Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
TV Ads Deliver Antiwar Message
EPA Commemorates National Radon Action Month
Blix: Iraq violating U.N. arms ban
U.N. Experts Report Chemical Warheads Find in Iraq
Iraq Says Ready to Resolve U.N. Arms Complaints
Inspectors Search Hussein's Complex
Inspectors Find Empty Warheads in Iraq
Kazakhstan's only nuclear power plant goes bankrupt
North Korea Dismisses U.S. Offer as 'Deceptive'
Nuclear diplomacy on North Korea since 1985
Seoul Braced for 'Worst-Case' Korea Scenario
2 Koreas Agree to Resume Talks on Nuclear Crisis
Commercial Devices Could Fuel 'Dirty Bombs'
Nuke Plant Fire Leads to Reactor Shutdown
Ethics Cloud Hangs Over Los Alamos Lab
3 Counties Maneuver in Bid to Close Down Indian Point
LES chief says waste won't stay in state
Government's path of secrecy
U.S. sees nothing alarming in N. Korea going on alert
Rumsfeld rebuts Daschle complaint on lack of briefing
Angry Bush leans on inspectors
MILITARY
Al Qaeda adapts to pursuit tactics
What About This Crisis?
U.N. Confirms Congo Atrocities
French Prestige on the Line in the Ivory Coast Civil War
Canadian takes stand in 'friendly fire' case
U.S. fails to achieve anti-drug goal in Colombia
U.S. Special Forces Arrive in Colombia
Small Nations Criticize Plan for 2 Chiefs Over Europe
Iraqis tired of endless wars
U.S. Sends 600 Troops and Antimissile Systems to Defend Israel
U.S. Resisting Calls for a 2nd U.N. Vote on a War With Iraq
Pilots Ignored Bomb Procedures, Officer Says
US Air Force Says 'Speed' Good for Tired Pilots
Top general lays out strategy for war with Iraq
Navy May Move More Planes Close to Iraq
U.S. public not sold on Iraq war: poll
U.S. taking its case for war to Vatican
Media group tells how to cover bioterrorism
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
ACLU fears door open to Big Brother
LAPD Chief Unveils Plan To Rout Gangs
Professor Arrested in Plague Vials Case
Use of Secret Evidence Rejected
Judge Criticizes Bid to Deny Terrorist Suspect a Lawyer
Government's path of secrecy
Court Upholds Copyright Extension
ENERGY AND OTHER
NASA Tests Environmentally Friendly Rocket Fuel
Anthrax holds hope as cancer fighter
ACTIVISTS
Environmental Group Opposes Army Building Burning
Chicago Passes Anti-War Resolution 46-1
Peace groups primed for big anti-war push
China Tries Labor Leaders Amid Protest
Jan 18: WHAT YOU NEED to KNOW if you're coming to DC
Survival Strategies for Winter Protests
Anti-war movement broadening
Remake of LBJ's 'Daisy' Nuke Ad Opposes Iraq War
Sampling of Anti - War Protests
'I'm an ex-marine recruiting human shields'
Listen to the Veterans
Demand peace
March -- but bring your own sign
Where's the Dissent?
-------- NUCLEAR
TV Ads Deliver Antiwar Message
By JOHANNA NEUMAN
Los Angeles Times
Jan 16, 2003
http://www.tampatrib.com/News/MGAYKF5A0BD.html
WASHINGTON - The TV ads begin airing today, raising the specter of nuclear war should the United States attack Iraq.
They depict mushroom clouds, images designed to stir controversy and galvanize public opinion.
With U.S. military forces poised for action in the Middle East, the peace movement has turned to a perennial show- stopper: the daisy ad. A remake of the commercial first broadcast during Lyndon Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign against Republican Barry Goldwater, it shows a little girl counting flower petals in a field of daisies. Her image is replaced by a nuclear explosion.
The ad, to air in 13 major markets, is part of a campaign by a coalition of peace groups to build momentum against war. Antiwar rallies are scheduled for Saturday in San Francisco and Washington. On Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, activists are turning to the civil rights leader's speeches for sentiments about the war in Vietnam that still resonate. And on Tuesday, people who oppose war plan to descend on district congressional offices to urge more time for U.N. inspections.
``When the stakes are this high ... running a controversial ad seems like the least that we can do to make sure our leaders are thinking about the consequences before they rush into it,'' said Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org, which sponsored the commercial.
MoveOn.org was formed during the Clinton impeachment trial, a grass-roots effort to get Congress to ``move on'' to other issues. It has reinvented itself as an online civic group that specializes in mobilizing support through the Internet on issues ranging from campaign finance to tax policy. The group, which claims 650,000 members, says it raised $400,000 in 48 hours, much of it from contributions of $35 or less, to pay for the five-day ad campaign.
-------- accidents and safety
EPA Commemorates National Radon Action Month
January 15, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-15-09.asp#anchor7
WASHINGTON, DC - About one home in 15 across the U.S. contains too much radon, making the invisible gas one of the nation's leading causes of lung cancer.
In some areas of the country, as many as one out of two homes has high levels or indoor radon. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Christie Whitman urged Americans to test their homes for radon gas in January, which has been designated as National Radon Action Month.
"As many as 22,000 people die from lung cancer each year in the United States from exposure to indoor radon," Whitman said. "Americans could help prevent these deaths and protect their families by testing their homes for radon as soon as possible. Not only is radon testing a sound investment in the long term health of your family, but it could also be a good investment in terms of the resale value of your home. In many areas, radon testing is a required part of real estate transactions."
poster This year's winning radon action poster was drawn by a 6th grade student from North Carolina. (Photo courtesy EPA) Radon, a radioactive product of the element radium, is invisible, odorless and occurs naturally in soil, rock and water across the country. When inhaled, radon releases small bursts of energy that can damage the DNA in lung tissue over time and lead to lung cancer.
The EPA and partner organizations are sponsoring activities around the country this month to increase awareness of the health risks of radon. Radon levels can soar during the colder months when residents keep windows and doors closed and spend more time indoors. Radon can also be a danger in summer when homes are closed tight for air conditioning.
Although some areas of the country have naturally higher radon levels than others, the EPA recommends that everyone test their home because isolated radon "hot spots" can occur anywhere. The EPA also recommends testing in schools, work places, community centers and other buildings where people spend long periods of time.
The EPA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn that homes with radon levels of four picoCurries per liter of air or higher pose a danger and should be fixed by an experienced contractor.
The EPA partners with the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) and their extension services, the National Safety Council, state and local government agencies and other nonprofit and commercial organizations to conduct an annual national poster contest to heighten awareness of radon. The national poster contest concludes with the winner and their parents or guardian brought to EPA Headquarters for an award ceremony and a photo opportunity with the EPA administrator and other top level officials.
This year's poster winner is a 6th grader from North Carolina. The winning poster will be distributed across the country as part of radon public awareness efforts.
For more information about indoor radon, visit: http://www.epa.gov/iaq/radon
-------- inspections
Blix: Iraq violating U.N. arms ban
By Gareth Harding
UPI Chief European Correspondent
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030116-090449-9866r.htm
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said Thursday Iraq had clearly violated a U.N. arms ban by importing illegal material that could be used to build nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
Speaking after briefing senior EU officials, Blix said: "We have found things that have been illegally imported, even in 2001 and 2002. The question of whether they relate to weapons of mass destruction requires further inspection."
Blix, who is due to brief French President Jacques Chirac and British premier Tony Blair Friday before traveling to Baghdad, said the message he was taking to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was that the situation is "very tense and very dangerous."
On the eve of the 12th anniversary of the Gulf War that drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the United States has sent more than 100,000 troops to the region and Washington has made it abundantly clear it intends to use them if Baghdad does not comply with U.N. calls to disarm.
Blix said patience with Iraq was running out and that the oil-rich country had to decide whether to cooperate more proactively with weapons inspectors or face the threat of a U.S.-led war.
"We feel Iraq must do more than it has so far in order to make inspections a credible avenue. The other major avenue is in the form of armed action against Iraq," he said. "We are trying our best to make inspections effective so we can have a peaceful solution."
The Swedish diplomat will present a report on his team's findings to the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 27. However, he attempted to dampen speculation this would automatically trigger an assault on Baghdad.
"I don't think history will finish on Jan. 27," he said, adding the report was just an "update" and that further Security Council briefings were scheduled for February.
Blix said that after two months, 130 U.N. inspectors were in Iraq, using eight helicopters and radar equipment to search for weapons of mass destruction.
However, the chief investigator accused Iraqi authorities of preventing inspectors from interviewing 500 Iraqi scientists identified as having worked on weapons projects.
"If Iraq is absolutely sure they have nothing to hide, it should ensure they are allowed to be interviewed without intimidation," Blix said.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana Thursday also stepped up the pressure on Baghdad to comply with U.N. resolutions or face military action.
"It is not enough that Saddam Hussein's regime opens doors. It has to be much more proactive to convince the United Nations that it has disarmed its weapons of mass destruction," he told reporters after meeting Blix.
Solana said a war with Iraq could be averted but "the responsibility is basically on the side of Saddam Hussein."
----
U.N. Experts Report Chemical Warheads Find in Iraq
Reuters
Thursday, January 16, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1357-2003Jan16?language=printer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.N. weapons inspectors in Iraq on Thursday found empty warheads designed to carry chemical warfare agents, a U.N. spokesman said in Baghdad.
Hiro Ueki did not elaborate on the possible significance of the find during an inspection of the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area. He said an inspection team had gone there to inspect a large group of bunkers constructed in the late 1990s.
"During the course of their inspection, the team discovered 11 empty 122 mm chemical warheads and one warhead that requires further evaluation," Ueki said in a statement.
"The warheads were in excellent condition and were similar to ones imported by Iraq during the late 1980s. The team used portable X-ray equipment to conduct preliminary analysis of one of the warheads and collected samples for chemical testing."
There was no immediate comment from the Iraqi side.
President Saddam Hussein's administration has insistently denied still possessing chemical weapons, which Iraq has been repeatedly ordered to give up under United Nations Security Council resolutions dating back to the Gulf crisis of 1990.
Inspectors have complained that Iraq has failed to provide evidence of action it says it took to destroy stocks of banned weapons following the departure of previous U.N. teams in 1998.
Following a new Council resolution, 1441, passed in November last year, U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq four weeks ago.
The United Nations has warned Iraq that a failure to observe its ban on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons will have "serious consequences." The United States is already massing forces in the region for a possible invasion to overthrow Saddam.
----
Iraq Says Ready to Resolve U.N. Arms Complaints
Reuters
Thursday, January 16, 2003; 1:09 PM
By Huda Majeed Saleh
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1358-2003Jan16?language=printer
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A top adviser of President Saddam Hussein said on Thursday that Iraq expected to resolve any problems with U.N. weapons inspectors over Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction at talks in Baghdad next week.
"All is going well so far. There are some remarks here and there and there are some complaints here and there but we expect to resolve those questions or complaints on Sunday and the next day," Amir al-Saadi told a news conference in Baghdad.
He was referring to chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Mohamed ElBaradei's planned visit to Baghdad on January 19-20.
Blix and ElBaradei said on Thursday that Iraq must do more to prove it does not possess chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in order to avoid military conflict.
Saadi said Iraq would discuss with both men their claims that Iraq's arms declaration to the U.N. Security Council last month left many questions unanswered. "All this will be discussed and we will reply officially and hand it over to the Security Council," Saadi said.
He also accused the international media of "spicing up" the statements by Blix and ElBaradei and said he did not foresee any major problems.
He pledged "active cooperation" with the inspectors but said recent calls on Iraq for "proactive cooperation" -- which he said meant that Iraq should hand over banned weapons -- were impossible to meet "because we don't have those weapons."
"Inspections that are intrusive are hurtful and detrimental ...We are committed by the (Security Council) resolutions that we have agreed to continue on this path," he said.
"If these inspections are carried out professionally and fairly, this period (of inspections) will not be long," he said, adding that a Security Council resolution in November drew a timeline for the lifting of 13-year-old U.N. sanctions on Iraq.
INSPECTORS VISIT 380 SITES
General Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of the National Monitoring Directorate, told the same news conference that the inspectors had visited 380 sites since they resumed work on November 27.
Saadi, reacting to a statement by Blix that the inspectors had found smuggled military equipment in Iraq, said: "They did not find it, we declared it...Everybody knows that we have a (conventional) military industry, we produce weapons from bullets to hand guns, artillery and artillery guns...
"How do we produce these, from air?"
He said the imports were not in breach of the Security Council resolutions, which banned countries from exporting them to Iraq but did not ban Baghdad from acquiring them.
Both Saadi and Amin blasted the inspectors' surprise visits earlier in the day to the houses of two Iraqi scientists, saying the visits encroached on the human rights of both men, but acknowledging that they did not breach the inspectors' mandate.
Saadi said it was up to the individuals themselves to allow inspectors into their homes and the authorities could not make people open their doors to the inspectors without a court order.
Blix and ElBaradei are due to brief the Security Council on January 27 but Blix said he is "almost sure" diplomats will request another report in February. The inspectors say many gaps must be filled and information must be analyzed.
---
Inspectors Search Hussein's Complex
Safes Opened in Buildings Near Palace
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 16, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63185-2003Jan15?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 15 -- U.N. arms experts entered a vast riverfront palace compound containing President Saddam Hussein's main office to search two high-security buildings today, intensifying their hunt for evidence of banned weapons programs less than two weeks before they must report their progress to the U.N. Security Council.
The nearly four-hour search of the grounds of the Republican Palace, a sprawling and secretive complex that serves as Iraq's White House, was the inspectors' most significant incursion into the nucleus of Hussein's government since they resumed their activities here seven weeks ago. Hussein uses the palace to receive foreign visitors and to hold formal government events.
Although the U.N. team stayed away from Hussein's residence and office, the buildings they searched suggested that the inspectors have begun acting upon intelligence data, some of which was supplied by the U.S. government, to identify new sites to visit. A U.N. official said the buildings, near the edge of the palace grounds, had never been searched by inspectors and had not been identified by the Iraqi government as related to current or past weapons programs.
Demetrius Perricos, a top official with the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission who led the inspection, would not say how the buildings were chosen, but he noted that satellite imagery of the site showed the construction of double fences and high walls that were deemed suspicious. "You don't know what's under these roofs," he said. "It just shows that it's nicely protected."
In one of the buildings, he said, the inspectors discovered three large safes, which were opened after a two-hour wait for a person who knew the combination. The inspectors examined the documents found in the safes, he said, but did not remove anything, suggesting they found nothing incriminating.
After the inspectors left, a short, gray-haired man who called himself a civil servant and said his name was Abu Mohammed Issawi, said the U.N. team looked at a building that coordinates veterans affairs. A few moments later, a security official clad in a black leather jacket pulled Issawi away and told him to "stop it."
While one U.N. team was at the palace, 10 other groups fanned out across the country in one of the most active days of inspections since searches resumed on Nov. 27. Among the sites visited was a munitions depot in Tikrit, about 100 miles northwest of Baghdad and the home town of Hussein and many of his top advisers and most loyal troops.
Today's activities appeared to be, at least in part, a response to criticism from the Bush administration that the inspections have not been fast or aggressive enough. U.S. officials have urged the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, to conduct more intrusive searches and to take Iraqi scientists out of the country for questioning. On Tuesday, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice traveled to the U.N.'s New York headquarters to urge Blix to heed the U.S. requests.
Perricos, the U.N. official, said the inspectors had no difficulty entering the palace grounds today. They were kept waiting for 15 minutes, a delay he called "understandable," while Iraqi officials accompanying the inspectors sought approval from their superiors to open the gates.
The palace, ringed by high cement walls and plainclothes security personnel, is usually off-limits to everyone except senior government officials and Hussein's relatives, office staff and personal security detail. Motorists using a nearby expressway are prevented from stopping outside the gates. Although the complex is on the Tigris River in central Baghdad, some official maps depict the 1.7-square-mile compound as undeveloped swampland.
For most of the 1990s, Hussein's government refused to allow inspectors into the Republican Palace and other presidential sites on the grounds that it would violate Iraq's sovereignty. But in February 1998, after President Bill Clinton threatened to launch military strikes against Iraq, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan hammered out a compromise that allowed inspectors to visit the palaces and other sensitive sites if they provided advance notice and were accompanied by a team of diplomats. A team of inspectors and diplomats subsequently scoured the Republican Palace on two occasions in March and April 1998 but reported finding no evidence of weapons of mass destruction.
The Nov. 8 Security Council resolution that restarted the inspections calls for inspectors to visit any site they want, whenever they want and without having to ask for permission. On Dec. 3, the inspectors briefly searched one of Hussein's other palaces, the Sijood compound, a largely unused facility in Baghdad.
Iraqi officials protested the visit to Sijood, calling it "unjustified and unnecessary." Last week, Hussein accused the inspectors of gathering intelligence for foreign governments. And today, an influential newspaper owned by Hussein's son lashed out at the inspections in a front-page editorial, saying, "Iraqis are angry and agitated, and some of them can no longer tolerate the sight of inspectors' teams."
--------
Inspectors Find Empty Warheads in Iraq
January 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- An inspection team searching bunkers in southern Iraq on Thursday found 11 empty chemical warheads that Iraqi officials had not declared to the United Nations, a U.N. spokesman said. Iraq insisted that it had reported the rockets, which it said were old and never used for chemical weapons.
Also Thursday, inspectors searched the homes of two Iraqi scientists in Baghdad for the first time. One of the them, a physicist, left with inspectors, but it was unclear if there was any connection between the home search and the discovery of the munitions.
Debate immediately began about whether the warheads constituted a material breach under U.N. Resolution 1441.
The Bush administration insisted that Iraq was violating the resolution regardless of whether the warheads are in violation.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the inspectors themselves have indicated that Iraq has failed in a number of areas to cooperate fully with U.N. Security Council requirements.
``There's no point in continuing forever, going on, if Iraq is not cooperating,'' Boucher said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the administration was assessing the warhead discovery and would be deliberate about reacting to it.
The resolution stipulates Iraq must declare any banned weapons, their locations and related materials. Any false statements or the failure to cooperate ``shall constitute a material breach,'' which could be a trigger for war.
U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the discovery may not amount to a ``smoking gun'' unless some sort of chemical agent is also detected. Key questions about the find are whether any chemical weapons were ever loaded into the ordnance, and, if so, when, officials said. Serial numbers on the rockets should tell inspectors where and when they were made.
The 122 mm warheads were found in bunkers built in the late 1990s at the Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area, 75 miles south of Baghdad, Hiro Ueki, the inspectors' spokesman in Baghdad, said in a statement. The team examined one of the warheads with X-ray equipment and took away samples for chemical testing, the statement added.
Ueki told The Associated Press the shells were not accounted for in Iraq's declaration. ``It was a discovery. They were not declared.'' He also said a 12th warhead was also found that needed further evaluation.
But Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, the chief Iraqi liaison officer to the inspection teams, said they were short-range shells imported in 1988 and mentioned in Iraq's report. He expressed ``astonishment'' over what he called ``no more than a storm in a teacup.''
Amin said the inspectors found the munitions in a sealed box that had never been opened and was covered by dust and bird droppings.
``When these boxes were opened, they found 122 mm rockets with empty warheads. No chemical or biological warheads. Just empty rockets which are expired and imported in 1988,'' Amin told reporters, adding similar ordnance was found by U.N. inspectors in 1997.
David Albright, a former nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq, said the discovery would represent a violation ``if Iraq knew that these warheads existed and they are for chemical weapons.''
Another former inspector said that at one time, Iraq had thousands of warheads filled with chemical agents.
``Trained chemical inspectors should be able to tell pretty easily whether the rockets discovered on Thursday are designed to be filled with chemical agents,'' said Terry Taylor, who heads the Washington office of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
On Dec. 7, a chemical team secured a dozen artillery shells filled with mustard gas that had first been inventoried by earlier inspectors in the 1990s. Those were the first weapons of mass destruction brought under inspectors' control in the current search, which began in November.
Chief inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei have said Iraq's weapons declaration is incomplete -- failing in particular to support its claims to have destroyed missiles, warheads and chemical agents such as VX nerve gas.
The United States, which has begun a heavy military buildup in the Persian Gulf, has threatened war on Iraq if it is found to be hiding banned weapons programs. The Iraqi government says it no longer has any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and submitted a 12,000-page declaration to the United Nations last month that it said proved its case.
During the search at the Iraqi scientists' homes, the inspectors escorted one of them to a field to examine what appeared to be a man-made mound of earth. The scientist, who carried a box of documents as he left his house, was then taken to the inspectors' hotel along with the documents and Iraqi officials.
Amin said the inspectors also asked to speak privately at their hotel with two other scientists linked to Iraq's weapons programs Thursday, but the scientists refused to be interviewed without Iraqi officials present. The inspectors did not interview the two scientists, whom Amin did not identify.
Blix and ElBaradei have stepped up demands that Iraqi improve its cooperation. Iraqis ``need to be more active ... to convince the Security Council that they do not have weapons of mass destruction,'' Blix said, adding that the alternative is ``the other avenue ... we have seen taking shape in the form of military action.''
The homes searched Thursday were those of physicist Faleh Hassan and his next-door neighbor, nuclear scientist Shaker el-Jibouri, in the Baghdad neighborhood of al-Ghazalia.
It was the first time the inspectors have searched private home since they resumed their work. The team searched the homes for six hours, with experts seen going through documents at a table set up near Hassan's front door and having an animated discussion with Iraqi liaison officials.
Afterward, Hassan -- who is director of al-Razi, a military installation that specializes in laser development -- drove with the inspectors and Iraqi officials about 10 miles west of Baghdad to an agricultural area known as al-Salamiyat. There, Hassan, two inspectors and a liaison officer walked to a bare field and examined the mound of earth for about five minutes.
Inspectors did not speak to journalists and it was not clear why they were interested in the mound. An Iraqi official later said the field was a farm that Hassan sold in 1996.
After the visit, a visibly angry el-Jibouri told reporters the inspectors spent two hours in his home -- and cordoned it off for much longer -- looking into everything, ``including beds and clothes.''
``This is a provocative operation,'' he said. ``They did not take away any documents but they looked at personal research papers.''
AP Washington correspondent George Gedda contributed to this report.
-------- kazakhstan
Kazakhstan's only nuclear power plant goes bankrupt
Thu Jan 16,12:45 PM ET
AP World Politics
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030116/ap_wo_en_po/as_gen_kazakhstan_nuclear_plant_bankruptcy_1
ALMATY, Kazakhstan - The only nuclear power plant in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan was declared bankrupt Thursday by a court after accumulating unbearable debts.
The Mangyishlak plant in western Kazakhstan was driven into the red because of reduced demand for energy and low prices enforced by local anti-monopoly authorities there, said Valikhan Asambayev, who was appointed to bring the plant back to profitability.
The plant has been struggling in recent years and in February 1999 was ordered to restructure, having accumulated a debt of 3.3 billion tenge (US$21.3 million at today's rates).
The deadline for the plant to return to profitability was extended last September to Feb. 2, but it has been unable to repay even that initial debt, while accumulating more financial burdens.
On Thursday, a regional court declared the plant bankrupt and ordered it to be auctioned off. To operate the plant, a potential buyer must have a license to handle radioactive materials in Kazakhstan and have been working in the sector for at least five years.
That leaves only two possible suitors, national energy company Kazatomprom or the National Atomic Center. The latter lacks the money to buy the plant, leaving the likely buyer as Kazatomprom.
-------- korea
North Korea Dismisses U.S. Offer as 'Deceptive'
By Peter S. Goodman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 16, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63289-2003Jan15?language=printer
SEOUL, Jan. 15 -- North Korea today dismissed the Bush administration's recent offer to resume aid if Pyongyang abandons its nuclear weapons programs, calling the overtures "nothing but a deceptive drama to mislead the world public opinion."
"The U.S. loudmouthed supply of energy and food aid are like a painted cake pie in the sky," North Korea's Foreign Ministry declared in a statement distributed by the official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea's rejection of the Bush offer left the administration with few policy options while facing the likely prospect that the reclusive Communist country will now resume its recent course of confrontation. On Tuesday, North Korea issued a veiled and vague threat that it would soon employ "options."
Though North Korea continues to work to reactivate a reactor capable of producing nuclear material that could be used in weapons, the Bush administration has set aside military force as a potential response. The White House has also put aside talk of economic sanctions, recognizing that China -- North Korea's largest outside source of food and fuel -- opposes that course, rendering it ineffective. The administration has instead reluctantly pursued a third tack: inducements and diplomatic persuasion.
After initially opposing any concessions, the administration shifted considerably in recent days, signaling that if North Korea reverses course, the things it wants most -- food, fuel and potential security assurances -- could all be in store.
On Monday here in the South Korean capital, Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly said the United States might be prepared to resume energy aid if North Korea renounced its nuclear plans. On Tuesday, President Bush went further, directly linking a North Korean reversal with energy and agricultural aid for the deeply impoverished country.
But in its response today, North Korea asserted that the United States was effectively demanding a surrender before engaging in substantive negotiations.
"What we heard from the U.S. side was simple words that the U.S. had nothing to say about the resumption of dialogue," the statement declared, adding that the White House was effectively saying that talks would be "possible only after . . . [North Korea] is totally disarmed. Nobody will be taken in by any tricks employed by the Bush administration. The U.S. can never evade the blame for the present crisis unless it makes a fundamental switchover in its hostile policy."
The statement lacked North Korea's trademark bellicosity, suggesting that -- in a peculiar sort of way -- it was an entreaty for talks on Pyongyang's terms.
North Korea "is ready to solve the nuclear issue through negotiations on condition that the U.S. recognizes the DPRK's sovereignty, assures it of non-aggression and does not obstruct its economic development," the statement said, using the abbreviation for North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The White House dismissed the statement and said it was awaiting an official response. "It's always very hard to read North Korea," said Ari Fleischer, the chief spokesman for the president. "North Korea has a habit of saying very many inflammatory things and then their inflammatory things can sometimes contradict themselves and so can their private statements."
[On Thursday, Kelly said resolving the nuclear standoff with North Korea would be a "slow process," the Reuters news agency reported. "We're going to have to talk more together and communicate with other people, including North Korea, very, very clearly, so we all agree on the end results," he said after talks with Chinese officials in Beijing.]
North Korea appears to be employing a well-honed strategy of inducing talks by provoking fear of nuclear proliferation and hostilities, then seeking to increase its bargaining position by escalating still further.
In the past month, the North has begun work to reactivate the reactor, expelled U.N. inspectors, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and, most recently, threatened to resume testing ballistic missiles.
But those familiar with North Korea's methods say it still has many other ways to intensify the conflict. For example, it could follow through on the threat to test missiles by moving equipment around, test high explosives used to build nuclear bombs or disclose some of the contents of its large stocks of chemical and biological weapons, said Kim Tae Woo, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a research group affiliated with the South Korean Defense Ministry.
A senior U.S. military official said today that North Korean soldiers have stepped up patrols over the past week in a section of the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the Korean Peninsula for a half-century.
Lt. Col. Matthew Margotta, who commands a combined battalion of U.S. and South Korean soldiers, said the activities in the DMZ were "not alarming, just unusual."
----
Nuclear diplomacy on North Korea since 1985
REUTERS SOUTH KOREA:
January 16, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19437/story.htm
SEOUL - Following is a chronology of key events in the past 17 years of diplomatic efforts to contain North Korea's atomic ambitions:
December 1985 - North Korea joins the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but makes adherence to safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) contingent on removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea.
September 1991 - President George Bush announces withdrawal of all U.S. tactical nuclear weapons deployed abroad, including about 100 based in South Korea.
December 1991 - The two Koreas sign the South-North Joint Declaration on the Denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. They pledge not to test, produce, receive, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons. They also agree to mutual inspections.
January 1992 - North Korea concludes a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA, ratifying agreement in April.
May 1992 - North Korea declares seven sites and some plutonium to be subject to IAEA inspection.
September 1992 - IAEA inspectors discover discrepancies in North Korea's initial report on its nuclear programme and ask for clarification on the amount of reprocessed plutonium.
February 1993 - The IAEA demands special inspections of two nuclear waste storage sites, citing evidence that North Korea had been cheating on its NPT commitments. North Korea refuses.
March 1993 - Facing demands for special inspections, North Korea announces its intention to withdraw from the NPT in three months, citing national security considerations.
April 1993 - The IAEA declares that North Korea is not adhering to its safeguards agreement.
June 1993 - Following talks with the United States, North Korea suspends its decision to pull out of the NPT and agrees to accept IAEA safeguards.
January 1994 - CIA director estimates that North Korea may have produced one or two nuclear weapons.
March 1994 - IAEA inspectors arrive in North Korea for the first inspections in a year. North Korea's refusal to allow inspections at a plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, prompts the IAEA to pass a resolution calling on North Korea to immediately allow all requested inspections.
Yongbyon became the target of a planned U.S. strike.
May 1994 - North Korea begins removing spent fuel from a five-megawatt research reactor without international monitoring.
June 1994 - North Korea announces its withdrawal from the IAEA. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter negotiates a deal with North Korea in which it confirms its willingness to freeze its nuclear arms programme and resume talks with the United States.
October 1994 - The United States and North Korea conclude four months of negotiations by adopting the Agreed Framework in Geneva. The agreement calls for North Korea to freeze and eventually eliminate its nuclear facilities and to allow IAEA special inspections. In exchange, Pyongyang is to receive two light-water reactors, financed and built through the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), a multinational consortium, along with annual shipments of heavy fuel oil to tide North over until the light water reactors come on stream.
March 1995 - KEDO is formed in New York with the United States, South Korea and Japan as original members.
September 1997 - European Union joins KEDO.
August 1998 - North Korea test-fires a missile over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean, triggering U.S. alarm. In late 1999, North Korea agrees to a moratorium on test firings, later extending that moratorium until 2003.
December 1998 - The United States and North Korea hold talks to address U.S. concerns about a suspected underground nuclear facility at Kumchang-ni, northeast of the capital.
May 1999 - In exchange for food aid, North Korea allows a U.S. inspection team to visit the Kumchang-ni site. The team finds no evidence of nuclear activity.
November 1999 - KEDO officials sign contract with the Korea Electric Power Corporation to begin construction of the two LWRs in Kumho, North Korea.
January 2002 - President George W. Bush says North Korea, Iran and Iraq form an "axis of evil" threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction. North Korea says the remarks are tantamount to a declaration of war.
April 2002 - Bush issues a memorandum stating that he will not certify North Korea's compliance with the Agreed Framework. However, he allows continued U.S. funding of oil shipments.
October 3-5, 2002 - James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, visits North Korea. When he confronts Pyongyang with U.S. evidence of a covert uranium enrichment programme, his hosts say North Korea is "entitled to possess not only nuclear weapons but other types of weapons more powerful than them in defence of its sovereignty in face of the U.S. threat".
October 16, 2002 - The United States announces that North Korea admitted during Kelly's visit to having a covert programme to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
October 25, 2002 - North Korea's Foreign Ministry says it will address U.S. concerns about its nuclear programme if the United States signs a non-aggression treaty, guarantees Pyongyang's sovereignty and pledges not to interfere in its economic development.
November 14, 2002 - The United States and its KEDO allies meet in New York and decide to cut off fuel oil shipments to North Korea, beginning in December.
November 29, 2002 - The IAEA calls on North Korea to open its atomic weapons programme to inspections, saying it "deplored" Pyongyang's assertion it had a right to possess the weapons.
December 4, 2002 - North Korea rejects the IAEA call to allow inspections, saying the U.N. nuclear watchdog was abetting U.S. policy toward the North.
December 12, 2002 - North Korea announces it plans to immediately restart the Yongbyon reactor to generate electricity to make up for the cutoff of fuel oil shipments.
December 21, 2002 - The IAEA says North Korea has disabled surveillance devices the agency had placed at the Yongbyon reactor.
December 22, 2002 - North Korea says it has begun removing IAEA monitoring equipment from Yongbyon, drawing condemnation from the United States, South Korea, Japan and France.
December 27, 2002 - North Korea tells the IAEA its inspectors are no longer needed at Yongbyon and orders their expulsion.
December 31, 2002 - U.N. nuclear inspectors leave North Korea.
January 6, 2003 - IAEA gives North Korea one last chance to re-admit inspectors or be reported to the U.N. Security Council.
January 11, 2003 - Pyongyang becomes first country to withdraw from the NPT. (SOURCES: Arms Control Association, U.S. State Department, Korean Central News Agency).
----
Seoul Braced for 'Worst-Case' Korea Scenario
Reuters
Thursday, January 16, 2003
By Brian Rhoads and Jane Macartney
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1298-2003Jan16?language=printer
BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Thursday it was prepared for a worst-case scenario, including war on the peninsula, if diplomacy failed to resolve the crisis over North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons ambitions.
At the same time, the top U.S. envoy for Asia said in Beijing the whole international community agreed the Korean peninsula must be free of nuclear weapons, but he held out little hope of a speedy outcome.
"It's going to be a slow process to make sure we achieve this in the right way," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly told reporters after talks with Chinese leaders.
Kelly spoke after Pyongyang dismissed as "pie in the sky" U.S. offers of possible food and energy aid if the impoverished North would halt its nuclear program.
A White House spokesman traveling with President Bush in Scranton, Pennsylvania, said on Thursday North Korea risked further isolation by refusing U.S. offers for talks on dismantling its suspected nuclear program.
"The president has said the United States will talk to North Korea about dismantlement of their programs," Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters.
"North Korea's seeming rejection of the offer to talk means North Korea further isolates itself from the rest of the world and only harms the people of North Korea," Fleischer said.
In Seoul, South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jun told parliament war would be unavoidable if diplomacy failed.
"If the North Korean nuclear problem cannot be solved peacefully and America attacks North Korea, war on the Korean peninsula will be unavoidable," said Lee.
"Our army is prepared for the worst-case scenario."
Despite Pyongyang's hard-line public declarations, Japan's foreign minister and South Korea's president-elect said they saw signs it wanted talks to end the crisis.
'VERY GOOD' U.S.-CHINA TALKS
Kelly, visiting Asian capitals to drum up support for Washington's stance on North Korea, said he held "very good" talks with officials from China -- one of Pyongyang's few allies. "We're going to have to talk more together and communicate with other people, including North Korea, very, very clearly, so we all agree on the end results," he said.
Kelly left China for Singapore as Russia's chief Asia expert, Alexander Losyukov, prepared to fly to Beijing and then to Pyongyang, where he was to discuss Moscow's proposals for ending the crisis.
An Australian diplomatic delegation has been in the North Korean capital this week too, seeking to find a way out of the impasse. But a visiting British Foreign Office minister said in Hong Kong on Thursday he believed Pyongyang wanted to deal exclusively with Washington.
North Korea triggered the crisis last month when it threw out U.N. nuclear inspectors. Last week, it pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and threatened to resume missile tests.
Meeting in Seoul, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi and Roh Moon-hyun, South Korea's president-elect, said they saw three promising elements in Pyongyang's Jan. 10 announcement it was quitting the treaty, aides said.
The three items were Pyongyang's statement it did not intend to produce nuclear arms, its offer to discuss other ways of verifying its nonnuclear pledges and the omission of a demand for a nonaggression treaty, a Japanese spokesman said.
"Foreign Minister Kawaguchi mentioned that these three factors ... indicate some willingness on the North Korean side to have a dialogue with other parties," the spokesman told reporters in Seoul. "Mr. Roh agreed with her analysis."
Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose monitors were evicted from a North Korean nuclear plant after Pyongyang announced it would reactivate the mothballed facility, said Losyukov's visit could be key.
RUSSIA SEEN AS 'HONEST BROKER'
"The elements of a solution are there on the table. They just need an honest broker or an interlocutor to put it together," ElBaradei said. "I am very heartened that Russia is sending an envoy to Pyongyang in the next couple of days and I hope that will start the ball rolling."
In a major shift in his approach to North Korea since the crisis erupted, Bush offered on Tuesday to revive a stalled initiative to give North Korea food and energy aid if it abandoned its pursuit of a nuclear arsenal.
North Korea -- officially called the Democratic People's Republic of Korea -- scorned the offer, saying Washington was trying to trick it into disarming.
"The U.S. loudmouthed supply of energy and food aid are like a painted cake pie in the sky as they are possible only after the DPRK is totally disarmed," said the Foreign Ministry statement.
Washington's softer approach followed weeks of rising tension over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions that has distracted the United States as it contemplates using military force to disarm Iraq -- part of what Bush has termed an "axis of evil" along with North Korea and Iran.
A senior U.S. official said the Bush administration's primary concern was trying to keep the nuclear crisis with Pyongyang at bay while it prepares for war with Baghdad.
Pyongyang has clearly not fallen in with that strategy.
Diplomats say the United States would like China, which provides Pyongyang with cheap grain and oil, to put more pressure on North Korea to drop its nuclear ambitions and avoid provocative moves such as missile testing.
China, which has taken a relatively balanced approach to the nuclear dilemma, has been pressing the two sides to negotiate. But two days after China invited the two sides to meet in Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said on Thursday there had been no takers.
----
KOREAN PENINSULA
2 Koreas Agree to Resume Talks on Nuclear Crisis
January 16, 2003
New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/16/international/asia/16KORE.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Jan. 15 - North and South Korea agreed today to resume high-level talks here next week, as diplomatic efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis accelerated.
The announcement of the meetings in Seoul next Tuesday, which will be the first cabinet-level talks between the two countries in months, came as North Korea rejected signals by the Bush administration that it was open to dialogue.
"In essence, there is no change in the U.S. conditional stand that it would have dialogue with the D.P.R.K. only after it scraps its `nuclear program,' " the North Korean Foreign Ministry statement said, using the initials for North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "It is clear that the U.S. talk about dialogue is nothing but a deceptive drama to mislead the world public opinion."
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, called North Korea's assertion an "unfortunate statement." "North Korea has a habit of saying many inflammatory things," he said. Mr. Fleischer denied North Korea's assertion that the United States wanted to disarm the nation. "The U.S. supports a "denuclearized" Korean Peninsula, he said. "That's not the same as disarmament."
Despite the vitriol that often characterizes North Korean statements in times of crisis, however, the message contained signals that the North might be positioning itself for negotiations with Washington, analysts said.
"It is the consistent stand of the D.P.R.K. to settle the issue on an equal footing through fair negotiations that may clear both sides of their concerns," the statement said. "We have already clarified that the D.P.R.K. is ready to solve the nuclear issue through negotiations on condition that the U.S. recognizes the D.P.R.K.'s sovereignty, assures it of nonaggression and does not obstruct its economic development."
One longtime analyst of North Korea called the language a nuanced reply to the Bush administration, meaning "nice try, but wrong target."
The United States has said that if North Korea verifiably eliminates its nuclear weapons program it will consider economic aid, recognize the country's sovereignty and formalize recent promises not to attack.
One longtime analyst of North Korea said he interpreted the latest North Korean statements as an invitation for Washington to deliver "a piece of paper that has it all written down in one place."
From the beginning of the current crisis, which began when the United States presented North Korea with evidence that it knew the North was secretly developing a program to produce highly enriched uranium, in violation of a number of the country's international commitments, North Korea has insisted that any solution must come out of direct talks with Washington. North Korea has insisted on a nonaggression treaty with the United States, saying that with formal security guarantees it would open its doors to American inspectors.
The position of the United States has evolved substantially in recent weeks, nudged by South Korea, Japan, Russia and China, from a refusal to engage with North Korea to its current willingness to talk. What has remained, however, is the American insistence that North Korea take a major first step by dismantling its nuclear program and submitting to verification.
President-elect Roh Moo Hyun has insisted that South Korea be allowed to play a leading role in international diplomacy involving North Korea. "The North crisis should be resolved peacefully," Mr. Roh said today. "It could also be resolved through dialogue based on mutual cooperation between South Korea and the U.S. with the help of diplomatic efforts among Japan, Russia, and China." Despite the scheduled resumption of North-South talks next week, however, it is unclear whether South Korea will be able to influence North Korea on nuclear and other security matters.
Meanwhile, South Korea's departing president, Kim Dae Jung, abruptly canceled a meeting scheduled for Thursday with Japan's foreign minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi. The reason was a visit Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, made on Tuesday to the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto war memorial. The shrine is considered a symbol of Japanese wartime military imperialism.
"We are outraged and deeply disappointed," the South Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry said in a statement, urging the Japanese government "not to damage the feeling of South Korean people any further."
In another development, South Korea's Supreme Court decided today to recount votes cast across the nation in last month's presidential election amid doubts over the accuracy of the vote-counting machines. The recount will begin before the end of this month at 80 polling districts, including 17 in Seoul, the Supreme Court ruled.
Mr. Roh defeated Lee Hoi Chang by a margin of 570,980. The recount was not expected to change the outcome, however.
-------- terrorism
Commercial Devices Could Fuel 'Dirty Bombs'
Report Outlines Threat From Lax Controls
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 16, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63720-2003Jan15?language=printer
Tens of thousands of radioactive devices currently used in medicine and industry are powerful enough to inflict major damage if used by terrorists in a "dirty bomb," yet governments worldwide have failed to take steps needed to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, according to a study scheduled for release today.
Despite a growing awareness of dirty bombs, U.S. law places few limits on exports of radioactive equipment, even to troubled states such as Afghanistan or the former Soviet republics, says the report by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Monterey Institute of International Studies. Dirty bombs are crude weapons that use conventional explosives to spread dangerous radiation.
Lax controls have left a legacy of thousands of lost and abandoned radioactive devices around the world, especially in the former Soviet Union. "The locations of many unauthorized dumps of radioactive sources remain unknown," the report says. The study, the result of a yearlong investigation, is among the first to examine security risks posed by commercial radioactive equipment.
The risks involve only a small fraction of the millions of commercial radioactive devices manufactured since the 1940s -- a finite number of highly radioactive machines and tools that could be quickly identified and secured if governments acted aggressively to fix the problem, the study's authors said. A half-dozen nations produce the vast majority of radioactive equipment that poses the greatest threat, they said.
"The threat is challenging but manageable if we prioritize the small fraction of sources that pose the highest security risk," said Charles D. Ferguson, a physicist who is the center's scientist-in-residence and one of three authors of the report.
Radioactive materials such as cesium-137 and cobalt-60 have thousands of commercial applications ranging from medical diagnostics to food irradiation and household smoke detection. In most commercial devices the amount of radioactivity is extremely small, but a few are "hot" enough to deliver a lethal dose within a few minutes of direct exposure.
While there has never been a dirty-bomb attack, U.S. officials believe they disrupted plans by al Qaeda to unleash a dirty bomb -- also known as a "radiological dispersion device" -- on a U.S. city with the arrest last May of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen linked by the FBI to al Qaeda.
Most terrorism experts contend that a dirty bomb explosion would likely cause few immediate casualties but could create panic and cause extensive property damage.
The Monterey report calls for tighter controls on exports of radioactive equipment and better oversight of the use and eventual disposal of the devices. It calls for improved international efforts to round up radioactive devices that have been abandoned or illegally dumped. An Energy Department initiative that recovered 10,000 "orphaned" devices in recent years is being threatened this year with deep funding cuts, the study notes.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- michigan
Nuke Plant Fire Leads to Reactor Shutdown
1/16/03
The Associated Press
From: Ndunlks@aol.com
BRIDGMAN, Mich. (AP) - A transformer fire at a nuclear plant injured a security officer and led to the automatic shutdown of one of the plant's two reactors.
The fire Wednesday night at the Donald C. Cook Nuclear Plant in southwest Michigan also resulted in a brief activation of the site's emergency plan, the plant's owner, American Electric Power Co., said in a news release.
A security officer was treated for smoke inhalation.
The transformer, which is outdoors and adjacent to the plant, is used to increase the voltage of the plant's generator for more efficient long-distance transmission of electricity.
When the transformer failed, the plant's operating system automatically shut down the Unit 1 reactor, which was operating at full power. All safety systems responded appropriately, and the reactor was not damaged, AEP said.
The plant's fire brigade extinguished the fire in 35 minutes, and the plant notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and state and local emergency-response agencies, AEP said.
The fire's cause remained under investigation.
On the Net:
American Electric Power Co., http://www.aep.com
-------- new mexico
Ethics Cloud Hangs Over Los Alamos Lab
January 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Los-Alamos-Scandal.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- The laboratory that built the atomic bomb and is entrusted with some of America's most sensitive defense secrets has lost track of millions in equipment and credit-card expenses in a scandal that has claimed five top managers, including the director.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is under investigation by the FBI and at least three congressional committees, which are looking into allegations of theft, fraud and management cover-up. The allegations surfaced after two internal investigators were fired last year.
Los Alamos' new interim director, Pete Nanos, on Wednesday told University of California officials who oversee the lab that he will have to ``drain the swamp'' at Los Alamos, and start with a wall-to-wall inventory.
``We are not a bunch of crooks -- the problem is, I can't prove it,'' he told lab employees on his first day on the job last week.
The scandal is the latest embarrassment for the elite research lab in the past several years. In 1999, Wen Ho Lee was accused of mishandling nuclear weapons codes, but the government's case fell apart and ended with a plea bargain that freed the Taiwanese-born scientist. The next year, two computer hard drives with top-secret nuclear-related material disappeared, only to turn up mysteriously behind a copy machine.
Now Los Alamos is under scrutiny from the Energy Department and other agencies looking into allegations it lost $2.7 million in computers and other equipment. In addition, a lab-commissioned audit found nearly $4.9 million in questionable credit card transactions over four years.
Separately, the FBI is investigating two workers suspected of using $50,000 in purchase orders to buy fishing and camping gear and other items for themselves. Four other employees allegedly used lab purchase cards -- sort of like credit cards -- for such things as cash advances at casinos and jewelry. One even tried to charge a customized Ford Mustang.
The scandal cost Director John Browne his job last month. He and four other managers have either resigned or been reassigned. The University of California, which runs the lab for the Energy Department, has assumed oversight of the lab's audit office and other business operations.
``The broader public perception of the lab has been severely damaged by these scandals,'' said Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, which tracks secret research.
The man-on-the-street view of Los Alamos, he said, ``is likely to be credit-card fraud or theft instead of the frontiers of modern physics.''
Nicknamed ``The Hill'' for its isolated mountaintop location, the lab has always been secretive about its work. Outsiders do not get in without a pass, and the area that handles highly dangerous plutonium is surrounded by razor-wire fences and heavily guarded gates.
Internal investigators Glenn Walp and Steve Doran said they were fired in November because lab officials did not want the problems to become public and endanger the university's $1.6 billion-a-year contract to run Los Alamos, which expires in 2005.
Lab managers said the two men were dismissed because they were not a ``suitable fit.'' But Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has asked the department's inspector general to investigate the firings and the men's allegations of a cover-up.
Abraham also put university officials on notice that they need to fix the problems ``to ensure we return Los Alamos to its pre-eminent position in science and national security.''
Lab officials said they have accounted for all but about $260,000 of the questionable credit-card charges. As for the missing equipment, lab spokeswoman Linn Tytler said Los Alamos is working with university auditors to find it.
Doran, a former police chief hired to help Walp, a former Pennsylvania state police colonel, said a ``bottomless budget'' at Los Alamos led to a cavalier attitude about rules and spending.
``It's this spoiled-rich-kid attitude they've had for years,'' he said.
On the Net:
Los Alamos: http://www.lanl.gov
University of California: http://labs.ucop.edu
-------- new york
3 Counties Maneuver in Bid to Close Down Indian Point
January 16, 2003
New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/16/nyregion/16NUKE.html
Rockland County yesterday joined an effort by two neighboring county governments to shut the Indian Point nuclear plant by refusing to sign off on plans for a possible radioactivity emergency.
The move by C. Scott Vanderhoef, the Rockland County executive, came in response to a report last week that called evacuation plans for the plant inadequate, particularly given the potential for terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks.
His decision means that three of the four counties surrounding the plant will refuse to send the state their usually routine annual certification of disaster plans. The certification is a checklist confirming that rescue workers have completed training and have the resources to deal with a radioactive emergency. The counties' opposition, while largely symbolic, could bolster legal efforts to force a shutdown of the plant.
Only the Putnam County executive, Robert Bondi, has decided to sign the plan, saying that certification is a technicality that should be free of political calculations.
"We should all be spending more time talking about how to protect the plant from a terrorist attack rather than arguing over whether it should be shut down immediately," said Mr. Bondi, a volunteer fireman. He added, "If we close the plant down, probably we would be doing just what the terrorists would like us to do: alter our lives forever."
But Mr. Vanderhoef, joining his colleagues in Westchester and Orange Counties, said he could not certify the plan, in light of a report released Friday by James Lee Witt, a consultant for the state, that said an evacuation plan required for a 10-mile radius around the plant was unworkable and emergency planning was inadequate to protect the public.
The report found, among other things, that roads would probably be clogged by panicked residents well beyond the 10-mile radius, and that emergency workers, many of them volunteers, might not respond because of the perceived danger.
"The whole Witt report is disturbing, and obviously its conclusions are disturbing," Mr. Vanderhoef said after a conference call with the three other county executives, who plan to request meetings with state and federal officials to discuss the findings.
Every year, the state is required to send the Federal Emergency Management Agency a certification that the disaster plan is in place and current. The state typically sends its certification after collecting letters from the four counties.
But state officials say they will be hard-pressed to send the certification if the counties responsible for responding to emergencies do not certify the plan. The state's Emergency Management Office has not decided whether to certify the plan.
Even if FEMA decides that the plan is not current, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could still allow the plant to operate, at least temporarily. But opponents plan to use the lack of certification in a legal fight to force a closing, a process experts say could take at least a year.
Jim Steets, a spokesman for Entergy, which owns the plant, said that the company stood by the plan and that Mr. Witt had overstated the problems with it.
-------- tennessee
LES chief says waste won't stay in state
By KELLI SAMANTHA HEWETT Staff Writer,
Tennesseean
Thursday, 01/16/03
http://www.tennessean.com/growth/archives/03/01/27722672.shtml?Element_ID=27722672 Proposed plant lacks disposal plan
The CEO of a proposed uranium enrichment plant for Trousdale County said his company may develop its own site ''someplace'' for permanently storing depleted uranium.
George Dials said the future of storing depleted uranium remains unclear, but he emphasized it will not stay in Tennessee permanently. ''This is a business decision, not a health and safety decision,'' said Dials, president and CEO of the international business group Louisiana Energy Services.
Low-level material doesn't carry the same risk as high-level material from nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants, Dials said at a press conference yesterday at Nashville International Airport.
The long-term fate of the material, called tails by the industry and nuclear waste by opponents, remains one of the most debated issues of the $1.1 billion plant. Local leaders have come to a preliminary agreement on limiting the amount stored on site at any given time.
A rotating stock of the material could stay in Hartsville for at least five years, Dials said, but details aren't yet final.
Thursday, 16 January, 2003, 13:18 GMT 'I'm an ex-marine recruiting human shields' As war with Iraq seems to edge ever closer, former US Marine Kenneth Nichols O'Keefe - who fought in the Gulf War - plans to lead a group of Westerners to be human shields.
I'm hoping to recruit hundreds of volunteers en route to Iraq and my goal is thousands. After we leave London on 25 January, we go to France, then Holland, Germany and Switzerland before heading towards Baghdad.
US Marines help an injured colleague in 1991 I left the Marines after the Gulf War - I'd had an altercation with my superiors
In the UK and the US, there's little appetite for war but the authorities don't expect many people to go to such extremes to stop it. That would be true if there was only 20 to 50 of us, but if there's 500 or more, it becomes easier and easier to recruit people.
The bandwagon is already formed. The first two or three people were the most difficult - it was myself and one other person who said 'we're going', and it was another fortnight before we got a third. Based on that sort of progress, we'd only have a dozen by now, but it's grown exponentially since then.
Not one of the volunteers has said that they want to go to Iraq to support Saddam Hussein. The theme I'm getting is that this is a criminal war, that it's going to victimise an already victimised population. Many also regard the US as the greatest threat to world security.
Battle scars
I was in the Gulf War in 1991 for six months with the Second Battalion, Fourth Marines.
Iraqi children act as human shields Expats and Iraqi children were placed at key instillations in 1991 The first few months we sat on the border of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and when the ground war kicked off we had to secure the road that runs between Kuwait City and Baghdad - the Highway of Death, where 20,000 Iraqis were massacred by the US military forces as they were retreating.
I was in a supporting role in that massacre; although I didn't kill anyone personally, I still take responsibility for the deaths of others.
I left the Marines seven or eight months later - essentially I was fired when they were downsizing after the war.
Torched oil fields in 1991 It is not Kenneth's war experience that turned him to peace I'd had an altercation with my immediate superiors, having reported them for an abuse of power. It might seem quite trivial, but we were living on board a ship in the Mediterranean in summer and it was very hot.
My superiors had shut a passage so as to keep what little air conditioning there was in their area. They had no authority to do that, and it forced us in the lower ranks to go three times as far to get to routine areas.
The whole platoon was punished for what I did, and I had to look over my shoulder after that. A lot of marines would no doubt describe me a provocateur or a "bad apple" but to my mind I did the right thing.
War and peace
While my experience in the Gulf helped shape me, it's not my time there that's prompted me to return. I'm going to protest against my country's policies.
I do all this because I want to see a peaceful world
I've also renounced my citizenship. I've handed over my passport, put my hand up and sworn the oath - and added a statement condemning the US's criminal acts at home and abroad, and its destruction of the natural environment - and left the country.
I'm now based in Holland, where I came in November 2001 to seek political asylum. I no longer have a passport but I managed to get into the UK with a copy of my old US one - no doubt because I'm white and speak with an American accent.
Kurd refugees in 1991 Thousands have died or been displaced as a result I do all this because I want to see a peaceful world.
I grew up in a prosperous place in southern California, I went to the beach and surfed, I played soccer. I had a loving family, a safe neighbourhood. Before I left the US, I lived in paradise in Hawaii, had my own dive business and was involved in a lot of marine conservation work.
I've had a life most people would kill for. It makes me very sad to know that the majority of people don't have such opportunities.
''I think people want a bit more specificity than they need in this case,'' Dials said.
LES plans to submit its federal application for the plant Jan. 30, outlining more project details. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission could take more than a year to decide if the project will become a reality.
Opponents say the risks associated with storing the tails are more serious than LES has indicated.
A handful of opponents showed up for Dials' meeting but were turned away from an administrative conference room. The group of about six waited for Dials by the Southwest ticket counter, exchanging a few sentences of small talk before Dials flew out.
''They just told us it was private and told us to wait down here,'' said Will Callaway, of the Tennessee Environmental Council.
''I don't know why LES thinks it's so important to exclude Tennesseans.''
-------- us politics
Government's path of secrecy
St. Petersburg Times,
January 16, 2003
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/01/16/news_pf/Opinion/Government_s_path_of_.shtml
"A government operating in the shadow of secrecy stands in complete opposition to the society envisioned by the Framers of our Constitution," wrote Judge Damon Keith of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati last year. "When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation."
The judge was condemning the Bush administration's policy of closing all immigration hearings for post-Sept. 11 detainees. However, his words could be a critique of the administration's penchant for secrecy on a broad front. Believing that the public is entitled only to information the government chooses to release, the president and his lieutenants are going to extraordinary lengths to limit the information made public by federal agencies. By sharply restricting public access to government employees, documents, hearings and meetings, the administration has thrown up barriers to traditional government watchdogs such as the press and public interest groups, and made itself far less accountable.
Some of the most troubling acts of secrecy include Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to disclose to Congress details of the role oil companies played in his energy task force meetings and President Bush's decision to institute new restrictions on the release of the papers of former presidents. But the culture of closed doors pervades the administration.
Attorney General John Ashcroft could not have been much clearer in 2001 when he issued a directive to all federal agencies encouraging them to deny documents to the public that had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act. He promised to defend any challenges to those rejections in court. Under the Clinton administration, the policy had been just the opposite: provide as much information as possible as long as there is no "foreseeable harm" from the release.
But Ashcroft's Justice Department is obsessed with secrecy. He has refused to make public the names of hundreds of people detained on immigration charges and material witness warrants following the Sept. 11 attacks, even after multiple requests by members of Congress. And he has stonewalled Congress' request for information on how the FBI is implementing some of its new powers of surveillance and wiretapping under the USA Patriot Act. All that, in addition to the department's decision to impose a blanket closure of immigration hearings for post-Sept. 11 detainees, the constitutionality of which is still being challenged in the courts.
Since Bush became president, the number of documents being classified is up about 18 percent, and three more federal agencies have been given the power to create secret files.
Two dangerous impulses of government are at work: First is the desire to arrogate more power to the executive branch by refusing to acknowledge Congress' oversight role; second is the attempt to shut down public criticism and dissent by restricting access to the information needed to make intelligent assessments on programs and policies.
The Bush administration is leading us down a dangerous path, one where our government is far less interested in being responsive to the people than in self-protection and self-promotion.
----
U.S. sees nothing alarming in N. Korea going on alert
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-72466627.htm
North Korea's military has been alerted to prepare to increase its combat readiness, but U.S. intelligence officials said the notice does not indicate an increased danger of conflict.
The alert was sent to North Korean military units earlier this month and comes amid heightened tensions over Pyongyang's violation of nuclear arms agreements.
"The alert said 'get ready to get ready,'" according to one intelligence official.
Another official said the alert appeared similar to the heightened status of North Korea's million-member army prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf war. "The difference now is the nuclear problem," said another official.
The Bush administration has been trying to defuse the crisis over North Korea's new push for nuclear arms by offering concessions if Pyongyang agrees to reverse its nuclear arms program.
U.S. intelligence agencies are closely watching North Korean military forces for any signs of increased alert status, the officials said.
So far, the only indicators are preparations by military forces for routine winter training exercises, the officials said.
Most of North Korea's armed forces are deployed close to the demilitarized zone set up in 1953 to separate communist North Korea from democratic South Korea.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that North Korean forces were conducting normal training exercises, and recent unusual patrols by North Korean troops in the demilitarized zone do not appear related to the nuclear problem.
North Korea's military activities do not appear unusual, he said.
"In terms of the DMZ and the winter training cycle, I don't see issues with either of those that would tell me that North Korea is on a different footing today than they were, let's say, 30 days ago," Gen. Myers said.
North Korean military forces patrolling the DMZ recently violated the armistice that ended the Korean War by carrying machine guns, which are banned by the accord.
As for the nation's preparations to deal with any North Korean attack, Gen. Myers said defense planners are continuing routine work on war-fighting preparations.
Defense and military officials are "working all sorts of contingencies for various situations" related to Korea, Gen. Myers said.
North Korea on Saturday announced it was withdrawing from the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which Pyongyang signed to obtain nuclear technology.
In September, North Korea admitted to covertly developing uranium-based nuclear weapons and then announced it was restarting a reactor that can produce weapons-grade plutonium.
According to U.S. forces in Korea, 70 percent of North Korean military forces are deployed within 90 miles of the South Korean border.
The North Korean forces near the demilitarized zone include 700,000 troops, more than 8,000 artillery pieces and 2,000 tanks.
The forces are deployed in more than 4,000 underground facilities that would allow the army to strike with little or no warning.
A major worry of U.S. commanders in charge of the 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea is the recent addition of long-range multiple- rocket launchers and 170 mm self-propelled guns near the DMZ.
North Korea also has up to 400 missiles of various ranges that can be equipped with high-explosive warheads or chemical and biological weapons.
U.S. intelligence officials have been watching North Korea for signs the communist state will resume missile testing.
In October 2000, the North imposed a moratorium on missile flight tests after its landmark 1998 test of a long-range Taepodong missile.
Official North Korean news media also have warned that any conflict would result in turning the United States into "a sea of fire."
Defense analysts said North Korea has the capability to launch a non-nuclear missile warhead as far away as the western United States on a Taepodong long-range missile.
----
Rumsfeld rebuts Daschle complaint on lack of briefing
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-331828.htm
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said Congress as a whole "has not been briefed on Iraq" and North Korea, and accused the Bush administration of not "upholding their end" of the resolution that authorized the president to use force against Saddam Hussein.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld disputed that notion, pointing out that he has made regular appearances before Congress and has invited senators to visit the Pentagon to be briefed on national security matters.
"I have trouble understanding exactly how one could make more regular appearances [before Congress]," Mr. Rumsfeld said yesterday upon exiting a closed-door hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"I've given over 20 briefings up here I think 32 weeks out of 52 last year, I was involved in extensive briefings - in the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill - throughout that entire period."
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is scheduled to hold a classified briefing in the Capitol this afternoon on the nuclear arms crisis in North Korea. All senators have been invited to attend.
However, Mr. Daschle, South Dakota Democrat, contends that senators have learned more about the Bush administration's "flip-flopping" policy on North Korea by reading newspapers than from official briefings. On top of that, he said, the Bush administration is violating its responsibilities in the resolution that approved the use of force in Iraq.
"If you recall, the Iraq resolution last fall required the administration to come to the Congress within 60 days," Mr. Daschle said. "That report is now a month overdue. We don't yet know what the administration's official position is [on Iraq] as a result of their unwillingness to share a report with us. We have not been briefed on Iraq."
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the second-ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, agrees with Mr. Daschle.
"Senator Kennedy believes that there hasn't been a steady flow of information to Capitol Hill and believes they should reach out more in terms of consulting with Congress in disarming Saddam Hussein," said Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Kennedy's spokeswoman.
Mr. Kennedy was among the 23 senators - all but one were Democrats - who voted against using force against Saddam Hussein. Mr. Daschle voted for the resolution.
Sen. John W. Warner, Virginia Republican and incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, rebuked White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. last week for not keeping Congress well-enough informed about the situation in Iraq and North Korea.
Open and full communication is most necessary now, Mr. Warner said, because "this situation with regard to Iraq, to North Korea, is among the most serious that I have ever witnessed in my over-30 years in public service in national defense."
Mr. Warner suggested that the level of information shared with Congress is fine, though "any situation could be strengthened."
"At my level, with my responsibility [communication] has been absolutely satisfactory," Mr. Warner said. "I think some of the junior members on the committee, they need some start-up time."
One of those new committee members, Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said yesterday's classified briefing with Mr. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was "overdue and needed."
"It was a good start, but I'd welcome more information," Miss Collins said.
----
Angry Bush leans on inspectors
By Colum Lynch in New York and Tom Allard
January 16 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/01/15/1042520672187.html
The United States is pressing the chief United Nations weapons inspector, Hans Blix, to remove Iraqi scientists for interviews after President Bush said he was "sick and tired of games and deception" from Saddam Hussein.
Mr Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, flew to New York yesterday to try to persuade Dr Blix to conduct the confidential interviews on Baghdad's secret efforts to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
She also pressed Dr Blix to scrap his plans to provide the UN Security Council with a report in late March. The Bush Administration wants his report due on January 27 to be the war marker.
At the same time, Mr Bush hinted at a "bold initiative" on aid if North Korea cancelled its nuclear program, as two polls showed his approval rating slipping below 60 per cent for the first time since September 11, 2001.
A Gallup poll on January 10-12 showed Mr Bush with a 58 per cent approval rating, down five percentage points on a week earlier, and a disapproval rate of 38 per cent. An Ipsos-Reid-Cook poll held on January 7-9 turned up almost identical results.
Gallup pinpointed foreign affairs - specifically the North Korean nuclear crisis - as a key to Mr Bush's decline. It also noted that his announcement this month of a $US600 billion economic stimulus package had little impact on public sentiment.
In Australia, Labor is almost certain to oppose a US-led unilateral strike on Iraq without UN endorsement. The Opposition Leader, Simon Crean, said on Friday without qualification that the ALP would not support this.
Yesterday, he said the only scenario under which Labor could support a unilateral invasion would be if clear evidence emerged that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction but a Security Council member still vetoed military force.
The Prime Minister, in announcing that troops would be sent to the Gulf, refused to rule out backing a unilateral US strike.
Mr Crean said yesterday: "To be deploying troops in advance of the UN decision is a totally inappropriate call in the current circumstances. I think it sends a bad signal."
He believed most Australians agreed with his position. "What we're talking about here is, potentially, young men and women being asked to put their lives at risk. This is a serious matter, it's one that we have to avoid at all costs if we can."
Mr Bush, meanwhile, expressed growing impatience with the inspections. "Is Saddam Hussein disarming? So far, I haven't seen any evidence that he is disarming. Time is running out on Saddam Hussein. He must disarm. I'm sick and tired of games and deception."
However, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, appealed to the US and other Security Council members to give the inspectors more time before considering force. In one of their boldest moves, the inspectors yesterday swooped on Saddam's main Baghdad palace.
Britain's Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, insisted yesterday that US and British could fight during the summer months. Asked about the view that allied forces could not fight in such intense heat, he said: "That is not true ... if that is what is required, that is what will happen."
The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Newsday and agencies
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Al Qaeda adapts to pursuit tactics
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 15, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030115-95453318.htm
Many die-hard Taliban and al Qaeda operatives have eluded capture by quickly learning and adapting to the United States' hunt-and-destroy techniques, say military personnel.
"They have learned our tactics, and we have to adapt to them," said an Army Special Forces soldier who spent months in Afghanistan trying to find leaders of the ousted Taliban regime.
In a recent speech at the Brookings Institution, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers said: "Since the Taliban has fallen, since the al Qaeda has scattered, mainly to the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and other places in the world, for that matter in the region, since then, they've adapted their tactics, and we've got to adapt ours."
Gen. Myers and other senior officials do not always publicize in what ways the enemy has adjusted, so as not to reveal U.S. countermoves. But interviews with veterans of the campaign in Afghanistan show that al Qaeda operatives and Taliban fugitives learn quickly. Some examples include:
•Taliban leaders ceased using convoys and sport utility vehicles, switching to motorcycles and donkeys, and began traveling alone so as not to draw surveillance.
•These fugitives also move alone in cities, blending in with friendly Afghans. "A Taliban could walk right past and you wouldn't know it," said an Army Green Beret who walked the streets of Kandahar, the former Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan.
The soldier estimates that there are still 100 former Taliban leaders who need to be killed or captured to prevent them from organizing a rebel war against Afghanistan's U.S.-backed leader, Hamid Karzai.
•Al Qaeda fighters learned to discern the distinctive sound of the four-engine AC-130 gunships. Early in the war, the "flying battleships" had great success in attacking enemy troops. The enemy also learned to detect the more muffled sound of unmanned Predator spy planes and rapidly moved for cover to avoid deadly Hellfire missiles.
"At night, when these groups heard a Predator or AC-130 coming, they pulled a blanket over themselves to disappear from the night-vision screen," Maj. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, who led U.S. forces in Afghanistan, told the Army's Field Artillery magazine. "They used low tech to beat high tech."
•Al Qaeda leaders greatly reduced their time on telephones and radios after realizing the United States' unmatched technical ability to monitor voice communications. During the summer, the military found a large cache of brand-new satellite phones - unused. This signaled that al Qaeda fighters have found other ways to talk without being detected, a Pentagon official said.
•Taliban and al Qaeda fugitives have paid teenage Afghans to act as spies. The agents position themselves outside known U.S. special-operations bases near Kandahar and near Khost in eastern Afghanistan and notify their handlers when special-operations patrols leave the compounds.
In at least two incidents, Green Beret A teams have confronted armed Afghan men who appeared to be following the soldiers. In one case, an officer shot an Afghan who raised his weapon as if to fire. A spokesman for Task Force 180, which commands U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, said that incident has been under investigation by the Army.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has taken steps to tighten the noose around al Qaeda fighters and other terrorists worldwide. He has approved a new counterterrorism war plan that seeks to speed reaction time so terrorists do not have days to adjust.
Last week, he also announced a major promotion for U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla.
He gave the command its first battle staffs in Tampa. With the battle staffs comes new authority to plan and carry out covert strikes against terrorists. The defense secretary also gave the command certain classified intelligence assets that will help it find terrorists and carry out missions within minutes or hours rather than days.
Marine Corps Gen. John F. Sattler, who commands a new counterterrorism task force on the Horn of Africa, said that just the act of collecting intelligence on terrorists keeps them off-guard.
"We feel very confident that by virtue of breathing down their neck, looking at them through multiple intelligence sources and collecting on them through multiple sources, that we are in fact disrupting, keeping them off balance until we can go to that next phase, which is defeat, i.e. bring to justice," he said.
-------- africa
What About This Crisis?
By Mary McGrory
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Washington Post; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64232-2003Jan16?language=printer
Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), the premier calamity collector of the House of Representatives, is just back from a country we'd rather not think about, and telling us things we'd rather not know. As usual, he is demanding that attention be paid.
This time it's the famine in Ethiopia, one of those loser countries where Wolf feels most at home. He's warning Congress and the White House of the urgency of the situation and the prospect that millions of Ethiopians will die if help is not on its way soon.
To Wolf, the Ethiopian famine is an "opportunity" for George W. Bush. "I think he really cares about these things and wants to do the right thing," he says. He must use the bully pulpit to rally people and increase our aid to set an example to the world.
Wolf requested an appointment to tell the president what he saw in Ethiopia and to show him a harrowing video of dull-eyed children with bloated bellies balanced on matchstick legs and desperate mothers who can't nurse their miserable babies. He wanted to urge Bush to consider that Ethiopia's cupboard will be totally bare by March unless the world digs down for money and food for the dying. One Saturday morning broadcast from the Oval Office would be enough to turn the tide. The faith-based agency that Bush insisted on installing in the Agency for International Development (AID) should serve as a clearinghouse.
Wolf never heard back on his request.
But Wolf is quite right. Bush should welcome a chance to form a coalition that would rain down grain instead of Hellfire missiles on a small, poor country. He could refurbish his humanitarian credentials, which have gotten badly dented in several weeks of war-seeking rhetoric that devoured half his "compassionate conservative" mantra. Sneering Europeans would respect the effort.
For the first time since his phenomenal rise in the polls after 9/11, Bush's numbers have declined. Doubts have set in. The cocky, swaggering, Old West lingo was just right when the country was shaken to the roots by the slaughter at the twin towers. But in the North Korean non-crisis, attitude was not enough. Bush -- who apparently thought Kim Jong Il would be respectful of his November victory at the polls -- spun around in complete circles, vowing never to talk, never to negotiate, never to do what Clinton did. Then he had to get his information from the Democratic governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, Clinton's U.N. ambassador, who was sought out by two North Korean diplomats.
The country may have been cowering at the specter of a North Korean roadside stand where nuclear weapons would be sold to the world's madmen, but all Bush could manage was a petulant statement that he was "sick and tired" of Saddam Hussein.
The public, or at least those polled by Gallup, didn't think much of his economic medicine -- his "jobs and growth" plan to fatten fat cats. Democrats are calling it the "Leave No Millionaires Behind" program.
To demonstrate again its opinion of the worthlessness of Democratic senators, the White House canceled a promised North Korea briefing by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz -- it said it was short of briefers. Democratic leader Tom Daschle then announced that Bill Richardson would brief the Democrats. The White House said Armitage would be available after all.
This all seems rather small in light of what is happening in Ethiopia, and what could happen in Iraq or in North Korea if Kim Jong Il opens his Wal-Mart for weapons of mass destruction. Chief Andrew Natsios of AID is visiting the stricken country and its prime minister, Meles Zenawi, his friend of 20 years.
Meles, who helped bring Ethiopia's savage war with its Eritrean neighbors to a cease-fire, is pro-American; there is no suspicion, as in other African countries, that food aid is being used as a weapon, no issue of genetically modified grain. But if the world doesn't snap to and increase its contributions, Wolf predicts that by Easter, "thousands of Ethiopians could be dead from starvation."
In his unabashedly evangelical style, Wolf asks, if these were Norwegian children, "wouldn't the world be rushing to help?" Wolf wants the born-again Christian in the White House to put that question to the world.
Now that he's on the brink of violating the basic principle of his reign -- the ABCDs of his political doctrine (Anything But what Clinton Did) -- Bush might be more amenable to asking the question. It's better than being asked why he's following in Clinton's footsteps in North Korea.
----
U.N. Confirms Congo Atrocities
Rebels Linked to Cannibalism, Hundreds of Rapes and Killings
Associated Press
Thursday, January 16, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63718-2003Jan15?language=printer
KINSHASA, Congo, Jan. 15 -- A U.N. inquiry confirmed systematic cannibalism, rape, torture and killing by rebels in a campaign of atrocities against civilians in the forests of northeast Congo, with children among the victims, U.N. authorities said today.
Accused rebel groups include the Congolese Liberation Movement, led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, one of two key insurgent movements promised a leading role in Congo's government under a power-sharing agreement to end the central African nation's four-year-old war.
Rebels called their terror campaign Operation Clean the Slate, said Patricia Tome, spokeswoman for the U.N. Congo mission in the capital. "The operation was presented to the people almost like a vaccination campaign, envisioning the looting of each home and the rape of each woman."
The charges are laid out in a preliminary report based on a six-day mission by U.N. investigators last week to remote Ituri region. The investigation was prompted by reports from clergy and nonprofit groups operating in the province.
U.N. investigators said the attacks occurred at Mambasa, 70 miles northwest of the northeastern city of Beni, and at Mangina, also near Beni.
The report cited 117 instances of arbitrary executions between Oct. 24 and 29. It cited 65 cases of rape, including the rape of children, 82 kidnappings and 27 cases of torture.
"The testimony given by victims and of witnesses was of cannibalism and forced cannibalism," including people made by rebels to eat members of their own family, Tome said.
Atrocities found by investigators include the removal and consumption of hearts of infants, small girls killed and mutilated, "people executed alive before the members of their families, and the rape of children," Tome said.
U.N. investigators previously reported that the targets of cannibalism also included Pygmies, whom rebels routinely enlist as hunters. Investigators said they went into the bush to interview Pygmies who had gone into hiding after the rebel campaign.
The allegations named Bemba's group and its ally, the Congolese Rally for Democracy-National, which are fighting the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement for mineral-rich areas of Ituri province.
The findings have been given to the U.N. Security Council and to Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.
----
French Prestige on the Line in the Ivory Coast Civil War
January 16, 2003
New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/16/international/europe/16PARI.html
PARIS, Jan. 15 - France initiated peace talks here today between rival factions fighting for control of Ivory Coast, hoping to end that country's four-month civil war and extricate itself from a dangerous and expensive military intervention.
France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, opened the talks with a stern warning to the 32 invited delegates that Africa's future is at stake. But he might have added that France has much at stake as well.
"France is risking its credibility in Africa," said Danielle Domergue, professor of African history at the University of Montpellier and an expert on France's relations with its former colonies. She believes the peace talks have only "minimal chances" of success.
After Ivory Coast was split by a coup in September, France sent 2,500 troops to to protect the 25,000 French citizens in the West African nation. But the troops have become embroiled in an increasingly complicated civil war that has cost hundreds of lives and displaced more than 600,000 people.
Three rebel groups control a majority of the country, held at bay from the resource-rich south and the coastal city Abidjan by Foreign Legionnaires. France is committed to keeping its troops in the country by a 1961 treaty and the certainty that the rebels would descend on Abidjan if it pulled out.
A French-brokered truce, signed on Monday between the rebels and the government, allowed the talks to take place. The delegates represent the country's principal political parties and the three rebel groups.
The opening ceremony was held in a hall near the Champs-Élysées before negotiations got under way behind closed doors in Linas-Marcoussis, 20 miles southeast of the city.
For France, more is at stake than the safety of French citizens and economic interests, chiefly cocoa plantations, in its former colony. France has long relied on its role as a supporter of developing countries to distinguish itself in world affairs.
"France wants to be seen as a world power and because it isn't as strong as other powers it does that by caring about areas that aren't first rank assets," said Roland Marchal, an Africa expert at the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris. It is a franchise French politicians are eager to protect, Mr. Marchal said, and one that could suffer if the country fails to stop the civil war.
In part, France's Ivory Coast adventure is an attempt by President Jacques Chirac's government to reassert France's military and political influence in a region neglected under past Socialist governments, which scaled down France's political presence in Africa and closed its largest military bases there.
Mr. Chirac had wanted to intervene in Ivory Coast in 1999 when a coup unseated the president but was stopped by France's socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, with whom Mr. Chirac then shared power. Now, fully in control, Mr. Chirac is pursuing his African agenda unhindered.
But if France fails to broker a lasting peace, it could find itself engaged in a costly, long-term commitment, fighting on behalf of a nominally democratic government for which Paris has shown little love. Worse, many people fear the fighting could destabilize neighboring countries.
Ivory Coast's president, Laurent Gbagbo, came to power in what opponents say were manipulated elections after the coup. He has rejected rebel demands that he step down or hold new elections and is not attending the talks.
-------- canada
Canadian takes stand in 'friendly fire' case
January 16, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-12632088.htm
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. (AP) - A Canadian soldier who lost an eye and a leg when U.S. pilots mistakenly bombed allied forces in Afghanistan testified yesterday that his troops were not firing into the air when the bomb exploded.
The military hearing, which began Tuesday, will determine whether Majs. Harry Schmidt and William Umbach should face a court-martial for involuntary manslaughter.
The two Illinois National Guard pilots said they believed they were being attacked by enemy ground troops. The Air Force said the pilots failed to make sure no allied ground troops were in the area.
Four Canadian soldiers were killed and eight were wounded in the April 17 bombing.
Sgt. Lorne Ford, one of the Canadians injured, was one of four soldiers to testify at the hearing that none of the Canadians had fired his weapon skyward or saw ricochets that went any higher than 200 feet.
He said he was observing the group's live-ammunition exercise near Kandahar when he heard the sound of a jet overhead, then he blacked out.
"I woke up on my right side and I noticed my injuries right away," Sgt. Ford said. "I had lost muscle and tissue on my upper left leg."
Sgt. Ford's leg had to be amputated, and he also lost his right eye. He spent two months in hospitals.
Three other Canadians, Capt. Joseph Jasper, Cpl. Brian Decaire and Cpl. Brett Perry, also testified that none of their troops had fired skyward.
Capt. Jasper testified Tuesday that the troops had not fired their weapons for several minutes when he heard the blast of the 500-pound bomb.
"Basically, we looked at each other and said, 'What was that?'" Capt. Jasper said.
Air Force attorneys yesterday played videotape taken from Maj. Schmidt's F-16 that showed the explosion.
Immediately before the blast, Maj. Schmidt is heard saying he is under attack and is "rolling in, in self-defense."
The pilots' attorneys, David Beck and Charles Gittins, said the two men weren't told Canadian troops were conducting live-fire exercises in the area.
Capt. Jasper testified Tuesday that more than half of his troops had covered up blinking red lights on their helmets, which they normally used for safety reasons during live-ammunition exercises, because the blinking sometimes bothered helicopter pilots landing at an airfield about three miles away.
Under cross-examination, Capt. Jasper said he "had no idea" that U.S. military rules stated that ground troops in exercises must leave the lights visible - partly to warn American pilots that allied troops were on the ground.
Mr. Beck also had argued that Air Force-issued "go pills," otherwise known as the prescription amphetamine Dexedrine, might have impaired the pilots' judgment. The Air Force issues amphetamines to help pilots stay awake during long missions, he said.
The Air Force has said that use of the pills is voluntary, and that their effects have been tested thoroughly.
Both U.S. pilots also face charges of aggravated assault and dereliction of duty and could receive up to 64 years in military prison if convicted.
-------- colombia
U.S. fails to achieve anti-drug goal in Colombia
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-29688044.htm
The State Department has failed to meet its 2002 goal of eradicating more than 11,000 acres of Colombian opium poppy fields at a time when heroin from that South American country is flooding into cities all along the East Coast.
According to information sent by Colombian police officials to the House Committee on International Relations, only about 7,400 acres of Colombian opium poppy fields identified by authorities were eradicated last year - continuing a steady decline in the U.S. program to cut Colombian poppy production.
Opium poppy-field eradication in Colombia in 2001 was down 80 percent from 2000.
"There is a direct link between opium production and the heroin in every city and town in the East Coast," said one official close to the program. "Police throughout the Northeast are finding Colombian heroin on every street corner and in every school, and overdose deaths have skyrocketed.
"If it hasn't reached your street or your neighborhood, it will - and soon," said the official, who asked not to be identified.
Law-enforcement authorities estimate that Colombian drug traffickers now account for between 56 percent and 67 percent of the heroin being used on the East Coast. Its purity ranges from 80 percent to the mid-90s, allowing dealers to "cut" it several times, meaning that adulterants - such as aspirin and Dramamine - are added to decrease the cost and increase the profit.
Recent Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence reports show that heroin use in the United States has increased substantially over the past decade, with more than a million people nationwide believed to be addicted - largely due to increased poppy production in Colombia.
Rogelio E. Guevara, the DEA's chief of operations, said that in recent years, poppy cultivation and heroin production have become dominated by independent trafficking groups outside the control of major cocaine organizations.
Mr. Guevara said Colombian heroin traffickers have established themselves as major sources of the drug in the Northeast, the largest heroin market in this country.
Paul E. Simons, the State Department's acting assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told the House Government Reform Committee last month that the department recognized the "increased growth and impact" of Colombian heroin and renewed efforts were under way to address it.
But Mr. Simons told the committee the poppy-eradication program in Colombia had been hampered by a lack of equipment and pilots, budgetary restraints and bad weather, although committee members countered that former Colombian National Police Director Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano had the same amount of equipment when he eradicated 22,724 acres in 2000.
Anne Patterson, U.S. ambassador to Colombia, told the committee that U.S. officials in that country had increased the spraying of coca fields, from which cocaine is produced, and that program had been "very successful."
Mrs. Patterson described the cutback in the spraying of opium poppy fields, from which heroin is produced, as a "joint decision," but could not recall whether she had received any direction from the State Department or other federal agencies.
"I think you've made some wrong decisions that have resulted in a massive increase in the exportation of heroin into the United States," Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman, New York Republican, told Mrs. Patterson. "As a result, our local police don't know what to do with this major flow of heroin out of Colombia."
Rep. Dan Burton, Indiana Republican, said eradication missions against Colombia's poppy fields were "drastically reduced" despite recommendations from U.S. and Colombian law enforcement officials to eradicate the drug at its source.
"This heroin is the purest, most addictive and deadly heroin produced anywhere in the world," he said. "With a single dose costing as little as $4 and having purity levels as high as 93 percent, this is a problem that demands the attention of Congress."
Mr. Burton said the decision to focus the Colombian eradication program on coca fields "has clearly had consequences," resulting in an increase in Colombian heroin availability in the United States, hospital overdoses and "overdose deaths in nearly every big city and small town east of the Mississippi."
--------
U.S. Special Forces Arrive in Colombia
January 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Colombia-US-Troops.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Dozens of U.S. Green Berets flew in to a Colombian war zone this week to train Colombian army troops to protect a key oil pipeline from rebel attacks, a U.S. official said Thursday.
The arrival of the members of the 7th Special Forces Group marks a turning point in U.S. involvement in Colombia's civil war. Previously, U.S. military aid and training was restricted largely to battling cocaine production, which rebels and rival paramilitary gunmen profit from, fueling the war.
But the Bush administration, with approval from the U.S. Congress, has decided the U.S. military assistance should expand into helping Colombia combat the rebels.
About 60 U.S. trainers began arriving earlier this week, joining about 10 others already stationed in Arauca state on Colombia's eastern border with Venezuela, said the U.S. official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.
On Thursday, about 20 U.S. troops drove up to Arauca airport in jeeps, then unloaded equipment, including military vehicles, from an arriving plane, according to a reliable witness who insisted on anonymity.
Numerous shipments of equipment and supplies are expected over the next few weeks, the U.S. official said. The troops -- who are settling in to military barracks on Colombian army bases throughout Arauca state -- are expected to begin training at the end of the month, he said.
Leftist rebels are battling the government in Arauca, an area of grassy plains and oilfields. The rebels regularly bomb the pipeline and have stepped up their attacks on military and police targets in recent weeks.
The members of U.S. troops, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., are to train two Colombian army brigades that protect an oil pipeline that carries oil for Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum across northern Colombia to a seaside depot.
Rebels have attacked the pipeline, Colombia's second largest, dozens of times this year. In December, suspected rebels forced a bus driver transporting security workers for Cano Limon oil field to park the vehicle next to explosives, killing two workers and injuring 11 in the ensuing explosion.
Car bombs and mortar attacks are also common in the region.
U.S. special forces have already trained a 2,000-member Colombian army counternarcotics brigade as part of almost US$2 billion in mostly military aid the United States has given Colombia over the past three years.
-------- europe
Small Nations Criticize Plan for 2 Chiefs Over Europe
January 16, 2003
By THOMAS FULLER,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/16/international/europe/16EURO.html
PARIS, Jan. 15 - Deep divisions emerged in the European Union today over a joint proposal by the French and Germans to install two presidents at the helm of the expanding bloc.
President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany agreed at a meeting late Tuesday to a compromise that would overhaul the union's structure to prepare it for the admission of 10 new countries next year. But the idea of two presidents, which supporters say would help personify the faceless bureaucracy in Brussels, was swiftly criticized by leaders of small nations, who fear domination by Europe's big powers.
"The Netherlands rejects these proposals," said Apzo Nicolae, deputy foreign minister and secretary for European affairs. "This is not the right direction."
Mr. Nicolae, who said he was awaiting details of the plan, said the proposal Mr. Chirac and Mr. Schröder agreed to over dinner at the Élysée Palace would shut out the small nations by abolishing the current system of rotating responsibilities among the union's 15 members. Others criticized the plan as too confusing, saying power distribution was complicated enough without competing presidents.
"There are potential problems," Jonathan Todd, a commission spokesman, said. "There might be problems in having two centers of power on the same footing."
The joint plan calls for two major changes to the Brussels power structure. The European Commission, the executive body charged with proposing laws and implementing them, would be led by a president elected by members of the European Parliament. Currently, the president is appointed by heads of government of the 15 member countries in an often murky process. The plan then calls for the creation of a president of the European Council. Currently, the council is governed by a system of six-month rotations by the 15 member governments.
Diplomats said today that it was unlikely that the plan would be adopted in its current form. But they said it would serve as a starting point for the crucial debate over how power will be shared in Brussels.
For nine months, delegates to Europe's constitutional convention have debated the outlines of new institutions. The most difficult discussions will take place in the coming weeks, when the responsibilities of the current institutions in Brussels are to be more clearly defined.
The Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in a speech today in Copenhagen that the key hurdle would be finding a power balance between large and small countries. "If attempts are made to upset this balance," he said, "there is a risk that the E.U. will fall apart."
Small countries are concerned about being crowded out when East European countries are admitted in May next year, one European diplomat said. Analysts worry that the new institutions will not be ready in time. The convention is to produce a draft constitution in June that must then be approved by the 15 member countries.
Despite the criticism, the plan is a breakthrough because France and Germany had clashed over preliminary plans. Germany wanted to strengthen the commission, which it sees as the protector of a more integrated Europe. France wanted to bolster the power of the council, which it saw as a way to ensure that its national sovereignty is guaranteed. The compromise was to create two presidents.
"In truth there was a real problem where the vision of Germany and France were not exactly the same," Mr. Chirac said at a news conference in the Élysée Palace on Tuesday.
He said that he and Mr. Schröder had decided that Germany and France would "each take one step toward the other."
"Once again," Mr. Chirac said, "we have shown that the French-German motor - essential for the construction of Europe - is functioning well."
But the plan's detractors said the compromise would only serve to muddle the European public's already confused view of what goes on in Brussels.
"It appears to me that we're taking risks ill-advised in a Europe already so difficult to understand," said Francois Bayrou, president of France's conservative pro-European Union for French Democracy party. "If there were a double presidency, there would one day be a conflict of legitimacy."
-------- iraq
Iraqis tired of endless wars
By Andrew Hammond
16 Jan 2003 09:37
Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L16345347
HAMADANIYA, Iraq - A lone pylon stands in the middle of empty winter fields on the plains surrounding Mosul, testament to the war that for Iraqis has not stopped since 1991.
Edwar Mansour says it was here that two years ago U.S. or British planes -- no one in this mainly Christian farming community caught a glimpse -- knocked out electricity cables running from Baghdad to the Kurdish enclave just north of Mosul, Iraq's third biggest city.
Now the pylon stands naked on the horizon. No one goes near it since the fire that burned the fields has made growing barley, wheat or lentils there impossible, Mansour says.
"Three dunums (2,500 square-metres) went up on fire. No one saw the planes, we just heard the noise when the lines sparked," the 47-year-old farmer told Reuters.
This week marked the 12th anniversary since the U.S.-led war to end Iraq's occupation of southern neighbour Kuwait, but it means little to people in the Christian villages outside Mosul or the Muslims and Christians within the city.
U.S. and British planes have patrolled no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War. They say the patrols, which often target military installations, are to protect the Kurds in the north and Muslim Shi'ites in the south still under Baghdad control.
Mosul, one of Iraq's most ethnically diverse cities, falls inside the northern no-fly zone, although it is outside the Kurdish self-ruled area.
Iraq says the zones, which are not explicitly authorised by the U.N. Security Council, have been a source of continual bleeding, with a death toll of over 300 people.
"Our problem is that if there is no agriculture we can't live. This was without reason, It's unacceptable," Mansour said.
Drafted to fight in Kuwait when the war began on January 17, 1991, the battle over Kuwait was finished before Mansour made it to the battle zone.
The fight had moved to his backyard.
"This is the effect of the sanctions, this white white hair," he says, pointing to his stubbly face. "Our problem is that for us war isn't over."
"Chemicals and fertilisers are too expensive for us now. Now I have to work as a television repairman as well. But I can't completely leave agriculture, so I still keep some land to grow lentils," he added.
The acres of land he can afford to till have fallen from 150 dunums before the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war, which he fought in, to the 10 dunums he's left with today.
MOSUL DEFIANT
And now another war is on the horizon. The Bush administration is threatening a sequel over weapons of mass destruction it says President Saddam Hussein is hiding.
"We don't want a war, but what can we do? It all comes from the will of God above," Mansour said.
Mosul, an ancient Assyrian city which gave its name to muslin cloth during the prosperous medieval Islamic era, could be in the forefront of an invasion if the Americans and their allies advance from the north.
Earlier this month U.N. weapons inspectors moved into a local hotel to begin daily inspections from Iraq's third city.
The city's occupation by the British during the First World War after ousting the Ottoman Turks in a 45-day siege is remembered in local lore to this day.
"The people were besieged in the city that they had to start eating cats," said local government employee Mustafa Ismail.
Near the old city where the siege took place is a British cemetery with a memorial commemorating the Hindus and Sikhs who died fighting.
A drunken poor man who lives next door with his family, offering token protection of the site, says a high wall and firmly locked gate have kept out any locals angry at the idea of the foreign invaders.
The city of two million is putting up a defiant face before today's threat. Stores and workers bear names like "the endurance of Iraq" and "Mohammed al-Durra," the Palestinian child whose death in clashes with Israeli soldiers at the start of the Palestinian uprising in 2000 has acquired fabled status throughout the Arab world.
No one appears to take seriously the idea that American troops, or Kurds from the enclave just north of Mosul in alliance with them, could invade the area.
"The Kurds won't join an attack on Mosul because they have links of family and business here, and the Americans will never fight on the ground anyway," asserted Ismail.
-------- israel / palestine
MILITARY
U.S. Sends 600 Troops and Antimissile Systems to Defend Israel if Iraq Attacks
January 16, 2003
New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/16/international/middleeast/16ALLI.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 - The United States has sent Patriot antimissile systems and 600 troops to Israel to strengthen its ability to defend against missile attack.
Officially, the American forces have been sent for an exercise that will test the ability of American and Israeli missile defenses to work together. But the exercise will mean that American forces will work alongside the Israeli military and be in position to help defend against attacks by Iraq's Scud missiles if President Bush decides to take military action soon to oust Saddam Hussein.
"We are now in the process of having an exercise," a senior Israeli official said. "We believe that if the time comes and we shall have hostilities we shall probably have American Patriot batteries deployed to Israel."
In the exercise, United States forces are to be based in Israel until mid-February, American officials said. Their deployment, however, could easily be extended.
American participation in the exercise is also expected to include an Aegis air defense cruiser. The Aegis has a sophisticated radar that can track enemy missiles and integrate the information into the land-based air defense command centers.
American Patriot batteries were dispatched to Israel before the 1991 Persian Gulf war, and the Bush administration has a strong motivation to help its ally now as well. Washington is also trying to dissuade Israel from retaliating against Iraq if it comes under fire.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, has informed American officials that Israel plans to strike back if it is successfully attacked by Iraq. Israel, however, would be under less pressure to respond if Iraqi missiles were intercepted by a combined American-Israeli defense. Washington fears that Israel's entry into a war could be exploited by Iraq, which would try to portray the conflict as one between Islam and an American-Israeli coalition.
The arrival of American forces is just one step that the administration is taking to help defend its allies as it ratchets up the pressure on the Iraqi government.
American officials have asked NATO for six types of assistance. Much of the support is intended to help Turkey, a crucial ally and NATO member. The United States would like NATO to send Awacs radar planes to Turkey. It also wants NATO nations to send Patriot air-defense batteries to Turkey.
Turkey has indicated that it will allow the United States to use air bases to strike Iraq, but officials say it has not decided whether to allow the deployment of a significant number of United States ground troops.
In addition, the United States would like NATO ships to protect ships in the eastern Mediterranean. It would also like NATO nations to provide personnel to help protect American bases in Europe and possibly in the Persian Gulf, according to a senior administration official. NATO forces could also be used to fill other shortfalls that may arise as American forces are dispatched to the gulf.
The measures were worked out by Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, the NATO commander, whose tour of duty is coming to an end this week, and Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the chief of the United States Central Command.
Some of the measures were discussed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz during a December trip to NATO headquarters, but serious consultations on the details are only now getting under way.
Beyond these measures, Western officials say the United States would like NATO to update and review its contingency plans to defend Turkey in case there is war with Iraq, and the alliance invokes Article V, which calls for the collective defense of NATO members.
While the support being sought by the United States is essentially defensive, it is still politically sensitive. Many allies want to give United Nations weapons inspectors more time before confronting the decision of whether to go to war with Iraq.
But there is no ambivalence about the American deployments on the part of the Israelis. Israeli officials say that the Patriot batteries sent to Israel for the 1991 gulf war were generally ineffective. Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel during that conflict, and American intelligence believes Iraq has retained a small, secret arsenal of Scuds.
But the Patriot has been upgraded since then, and the Israelis see a role for it in a two-tier system that would include the Israelis' Arrow system, two batteries of which have already been deployed. According to the Israeli plan, the Arrow system would try to shoot down Iraqi Scuds at high altitudes. American and Israeli operated Patriots would concentrate on Scuds that leaked through, intercepting them at lower altitudes.
Not only does the two-tiered approach provide more protection, but it also would enable Israel to husband some of its number of Arrow interceptors.
American officials said that several batteries of Patriots have been sent to Israel. The American forces sent to Israel for the exercise are under the command of Gen. Stanley E. Green, the head of the Army's Air Defense Artillery Center.
As the United States has built up its forces, it has used military exercises as an opportunity to deploy systems in the region and test them for a possible war with Iraq.
For Israel, the exercises are just part of a series of steps being taken to prepare for the possibility of war.
Mr. Sharon met today with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and other generals to review plans to protect civilians and the military.
-------- un
U.S. Resisting Calls for a 2nd U.N. Vote on a War With Iraq
January 16, 2003
New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/16/international/middleeast/16PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 - The Bush administration resisted calls by other nations today that it secure the explicit blessing of the United Nations Security Council before going to war with Iraq. The White House further suggested that it could decide in favor of military action even if weapons inspectors do not turn up concrete new evidence against Saddam Hussein.
A day after President Bush warned that "time is running out" on Mr. Hussein, a senior administration official said the timetable for a decision about war would be "driven by events." Those include a report to be submitted by the United Nations weapons inspectors on Jan. 27 and evidence that Mr. Hussein is truly complying with the United Nations demand that he give up any weapons of mass destruction.
In another sign of the growing frustration with what the White House views as stalling and evasion by Iraq, the official said that Mr. Hussein was intimidating his scientists into refusing to travel outside of Iraq for interviews about Baghdad's weapons programs. Iraq has said that none of its scientists want to go outside the country for interviews.
"From that kind of regime, that's called marching orders," the official said.
Clearly intent on not allowing the weapons inspections to continue for months without a decision on confronting Mr. Hussein, the administration said it would try to head off pressure from some nations to work according to a timetable established under a 1999 United Nations resolution that would require the inspectors to report again in late March.
The resolution adopted in November, No. 1441, "lays out a more intensive rhythm for inspections and a set of expectations meant to test Saddam Hussein's readiness to disarm peacefully," said the senior official. "It is an immediate test."
Further raising the pressure on Mr. Hussein, officials said the United States has asked NATO to help in the event of a war, in part by protecting Turkey against attack. Officials also disclosed that the United States has sent Patriot antimissile systems and 600 troops to Israel to strengthen its defenses against an Iraqi missile attack.
As it confronted pressure from other countries to slow the pace of events and for concrete evidence that Iraq is hiding chemical and biological weapons and seeking to build or acquire nuclear weapons, the White House said Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, the closest ally of the United States, would meet with Mr. Bush at Camp David on Jan. 31.
Their meeting is to be held four days after the United Nations inspectors submit their report, a step administration officials have said will be important in Mr. Bush's deliberations about whether to take military action. Their meeting will also come three days after Mr. Bush is expected to deliver his State of the Union address, an opportunity for him to make his case against Iraq to the nation and the world.
But even as administration officials reiterated their view that the onus is on Mr. Hussein to show that he is complying with the United Nations resolution, the United States came under pressure from other nations not to act without another Security Council resolution.
In Moscow, the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, said that "a unilateral military operation against Baghdad that is not sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council is capable only of worsening the already difficult situation in the region," according to the Interfax news agency.
Mr. Ivanov said war without the approval of the Security Council "would lead to unpredictable consequences for international peace and stability, including damage to the interests of the global struggle against terrorism."
Canada's Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, said at a news conference in Ottawa that the world "must speak and act through the U.N. Security Council," and that, within reason, the weapons inspectors should have more time if they need it. He declined to answer when asked whether Canada would participate if the United States led a military action without further authorization from the United Nations.
Faced with criticism from within his own Labor Party today over the possibility of joining the United States in a war without a new United Nations resolution, Mr. Blair said, "Of course we all want a second U.N. resolution. I believe we will get one."
But he added, "Where there is an unreasonable veto put down, we will not rule out action." Asked today whether the United States would seek another resolution from the United Nations if Mr. Bush decides to go to war, Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Bush had promised to consult with the Security Council and its members but had left open the option of acting against Iraq without a new resolution.
"The president will continue to work with other nations on this matter," Mr. Fleischer said. "And many nations have already weighed in and said they don't think a second resolution is necessary. And whether someone thinks a second resolution is necessary, or whether a different nation says a resolution is not necessary, the president will continue to work with one and all to build a coalition of the willing."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld turned up the pressure on the United Nations, saying that failure to support action against Iraq would leave the organization without credibility and at risk of collapsing, as the League of Nations effectively did in the 1930's.
At the time, Mr. Rumsfeld noted, Canada's Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, declared, "Collective bluffing cannot bring about collective security."
In a spirited news conference, Mr. Rumsfeld addressed the apparent discrepancy between the desire of some nations for a "smoking gun" in Iraq and the position of the United States that failure by Mr. Hussein to cooperate fully with the weapons inspectors could itself provide critical weight to the case for war.
Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed calls to withhold military action until international inspections found hard evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, arguing that inspections are inherently ineffective when the host country is uncooperative.
He said that the Iraqi government has proved very skilled in denial and deception tactics, and cited without details incidents in the last two months in which Baghdad he said concealed chemical or biological weapons from the inspectors.
He said American intelligence analysts have concluded that Iraq has produced chemical and biological weapons, and is actively pursuing development of nuclear weapons. Mr. Rumsfeld declined to provide specific evidence and warned, as he and other administration officials have since Sept. 11, 2001, that awaiting firm proof that a terrorist group or rogue nation possesses weapons of mass destruction could prove cataclysmic.
"In the case of Iraq, the task is to connect the dots before there's a smoking gun," he said. "If there's a smoking gun, and it involves weapons of mass destruction, it is a lot of people dead, not 3,000, but multiples of that."
-------- us
Pilots Ignored Bomb Procedures, Officer Says
By Lianne Hart
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 16 2003
http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2Dna%2Dfriendly16jan16§ion=%2F
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. -- American pilots moved too quickly in deciding to drop a bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, short-circuiting procedures that called for an extensive review of any request to fire, a U.S. officer testified at a military hearing Wednesday.
The testimony came after government lawyers played a grainy videotape showing that Maj. Harry Schmidt requested permission to fire, then disregarded an order to wait and dropped the 500-pound bomb.
Schmidt and his commander, Maj. William Umbach, are the focus of an inquiry here to determine whether they should be court-martialed on charges of involuntary manslaughter. The Air Force contends that they failed to follow proper procedure and failed to make sure there were no allied troops in the area.
Lawyers for the two fliers, formerly full-time Air Force pilots now in the Illinois National Guard, have said the pilots were not told that Canadian troops were conducting live-fire exercises. The pilots contend that light from tracer fire on the ground led them to believe they were under attack by enemy troops during a night patrol.
Transcripts of the pilots' conversations had been previously released. At the hearing in a makeshift courtroom, the pilots' words were played, along with a video that showed the attack.
On the tapes, Umbach advised restraint even as Schmidt seemed primed to fire. "Let's make sure that it's not friendly," said Umbach. Schmidt requested clearance to fire and was told to "stand by."
About a minute and a half later, Schmidt spotted more flashes of light on the ground. "I've got someone on the road and it looks like a piece of artillery firing at us.... I am rolling in in self-defense," he said. "Bombs away."
The bomb made a direct hit. Seconds later, the Air Force controller ordered: "Disengage. Friendlies. Kandahar."
"Can you confirm they were firing at us?" Umbach asked the controller.
"You are cleared, self-defense," the controller replied.
The apparently contradictory messages from the controller were not explained on the tape. As they flew back to Kuwait, Schmidt expressed concern. "I hope that was the right thing to do," he told Umbach. "Me too," Umbach said.
Col. Lawrence Stutzrien, who was in an air operations center in Saudi Arabia when the bomb was dropped, testified that the pilots ignored policies that called for elaborate efforts to prevent "friendly fire" incidents.
"Those rules for target approval were tightly controlled," Stutzrien said. "That was mainly because of the difficulty in telling apart friendlies from enemy, which was very problematic in Afghanistan."
Only three minutes passed between the time the pilots called in the threat and decided to fire, he said.
"Would three minutes be a normal time for a time-sensitive approval process?" asked Air Force attorney John Odom.
"No," Stutzrien replied curtly.
The release of the videotape capped a day of testimony in which several Canadian soldiers who survived the bombing said none of them had fired into the air during the training exercises underway at the time. Defense lawyers sought to portray the Canadian troops as prone to bending the rules, eliciting testimony that one had failed to attend a briefing before the training mission and that another had failed to wear his helmet as required.
But the Canadian soldiers said no one in their unit fired their weapons skyward. Machine gun fire that ricocheted off targets did not travel higher than 2,000 feet in the air, they said. Other testimony indicated that the American pilots never dipped below 10,000 feet.
Canadian Cpl. Rene Paquette, who suffered partial deafness from the blast, said he heard the bomb before it struck with a force that threw him into the air. "I felt like I was hit by a truck," said Paquette. "It flattened me to the ground and literally bounced me -- I was enveloped in a white light.
"I realized I couldn't call for a medic because my chest was filling up with blood. I was having difficulty breathing. When I sat up, I fell back over. I thought this was probably it. It seemed like an eternity.... Thoughts kept turning to my family and my child born almost to the hour two weeks before the accident. 'Please give me a chance to see my child and family.' I woke up in the dark. I wasn't lying where I was when the bomb hit. I knew I had been thrown somewhere."
The hearing, which began Tuesday before Lt. Gen. Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force based at Barksdale, is expected to last two weeks. Carlson will decide whether to recommend a court-martial. Both Schmidt and Umbach could get up to 64 years in military prison if convicted. If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article, go to www.lats.com/rights.
---
US Air Force Says 'Speed' Good for Tired Pilots
Thu January 16, 2003
By Jeff Franks
Reuters
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=2060157
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE - An Air Force physician sang the praises on Thursday of amphetamines used by two fighter pilots who bombed a Canadian infantry unit in Afghanistan, saying fatigue, not "speed," kills.
The defense had contended that Majs. Harry Schmidt and William Umbach, who face possible court-martial, were buzzed out on Air Force-sanctioned Dexedrine when they dropped a 500-pound (227-kg) bomb on a Canadian infantry unit near Kandahar on April 17.
An Air Force air combat commander said on Thursday in the hearing that he saw no evidence of the "fog of war" in a video of the "friendly fire" bombing, which killed four Canadians, wounded eight others and drew an angry response from Canada.
The grand jury-like "Article 32" hearing began on Tuesday. Schmidt and Umbach face charges of involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and dereliction of duty that could bring up to 64 years in military prison if convicted.
The two, both formerly full-time military pilots now in the Illinois National Guard, mistook the Canadians for the enemy when they thought they saw shots fired at them during a routine air cover mission. The Canadians were conducting a live-fire anti-tank exercise at the ruins of Tarnak Farms, once the property of Osama bin Laden.
Their lawyers have blamed battlefield confusion and "go pills" for the mistaken attack. The pilots were not warned that the Canadians were below and their judgment was affected by Dexedrine the Air Force provides for long flights, they said.
GOOD, NOT BAD
On Thursday, the Air Force Surgeon General's office sent pilot physician Pete Demitry to Barksdale to tell reporters covering the hearing that Dexedrine is a good thing, not bad.
He told a news conference the Air Force has used the stimulant safely for 60 years and that it is better than coffee because it not only keeps users awake, but also increases alertness.
There had been no known speed-related mishaps in the Air Force, whereas there had been many fatigue-related accidents, Demitry said.
"The hazard here is that fatigue kills," he said. "It (speed) is a life and death issue for our military."
The Air Force offers the drug on a voluntary basis, he said. Schmidt and Umbach popped "go pills" shortly before the attack as they started the long trip back to their home base in Kuwait.
Demitry said Dexedrine's side effects include headache, nausea and irritability.
Air Force Col. Lawrence Stutzrein, a director at the air combat command center for the Afghan war, testified on Wednesday that Schmidt, 37, and Umbach, 43, had acted far too quickly in deciding the Canadians were the enemy and then bombing them.
A video taken from the pilots' F-16 fighters showed little evidence of the "continuous firing" they told air controllers they saw and recorded their deep, rapid breathing as they zeroed in on the target and Schmidt unleashed the bomb.
CONFUSION
Adding to their confusion was that of the controller in a nearby AWACS radar plane, who told them shortly after the bombing that those were "friendlies" below, but also told the pilots they had been shot at.
"I hope that (bombing) was the right thing to do," Umbach radioed to Schmidt.
"Me too," Schmidt replied.
After viewing the tape again on Thursday, Stutzrein was asked by Col. Patrick Rosenow, who is presiding over the hearing, if the video showed "the fog of war."
"I don't see fog at all. I saw a lot of procedural problems," Stutzrein said.
"You didn't find that to be the fog of war?" he was asked.
"No," Stutzrein insisted.
Schmidt's attorney, Charles Gittins, told reporters outside the hearing that the Air Force's treatment of the two pilots could affect the behavior of others hesitant to make the quick decisions combat requires.
"There other pilots out there watching this hearing who are going to be making combat decisions based on what happens here," he warned.
Schmidt, a former "top gun" pilot at the Navy flying school, and Umbach, a pilot for United Airlines, have been supported by veterans' groups and other organizations who say they are heroes, not criminals. They were charged with crimes only because the Bush administration wanted to placate Canada, their backers say.
----
Top general lays out strategy for war with Iraq
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-16064696.htm
Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said yesterday there is an active "war plan" for Iraq that includes foiling Baghdad's dense system of air-defense radar and missiles.
His remark, at a Pentagon press conference with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, was one of the few times a senior military official has openly discussed the war plan and some of its targets.
In answering a question about Iraq's anti-aircraft missiles and radar, Gen. Myers said, "They're in a fairly finite area, if you will. They're around the Baghdad area, and they're dealt with appropriately in the war plan."
President Bush is weighing a decision whether to invade Iraq to topple dictator Saddam Hussein and cleanse the country of its components for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Gen. Tommy Franks, chief of the U.S. Central Command, has presented the president with a plan for an estimated invasion force of 250,000 troops, thousands of whom are now deploying to the Persian Gulf region.
Military sources say the war would begin with extensive air strikes on Baghdad's air-defense system by B-2 Stealth bombers, the F-117 stealth fighter and Navy-fired Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Once Iraq's air shield collapsed, Gen. Franks would be able to send more aircraft, and Predator spy drones, in and around Baghdad to destroy Saddam's security forces and hunt for the man himself.
Yesterday's Pentagon press conference also revealed:
•The Bush administration has formerly asked its NATO allies to supply troops and weapons to aid an invasion. Mr. Rumsfeld said the list does not necessarily exclude combat units. He specifically mentioned AWACS early warning aircraft as one item the Europeans were asked to supply, just as they did after September 11 to help patrol American air space.
•A warning from Gen. Myers that Iraqi commanders and leaders would be guilty of war crimes if they position civilians as "human shields" around military sites bombed by the allies.
The general said this would violate the Geneva Convention's international law of armed conflict. If death or serious injury occurred, "the individuals responsible for deploying any innocent civilians as human shields would be guilty of grave breaches of the Geneva Convention."
He referred to overseas news reports that Saddam planned to deploy human shields, as he did in 1998 when President Clinton ordered four days of bombing.
•The U.S. Army will soon begin training Iraqi exiles who have volunteered to join allied troops in deposing Saddam. The training will take place at the Taszar air base in Hungary, a NATO ally. The military will look for Iraqis to become translators, liaisons to local Iraqis and, in some situations, combatants.
•The administration has offered two models of spy planes, the high-flying U-2 and the unmanned Predator drone, to Hans Blix's team of United Nations weapons inspectors. To date, Mr. Blix has accepted the U-2, which will be flown by U.S. Air Force aviators over Iraq.
The U-2 aided a previous U.N. inspector team in the 1990s. Saddam vowed to shoot it down, but his missiles apparently lack the range or accuracy. The one-seat, single-engine U-2 flies above 70,000 feet. It can send immediate surveillance photos to receiving stations.
On the question of Iraq air defenses, Mr. Rumsfeld has authorized fighter pilots to not only strike at anti-aircraft batteries that threaten them, but also at command posts and fiber-optic relays that direct the systems.
The pace of attacks in a coalition-enforced no-fly zone south of Baghdad has increased in recent months in an effort to degrade Baghdad's ability to command multiple sites.
A U.S. land invasion would start from Kuwait, while aircraft would penetrate Iraqi air space from many different southern points. Degrading the system now saves air sorties for other purposes if a war begins.
"The air defenses around Baghdad remain formidable," Gen. Myers said. "They have the same surface-to-air missiles that they've had for some time. We think they've even upgraded some on their own."
He believes the continued attacks in the south are hindering the entire network. "We think it connects all that, and so it would have an effect on it. And we think it has, actually," he said.
--------
Navy May Move More Planes Close to Iraq
January 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Military.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon, preparing for a possible Gulf War, may send at least three more aircraft carriers to join two already within striking distance of Iraq, defense officials said Thursday.
By stationing carriers in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, the military would have Navy fighter-bombers in position to attack from three directions, complicating Iraq's effort to defend its airspace.
The USS Harry S. Truman battle group is now in the Mediterranean and the USS Constellation is in the northern Persian Gulf. Aircraft from the Constellation help patrol the ``no fly'' zone over southern Iraq.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had made no decision as of Thursday, officials said. Under consideration was a plan to send the Norfolk, Va.-based USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is conducting training off the East Coast of the United States; the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is undergoing repairs at Perth, Australia and originally was scheduled to return home to Everett, Wash., this month, and the USS Kitty Hawk, which is based at Yokosuka, Japan, and is the only Navy carrier permanently stationed abroad.
The proposal included having the USS Carl Vinson fill the Kitty Hawk's mission in the western Pacific. The Carl Vinson, which had not been scheduled to deploy from its homeport of Bremerton, Wash., until this summer, is headed for exercises near Hawaii.
In another sign of Pentagon preparations for war, the Air Force announced Thursday that it had canceled a major training exercise, called Red Flag, scheduled for this month at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.
It was scrapped because the 4th Fighter Wing from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., has been ordered to deploy to the Gulf region. It was to have been the lead wing in the exercise at Nellis. The decision frees up 24 air combat units and nearly 2,800 personnel from the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Army.
Officials who discussed the carrier plan on condition of anonymity cautioned that Rumsfeld could choose a different approach, but other officials familiar with deployment planning said it was almost certain that at least five aircraft carriers would be positioned within striking distance of Iraq, regardless of which they might be.
Also available for potential deployment from the East Coast is the USS George Washington, which returned to its homeport at Norfolk just before Christmas after a six-month deployment. The Navy has ordered the George Washington to be ready to get under way again on short notice.
Each aircraft carrier travels with a battle group of destroyers, cruisers and other ships, plus a submarine. Aboard each carrier are about 70 aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet strike fighters and support planes.
Only the Abraham Lincoln, which just completed a tour of duty in the Gulf, has the new F/A-18 Super Hornet, which has more range and is less vulnerable to enemy radar than the older Hornet. The new version made its combat debut last November in strikes from the Lincoln against air defense targets in southern Iraq.
On the Net:
Navy at http://www.navy.mil
-------- propaganda wars
U.S. public not sold on Iraq war: poll
More than half say Bush hasn't made a case for invasion
Jan. 16, 2003
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1042715061952&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968705899037
WASHINGTON (AP) - President George W. Bush has not yet convinced Americans that war with Iraq is justified, a major poll finds, suggesting the White House has much work to do to win public support for military force.
"I think a little more diplomacy would be in order," said Creig Crippen, an 84-year-old retired air force veteran from Deland, Fla.
There is widespread support for removing Saddam Hussein, but that support is conditional on proof of a threat from Iraq and on the support of allies, said the poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The poll was released Thursday as the United Nations said it had discovered empty chemical warheads south of Baghdad.
Two-thirds or more in the Pew poll and other recent polls say they favour military action against Iraq - but only under certain circumstances.
For example, the Pew poll suggests that support for war is strong, 76 per cent, if United Nations inspectors find nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. The support is evenly split if they find no such weapons but determine Iraq has the ability to make these weapons.
The public doesn't buy the administration's argument that Iraq must prove it does not have these weapons. Almost two-thirds, 63 per cent, said that would not be a sufficient reason for a war.
More than half, 53 per cent, say the president has not yet explained clearly what's at stake to justify the United States using military force to end Saddam's rule, according to the poll. About 42 per cent say he has.
The number who say Bush has clearly explained what's at stake has eroded since his September address to the United Nations, when it was 52-37 saying he had.
The Pew poll of 1,218 adults was taken Jan. 8-12 and has an error margin of plus or minus three percentage points.
"I believe that this is an action that is due because of Saddam Hussein's complete lack of respect for the democratic world and his people," said Philip Pederson, 65, a sales manager from Wheatland, Calif., and a Vietnam War veteran.
Although Bush has been making his case against Iraq in earnest since last September, White House officials say the hard work doesn't begin until Jan. 28, when Bush delivers his State of the Union address. That's one day after UN weapons inspectors issue their preliminary report.
The drumbeat for war will continue Jan. 31, when Bush meets at Camp David with his staunchest anti-Iraq ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. If Bush chooses to go to war, whenever that might be, there would be a final, Oval Office address in which he would spell out reasons, White House officials say.
Democratic legislators like Senator Carl Levin caution that the United States "must not prejudge the outcome" of the inspections.
Some in the public will be skeptical no matter what the president tells them about Iraq.
"I think they've made it very clear," said 23-year-old Rachel Wheatley of Washington, "that they're not really interested in what the inspectors have to say."
----
U.S. taking its case for war to Vatican
By Larry Witham
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-1425478.htm
The U.S. ambassador to the Vatican will hold a forum in Rome to argue to Catholic Church officials that a pre-emptive strike in Iraq would be a "just war," a moral argument that the pope and U.S. bishops have rejected so far.
The presentations to Vatican officials are likely to include American Catholic philosophers, such as Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, who have argued that the threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction justify new military strategies.
Jim Nicholson, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, confirmed the plan to Catholic News Service this week and organizers in Washington said it will likely be held from Feb. 8 to Feb. 10.
"It's going to be around that weekend," a staff member close to the plans said yesterday. "The agenda may already be pinned down."
The forum will "try to enlighten the dialogue on the moral analysis of when war might be morally justified," Mr. Nicholson told the wire service Monday.
Mr. Nicholson, along with other proponents of a new "pre-emptive strike" view of a just war, said terrorist attacks and weapons of mass destruction have changed the moral equation.
"The clarification of thought on everyone's part is a good thing," said Catholic philosopher George Weigel, who writes on the topic in January's issue of First Things.
But he said no one would expect the Vatican to endorse a particular military action.
The symposium in Rome will come after Pope John Paul II, in his first mention of the Iraq crisis, on Monday, told diplomats to the Vatican that military force must be "the very last option" and under "very strict" conditions.
"War is not always inevitable," he said in his annual address. "It is always a defeat for humanity."
After the speech, Mr. Nicholson said President Bush agreed that war was a last resort and that it could be averted if Iraq abides by U.N. resolutions and gets rid of its weapons of mass destruction.
Just-war doctrine says a war must be defensive, a last resort, likely to succeed and unlikely to produce more harm than remedy.
By those criteria, the U.S. Catholic bishops in November said a pre-emptive attack on Iraq is not morally justified.
In December, Archbishop Renato Martino of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said: "A preventive war is a war of aggression, there's no doubt. It is not included in the definition of a just war."
The moral argument of the pre-emptive strike, or "preventive war," doctrine, its advocates say, is to curtail unimaginable destruction by nipping it in the bud.
"If we knew on September 10 what was going to happen on September 11, would we not have been justified in taking some action against that?" said Mr. Nicholson, a Catholic and former head of the Republican National Committee.
He said that last fall Mr. Bush corresponded with the pope and that U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state.
"It has generated, I think, a pretty healthy discussion within the walls of the Vatican, among the Curia, and certainly in the Catholic press," Mr. Nicholson said in the news service interview.
The United States has had diplomatic relations with the Vatican since the Reagan administration, and issues such as the Soviet Union, Bosnia, the Middle East and now Iraq have been topics on the diplomatic table.
The pope opposed the 1991 Persian Gulf war and has lamented the embargo on food to Iraq's populace.
Though investigative reports have argued that President Reagan and Pope John Paul II worked together to aid the Solidarity movement in Poland, thus sparking the fall of Soviet communism, Reagan administration officials, including Vatican Ambassador Vernon Walters, have denied the report.
----
Media group tells how to cover bioterrorism
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-4300950.htm
The Radio and Television News Directors Foundation (RTNDF) has issued "A Journalists Guide to Covering Bioterrorism," and not a moment too soon.
The topic is complex, unnerving and easy to sensationalize. The stakes are high: A responsible news media, the organization says, can actually "make or break a response," and plays a critical role in the nation's recovery from the unthinkable.
"There is a massive difference between a crisis and a catastrophe," said RTNDF President Barbara Cochran. "And in the case of bioterrorism, the effect of media coverage on public perception could be the deciding difference between the two."
Faulty information and a hysterical tone are the key enemies, the 50-page guide notes.
"Even accurate information relayed in an overblown manner could undermine even the best response and cause unnecessary deaths, chaos, panic and instability," the guide states.
The challenge to journalists is the insidious nature of a biological attack, which can take days or even weeks to unfold. According to the guide, there is no big explosion, no heroic rescues - and no convenient story line. But too little information, rather than too much, prompts public alarm.
But can journalists get the right information? There is no guarantee.
"As news organizations seek answers from experts and government officials, inexperience, limited knowledge or a reluctance to share information on the part of some of these sources could create confusion, and possibly even panic," the guide warns.
CNN picked its way through the situation yesterday, stressing that vials of plague virus "may" be missing from a lab at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. A local councilman catagorized it as "a major situation" and called for Americans not to "let this terrorize them."
Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota countered, "But I don't think there is anything imminent that would suggest that anyone who might have these vials could actually perpetrate a bioterrorism event."
Within minutes, Texas officials sheepishly announced that the vials had been found and they were "sorry we had to test the system."
The crisis response "system" is a work in progress.
"Once the outbreak is reported to the public," the RTNDF guide states, "how media outlets handle the reporting of the unfolding story can make a big difference in the course of the outbreak and the success of efforts to contain or treat it."
The guide urges journalists to get a working knowledge of a biological attack, and how it differs from nuclear or chemical warfare. Is it a short-acting toxin or contagious virus, aerosal dissemination or human carrier?
The press should prepare its own journalistic countermeasures.
The guide urges news organizations to prescreen credible experts and understand public health plans "ahead of time," to dispel rumors and even expose profiteers out to make a buck off terrorism.
"Media coverage following the anthrax attacks in 2001 showed there's no certification or license to be an 'expert,' and the scramble to find sources yielded a surprising array of people, regardless of experience and education, who got their words on their air, or in print," the guide states.
It also offers a few pertinent questions for authorities, and advises journalists to stay focused. Civic authorities can no longer "afford to take a 'wait and see' attitude," the guide states. "Neither should the media."
The guide is available at the Foundation's Web site (www.rtndf.org).
• Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
ACLU fears door open to Big Brother
By Ellen Sorokin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-12697785.htm
The United States is at risk of turning into a full-fledged surveillance society where "Big Brother is watching you," says a report released yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Sophisticated technology makes advanced surveillance simple, but the erosion of constitutional protections in the wake of September 11 threatens the legal safeguards protecting Americans from excessive government snooping, the report concludes.
"Many people still do not grasp that Big Brother surveillance is no longer the stuff of books and movies," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program. He co-authored the report, "Bigger Monsters, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society."
"Given the capabilities of today's technology, the only thing protecting us from a full-fledged surveillance society is the legal and political institutions we have inherited as Americans," Mr. Steinhardt said. "Unfortunately, the September 11 attacks have led some to embrace the fallacy that weakening the Constitution will strengthen America."
In the District, the Metropolitan Police Department has a network of 14 surveillance cameras it plans to use to monitor two downtown rallies this month. Cameras are used to monitor monuments, federal buildings and public venues.
Officials in Virginia Beach and in Tampa, Fla., operate video surveillance cameras with face-recognition technology. The system analyzes faces based on a series of measurements, such as the distance from the tip of the nose to the chin or the space between the eyes.
ACLU analysts also criticized increasing surveillance in the private sector, which compiles vast amounts of personal information for marketing and sales purposes. Much of the data end up in the wrong hands, they said.
"From government watch lists to secret wiretaps, Americans are unknowingly becoming targets of government surveillance," said Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. "It is dangerous for a democracy that government power goes unchecked, and for this reason it is imperative that our government be made accountable."
One example, the report states, is the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program designed to collect a person's financial, medical, communication and travel records in a massive database in the hunt for terrorism.
"Even if TIA never materializes in its current form, what this report shows is that the underlying trends are much bigger than any one program or any one controversial figure like John Poindexter," Mr. Steinhardt said, referring to the TIA director who as President Reagan's national security adviser was prosecuted during the Iran-Contra scandal.
The report cites the proposed Computer Assisted Passenger Screening program as another example of government surveillance. CAPS would collect personal information on airline travelers to screen those deemed suspicious.
Concerns come from both sides of the political spectrum.
John Whitehead, founder of the conservative Virginia-based Rutherford Institute, wrote in an editorial that technology threatened the right of each U.S. citizen to participate in society without the express or implied threat of coercion.
"After all, that is exactly what constant surveillance is - the ultimate implied threat of coercion," Mr. Whitehead wrote.
James Lewis, with the District-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it is clear that America is becoming a surveillance society.
"The question is, 'How do you adjust the rules to take advantage of the technology that allows us to do this, and still give people the privacy they want and deserve?'" said Mr. Lewis, who is director of the center's Technology and Public Policy Program.
Mr. Steinhardt said Americans haven't felt the full potential of new surveillance technology because of latent inefficiencies in how government and businesses handle information.
"Database inefficiencies can't be expected to protect our privacy forever," he said. "Eventually, business-es and government agencies will settle on standards for tying together information, and gain the ability to monitor many of our activities - either directly through surveillance cameras, or indirectly by analyzing the information trails we leave behind us as we go through life."
----
LAPD Chief Unveils Plan To Rout Gangs
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 16, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63074-2003Jan15?language=printer
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15 -- After concluding that the Los Angeles Police Department had surrendered the streets to young hoodlums with guns, the department's chief unveiled today a new offensive in the gang war that has turned this city into the murder capital of the nation.
The latest strategy will involve pooling hundreds of officers from across the department, including detectives from homicide and narcotics units, to form gang-busting teams. They will receive help from probation and parole officers, prosecutors and school district officials. The teams will also work with agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
In addition, the LAPD is trying to engage members of churches and neighborhood groups to join the effort -- and to dispel the years of mistrust and rancor felt by many in the black and Hispanic neighborhoods whose residents describe the LAPD as an invading army.
Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn described the action today as "a major restructuring of the LAPD."
Police Chief William Bratton, appointed in October, said the department should shoulder blame for the city's soaring murder rate because of poor management and deployment of police officers, low morale, rogue officers, and timidity and disengagement that made anti-gang efforts ineffective.
"We got out of the business of going after gangs," Bratton said at a news conference in South Los Angeles, the neighborhood that has experienced the most violence. For example, he said, the former anti-gang squads did not work on the weekend and did not pursue drug cases.
"This department has been on the bench," Bratton said. "We've been totally out of the game when it comes to dealing with crime."
There were 658 homicides in the city last year, and police suspect that more than half were gang-related. The killings were centered in a group of neighborhoods in south and east Los Angeles, where many of the city's poorer black and Hispanic residents reside.
There are an estimated 52,000 gang members in the city scattered among about 430 gangs. In some families, gang membership is generational, from grandfather to father to son. Most of the active members are in their teens and early twenties, after which time they are either incarcerated, retired or dead. Many gang members pursue lives of "opportunistic" crime, but they are not highly organized, like drug cartels or the Mafia. Many of the killings are reportedly over issues such as "respect" and the control of a block or corner.
LAPD Deputy Chief Mike Hillmann, the newly appointed gang czar, said that since the killings erupted in November, he has tried to get out to every homicide scene. "I've seen more dead bodies in the last six weeks than I've seen in my career," he said. Hillmann has been on the force for 36 years.
Police are at a loss to explain the surge in gang violence. One theory is that a large number of gang members have recently returned from state prisons and are trying to reestablish control over their turf.
Police Commissioner Rick Caruso said, "The way we were dealing with gang violence clearly wasn't working." Caruso, along with the mayor and police chief, also described the gang members as akin to "domestic terrorists."
Pursuing that line, Hahn and Bratton will arrive in Washington next week to appeal for help from federal officials. Meetings are scheduled with FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge.
In a special session at the U.S. Conference of Mayors next Wednesday, Hahn and Bratton will speak at a closed session titled "Gang Crime and Domestic Terrorism."
Bratton said he would seek to "build relationships" in Washington. He is also looking for more money for his department. Currently, about 10 percent of the LAPD's officers are paid through a federal grant program. Bratton also said he believed that the gang crisis in Los Angeles could serve as "a national laboratory" in the fight against gangs.
In past years, the LAPD sought to control the violence with anti-gang teams known as CRASH units, for Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums. But a CRASH unit from the Rampart Station employed a corrupt officer named Rafael Perez, who alleged, as part of a plea bargain, that CRASH officers routinely planted evidence, made false arrests, shot unarmed suspects and sold drugs. He painted a picture of rogue cowboy-cops becoming essentially a gang themselves, complete with tattoos.
The Justice Department stepped in and concluded that the LAPD had engaged in "a pattern and practice of civil rights violations." Now the department operates under the supervision of a federal monitor and a U.S. district judge who oversee its adherence to strict rules governing the department's conduct.
But the rules require officers to frequently rotate out of anti-gang units to preclude corruption. Bratton seeks from his federal overseers permission to recreate the units, called Gang Impact Teams, to allow officers to serve for as long as five years.
As senior police officials describe it, when LAPD dismantled the CRASH units after the Rampart scandal, the department lost its ability to gather intelligence and penetrate gang life.
Community reaction to the new efforts has been mixed. Leonard Jackson, a minister at First AME Church and a member of the citizen advisory team employed to stem gang violence, said, "This is going to be a long, long road." He applauded the LAPD's renewed efforts to involve the community, but said time will tell.
A consistent problem in stemming gang violence has been the department's perceived reluctance to ensure the safety of witnesses who assist police in their anti-gang activities. There is a new toll-free line to report on gangs. The police promise callers will remain anonymous.
----
Professor Arrested in Plague Vials Case
By BETSY BLANEY
Associated Press Writer
Jan 16, 2002 11:48 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUBONIC_PLAGUE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) -- When 30 vials of a deadly bacteria that causes bubonic plague were reported missing from Texas Tech University, anxiety here was palpable. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge contacted the mayor, a terrorism alert was triggered and dozens of investigators from the FBI and other agencies converged.
But officials said Wednesday the bacteria wasn't missing after all. They alleged a Texas Tech professor had destroyed the vials before reporting their disappearance.
Dr. Thomas C. Butler was arrested Wednesday on a complaint of giving false information to the FBI. According to U.S. Attorney Dick Baker, Butler said Tuesday that vials containing bacteria obtained from tissue samples from East Africa were missing when "truth in fact, as he well knew, he had destroyed them prior to that."
Butler was booked into the Lubbock County Jail. He was scheduled to make his initial court appearance Thursday afternoon.
"We have accounted for all those missing vials and we have determined that there is no danger to public safety whatsoever," Lubbock FBI Lupe Gonzalez said.
Authorities declined to elaborate on what happened to the vials or say why or how Butler may have destroyed the samples.
The samples, among 180 the school was using for research on the treatment of plague, were reported missing to campus police Tuesday night. Butler was the only person with authorized access to the bacteria, which is classified as a select agent that has to be registered with the International Biohazards Committee and with the federal government.
University spokeswoman Cindy Rugeley said Butler, the project's principal investigator, made the report.
Butler is chief of the infectious diseases division of the department of internal medicine at Texas Tech's medical school. The university said he has been involved in plague research for more than 25 years and is internationally recognized in the field. He has been at Texas Tech since 1987.
Dr. Richard Homan, Texas Tech School of Medicine dean, said the bacteria form of plague being used for research "was not weaponized in any way."
Baker said FBI agents interviewed Butler on Tuesday. He said the complaint noted the false statement resulted in a huge investigation involving about 60 state, local and federal agents.
The public did not learn of the report of missing vials until early Wednesday. But hospitals and medical personnel were notified Tuesday, part of the city's post-Sept. 11 emergency plan.
Samples were kept in a locked area of Butler's lab, which is not in a high-traffic area. Butler kept logs on batches of samples, and one batch was reported missing, according to the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.
The secure area does not have a surveillance camera but access is controlled, officials said.
"I don't know the precise number (of keys), but it's limited," said Texas Tech Chancellor David Smith. "Policy (for federal grants) was not violated. This is one where we're looking at the human element."
Plague - along with anthrax, smallpox and a few other deadly agents - is on a watch list distributed by the government, which wants to make sure doctors and hospitals recognize a biological attack quickly.
Health officials say 10 to 20 people in the United States contract plague each year, usually through infected fleas or rodents. The plague can be treated with antibiotics, but about one in seven U.S. cases is fatal.
Texas Tech said that officials thought it was "prudent" to get law enforcement involved because of current concerns about bioterrorism.
The report was taken seriously at the highest levels of national security.
Lubbock Mayor Marc McDougal said he received a telephone call Wednesday from Tom Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security, offering contact information and assistance from his Washington office.
The FBI sent agents to Lubbock, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took part in the investigation. About 60 investigators from the FBI and other agencies converged on the medical school Tuesday night.
Smith said university policy was not violated, and no administrative action had been taken against faculty or staff as of Wednesday afternoon.
"We're in the process of an internal review," he said.
-------- courts
Use of Secret Evidence Rejected
Court Orders New Hearing for Suspect in Fake ID Case
By Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 16, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63259-2003Jan15?language=printer
PATERSON, N.J. -- A state appellate court has ruled that a local judge "lacked adequate basis" to allow prosecutors to present secret evidence against an Arab American man who was accused of selling phony identification documents to two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers.
The ruling came late Tuesday in the case of Mohamed Atriss. It has attracted national attention because of his apparently coincidental link to the hijackers, but more recently for prosecutors' use of secret evidence. Atriss, an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen, is apparently the only criminal defendant since the terror attacks to be barred from confronting the evidence against him -- a right guaranteed in the Constitution.
Passaic County Superior Court Judge Marilyn C. Clark allowed the secret evidence in a bail proceeding in November and relied on it in doubling Atriss's cash bond to $500,000, an amount consistent with a charge of capital murder. She said the evidence came from a "credible witness" at the closed hearing, but she and prosecutors declined to provide details.
Atriss's attorney, Miles Feinstein, appealed the bail amount and challenged the secret hearing, likening his client's treatment to "the government's McCarthy-led Communist witch hunts of the '50s."
State appellate Judge Howard H. Kestin did not free Atriss, who has been jailed for five months. Rather, he ordered Clark to hold another hearing by Jan. 31 to explain the justification for the extraordinary secrecy, which, he said, Clark did not do. If national security was the reason -- as prosecutors have argued -- Kestin said Clark erred in not calling federal authorities to testify.
The order makes the unusual suggestion that Clark invite federal officials to the next hearing if she intends to base her decision on national security. But federal authorities have been critical of the case since Atriss's arrest in August.
When Atriss's business was raided, County Sheriff Jerry Speziale took along camera crews and announced at a news conference that Atriss had sold phony identification documents to two hijackers. Speziale also disclosed that Atriss had been interviewed by FBI agents, and made the agents' names public. Federal law enforcement officials denounced Speziale and said privately they believed Atriss knew no more about the hijackers than about hundreds of other illegal immigrants who patronized him.
The county charged Atriss with 26 misdemeanor counts of conspiracy and selling phony documents to Hispanic immigrants. Later, a felony count of racketeering was added. Atriss has not been indicted; prosecutors said they will take the case to a grand jury next month.
None of the charges mentions the hijackers, but prosecutors have brought up the connection at hearings. The county's chief assistant prosecutor, Steven E. Braun, raised them in a brief filed Monday defending the use of secret evidence and the $500,000 bail. "The defendant's healthy financial status . . . his dual citizenships and, most importantly, his connection with two of the September 11th hijackers, justify the continuation of the bail," he wrote.
In defending the secrecy, Braun also cited several court rulings in federal cases related to the war on terror -- among them, the case of John Walker Lindh.
----
Judge Criticizes Bid to Deny Terrorist Suspect a Lawyer
Thursday, January 16, 2003
Washington Post; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62930-2003Jan15?language=printer
NEW YORK, Jan. 15 -- A federal court judge yesterday criticized a government request to reverse his decision allowing suspected al Qaeda terrorist Jose Padilla access to a lawyer.
Padilla, a U.S. citizen accused of scouting U.S. targets for an attack with a radiological "dirty bomb," has been declared an "enemy combatant" and is in a naval brig in Charleston, S.C. He has yet to see his lawyer, despite a December decision by Michael B. Mukasey, chief judge for New York's Southern District, that he be given access to legal counsel.
"This conference . . . was supposed to be for the purpose of discussing what steps had been taken voluntarily by the parties to arrange for counsel to see Mr. Padilla," Mukasey said yesterday. "It appears . . . that the government has no intention of allowing that to happen."
U.S. officials arrested Padilla in May when he arrived at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and accused him of meeting with senior al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan to discuss terrorist attacks.
Mukasey's 102-page ruling rejected the Bush administration's claim that allowing Padilla to speak to a lawyer would hurt the government's intelligence-gathering effort and jeopardize national security.
The government must file a response to Padilla's most recent motion by Jan. 22 and Padilla's lawyers will respond by Jan. 29. Then Mukasey will decide whether he will reconsider his decision to let Padilla see his lawyer.
- Christine Haughney
----
Government's path of secrecy
St. Petersburg Times
January 16, 2003
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/01/16/Opinion/Government_s_path_of_.shtml
"A government operating in the shadow of secrecy stands in complete opposition to the society envisioned by the Framers of our Constitution," wrote Judge Damon Keith of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati last year. "When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation."
The judge was condemning the Bush administration's policy of closing all immigration hearings for post-Sept. 11 detainees. However, his words could be a critique of the administration's penchant for secrecy on a broad front. Believing that the public is entitled only to information the government chooses to release, the president and his lieutenants are going to extraordinary lengths to limit the information made public by federal agencies. By sharply restricting public access to government employees, documents, hearings and meetings, the administration has thrown up barriers to traditional government watchdogs such as the press and public interest groups, and made itself far less accountable.
Some of the most troubling acts of secrecy include Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to disclose to Congress details of the role oil companies played in his energy task force meetings and President Bush's decision to institute new restrictions on the release of the papers of former presidents. But the culture of closed doors pervades the administration.
Attorney General John Ashcroft could not have been much clearer in 2001 when he issued a directive to all federal agencies encouraging them to deny documents to the public that had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act. He promised to defend any challenges to those rejections in court. Under the Clinton administration, the policy had been just the opposite: provide as much information as possible as long as there is no "foreseeable harm" from the release.
But Ashcroft's Justice Department is obsessed with secrecy. He has refused to make public the names of hundreds of people detained on immigration charges and material witness warrants following the Sept. 11 attacks, even after multiple requests by members of Congress. And he has stonewalled Congress' request for information on how the FBI is implementing some of its new powers of surveillance and wiretapping under the USA Patriot Act. All that, in addition to the department's decision to impose a blanket closure of immigration hearings for post-Sept. 11 detainees, the constitutionality of which is still being challenged in the courts.
Since Bush became president, the number of documents being classified is up about 18 percent, and three more federal agencies have been given the power to create secret files.
Two dangerous impulses of government are at work: First is the desire to arrogate more power to the executive branch by refusing to acknowledge Congress' oversight role; second is the attempt to shut down public criticism and dissent by restricting access to the information needed to make intelligent assessments on programs and policies.
The Bush administration is leading us down a dangerous path, one where our government is far less interested in being responsive to the people than in self-protection and self-promotion.
----
Court Upholds Copyright Extension
Justices Back Congress in Win for Artists, Entertainment Firms
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 16, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63196-2003Jan15?language=printer
The Supreme Court upheld a 1998 federal law yesterday that extended the life of most copyrights by 20 years, deciding a landmark copyright case in favor of artists, writers and the entertainment industry.
A loose coalition of independent scholars, publishers and Internet archivists had argued that, by lengthening existing copyrights, the law, known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in honor of the late singer and House member, effectively made those copyrights perpetual -- violating the constitutional provision that says Congress may spur intellectual productivity by granting copyrights for "limited times."
But by a vote of 7 to 2, the court deferred to Congress, holding that it enjoys essentially unfettered power to determine the length of copyrights, as long as it specifies a period. Congress had several reasons to pass the Bono Act, including increasing economic incentives for creative activity, encouraging owners of old movies to restore and distribute them and harmonizing U.S. and European intellectual property law, the court said -- and it is not up to the judiciary to second-guess such policy judgments.
"The [law] reflects judgments of a kind Congress typically makes, judgments we cannot dismiss as outside the Legislature's domain," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the opinion for the court.
At stake was the future ownership of such icons of Jazz Age American popular culture as early Mickey Mouse cartoons, certain silent films and George Gershwin melodies such as "Rhapsody in Blue," whose copyrights were set to expire early this century -- until Congress approved the Bono Act and President Bill Clinton signed it.
The act extended copyright terms from 50 years after the author's death to 70 years, or, in the case of anonymous or corporate works, 95 years from publication.
In a sense, then, yesterday's case was about the point at which songs, pictures and stories that are widely considered part of the American cultural patrimony will be recognized as such under the law.
Opponents of the Bono Act had also maintained that it should be subject to court review as a possible violation of the First Amendment, since it restricts the free flow of information.
The court swept that argument aside as well.
"[C]opyright's purpose is to promote the creation and publication of free expression," Ginsburg wrote, adding that "copyright law contains built-in First Amendment accommodations" such as the "fair use" doctrine, which permits limited reproduction of copyrighted material by journalists and scholars.
Two justices, Stephen G. Breyer and John Paul Stevens, dissented in separate opinions that argued the Bono Act essentially conferred a windfall on existing copyright holders and their familial or corporate heirs, without any corresponding increase in creative effort or public knowledge.
The case, Eldred v. Ashcroft, No. 01-618, was the first in which the court had been called upon to weigh the constitutionality of a law setting copyright terms; it also confronted the justices with a novel Internet-age political movement, spearheaded by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, aimed at breaking what its members consider the hammerlock that copyright gives large corporations such as Walt Disney Co. on art and information that should be readily available online.
"[I]f there is any good that might come from my loss," Lessig, who argued the case before the court in October, wrote in a Web posting yesterday, "let it be the anger and passion that now gets to swell against the unchecked power that the Supreme Court has said Congress has."
Lessig noted that his cause enjoyed the support of the Free Software Foundation and such figures as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly and Nobel Prize-winning economists Milton Friedman and Kenneth J. Arrow.
Jack Valenti, president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a statement that his organization is "pleased that the Court has reaffirmed the absolute authority of Congress to set copyright terms. We have always maintained and the law has long recognized that copyright, whose aim it is to provide incentive for the creation and preservation of creative works, is in the public interest."
The law was strongly backed not only by the heirs of such artistic greats as children's author Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), but also by Disney, AOL Time Warner and a parade of recording industry stars. Yesterday's majority opinion noted that Congress had decided that extended copyright would give artists more incentives to create, based in part on testimony by Quincy Jones, Bob Dylan and Carlos Santana.
In a statement, Disney pronounced itself "pleased with the court's ruling, which ensures copyright owners the proper incentive to originate creative works for the public to enjoy."
In his dissent, Breyer used economic data to show that the copyright extensions in the Bono Act would grant copyright holders 99.8 percent of the benefits they would get from a perpetual copyright. In contrast, he noted, the costs to researchers of locating and purchasing copyrighted works are prohibitive.
To Breyer, the costs and benefits of the law were so skewed between copyright holders and the public that it "cannot be rationally understood to advance a constitutionally legitimate interest.
"And the qualitative costs to education, learning and research will multiply as our children become ever more dependent . . . upon computer-accessible databases -- thereby condemning that which is not so accessible, say, the cultural content of early 20th-century history, to a kind of intellectual purgatory," Breyer wrote.
But Ginsburg noted that the law included some exemptions for libraries, and that teaching and research would be protected under the "fair use" doctrine. She added that striking down the Bono Act would call into question past copyright extensions as well.
The case began in 1999, after Eric Eldred, who runs an Internet archive called Eldritch Press, discovered that he would have to pay to publish works from the 1920s, such as a collection of Sherwood Anderson stories.
He sued unsuccessfully in U.S. District Court in Washington, and lost again on appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. But the Supreme Court agreed early last year to hear the case.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
NASA Tests Environmentally Friendly Rocket Fuel
January 15, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-15-09.asp#anchor5
PALO ALTO, California - A new, alternative rocket fuel may increase operational safety and reduce costs over current solid fuels, say researchers from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA).
Two years of collaboration between Stanford University and NASA's Ames Research Center have led to the development of the non-toxic, easily handled fuel made from a substance similar to what is used in common candles. The new paraffin based fuel could someday be used in Space Shuttle booster rockets.
The byproducts of combustion of the new fuel are carbon dioxide and water. By contrast, conventional rocket fuel produces aluminum oxide and acidic gasses, such as hydrogen chloride.
"There is great cost in making, handling and transporting traditional solid rocket fuels, but the new paraffin based fuel is less expensive, non-toxic and non-hazardous," said Greg Zilliac of Ames. "Because the fuel is very stable and environmentally friendly, a hybrid rocket could be fueled at the launch site rather than at the factory, thereby saving money."
The main goal of the NASA test program is to determine if the promising results of earlier bench top experiments conducted at Stanford will scale up to the combustion chamber conditions required for space launch operational systems.
"The NASA combustion tests have been very promising and indicate the burn rate for the larger scale apparatus is as high as that achieved in the small scale Stanford tests," Zilliac continued. "This new fuel could significantly impact the future of space transportation."
The concept of a fast burning, low cost, paraffin based fuel was first conceived by Dr. Arif Karabeyoglu of Stanford, Dr. David Altman, president of Space Propulsion Group Inc., and Stanford University Professor Brian Cantwell. Karabeyoglu developed the theory in his doctoral thesis, which was supported in part by Stanford and NASA.
Cantwell said the new fuel could be used to create a hybrid rocket equivalent to the Space Shuttle's solid rockets.
"Hybrid rockets, using the paraffin based fuel, can be throttled over a wide range, including shut down and restart," Cantwell explained. "That's one reason why they could be considered as possible replacements for the Shuttle's current solid rocket boosters that cannot be shut off after they are lit. One design concept being considered is a new hybrid booster rocket that is able to fly back to the launch site for recharging."
-------- health
Anthrax holds hope as cancer fighter
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030116-72351912.htm
A new federal study says there could be life-saving medical benefits from anthrax, one of nature's deadliest bacteria.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) used a genetically engineered anthrax protein to shrink, and even destroy, a variety of cancers from hundreds of laboratory mice, according to a report this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The anthrax used in the tests was genetically modified so that it did not activate unless it came in contact with a chemical on the surface of malignant tumors. The mice were not harmed by the bacteria because it did not adversely affect healthy cells.
Stephen Leppla and Thomas Bugge, co-authors of the study, discussed the findings on the Web site of the NIH's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (www.nidcr.nih.gov).
They explained how they converted a bioterrorism agent that killed five Americans in mail attacks in the fall into what may be a safe and effective cancer killer. They said their results were encouraging but stressed that they still have a long way to go before gene-spliced anthrax could be used to treat cancer in humans.
"We are currently testing the drug against mouse and human tumors, the latter having been implanted in mice. So far we have tested lung carcinomas, melanoma [a deadly skin cancer], and oral cancer," Mr. Bugge told NIDCR science writer Bob Cuska.
"We have seen a good effect in all three tumor types, and we will continue the testing over time in a variety of other tumor types. So, there are certainly many years of work ahead before we, or anyone who takes up this project, can test it in people," said Mr. Bugge, a researcher in NIDCR's Oral and Pharyngeal Cancer Branch.
Mr. Leppla, a scientist in NIDCR's Oral Infection and Immunity Branch, who has spent most of his career studying anthrax, agreed. "It's also important to remember that many things that look very good in cell culture or in mice turn out to have unexpected toxicities," he said.
They reported promising results in the tests, noting that one modified anthrax-protein injection reduced the size of lung tumors in the mice by an average of 65 percent and shrank soft-tissue tumors 92 percent.
After two treatments with the experimental toxin, lung tumors became 86 percent smaller, and soft-tissue tumors were 98 percent smaller. Melanoma tumors turned 85 percent smaller after one treatment and 92 percent smaller after two.
The researchers also reported that tumor cells began dying 12 hours after the treatment began. They added that many tumors - including nearly 90 percent of soft mouth cancers - completely disappeared after two anthrax injections.
The modified toxin seeks out a particular type of cancer cell, marked by a high level of an enzyme called urokinase, which is found on the surface of the cell.
This toxin is activated only by urokinase. In that respect, it differs greatly from the deadly toxin in natural anthrax.
The latter is activated whenever it comes in contact with furin, an enzyme in all living cells.
Scientists believe urokinase plays an important role in the spreading of cancer through the body, the two researchers said.
The modified toxin also did not harm healthy cells adjoining the tumors, because there were no urokinase enzymes on the surface of those cells, they said. If this new treatment proves effective in fighting cancer in humans, its methodology would have benefits over chemotherapy, which sometimes harms neighboring healthy cells.
Dr. Leppla said that he's certain these modified proteins cannot cause anthrax infection. "We start with a thoroughly disabled anthrax strain," he said, adding that by themselves, these proteins are "incapable of causing anthrax."
"We are simply interested in exploiting the natural properties of these proteins, in hopes of efficiently delivering a deadly toxin directly to tumor cells and killing them."
He compared the toxic proteins used in the treatment "to grenades with the pins still inside them." They "don't turn deadly," he said, "until they are cleaved on the surface of the tumor cell."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Environmental Group Opposes Army Building Burning
January 16, 2003
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-16-09.asp#anchor4
MERRIMAC, Wisconsin - A Wisconsin environmental group is opposing plans to destroy by burning as many as 100 explosives contaminated buildings at the closed Badger Army Ammunition Plant.
Citizens for Safe Water Around Badger (CSWAB) is asking Representative Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, to help find a safe alternative to open burning of the contaminated buildings - a proposal that nearby residents say will cause more pollution at the closing military base.
In a letter issued this week, CSWAB said that funding should be invested in the research and development of alternative technologies that meet the military's criteria but do not place human health and the environment at risk. The group proposes that Badger be utilized as pilot site.
The proposal could create job opportunities for workers displaced by base closure and could also bring needed federal dollars into Wisconsin.
Disposing of unwanted buildings at closing military facilities is a challenge facing communities across the country. Each year, hundreds of buildings are burned by the Department of Defense, a process which critics say places human health and the environment at unnecessary risk and exacerbates environmental damage caused by past military activities.
"Environmental cleanup at Badger is already a highly complex and challenging problem," said Laura Olah, executive director of CSWAB. "The last thing we need is more contamination."
Plexus Scientific, a contractor working for the U.S. Army, reports that during an open burn materials are "changed from a solid form and are released to the atmosphere where they will certainly be deposited over a large area resulting in contamination of soil and surface water." This method poses potential risks to workers and others posed by the inhalation of vapors and fugitive particulates, Plexus states.
Open burning will, Plexus adds, "cause the release of hazardous materials such as asbestos, lead, zinc, and potentially harmful combustion products from electrical materials, preservative coatings on equipment, paints, plastics, and construction materials into the atmosphere and potentially into soils, groundwater, and surface water."
Finding an environmentally friendly solution is consistent with the recommendations of the Badger Reuse Committee, an independent advisory group funded with Baldwin's help. Last year, the committee of local and tribal governments, state and federal agencies, and other interested groups approved a plan that stipulates future activities should pose no risk to people or the environment and should not pose the threat of additional contamination of the Badger property.
Planned future uses for the 7,400 acre facility, located next to Devil's Lake State Park and the Baraboo Hills, include conservation, agriculture, education and recreation.
In order to give federal legislators time to find funding and other support for the project, the group is also asking that the proposed open burning be delayed. According to the Army, the first burn could occur as early as February or March.
----
Chicago Passes Anti-War Resolution 46-1
Vote Follows Extensive and Personal Debate
Chicago Tribune,
Jan. 16, 2003
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-030116council,1,6078693.story?coll=chi%2Dnews%2Dhed
After one of the most mesmerizing, impassioned and personal debates ever to occur in Chicago's City Council Chamber, Chicago has become the largest and most prominent city in the nation to formally oppose a unilateral pre-emptive strike on Iraq.
One by one, black and white, Latino and Jewish, men and women, the Aldermen stood to draw attention to their own particular concerns with the current path of the Bush Administration. Many pointed out that the real dangers this nation faces today are the rising rates of unemployment and economic stagnation. Others were concerned about the double standard the administration is showing with respect to North Korea. And some drew attention to the prospect of young sons and daughters coming home in body bags from an ill-conceived war.
The Committee of Human Relations of the Chicago City Council sent the "Resolution Opposing Pre-emptive U.S. Military Strikes on Iraq" to the full council today after a vote yesterday.
"It is our sons and daughters who will be recruited- perhaps even conscripted-to fight in this war," said Ald. Joseph Moore (49th), chief sponsor of the resolution. Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) was concerned that the "cost of the war will dry up federal funding for domestic programs for a war that has yet to be justified."
Judith Kossy of Chicagoans Against the War on Iraq said she and her organization were deeply moved by the leadership of Ald. Joe Moore, Ald. Helen Shiller, Ald. Ricardo Munoz, Ald. Leslie Hairston and by the action taken today the City Council. "Two out of three people in the nation oppose a unilateral war. It's important for local leaders to articulate their constituent's feelings to President Bush and to the world," Kossy said.
The full resolution follows:
RESOLUTION OPPOSING A PRE-EMPTIVE U.S. MILITARY ATTACK ON IRAQ
WHEREAS, the issues between Iraq and the world community have not proven to be irresoluble by traditional diplomatic efforts; and
WHEREAS, while Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who should be removed from power, both for the good of the Iraqi people and for the security of Iraq's neighboring countries, it is not at all clear that a unilateral U.S. military action would result in the installation of a free and democratic Iraqi government; and
WHEREAS, U.S. military actions would risk the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians without guaranteeing the safety and security of U.S. citizens; and
WHEREAS, a pre-emptive and unilateral U.S. military attack would violate international law and our commitments under the U.N. Charter and further isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world; and
WHEREAS, the Congressional Budget Office estimates a military action against Iraq will cost our nation between $9 and $13 billion a month, likely resulting in further cuts in federally funded projects and programs that benefit our city and its residents; and
WHEREAS, a U.S.-led war in Iraq would compromise our current action in Afghanistan, and require years of nation-building activities in Iraq; and
WHEREAS, the Bush administration has failed to articulate a clear strategic objective or outcome of a military attack against Iraq, and such an attack fails to enjoy the support of many of our important allies; and
WHEREAS, we give our unconditional support to U.S. military personnel serving at home and abroad in their tireless battle against global terrorism, and should our military forces be sent to Iraq, we give our unyielding support to our young men and women serving in our nation's military, even if we oppose the policy that sent them there;
NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that we, the members of the City Council of the City of Chicago, oppose a pre-emptive U.S. military attack on Iraq unless it is demonstrated that Iraq poses a real and imminent threat to the security and safety of the United States; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we support a return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq, enhanced by sufficient police support to guarantee unfettered access to all targeted sites; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we urge the U.S. to work through the U.N. Security Council and reaffirm our nation's commitment to the rule of law in all international relationships; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the Illinois congressional delegation and the President of the United States.
----
Peace groups primed for big anti-war push
Story by Jason Hopps
REUTERS UK:
January 16, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19434/story.htm
LONDON - In a series of rallies organisers hope will dwarf the widespread anti-nuclear marches of the 1980s, peace activists are planning to fill cities across Europe and the United States under a "Don't attack Iraq" banner.
Smaller protests against a second Gulf war - looming larger in recent weeks as U.S. and British military might builds in the region - are scheduled for cities in Japan, South Africa, Turkey, Australia and Canada.
D-Day for the peace movement in Europe will be February 15, when simultaneous protests in several capitals are expected to draw hundreds of thousands of marchers.
"February 15th is an international day of action...I think we could see record numbers at the biggest anti-war demonstration London has ever seen," said Andrew Burgin, spokesman for Britain's Stop the War Coalition.
"The message is a simple one: no war against Iraq for any reason, whether the United Nations supports an attack or not," he told Reuters.
ANTI-WAR PUSH
On that day, big protests are also planned for Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Madrid and the Swiss capital Berne.
Public opinion in Europe is at best divided over an attack on Iraq and in most countries - Britain and France included - is against by a wide margin if an invasion is not supported by the United Nations.
Groups in the Netherlands have collected around 10,000 signatures for a petition against a war and have delivered it to the prime minister's office in The Hague.
In France, some 40 groups, including unions, anti-racist organisations and the Communist and Green political parties, are planning a nationwide peace protest on January 18 timed to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the 1991 Gulf War.
In the United States, organisers expect tens of thousands of people at a January 18 protest in Washington, the third large-scale demonstration in the U.S. capital since October.
Anti-war organisers and environmental group Greenpeace are hoping for large turnouts in Tokyo for a January 18 march and in Sydney for a February 16 demonstration.
By contrast, response to a possible attack on Iraq in the conservative Gulf Arab region has been muted.
There have been virtually no anti-war rallies recently - except for some peaceful protests in Bahrain and Yemen - in an area where governments and police keep a tight lid on public demonstrations.
ATTACK INEVITABLE?
With the net tightening around Saddam Hussein, many anti-war groups believe bloodshed in Iraq may be imminent, but say the peace movement is not powerless to rein in a protracted conflict.
Washington has more than doubled its troops in the Gulf region to 150,000 and the top two U.N. inspectors will travel to Baghdad next weekend to confront Iraqi officials over weapons of mass destruction.
"An attack on Iraq has been inevitable for a long period," said Burgin. "The question for (British) Prime Minister Tony Blair's government and other European governments is 'will they survive the growing opposition to the war?'" he said.
Political analysts say a well-organised peace movement could provide serious problems for governments - especially Blair's, America's staunchest ally since the September 11 attacks - where public opinion is stacked against an attack not sanctioned by the United Nations.
"We already know it's politically dangerous for the Blair government to be such a strong supporter of the United States and there is clearly some division at cabinet level," said John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University.
"The combination of a war that might not be backed by the U.N. with domestic public opinion that is opposed means the British government will be under a very difficult situation if a million people start marching in the streets," he said.
----
China Tries Labor Leaders Amid Protest
Crowd at Courthouse Highlights Mounting Problem for Communist Party
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 16, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63290-2003Jan15?language=printer
LIAOYANG, China, Jan. 15 -- Under tight security and with an angry crowd holding a vigil in sub-zero temperatures outside, a court in this northeastern Chinese city tried two prominent labor leaders on subversion charges today, then adjourned without announcing a verdict.
Yao Fuxin, 52, and Xiao Yunliang, 56, were arrested last March for helping organize large-scale protests in Liaoyang demanding aid for workers left jobless by economic reforms and punishment for officials unfairly profiting from the privatization of state industries. The protests, which drew as many as 30,000 people from factories across the city, were among the biggest labor demonstrations in China in years and underscored the Communist Party's difficulties with rising labor unrest.
Several international labor and human rights organizations, as well as a group of U.S. congressmen, have appealed to Beijing to release Yao and Xiao. But the Chinese government determined to stick to its longstanding strategy of suppressing independent labor activism by severely punishing worker leaders.
Prosecutors at the Liaoyang Intermediate People's Court portrayed Yao and Xiao as members of the banned China Democracy Party who worked with such "hostile elements" as foreign journalists and overseas labor activists to "subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system," according to several people who were in the courtroom.
But the prosecutors called no witnesses, depriving defense lawyers of the chance to cross-examine them, and the judges repeatedly cut off Yao as he spoke in his own defense, the courtroom sources said. The trial was completed in four hours. Yao and Xiao could receive sentences of up to life in prison when the judges return with a verdict, which could be as early as this week.
"We're not optimistic," said Yao's daughter, Yao Dan. "We still have hope, but we're very worried."
Authorities sealed off roads near the courthouse, and police officers were stationed in large numbers outside the building and in worker neighborhoods, apparently to stifle protests. Over the past few weeks, police have also cut the phone lines to the homes of several labor leaders and threatened to ruin their children's lives if the workers attempted to stage more demonstrations, workers said.
Still, a few hundred workers showed up outside the courthouse this morning, wrapped in thick coats and scarves, straining to get a glimpse of Yao and Xiao as they were taken in and out of the building. A row of police officers blocked their path but took no action as the workers complained loudly about the government's decision to prosecute the men.
"How is it a crime to ask for our wages?" asked one unshaven worker, stamping his feet to stay warm. "How can that be subverting state power?"
Tickets were required for admission to the trial, and only a few dozen workers and family members made it in. Workers said most of the 200 or so people seated in the room were government officials and police officers. A French journalist who attempted to enter the courthouse was detained and forced to return to Beijing.
Yao and Xiao were escorted into the courtroom wearing orange prison vests and handcuffs. They appeared thin but healthy and in good spirits, people in the room said. Xiao bowed his head and raised his hands above his head in a gesture of thanks to the workers before the trial began.
When given a chance to speak, Xiao mocked the charges against him, asking how an unemployed worker like himself could overthrow the government, audience members said. Yao delivered a more emotional statement, they said, arguing that everything he did was for his fellow workers and shedding tears as he described how poor they were. Some workers in the gallery wept too, and police forced them to leave the courtroom.
The Chinese government had previously accused Yao and Xiao of violence during the protests. But prosecutors made no mention of that allegation today. Instead, they focused on linking the pair to the China Democracy Party, a short-lived independent political party that was crushed in 1998.
People in the courtroom said prosecutors cited as incriminating evidence phone calls between the defendants and reporters with Agence France-Presse, the Wall Street Journal and two human rights organizations based in Hong Kong, as well as Yao's decision to attend a memorial for students killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The trial also offered a glimpse into the authorities' divide-and-conquer approach to crushing labor activists. Courtroom sources said prosecutors highlighted a statement accusing Yao of recruiting people to join the China Democracy Party. The statement was allegedly made by Pang Qingxiang, a top worker leader who was arrested with Yao and Xiao in March but released last month.
Yao acknowledged attending two meetings of the China Democracy Party in 1998 but said he never joined because he supported the Communist Party, his daughter said. He also defended his contacts with foreign journalists and human rights groups, saying he had already tried to persuade Chinese journalists and institutions to help without any luck.
----
[Good pointers for potential organizers. et]
Jan 18: WHAT YOU NEED to KNOW if you're coming to DC
From: answer.general-report@action-mail.org
Date: Thu Jan 16, 2003 1:21am
DETAILS OF JAN. 18 NATIONAL MARCH ON WASHINGTON DC
Location, bus drop off, bus pick-up parking & more!
[Please note: You may have to copy and paste links into another browser window to be directed to the correct location. Simply following the hyperlink may require you to scroll down to the appropriate section of the page.]
SATURDAY, JANUARY 18
permitted rally & march
Rally @ 11 am West Side of the Capitol Building 3rd St. on the Mall
March to the Washington Navy Yard: M St. between 1st and 11th Sts. SE
A MAP OF THE CAPITOL AREA AND MARCH ROUTE CAN BE FOUND AT http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/map.html
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW IF YOU'RE TRAVELING TO DC
FOR BUSES, VANS, and CAR CARAVANS GOING TO Washington DC:
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/j18contacts.html Transportation will be organized from cities all over the country to travel to Washington DC. There are currently more than 200 cities in almost every state organizing buses to be in DC on January 18.
DRIVING DIRECTIONS
For detailed driving directions to DC (3rd St. on the Mall: 3rd St. and Madison Dr. NW),
http://www.mapquest.com/directions/main.adp and enter "3rd St. and Madison Dr. NW" in Washington DC as your destination. If you are looking on a map, find 3rd St. between Constitution Ave. and Independence Ave. Between these two streets, you will see that Madison Drive and Jefferson Drive run through the National Mall.
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IN DC
For a DC Metro map,
http://www.wmata.com/metrorail/systemmap.cfm .
3rd St. on the National Mall (west side of the Capitol) is accessible from a few metro stations. The closest stops are Federal Center SW on the blue/orange line and Archives Navy Memorial on the green line. It is also possible to walk from Union Station (train station, nearby bus station, Union Station stop on the red line). The metro system opens at 8 am on the weekends. If you are coming early to volunteer, check into buses from your area.
AIRPORT, BUS, AND TRAIN STATIONS IN DC
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/logistics.html#trans4
WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO KNOW WHILE YOU'RE IN DC
BUS/VAN/CAR DROP OFF
Buses and vans can drop passengers off on 3rd St. between Pennsylvania Ave. and Independence Ave. Buses cannot park here, but they can pull up and unload on either side of 3rd Street. We do not expect major delays or traffic jams. Groups are encouraged to drive directly to the rally site and drop off the majority of their passengers, and then proceed to parking. For more information,
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/logistics.html#dc1
BUS PICKUP
After an opening rally at the Mall, we will march to the Washington Navy Yard. Bus pickup will be on nearby New Jersey Ave. north of M St.
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/logistics.html#dc1
HOUSING IN DC (HOSTELS, HOTELS & CAMPSITES)
Locations added in the last week. January 18 rates available.
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/logistics.html#dc2
MARCH
We will march to the Washington Navy Yard and then rally on M St. between 1st and 11th Sts. SE. After a closing rally, we will disband in this area. See BUS PICKUP and PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION in DC for directions from this area.
WHAT YOU SHOULD BRING
Bring snacks and water, and wear comfortable shoes since you'll be standing and walking for several hours. Remember to prepare for cold weather! If you've been to an A.N.S.W.E.R. protest before and have an "Act Now to Stop War & End Racism," t-shirt wear it to the protest!
TABLING POLICY
PLEASE READ FULLY IF YOU ARE BRINGING A TABLE
There is a designated area for groups to set up tables at the rally, and there will be a small fee. Table space in the designated area is available on a first come, first serve basis. The fee must be paid at the time you set up your table.
The designated tabling area is on the outer edges of the gravel walkway between the grassy panels. Please refer to the map at the top of this page to get a better picture. There are three grassy panels that run along the Mall, the first section of which are between 3rd and 4th Sts. Groups cannot set up tables in the middle section. You may set up along the outer edges of the gravel walkways that run between the panels. This may extend west of 4th St. if the area between 3rd and 4th Sts. fills up.
There will be volunteers on hand to explain the designated tabling area and to collect the fee. Groups setting up tables for free literature distribution will be charged $25 per table; anyone setting up a table to sell materials will be charged $50 per table. Please bring cash, check or money order (made to "A.N.S.W.E.R.") with you when you set up.
Groups may only set up tables. No other structures can be set up. All groups must bring their own tables. HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED
VOLUNTEERING
To make this event a success, hundreds of volunteers are needed to help out in many areas! If you would like to volunteer, click here for details:
http://internationalanswer.org/campa igns/j18/volunteers.html
. Whether you're arriving a few days early, or the morning of the 18th -- there are many ways you can help out. If you are coming early to volunteer, you should consult the bus map/schedule
http://internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/logistics.html#trans3
(as the metro does not begin running until 8 am). You will be able to arrive earlier by bus. Also, if you are coming before 8 am, street parking will be readily available and you are not required to feed (pay) meters in downtown DC on Saturdays. Many volunteers and helpers will be needed in this area, so please call 202-544-3389 or email to find out how you can help!
WORK SESSIONS
There will be a sign-making work session in Washington DC from 6 to 9 pm on Friday, January 17. Call 202-544-3389 for details. For helping in New York City work sessions, call 212-633-6646.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE ABOVE TOPICS, ALONG WITH DISABILITY ACCESS, FOOD, AND BATHROOMS, CAN BE FOUND ON THE JAN. 18 LOGISTICS PAGE http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/logistics.html
If you have questions after reviewing this page, call us at 202-544-3389.
San Francisco logistics can be found at: http://www.internationalanswer.org/campaigns/j18/logisticssf.html
For general information about the January 18 National March on Washington DC and joint action in San Francisco, go to http://www.internationalanswer.org
Send replies to answer@a...
This is the ANSWER activist announcement list. Anyone can subscribe by sending any message to <answer.general-subscribe@a...> To unsubscribe <answer.general-off@a...>
----
Survival Strategies for Winter Protests
by John Steinbach, Gray Panthers
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003
From: John Steinbach <johnsteinbach@comcast.net>
The Anti-War Movement doesn't have the luxury of scheduling protests only in the Spring and Autumn when the weather is comfortable. Sometimes it becomes necessary to mobilize in the blistering heat of mid-August or, as is the case today, the bitter cold of mid-January. The weather forecast for Washington on January 18 is 3 to 5 inches of snow on the ground, stiff winds, and a high of 25 degrees.
This doesn't mean that we shouldn't protest! To the contrary. I know of at least one activist in his 90s who intends to march with the Gray Panthers. What it does mean, however, is that certain basic preparations should be made in order to ensure a comfortable experience.
1. Dress warmly! When the protest begins at 11AM, expect the temperature to be in the teens. The best way to keep warm is to layer clothes. Put first on long underwear or heavy tights and the a heavy pair of pants(or even 2!) Wear several undershirts under a heavy shirt and sweater, and a heavy winter coat. Wear heavy insulated boots with at least 2 pairs of socks(preferably more). If you don't have insulated boots, it may be a good investment to visit a department store and purchase an inexpensive pair of felt lined rubber boots(buy the boots a size too large to accommodate heavy socks and make sure that the soles have snow treads). A warm hat or hood that covers the ears is a must! Top off your winter protest wardrobe with insulated winter gloves. Inexpensive disposable hand & foot warmers are readily available at sporting goods stores and can make the protest much more enjoyable.
2. Be prepared! Have a good nights sleep & eat a nourishing hot breakfast prior to the rally. Bring a small backpack with a thermos of hot liquid. Hot Chocolate or broth is better that coffee, which is a diuretic(go to the bathroom before you arrive at the rally). Bring candy bars or other high carbohydrate foods to eat during the day.
3. Keep Moving! The biggest danger during midwinter protests is frostbite to the extremities. As we age, our circulation gradually deteriorates making us more susceptible to frostbite. Warm boots & gloves can help, but continually moving in place keeps the blood flowing(Stamping the feet & swinging the arms increases the circulation). This is especially important during the rally when we will be standing around for several hours.
4. Be Aware of signs of Hypothermia! Keep a close eye on others in your group & people around you. Call for help immediately if you see anyone with signs of hypothermia.
Signs of Hypothermia: Drowsiness, fatigue; Stumbling; Thickness of speech; Amnesia; Irrationality, poor judgment; Blueness of skin (cyanosis); Dilation (enlargement) of pupils; Decreased heart and respiration rate; Stupor; Fatigue, drowsiness, exhaustion; Feeling of deep cold or numbness; Poor coordination
Treatment for hypothermia:
• Get adequate rest and maintain good nutrition before and during cold weather activities.
• Consume adequate high-energy foods and water during cold weather activities.
• Use wind and water proof clothing.
• Exercise to keep up the body's heat function.
• Shelter victim from wind and weather & insulate victim from the ground.
--------
Anti-war movement broadening
1/16/2003
By John Ritter,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-01-16-protests-usat_x.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - Opposition to war with Iraq may not be deep, but it's getting wider. From liberal environmental groups to mainstream labor organizations to conservative Republican businessmen, anti-war sentiment is spreading beyond college students, the radical fringe and those who protested the Vietnam War.
Whether the anti-war movement grows as its base broadens may be become clearer Saturday when large demonstrations are planned here and in Washington. Anti-war gatherings Oct. 26 drew 100,000 in Washington and 50,000 here, activists say. Organizers are hoping for bigger turnouts this weekend as busloads stream into both cities from across America.
Organizers say Friday's anti-war activists, who they refer to as peace activists, are more representative of the general population than protesters during the Vietnam War. They say the push for coalition-building is more sincere, the planning and logistics are more sophisticated, and the recruiting and fundraising are more fruitful. The Internet, with mass e-mailings and information Web sites, is a key facilitator, they say.
The result, they say, is a peace movement not only ahead of the pace of Vietnam War protests but also one with a chance of stopping war - or at least forcing U.S. cooperation with the United Nations -before the shooting starts.
American GIs were coming home in body bags before serious protests erupted in the mid-1960s. Today, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets while the administration is drawing a war plan.
Anti-war activists are buoyed that they've forged a movement despite a popular president, a widely supported military intervention in Afghanistan and little media attention to protest groups.
"We've seen just an astonishing growth in young people who have never been politically active, who don't even remember the first Gulf War because they were only 8 or 9 years old at the time," says Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action.
Another difference from the Vietnam era is that opposition takes many forms.
Oakland's school board draws criticism for authorizing a teach-in on Iraq dominated by opponents of a war. Fifty Marin County, Calif., women undress and lay on a beach, spelling out with their bodies "No war." Grandmothers for Peace walk the frigid streets of St. Paul each week toting peace signs and handing out leaflets.
Members of Singing for Peace travel commuter trains in the San Francisco Bay area serenading riders. Weekly peace vigils become standing events in Oakland, San Jose and Fremont, Calif.
MoveOn.org, an Internet-based organization that says it has 600,000 members, spends $400,000 reprising the famous 1964 "Daisy" TV ads that President Johnson's campaign used to paint Republican Barry Goldwater as an extremist. The ad, which started Thursday, shows a girl plucking petals from a daisy contrasted with a missile launch countdown and nuclear mushroom cloud.
Students at 60 colleges and universities announce a broad coalition to link campus anti-war activities. Groups as diverse as the Sierra Club, the National Council of Churches, the NAACP and the National Organization for Women come out against war.
A Republican business group pays for a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal this week warning Bush: "The world wants Saddam Hussein disarmed. But you must find a better way to do it."
Thirty-eight city councils, including those in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore, pass or are considering anti-war resolutions.
More than 55,000 Americans log onto the Internet to sign an Iraq Peace Pledge. More than 5,000 agree in a Pledge of Resistance to take part in civil disobedience if war breaks out.
However, public support for an invasion of Iraq remains strong - 56% approve of sending troops to oust Saddam Hussein, according to the latest USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll. But support is almost as strong - 52% - for waiting until U.N. arms inspectors actually find weapons of mass destruction.
Behind those slim majorities lie deep reservoirs of doubt, activists say.
At a planning meeting here this week for Saturday's demonstration, the new face of protest was evident - bifocals and briefcases alongside pierced eyebrows and purple hair. Crowding into a room in the Women's Building in the city's Mission District were young and old, affluent and working-class men and women, blacks, Asian-Americans and Latinos.
International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) is the chief organizer of this weekend's marches, vigils, teach-ins and interfaith services. Many groups support the events, however, among them the Quaker's American Friends Service Committee and Peace Action, a 45-year-old organization that staged one of the first big Vietnam rallies at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1965.
Although it's early, there appears to be little of the squabbling among groups that plagued Vietnam organizers. That may be because students aren't driving the movement as in the '60s, some speculate. Recruits from all walks of life seem to be attracted by subtle political messages, in contrast to the violent images and rhetoric of the Vietnam War.
Veronica Lopez started volunteering just last week but already is on a security team for Saturday's march here. She was in the crowd on Oct. 26 and left her e-mail address at a sign-up table. ANSWER began sending her news updates and background on Mideast tensions.
When her Sonoma State University classes broke for the holidays, she headed for San Francisco. She spends days answering phones, painting banners and doing whatever is needed.
"I was feeling helpless as I saw things going forward with the war," Lopez, 26, says. "When I finally came here and got plugged in, it made me feel like there was something I can do to stop this."
Jay Martin, an unemployed fundraiser, was impressed by the Oct. 26 rally's organization. He jumped in to help a week ago and will be on a cell phone in the crowd on Saturday, reporting trouble and exhorting marchers to ignore hecklers.
"I don't know if we can stop the war," Martin, 36, says. "The country's so big you can name any cause and get 100,000 people into the streets. But every time there's a demonstration, it lets people know it's OK to be against the war."
--------
Remake of LBJ's 'Daisy' Nuke Ad Opposes Iraq War
January 16, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-ad.html
BOSTON (Reuters) - An Internet-based group of activists has remade a chilling Cold War-era television advertisement to try to turn the public against a war in Iraq.
The advertisement resurrects former Democratic President Lyndon Johnson's ``Daisy'' election ad of 1964 which tried to depict Republican Barry Goldwater as a trigger-happy extremist who could usher in nuclear Armageddon if elected president.
Like the original, the 30-second spot, airing in several cities on Thursday, begins with a little girl picking petals from a daisy and ends with the mushroom-shaped cloud of a nuclear explosion.
``War with Iraq,'' a narrator says. ``Maybe it will end quickly. Maybe not. Maybe it will spread. Maybe extremists will take over countries with nuclear weapons.''
The ad, which also features footage of burning oil wells and a crowd of Middle Easterners seething with anger, concludes with the words: ``Let the inspections work.''
The commercial was funded by the members of MoveOn.org, an Internet-based grassroots group that was formed in the 1990s to oppose the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton and now claims some 600,000 members.
Opponents of war, who are staging demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco this weekend, fear time is running out to prevent a conflict, as the Bush administration presses ahead with a major military build-up in the Gulf region.
The spot, called ``Daisy 2,'' began airing in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and eight other U.S. cities. It was initially slated to air for five days.
The original ``Daisy'' ad aired only once because of claims by the Republican Party that it slandered Goldwater.
-------
Sampling of Anti - War Protests
January 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Protest-Snapshots.html
A sampling of weekend protests planned in concert with a national anti-war rally in Washington on Saturday. Events are Saturday except where noted. Times, where available, are local.
California: San Francisco rally, starting 11 a.m. at the foot of Market Street at Embarcadero. March to Civic Center Plaza for speeches, entertainment, cultural performances.
Oregon: 1 p.m. rally and march in Portland, with about 50 groups participating.
Arizona: In Tucson, 40 groups have a march and rally.
Nevada: In Las Vegas, noon rally from the Bellagio fountains to the Tropicana and back. In Reno, rally at the University of Nevada.
Iowa: 11 a.m. march in Des Moines from Grandview College to the Statehouse, followed by rally.
Minnesota: 9 p.m. candlelight vigil at Lake Harriet in Minneapolis.
Missouri: St. Louis rally, march and interfaith service Monday, starting 10 a.m. at the Old Court House.
Vermont: March and rally in Montpelier.
Massachusetts: Vigil and rally in Cambridge, 10 a.m. to noon.
New York: In Albany, a candlelight march at 4:30 p.m. Friday from the Capitol. Schenectady march Saturday.
Florida: Rallies 1 p.m.-3 p.m. in Tampa, St. Augustine and Venice. Tampa marchers plan to go to main gate of MacDill Air Force Base, headquarters of Central Command.
----
'I'm an ex-marine recruiting human shields'
Thursday, 16 January, 2003
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/default.stm
As war with Iraq seems to edge ever closer, former US Marine Kenneth Nichols O'Keefe - who fought in the Gulf War - plans to lead a group of Westerners to be human shields.
I'm hoping to recruit hundreds of volunteers en route to Iraq and my goal is thousands. After we leave London on 25 January, we go to France, then Holland, Germany and Switzerland before heading towards Baghdad.
US Marines help an injured colleague in 1991 I left the Marines after the Gulf War - I'd had an altercation with my superiors
In the UK and the US, there's little appetite for war but the authorities don't expect many people to go to such extremes to stop it. That would be true if there was only 20 to 50 of us, but if there's 500 or more, it becomes easier and easier to recruit people.
The bandwagon is already formed. The first two or three people were the most difficult - it was myself and one other person who said 'we're going', and it was another fortnight before we got a third. Based on that sort of progress, we'd only have a dozen by now, but it's grown exponentially since then.
Not one of the volunteers has said that they want to go to Iraq to support Saddam Hussein. The theme I'm getting is that this is a criminal war, that it's going to victimise an already victimised population. Many also regard the US as the greatest threat to world security.
Battle scars
I was in the Gulf War in 1991 for six months with the Second Battalion, Fourth Marines.
Iraqi children act as human shields Expats and Iraqi children were placed at key instillations in 1991 The first few months we sat on the border of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and when the ground war kicked off we had to secure the road that runs between Kuwait City and Baghdad - the Highway of Death, where 20,000 Iraqis were massacred by the US military forces as they were retreating.
I was in a supporting role in that massacre; although I didn't kill anyone personally, I still take responsibility for the deaths of others.
I left the Marines seven or eight months later - essentially I was fired when they were downsizing after the war.
Torched oil fields in 1991 It is not Kenneth's war experience that turned him to peace I'd had an altercation with my immediate superiors, having reported them for an abuse of power. It might seem quite trivial, but we were living on board a ship in the Mediterranean in summer and it was very hot.
My superiors had shut a passage so as to keep what little air conditioning there was in their area. They had no authority to do that, and it forced us in the lower ranks to go three times as far to get to routine areas.
The whole platoon was punished for what I did, and I had to look over my shoulder after that. A lot of marines would no doubt describe me a provocateur or a "bad apple" but to my mind I did the right thing.
War and peace
While my experience in the Gulf helped shape me, it's not my time there that's prompted me to return. I'm going to protest against my country's policies.
I do all this because I want to see a peaceful world
I've also renounced my citizenship. I've handed over my passport, put my hand up and sworn the oath - and added a statement condemning the US's criminal acts at home and abroad, and its destruction of the natural environment - and left the country.
I'm now based in Holland, where I came in November 2001 to seek political asylum. I no longer have a passport but I managed to get into the UK with a copy of my old US one - no doubt because I'm white and speak with an American accent.
Kurd refugees in 1991 Thousands have died or been displaced as a result I do all this because I want to see a peaceful world.
I grew up in a prosperous place in southern California, I went to the beach and surfed, I played soccer. I had a loving family, a safe neighbourhood. Before I left the US, I lived in paradise in Hawaii, had my own dive business and was involved in a lot of marine conservation work.
I've had a life most people would kill for. It makes me very sad to know that the majority of people don't have such opportunities.
----
Listen to the Veterans
Charles Sheehan-Miles,
AlterNet
January 16, 2003
http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=14952
special forces
Twelve years ago, at roughly 2:00 a.m. local time on January 17, I was ready to go off guard duty when the call came down from the command post to wake up the platoon leaders ASAP. Not long after, we got the official word: U.S. forces were in contact. Lieutenant Dorr, my platoon leader, came back and briefed us: A hundred tomahawk missiles had been launched, and Special Forces were engaged behind the lines. We didn't need the briefings; all we had to do was look up at the sky to see hundreds of planes heading north for their bombing runs.
Imagine if Ronald Reagan had announced in 1985 that we were going back to Vietnam, and this time we were going to take out those commies. That's how surreal the whole discussion of invading Iraq is, because we have just about as much justification today. At least in 1991, we had the very real fact that Iraq had invaded and occupied its neighbor as justification for the war (forget that the U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie gave Saddam the go-ahead), and the just-war theorists had a lively debate. It was a fight in Congress and a very close vote, a vote that was swung by lies of babies thrown out of incubators concocted in a DC public relations firm.
The result of all this is clear: friends injured on the front lines in Iraq, 12 men in my division killed in action and many more wounded, tens of thousands more who came home sick. Only this week new research was published proving that the chemicals we were exposed to not only caused brain damage but also damaged fertility. This research vindicated thousands of veterans who reported their illnesses 10 years ago only to be told their ailment was in their heads.
Now, 12 years later, it is time for the country to sit up and listen to its veterans -- starting with figures including Generals Anthony Zinni and Norman Schwarzkopf who have consistently urged caution, certified war heroes such as Col. David Hackworth, and the hundreds of veterans who have signed petitions for Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans against the Iraq War.
As veterans who have served in wartime, it is our moral responsibility to ensure that those who serve in uniform today are not sent into battle without just cause. It is our moral responsibility to ensure that they don't needlessly die in a faraway desert for motivations that are unclear. Hold no illusions: Hundreds, possible thousands of Americans will die in the coming war. Tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis will die in the coming war.
All across America, hundreds of thousands of citizens are marching this week, calling out to their government to listen to the people, and in many cases they are joined or led by veterans. No one knows the horrors of war better than someone who has had a friend die in his arms. No one knows the horrors of war better than someone who lives with the memory of having killed another human being.
The tide is turning. Today, the majority of Americans see war against Iraq as unwarranted and unnecessary. But we must keep at it, keep talking, keep putting up signs, until Bush's war on America and Iraq is brought to a halt.
Twelve years ago, among the lights that flew so high over us in the desert night, Lieutenant Commander Scott Speicher was shot down over Iraq and never came home. Before the war ground to a halt in March untold thousands more died, at least some of them at my hand. Before the decade was over, another million innocent Iraqi civilians died. That must forever lie on the conscience of Americans, and the world, for letting it happen.
When I was in the Army, they taught me to respect and protect civilians, not to kill them. This war does nothing to protect American lives, but it will do everything to destroy the lives of many thousands of Iraqis and Americans. This war will not protect us from weapons of mass destruction, but it will make it more likely Iraq will try to use them. This war will not liberate the Iraqi people, but it will do everything to ensure they receive a new master, one ruled by corporate profits and oil to fuel more American consumption.
This war isn't worth the life of one American soldier. This week, thousands of American soldiers from my old post, Fort Stewart, are loading up on planes and deploying to Kuwait, to fight a war on our behalf. They go because it is their job, and because it is their mission to protect us.
It is now our mission to protect them.
Charles Sheehan-Miles, a Gulf War veteran and a co-founder of Veterans for Common Sense, is a former president of the National Gulf War Resource Center and author of the novel, "Prayer at Rumayla".
----
Demand peace
Vote in the streets this Martin Luther King weekend
Molly Ivins Creators Syndicate
01.16.03
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=14366
AUSTIN, Texas -- "Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal." -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Normally, making the case for peace over war requires the brain of a gnat. "Jaw, jaw," said Winston Churchill, "is better than war, war." There's not much historical evidence that war does anyone any good: a few rare cases of "just war" under St. Augustine's definition. Mostly war (A) kills a lot of people, causing hard feelings; (B) doesn't solve anything; (C) has hideous unintended consequences that often lead to more war. Avoid war if at all possible is the first rule of statesmanship.
Conservatives are fond of pointing out that there are problems in this world that can't be solved by throwing money at them. There are even more that can't be solved by dropping bombs on them.
We are in such a strange position here, preparing to attack a country that has neither attacked us nor threatened to attack us. President Bush calls his new doctrine "pre-emptive war," but pre-emptive war is what Israel did in 1967, with the Egyptian army massing on its borders. They attacked first under clear threat. John Ikenberry, professor of international relations at Georgetown University, told The Washington Post that this administration has embarked on something "quite extraordinary in American history, a preventive war, and the threshold for justification should be extraordinarily high."
Try to wrap your mind around the concept of preventive war. We tried having a war to end wars (didn't work); now we're having a war to prevent war?
I am perfectly well aware there is a case to be made for taking out Saddam Hussein -- you can make it on humanitarian grounds alone. The question is whether it's riskier to leave him alone or take him out. The oldest of all Texas dicta is, "Leave the rattlesnake alone." Those of us who spend time outdoors here not infrequently encounter snakes and sometimes have to kill them. But the rule is: You don't bother the snake, snake won't bother you. Saddam Hussein is 68 years old and slipping.
I assume we can defeat Hussein without great cost to our side (God forgive me if that is hubris). The problem is what happens after we win. The country is 20 percent Kurd, 20 percent Sunni and 60 percent Shiite. Can you say, "Horrible three-way civil war?" And as George W. Bush himself once said, "Unrest in the Middle East causes unrest throughout the region."
Let me point out what we have already lost: enormous amounts of goodwill and esteem all over the world. We are the saber-rattlers here; we are the aggressors, and the world knows it. The indifference of this administration to the opinions of the rest of the world is astonishing. After 9-11, we threw away more goodwill and sympathy than you can imagine by switching from the hunt for Al Qaeda to this ancillary (if that) mission to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
There is no evidence connecting Iraq to Al Qaeda. As Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio said in a recent speech: "Iraq has not committed any act of aggression against the United States. Iraq was not responsible for 9-11. Iraq was not responsible for the anthrax attack on our nation. The United Nations has yet to establish that Iraq has useable weapons of mass destruction. There is no intelligence that Iraq has the ability to strike at the United States. According to the CIA, Iraq has no intention to attack America, but will defend itself if attacked.
"Why, then, is our nation prepared to send 300,000 of our young men and women into house-to-house combat in the streets of Baghdad and Basra? Why is our nation prepared to spend $200 billion or more of our hard-earned tax dollars for the destruction of Iraq?"
Richard Perle, chair of the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Board, is a leading member of the small attack-Iraq-no-matter-what claque that is relentlessly pushing this war. He said bluntly last week in Britain that it makes no difference whether the U.N. weapons inspectors find anything or not. Great, we're ready to go to war on no evidence.
This war is not inevitable, and the person who can stop it is you. Monday, Jan. 20 is Dr. King's holiday. People all over the country will be rallying and marching in his honor, celebrating not only his eloquent opposition to racism and poverty, but his equally passionate protests against militarism. You get more than a vote in this country. You get to speak up. Write, phone, fax and e-mail your representative, senators and the White House. Vote in the streets. Do it.
"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." -- Dr. King
--------
March -- but bring your own sign
Ruth Rosen
Thursday, January 16, 2003
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/01/16/ED49808.DTL
MY 89-YEAR-OLD friend Alicia is angry because she can't march in San Francisco this Saturday. All her life, she has fought for civil rights and against unjust wars. Now, bound to a wheelchair, she is unable to walk. "If I were well and young," she says, her voice rising in indignation, "I would be there. So go tell all those young and able people that this war on Iraq is wrong."
Alicia is hardly alone in wanting to express her opposition to a possible invasion of Iraq. The pope has called such a war "a defeat for humanity." During the next week, anti-war demonstrations will take place in at least 23 countries, including Argentina, Canada, France, South Korea, Germany and Russia.
On Saturday, this country will witness two large "National Marches in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco." The number of buses chartered by communities from Maine to Texas suggest that more than 150,000 marchers will descend on the nation's capitol for a peaceful march and rally against a war with Iraq.
In San Francisco, organizers say they are bracing for a huge crowd as well. Buses will be arriving from as far as Canada and Idaho. "I'm bringing my grandkids," says one friend. "There's no better way to teach them how to be a citizen." She joins peace organizations, church groups and families with children who will arrive Saturday and assemble for an 11 a.m. opening rally at the foot of Market Street at the Embarcadero. Then they will march to Civic Center Plaza for a closing rally with speakers and cultural performances.
Organizers chose this date because they believe it may be the last time Americans can prevent, rather than protest, a war with Iraq.
But the day is also special because Monday commemorates the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. For many civil rights and peace activists, the march also honors the last year of King's life, when he broke his silence and denounced the Vietnam War.
King rightly anticipated that all kinds of people would try to discredit him for his anti-war position. "I came to the conclusion," he told a stunned congregation at Riverside Church in New York City in 1967, "that there is an existential moment in your life when you must decide to speak for yourself; nobody else can speak for you."
There is never a good time to oppose your government, he told them. "On some positions, cowardice asks the question, 'is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."
I still remember hearing King denounce the war that year. As I stood with other students at UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, I heard King worry that he might be cast as a communist for opposing the war. But, he said, silence was far more dangerous. "Those of us who love peace," he urged, "must organize as effectively as the war hawks. As they spread the propaganda of war, we must spread the propaganda of peace."
Like many other people, I rarely agree with the specific slogans or politics of those who happen to organize large protest marches. After hearing King speak that day, however, I realized that it's more important to oppose an unjust war than remain silent.
I especially don't like to march under signs that express disrespect or hatred for my country. It's my nation's policies -- not its ideals or people --
against which I bear witness. And so, I listen to the sage advice offered by one veteran peace activist: "Just bring your own sign."
For logistical information: www.internationalanswer.org. For King's denunciation of war: www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/encyclopedia/vietnam.htm
E-mail Ruth Rosen at rrosen@sfchronicle.com
----
Where's the Dissent?
Antiwar protests are happening all over the country and the world, but the mainstream media are hardly paying attention
By Jennifer Barrett
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Jan. 16, 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/860481.asp?0cv=CA01
Photos- http://a799.g.akamai.net/3/799/388/a84a7ae8024f11/www.msnbc.com/news/1758298.jpg http://a799.g.akamai.net/3/799/388/0d3f8f253b8648/www.msnbc.com/news/1758297.jpg
Last Saturday, at least 5,000 antiwar protesters gathered in Los Angeles to hear actor Martin Sheen of "The West Wing" and other activists speak out against war on Iraq.
ON THE same day, more than 2,000 braved the freezing cold for a similar rally in Minneapolis. And since November, a group of about 200 in San Francisco have been trying to draw attention to the cause by stripping off their clothes and arranging themselves to spell out messages of peace in various public places.
An estimated 100,000 protesters from around the country converged in the nation's capital last October in what was called the largest antiwar demonstration in Washington since the Vietnam War era, and at least as many protesters are expected to return this weekend for more rallies. On Saturday, a mass march and rally organized by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism) and other groups will begin at 11 a.m. on the Mall and an ANSWER-led youth and student rally is planned for Sunday at the same time outside the U.S. Department of Justice. But whether members of the media will be there too is less clear. Though the antiwar movement is gathering steam as the possibility of war draws near, it has not garnered much mainstream press coverage yet. A NEWSWEEK Lexis/Nexis news search found that in October 2002 there were more than 1,500 stories about U.S. troops and Iraq but only a third as many stories with the word "antiwar." In the past week, about 100 stories have been written about antiwar protesters while about eight times as many stories have covered troop deployments and movement in the Persian Gulf. NEWSWEEK's Jennifer Barrett spoke to Lance Bennett, founder and director of the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement at the University of Washington in Seattle, about the media's role in the debate over war with Iraq. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: You coauthored a book called "Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Gulf War" (University of Chicago Press) in 1994. How would you compare media coverage leading up to the Persian Gulf War to the media's coverage of the growing conflict with Iraq now?
Lance Bennett is the founder and director of the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement at the University of Washington IMG: Lance Bennett Lance Bennett: There has been much less public debate about the prudence of this war and there has been less coverage of social protest and a general command from the White House of media content.
Why do you think that is? The administration has used this issue to effectively support the president's popularity and the Democrats are in an extremely weak position at the moment and they are unwilling to challenge that popularity even if they don't feel the war is a good idea. If there is no official challenge to this policy, the media tend not to open the news gates to social voices that would challenge the policy.
The antiwar rally in Washington last fall was the largest antiwar demonstration in the nation's capital since the 1970s protest against the Vietnam War. Why has the media itself been so reluctant to question the policy when many regular Americans seem willing to do so?
The pattern of media coverage is really reflected in the levels of disagreement among policy elites. A protest movement can get itself into the news by staging demonstrations, but those demonstrations often focus on conflict, violence and police behavior and are not clear channels for getting protest messages to the public. It depends on how government opposition emerges. Clearly the media became very critical of Vietnam, but there was dissent not just between Congress and the White House but within the Defense Department and within the State Department. When that level of fractiousness occurs, you get much wider coverage of social viewpoints. I wouldn't characterize the media as being overwhelmingly not representative of public viewpoints. If you look at taxes and abortion or school prayer or social issues like affirmative action where many policy channels in government are contested and conflicted, then you tend to find a much mo
Do you think Americans are getting an accurate picture from the mainstream media of the antiwar movement here?
No. The movement is extremely deep, consisting of lots and lots of community groups involved in globalization issues and peace and global civil-society concerns and those who are simply worried about U.S. foreign intervention in a dubious conflict.
What would they have to do to get more media coverage? There needs to be some voice of dissent coming out of Congress. It's the way the media works in these matters. Protesters are taken more seriously when there are public officials who speak for them, and the media tend to go from that development in a story to find more grass-roots opinion to include in a story.
Do you think the media should take more proactive role in questioning whether war with Iraq is a good idea?
Yes, if we agree that governmental deliberation has been unnaturally restricted by the Republicans' command of the government at the moment and the Democrats' unwillingness to challenge that coming into a presidential-election season and that the media might recognize that and begin to raise questions. The media will raise questions if the war appears to be going badly or goes on for too long or takes too many lives-those become big story lines. But it would be nice to raise the questions before those unpleasant ones come up. The media are also in a ratings battle; look at the cable wars. The direction that competition between those news organizations takes generally revolves around more patriotism and better theme songs and more dramatic coverage of the military side of things.
Don't the cable news channels risk alienating viewers who think that having theme songs and catchy titles about the conflict with Iraq trivializes the issue of war?
I think it is just part of the infotainment trend in the entire industry, the movement toward soft news and dramatizations and simplifications and the production of news that begins to look like entertainment television-anything to grab an audience and hold it until the commercial break.
But CNN made its name as a serious and authoritative source for news during the Persian Gulf War. Why mess with a successful strategy?
I think CNN is involved in an internal struggle over whether it should emulate Fox more or establish its position in the market by staying with serious news. It has shifted from the old policy of news being the star to hiring more expensive talent to deliver the news and to put more human interest and soft-news features into its main newscasts. But I don't think it will go all the way in the direction of Fox in part because Fox is winning that competition. With Walter Isaacson leaving CNN, that leaves an opening for redefinition, but I suspect CNN still clings enough to its tradition of being a more serious news voice. We'll see a difference between Fox and CNN, but CNN will have theme songs and dramatizations and cover "smart bombs."
What effect has the media's coverage of Iraq had so far on public opinion?
I don't know if I'd say there has been a sea change between the gulf war coverage and today. It's just a trend that is continuing because of a lack of political opposition in policy circles. The media are simply not likely to raise serious questions going in but will wait until something goes wrong and then raise questions about the wisdom of this policy. There is plenty of time for the media to get critical, but the question is in the timing of that criticism and whether it is helpful to form a dialogue between the public and policymakers that would prevent unpleasant disasters.
Do you think that will happen? No. The administration has participated in a very effective news management campaign since the days after the September 11 attacks ... People who raised their voice even a small bit were immediately brought under fire either by members of the network of conservative voices or by the White House itself. That has had a serious chilling tone on journalistic criticism.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.