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NUCLEAR
Taiwan to Hold Annual War Games from Mid-April
Envoy: Iran To Continue Its Nuclear Power Effort
FBI Probes Fake Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Plans
The Case of the 'Deadly' Drone
Japan Deploys Ship Amid Missile Reports
U.S.: Nuclear NK 'within months'
N. Korea Uranium Bomb Advance, Missile Test Feared
U.S. will resume reconnaissance missions
'With Circumspection,' U.S. Planes to Resume Spy Flights Off N. Korea
Mars Odyssey May Pose Radiation Risk
Report Says Plan to Safeguard Nuclear Material Is Lacking
Ex-Official Defends Los Alamos Laboratory
Public Meetings Open on Proposed MOX Nuclear Facility
Real World Tests Urged for Nuclear Transport Casks
Blair hurt by Rumsfeld's friendly fire
Senator Patrick Leahy - Concerning Iraq
First and last war of the Bush Doctrine?
The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire
MILITARY
Untrained Afghan Police Force Needs to Be Overhauled,
Tomahawk Missiles May Spearhead U.S. War on Iraq
THIS IS THE COST OF BLAIR'S 'MORAL' WAR
Lockheed Fighter Jet $1.3 Billion Deeper in Red
Billions lost since 'axis of evil' speech
Developer Gets Rent-Free Deal on Federal Land
U.S. Army Chemical Weapons Incineration Draws Lawsuit
'Peasant' Force Takes Shape in Colombia
Iran and Iraq Agree to Release POW's
Iraqi Officials Proudly Exhibit A Disputed, Dinged-Up Drone
Iraq Shows One of Its Drones, Recalling Wright Brothers
Until war starts, Iraqis urged not to surrender
Proof The US Planned Genocidal Acts Against Iraq
ISRAEL BEGINS COURSES FOR INTELLIGENCE CORPS
Bereaved Palestinians Get $245,000 from Saddam
Army Kills Two Israelis by Mistake in West Bank
Ocalan's war warning
U.N. civility degenerates to displays of anger
U.S. Raises Prospect of Abandoning Effort for U.N. Vote
Bush Considers Dropping U.N. Resolution
U.S. may order missile ships to Red Sea
Shinseki Repeats Estimate of a Large Postwar Force
Pentagon seeks freedom to pollute land, air and sea
Military seeks exemption from laws
Aid groups run up against Pentagon cult of secrecy
Tomahawk Missiles May Spearhead U.S. War on Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Rights Group Faults Afghan Police
Legal Bid to Block War Rejected by U.S. Court
Soldiers Suing Bush Case Not Ready For Review
Texas Death Row Inmate Gets a Last-Minute Stay
F.B.I. Warns of Possible Hate Crimes in United States
REVEALED: AL QAEDA PLOT TO KILL BUBBA
OTHER
Netherlands Approves 18 Climate Friendly Projects
EPA Hosts Electronics Recycling Events
ACTIVISTS
New York passes anti-war resolution
Student rights guides offered
Students excused to protest war plan
Activists Rush to Rally Again In Last-Ditch Antiwar Effort
'Faces of Iraq': Weapons of Mass Peace
A Call to Conscience from Veterans
MTV Refuses Antiwar Commercial
If not war, then what?
Resignation fuels more war dissent
Anti-war protesters arrested trying to enter Capitol
Religious Groups Go Online for Peace
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- china / taiwan
Taiwan to Hold Annual War Games from Mid-April
Reuters
Thursday, March 13, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18624-2003Mar13?language=printer
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan, facing an arms build-up by political rival China, will hold annual military exercises next month to test its combat readiness, the defense ministry said on Thursday.
The Ministry of National Defense also dismissed a newspaper report that Singapore troops would take part in the Han Kuang, or Chinese Glory, drills for the first time.
"The annual routine Han Kuang 19 exercises will take place from mid-April to mid-June and they are aimed at testing the armed forces' self-defense combat readiness," the military said in a statement.
"There will be no participation of foreign troops whatsoever," the statement said, without giving more details.
China, which considers self-governing, democratic Taiwan a wayward province that must be reunited with the mainland, has a longstanding threat to invade the island if it declares independence or drags its feet on reunification.
Washington, Taiwan's main arms supplier, has told Taipei to spend more on its own defense rather than rely on the United States to thwart any possible aggression by China.
A U.S. report last month said China was adding at least 75 ballistic missiles a year to its arsenal and was likely to have 600 targeted at Taiwan by 2005.
Beijing vehemently opposes its allies from forging military ties with Taipei and fewer than 30 countries recognize Taiwan's Republic of China government, which fled to the island after losing a civil war to the Chinese Communists in 1949.
-------- iran
Envoy: Iran To Continue Its Nuclear Power Effort
U.S. Claims of Weapons Program Called 'Untrue'
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17893-2003Mar12?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS, March 12 -- Iran intends to continue expanding its civilian nuclear energy program despite U.S. allegations that it is a cover for a secret nuclear weapons program, a senior Iranian official said today.
Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, said his government has no intention of developing nuclear weapons but that it would seek to aggressively develop its nuclear power industry because of fears the United States may persuade foreign suppliers, including Russia, China and Ukraine, to stop shipments of nuclear components to Iran.
"You don't expect Iran to sit still," he said in an interview at the Iranian mission to the United Nations. "We don't have any confidence that two years down the road, three years down the road, the pressure by the United States may or may not work on our suppliers. We have to create a source of self-sufficiency, which will include a fuel cycle program."
The Bush administration has said it suspects Iran is enriching uranium for nuclear weapons at a facility near the town of Natanz in central Iran. The existence of the nuclear facility was made public in August by an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. U.S. officials assert that when the project is completed in 2005, it will be capable of producing several nuclear bombs a year.
Zarif denied the charge. He said Tehran did not initially disclose its efforts to develop the Natanz nuclear "fuel cycle" plant because of concerns the United States would pressure foreign suppliers to withdraw from the project.
But he insisted that Iran's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency informed the nuclear watchdog of the country's nuclear activities in June, more than a month before the facility's existence became public. A spokesman for the Vienna-based IAEA, reached by telephone tonight, said he could not immediately confirm the Iranian envoy's claim.
"We have nothing to hide; we played a very straightforward, transparent game with the IAEA," Zarif said. "If the United States did not follow this policy of simply trying to deny Iran access to nuclear technology for any purpose, I don't think you would have had all these scenarios that we are confronting. Unless the United States changes its behavior, we will see more of the same."
As a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is permitted to develop nuclear energy under the supervision of the IAEA. Under the terms of the agreement, Iran is allowed to enrich uranium. It is under no legal obligation to declare the facility until it began enriching uranium.
"The United States does not believe in the IAEA," Zarif said. "The United States wants Iran not to have nuclear power, period."
The IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, visited Natanz on Feb. 21. He found a fully operational plant with 160 gas centrifuges for enriching uranium. When completed, the facility is expected to hold 5,000 centrifuges, enough to produce at least two nuclear bombs a year. The discovery has prompted the agency to renew pressure on Iran to sign a 1997 protocol that would allow international inspectors greater authority to conduct inspections on short notice and to take advanced environmental sampling. Iran has declined to ratify the protocol.
The IAEA board of governors is expected to review a report on the agency's investigation into the Iranian facility. "I believe once this report is out, it will be clear that all these fictions . . . will prove to be untrue," Zarif said.
-------- iraq
FBI Probes Fake Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Plans
By Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17888-2003Mar12?language=printer
The FBI is looking into the forgery of a key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program, including the possibility that a foreign government is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq.
"It's something we're just beginning to look at," a senior law enforcement official said yesterday. Officials are trying to determine whether the documents were forged to try to influence U.S. policy, or whether they may have been created as part of a disinformation campaign directed by a foreign intelligence service.
"We're looking at it from a preliminary stage as to what it's all about," he said.
The FBI has not yet opened a formal investigation because it is unclear whether the bureau has jurisdiction over the matter.
The phony documents -- a series of letters between Iraqi and Niger officials showing Iraq's interest in equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons -- came to British and U.S. intelligence officials from a third country. The identity of the third country could not be learned yesterday.
The forgery came to light last week during a highly publicized and contentious United Nations meeting. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the Security Council on March 7 that U.N. and independent experts had decided that the documents were "not authentic."
ElBaradei's disclosure, and his rejection of three other key claims that U.S. intelligence officials have cited to support allegations about Iraq's nuclear ambitions, struck a powerful blow to the Bush administration's argument on the matter.
To the contrary, ElBaradei told the council, "we have to date found no evidence or plausible indications of the revival of a nuclear program in Iraq."
The CIA, which had also obtained the documents, had questions about "whether they were accurate," said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq's program to procure weapons of mass destruction.
The FBI has jurisdiction over counterintelligence operations by foreign governments against the United States. Because the documents were delivered to the United States, the bureau would most likely try to determine whether the foreign government knew the documents were forged or whether it, too, was deceived.
Iraq pursued an aggressive nuclear weapons program during the 1970s and 1980s. It launched a crash program to build a nuclear bomb in 1990 after it invaded Kuwait. Allied bombing during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 damaged Iraq's nuclear infrastructure. The country's known stocks of nuclear fuel and equipment were removed or destroyed during the U.N. inspections after the war.
But Iraq never surrendered the blueprints for its nuclear program, and it kept teams of scientists employed after U.N. inspectors were forced to leave in 1998.
----
The Case of the 'Deadly' Drone
An unmanned aircraft with a 25-foot wingspan is at the center of a US/UN weapons controversy.
By Scott Peterson
The Christian Science Monitor
March 13, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0313/p06s01-woiq.html
AL-TAJI, IRAQ - Iraq rolled out a controversial drone aircraft Wednesday, in an effort to rebut American claims that Iraq could use it to spread chemical and biological weapons.
The primitive craft - its wings held together with tin foil and duct tape, and two wooden propellers bolted to engines far smaller than those of a lawn mower - looked more like a high-school science project than the "smoking gun" that could spark a war.
"We are really astonished when we hear that this [craft] has been 'discovered' by inspection teams, [as] it has been declared in detail," said Ibrahim Hussein, an Iraqi Air Force general. "Nothing was hidden about it."
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that this drone "should be of concern to everybody," and American officials have sought to portray the issue as one of a series of Iraqi disarmament missteps. Britain also called Wednesday for "an accounting for unmanned aerial vehicles" as one of its six disarmament conditions for Iraq.
To stave off an invasion, Baghdad is stepping up rebuttals of such US allegations. US officials said Tuesday that high altitude U-2 surveillance planes, provided by the US Air Force, were threatened by Iraq and recalled. Iraq refuted the allegation within an hour of it becoming public, saying that two aircraft entered Iraqi airspace when only one had been approved.
The remotely piloted drone - with "God is Great" written in Arabic along the fuselage and on each wing, with a red permanent marker - has a wingspan of nearly 25 feet (a little more than half the wingspan of the US Predator drone).
But that is almost twice the 14 feet that Iraq originally stated when it reported the drone to UN weapons inspectors on Jan. 15. Iraqi officials Wednesday blamed a "typing error" for the discrepancy, but said they, on their own volition, sent a letter to the UN on Feb. 18 as soon as they found the error.
UN inspectors note, however, that they first saw the drone at this site on Feb. 10, and measured its wingspan at the al Mutasim testing airfield on Feb. 17 - just one day before Iraq sent its letter. UN teams have visited the site five times, and filmed the drone.
"Very little of [the vehicle's] physical characteristics correspond with what was declared," says Hiro Ueki, spokesman for UN weapons inspectors in Baghdad. "The engines are different, so is the makeup of the body. The payload is different.... The whole issue of drones remains under investigation."
Key questions for the UN, Mr. Ueki says, are: "Can it fly beyond 150 kilometers [93 miles]? [Or] whether it can be equipped as is, or modified, to carry biological or chemical weapons. That is what we don't know."
There appeared to be little evidence Wednesday that this drone - which was reportedly dismantled shortly after its public appearance - had a range that approached UN limits. It had a bracket on the bottom that might conceivably carry a small payload, and a one-foot-square space near the nose meant for surveillance or guidance electronics.
Iraqi officials say the drone could not be used to disseminate chemical or biological warfare agents: "It has no [WMD] capability whatsoever," says General Hussein.
US officials say that UN weapons chief Hans Blix buried information about the drone - and Iraqi discrepancies - in a 173-page list of unresolved weapons that he presented to the Security Council March 6.
That report noted that such unmanned vehicles are of "particular interest" to UN inspectors "because of their potential to deliver a weapon to a remote target. Even though some ... are small and can carry a few tens of kilograms as payload, this could be significant if that payload is a BW [biological weapon] agent such as anthrax."
But UN sources say that while the use of this drone is not clear, its unlikely to qualify as a "smoking gun." The drone looks like a crude model of the US pilotless vehicles. Bicycle brake cables control the gas flow to the engines; the fuselage is formed from an old aircraft wingtip fuel tank.
A handful of gleaming, smaller drones were on display last November at the Baghdad International Trade Fair. But they could have been mock-ups.
A blue drone at the fair had a single propeller and an Iraqi flag painted on the tail. A bright pink one had a small glass aperture in the nose, with a low-resolution camera inserted.
Iraq describes the drone it displayed Wednesday, which it calls the "Jerusalem 10," or Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV) 30A, as a one-of-a-kind prototype that can only operate within line of sight of a radio controller. It has flown two miles in tests, Iraqi officials say, and was designed for "reconnaissance, jamming, and aerial photography."
"If there was sufficient data to prove that they can carry chemical or biological weapons, and can fly beyond the range, then clearly [Blix] would have presented this as a major finding," says Ueki, the weapons spokesman.
-------- japan
Japan Deploys Ship Amid Missile Reports
By KENJI HALL
Associated Press Writer
Mar 13, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JAPAN_NKOREA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan has sent a destroyer to the Sea of Japan, the Defense Agency said Thursday, amid media reports that North Korea may soon test an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Meanwhile, South Korea's top diplomat urged North Korea on Thursday to accept a U.S. proposal to defuse a nuclear dispute through multilateral talks.
South Korea Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan criticized the North's objections to such international negotiations as "illogical." The day before, he urged the United States to be more flexible.
In Tokyo, Defense Agency spokesman Yoshiyuki Ueno said the Aegis-equipped destroyer - which includes top-of-the-line surveillance systems - was deployed to the Sea of Japan between Japan and North Korea.
Ueno refused to say when the destroyer was deployed, and described its mission as part of regular patrol activities.
But the dispatch came as two major Japanese newspapers reported North Korea appears to be making final preparations to test-launch its Rodong ballistic missile, possibly around the sea.
The Yomiuri, Japan's largest newspaper, said U.S. military officials in Japan notified their Japanese counterparts of the possibility last week after North Korean army vehicles were spotted gathering near several launching sites in the northeast and other parts of the isolated communist country.
The Rodong, first tested in 1993, has an estimated range of up to 940 miles - meaning it could reach most anywhere in Japan. In 1998, North Korea launched a long-range Taepodong ballistic missile over Japan, demonstrating its capability to reach virtually any Japanese city with warheads.
Regional tensions have been especially high recently.
On Monday, North Korea test-fired a short-range missile. It also conducted a test launch on the eve of the inauguration of South Korea's new president on Feb. 24.
Analysts have said the widely anticipated upcoming launch from a base on North Korea's east coast fits a recent pattern of unusual military maneuvers that seem designed to pressure Washington into dialogue.
In the past weeks, the communist North has rejected repeated U.S. offers to discuss the nuclear dispute in a multilateral setting including Russia, China and other countries, and insisted on direct talks with Washington.
The United States has rejected the North Korean demand as a ploy to extract more economic concessions.
The South's foreign minister, Yoon, told South Korea's MBC radio, "North Korea must come out with a more open stance."
Yoon said the eventual solution of the nuclear crisis would involve economic aid for the impoverished North from nations besides the United States.
"It's illogical to exclude the potential aid providers from the talks," Yoon said.
This week's missile test followed a March 4 confrontation between four armed North Korean fighter jets and a U.S. RC-135S Cobra Ball. No shots were fired in the rare encounter in international airspace over the Sea of Japan, about 150 miles off North Korea's coast.
The plane flew from a base in southern Japan.
In Washington, a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity said Wednesday the U.S. Air Force was readying aircraft to resume reconnaissance flights off the North Korean coast.
Japan ruled Korea as a colony from 1910 until its surrender in 1945 ended World War II. The two countries have no diplomatic relations, and North Korea frequently has said the presence of about 50,000 U.S. troops in Japan threatens its national security.
-------- korea
U.S.: Nuclear NK 'within months'
Thursday, March 13, 2003
CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/13/nkorea.nukes/index.html
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. has announced spy flights near North Korea will resume amid warnings Pyongyang's nuclear program is much more advanced than previously thought.
Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said North Korea could have enough weapons grade material within "months, not years" to produce nuclear weapons.
Though some members of the Bush administration -- as well as the CIA -- believe North Korea may already possess one or two nuclear weapons, experts had thought Pyongyang's nuclear program was still years away from creating a nuclear arsenal.
"The enriched uranium issue, which some have assumed is somewhere off in the fog of the distant future, is not," Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday.
"It is only probably a matter of months, not years, behind the plutonium [program]."
The U.S. says North Korea has restarted its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, which was mothballed after a 1994 deal with the Clinton administration.
Spent nuclear fuel from Yongbyon could be converted into weapons-grade plutonium before the year-end, U.S. officials estimate.
North Korea's nuclear program is at the core of a five-month standoff with Washington, that began when the U.S. said Pyongyang admitted to secretly pursuing nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, as the crisis drags on, the Pentagon says spy flights in international airspace near North Korea will resume.
Reconnaissance flights were suspended after March 2 when four North Korean MiG fighter jets intercepted a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft operating 150 miles off the Korean Peninsula over the Sea of Japan.
The MiGs apparently gestured for the pilot to land in North Korea, Pentagon officials said.
The Pentagon did not say when the flights would resume, or if they already had, but did rule out armed fighter escorts. (Spy flights) Destroyer dispatched
In other developments, Japan has deployed a high-tech Aegis destroyer to the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.
While Japan's Defense Agency says the ship's deployment was for regular patrols, the dispatch comes as Japan's media reports North Korea is preparing to test launch its Rodong ballistic missile. (Ship deployment)
North Korea test fired a short-range missile on Monday, its second test in as many weeks and the first series of launches since it shocked the world in 1998 by sending a long range Taepodong over Japan's main island. North Korea is sticking to its demand for direct face-to-face talks with the United States. North Korea is sticking to its demand for direct face-to-face talks with the United States.
Japan has said it may launch preemptive military action against North Korea if there was evidence Pyongyang was preparing a missile strike.
Separately, the United States is sending up to six F-117A stealth warplanes to South Korea for joint military exercises.
The deployment is the first in a decade but is not connected to current tensions on the Korean Peninsula, U.S. officials say. (Stealth jets)
The United States has also bolstered its aerial prowess in the region by sending 24 bombers -- 12 B-1s and 12 B-52s -- to its base in Guam.
North Korea says the bomber deployment and an increase of spy flights were preparations for pre-emptive strikes.
Pyongyang continues to call for direct dialogue with Washington to resolve the crisis, but the U.S. insists a resolution must be found within a multilateral framework.
----
N. Korea Uranium Bomb Advance, Missile Test Feared
Reuters
Thursday, March 13, 2003
By Paul Eckert and Carol Giacomo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18751-2003Mar13?language=printer
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials said spy flights will resume near North Korea and the communist state is months away from making nuclear bombs, while a Japanese report said on Thursday the North may soon launch a ballistic missile.
With the United States preoccupied with a possible war with Iraq, Pyongyang has used belligerent rhetoric and provocative moves to press for direct talks with Washington to defuse a crisis over two suspected North Korean nuclear arms programs.
"We seek peace, but we will not beg for peace like a slave in the face of demands to disarm," North Korean state radio said.
U.S officials said on Wednesday reconnaissance flights in international airspace off North Korea would resume after a delay caused by the interception of one of the unarmed aircraft.
The officials did not say whether the RC-135 spy plane flights had actually resumed but said there were plans to do so. Four North Korean MiG fighter jets buzzed one of the big planes on March 2 about 150 miles off North Korea's east coast.
The United States lodged an official protest over the near-miss, which the New York Times reported was an attempt by North Korea to force down the RC-135 and capture its crew.
The move comes as financial market-moving tensions have mounted on the Korean peninsula since U.S. officials said last October that North Korea had admitted to enriching uranium.
Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, the American point man on North Korea, said on Wednesday Pyongyang could produce highly enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons in months -- not years as experts had previously estimated.
"MONTHS, NOT YEARS"
That means the reclusive state could get nuclear weapons capability in the short term from both its uranium and plutonium programs, Kelly told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"The enriched uranium issue, which some have assumed is somewhere off in the fog of the distant future, is not," he said.
"It is only probably a matter of months, not years, behind the plutonium" program, which officials judge could produce bomb-grade plutonium six months after the North restarts a reprocessing plant it is now preparing to revive.
"It is very urgent to find a solution to the North Korean nuclear issue," South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said in a speech to naval academy cadets. "Another war would reduce our prosperity to ashes in a moment."
In a separate reminder of Pyongyang's potential threat to its neighbors, a Japanese newspaper reported on Thursday North Korea may be poised to launch a Rodong medium-range ballistic missile capable of reaching nearly all parts of Japan.
The Yomiuri Shimbun daily, quoting government sources, said army vehicles had gathered around several launch sites but it had not been determined if North Korea had begun to fuel the missiles. The paper's sources said it could be weeks before a launch, depending on how far preparations have gone.
"We don't have any specific information to conclude that North Korea is making preparations to launch a ballistic missile," Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said. It would be Pyongyang's first ballistic missile launch since 1998.
MORE PROVOCATIONS EXPECTED
North Korea has fired two short-range non-ballistic missiles since late February, apparently as part of training exercises.
Military analysts say North Korea has about 100 Rodong missiles, which have a range of about 1,300 km (800 miles). It shot off a Rodong in May 1993 that splashed down in the Sea of Japan, and shocked the world in 1998 by firing a longer-range Taepodong missile that flew over Japan.
Kelly said the United States sought multilateral talks involving South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and other countries but noted all of them would just as soon have Washington "take care of it." North Korea wants bilateral talks.
North Korea aims to "spark an incident with the Americans," said Brad Glosserman, director of research at Pacific Forum CSIS, a Hawaii-based think tank. "They see a wedge between Seoul and Washington and they want to exploit it."
The North has made preparations to begin reprocessing nuclear fuel at Yongbyon north of Pyongyang. To start reprocessing would set it on the road to full nuclear weapons production.
The U.S. Air Force in South Korea said it expected the arrival shortly of six F-117A "Stealth" warplanes to take part in annual war games, the first deployment of the radar-avoiding jets to South Korea in a decade.
U.S. B-52 and B-1 bombers landed on the Pacific island of Guam last week as a deterrent to Pyongyang in the event of a U.S.-led war against Iraq. North Korea said the deployment was preparation for a pre-emptive attack. (Reporting by Masayuki Kitano in Tokyo and Charles Aldinger in Washington)
----
U.S. will resume reconnaissance missions
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030313-31842559.htm
The Air Force prepared yesterday to resume reconnaissance flights off the coast of North Korea, 10 days after Korean fighter jets intercepted an Air Force plane equipped to monitor missile tests, a senior U.S. official said.
It was not immediately clear whether the Air Force planned to use fighter jets to escort the reconnaissance flights, but officials said earlier this week that escorts were highly unlikely. The United States always has asserted its right to conduct aerial surveillance in international airspace without armed escort, and rarely has encountered hostile interference.
On March 2, four armed North Korean fighter jets intercepted an RC-135S Cobra Ball over the East Sea/Sea of Japan about 150 miles off North Korea's coast. U.S. officials said one of the fighters used its radar in a manner that indicated it might be preparing to attack, although no shots were fired.
The U.S. plane broke off its mission and returned unharmed to its base at Kadena, Japan. Since then, there have been no U.S. reconnaissance flights off North Korea's coast, officials said.
The official who, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Air Force was preparing to resume reconnaissance flights provided no other details.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said he could not comment on specific plans.
"As we have stated, we continue to fly legal reconnaissance missions in a variety of places around the world," Cmdr. Davis said.
Cmdr. Davis said the North Korean pilots in the March 2 intercept appeared to be trying to draw the RC-135S to North Korea.
"Clearly the actions of the North Korean air crews, including hand gestures by one of the pilots, suggests that this was a coordinated attempt to force our aircraft to divert to North Korea," he said.
The Pentagon said the March 2 intercept was the first such incident with North Korea since April 1969, when a North Korean plane shot down a U.S. Navy EC-121 surveillance plane, killing all 31 Americans aboard.
The United States uses a variety of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance methods to monitor North Korea's military activity, including developments in its nuclear weapons program.
Tensions between the United States and communist North Korea are mounting on a variety of fronts.
In recent months, North Korea has expelled U.N. monitors, withdrawn from a key nuclear arms-control treaty and restarted a nuclear reactor that had been mothballed for years under U.N. seal.
The Pentagon recently dispatched a dozen B-52 bombers and a dozen B-1 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam, as a precautionary move designed to discourage North Korea from military action.
The Navy has announced plans to send the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson to South Korea to participate in a major U.S.-South Korean military exercise this month called Foal Eagle. The Air Force is sending six F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters from their home base in New Mexico to South Korea to participate in the exercise.
North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said yesterday that the Bush administration was "watching for a chance to mount a pre-emptive attack on the nuclear facilities."
----
'With Circumspection,' U.S. Planes to Resume Spy Flights Off N. Korea
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 13, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17827-2003Mar12?language=printer
SEOUL, March 12 -- U.S. spy planes will soon resume surveillance flights off North Korea, following an aerial interception by MiGs from the Communist state 10 days ago, according to U.S. military sources. But policymakers have rejected the idea of sending an armed fighter escort, believing that would increase the risk of hostilities with North Korea.
Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, would not discuss details of the flights, but said: "We will conduct legal and lawful missions in international airspace around the world. They are innocent and non-threatening, and they will continue."
The modified Boeing 707 spy planes, which take off from Okinawa, Japan, to monitor missile launches and North Korean communications, will operate alone, according to several military and civilian sources in Washington and Seoul. "We do not want to do anything provocative. We do not want an international incident," said a top military officer. "We are not going to stop doing it. But we will do it with circumspection."
Today, a senior official in Washington said that North Korea's uranium enrichment program, which could allow the country to build nuclear weapons, is further along than previously believed. James A. Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that production of highly enriched uranium is "probably a matter of months, not years," behind North Korea's efforts to produce plutonium from spent nuclear fuel rods, which it plans to do within six months.
"The enriched uranium issue, some have assumed, is somewhere off in the fog of the distant future," he said. "It is not."
North Korea stunned the Bush administration in October by revealing that it had been secretly pursuing a program to produce highly enriched uranium.
In recent months, North Korea has taken a series of steps escalating the dispute with the United States -- restarting a small reactor, test-firing short-range missiles and threatening to test-fire a ballistic missile.
There have been no flights of U.S. reconnaissance planes since March 2, when four North Korean jet fighters flew near an Air Force RC-135S carrying a crew of 17. One of the North Korean jets came within 50 feet of the plane, according to the Pentagon. U.S. officials have since been engaged in what sources described as an intense debate over how to respond to the incident.
Although some officials said no surveillance flights had been scheduled in the 10 days since March 2, other sources said U.S. officials had wanted more frequent flights to monitor any North Korean moves to test-launch missiles but had held back during the deliberations.
The decision not to send escort fighters is another sign that the Bush administration is eager to avoid confrontation with North Korea while it concentrates on Iraq. Another U.S. source confirmed that the decision on the spy planes had been a "restrained" response to the March 2 intercept, which Davis, the Pentagon spokesman, called a "reckless and provocative action" fraught with danger.
Before the incident, North Korea had strenuously protested U.S. reconnaissance flights, alleging that the planes intruded on North Korean airspace. The Pentagon has said the intercepted aircraft was 150 miles from North Korean shores, well within international airspace.
U.S. military aircraft have routinely monitored North Korea for decades, but flights with special surveillance equipment were stepped up as tensions grew over North Korea's nuclear program.
Immediately after the incident, U.S. officials strongly asserted that American forces would exercise "the right" to conduct surveillance. In fact, however, the flights were grounded while the Pentagon and Bush administration officials wrangled over what to do.
Some argued for a strong show of force by sending the spy planes aloft accompanied by fighter jets, according to sources. The advanced U.S. fighter planes "could shoot the MiGs down, no question," said one analyst familiar with the debate.
But others argued that such an incident could start a war. A military official noted the United States has long been "very, very hesitant" to arm and escort reconnaissance flights, on the theory that armaments undermine the argument that the flights are innocent and non-provocative.
Arguments for a more cautious approach eventually prevailed.
"It is pretty restrained for a red-meat Defense Department," said one analyst in Seoul.
The Pentagon has taken care that the spy plane pilots will not be surprised, as they were on March 2,
if MiGs do appear. Advanced detection systems will be trained on the area to detect the approach of any North Korean aircraft.
"You can do that with Aegis, you can do that with AWACS, you can do that with a U-2," said a military source, describing three of the long-range reconnaissance systems available to the military.
Monitoring could be done by ships accompanying the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier due to arrive in South Korean waters this week to replace the Kitty Hawk, which has gone to the Persian Gulf. The carrier's battle group includes destroyers with Aegis radar.
If North Korean planes were found to be approaching, it is unclear what the U.S. reaction would be. Military sources said the least confrontational course would be to order the spy plane to leave the area. "You could just fly east," away from North Korea, said the senior military officer. Another source, who is not in the military, said the Pentagon was considering keeping fighter planes in the air but at a "remote" distance, from which they could be called in if necessary.
"One thing is sure: You wouldn't be giving a pilot the authority to fire away at will," this source said.
Pentagon officials have said they believe a MiG pilot in the March 2 incident motioned for the reconnaissance aircraft to follow him and land in North Korea. It was "a deliberate attempt to force our aircraft down," Davis said. The RC-135S pilot ignored the gesture.
North Korea captured an American spy ship, the USS Pueblo, in 1968 in what apparently were North Korean waters. One crewman was killed and 82 others were held for 11 months. In 1969 North Korea shot down a U.S. EC-121 reconnaissance aircraft, killing 31 Americans in what has been called the worst single loss of U.S. servicemen in the Cold War.
Staff writers Vernon Loeb and Bradley Graham in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- space
Mars Odyssey May Pose Radiation Risk
March 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Mars-Odyssey.html
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has confirmed suspicions that the radiation on Mars is so intense that it could endanger astronauts sent to explore the Red Planet, scientists said Thursday.
The high radiation levels measured by the unmanned probe also suggest that any extraterrestrial life that might call Mars home would have little chance of surviving unless it were shielded beneath the planet's dusty, cold surface, said Cary Zeitlin of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute in Houston.
``It would have to be pretty robust against all kinds of environmental horrors,'' said Zeitlin, one of the scientists working on the project.
The conclusions stemmed from new data released by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory from the first year of scientific results from the $300 million mission.
Scientists also presented information on the minerals and elements that make up the planet's surface, including measurements that show its northern hemisphere is richer in water than its southern half. Near the planet's north pole, frozen water makes up as much as 75 percent, by volume, of the top 3 feet or so of soil, said William Boynton, one of the mission's scientists.
``We're talking ice with a little bit of dirt mixed in it and not the other way around,'' Boynton said.
NASA talks vaguely of future manned missions to Mars, where astronauts could use that ice for drinking water, fuel and oxygen to breathe. The new radiation findings suggest such a mission would be risky.
Even so, possible accidents involving the spacecraft that would take astronauts to and from Mars pose a far greater risk, Robert Zubrin, president of the pro-exploration Mars Society, said in a telephone interview.
``The idea (radiation) represents this incredible, forbidding obstacle to Mars exploration just isn't so,'' Zubrin said.
Mars is continuously bombarded by radiation from the galaxy at large, as well as by periodic bursts from the sun. The radiation would expose astronauts in orbit to an effective dose 2.5 times greater than that received by humans in low Earth orbit aboard the international space station, Zeitlin said.
A three-year mission would expose astronauts to the radiation limit considered safe by NASA over the career of an astronaut, he added.
The radiation environment on the surface of Mars is unknown but probably poses a similar risk, even though the planet's tenuous atmosphere would provide some shielding.
``It still remains to be seen what the hazards are on the surface,'' Odyssey project scientist Jeffrey Plaut said.
The main worry for astronauts on Mars would be the periodic bursts of charged particles that stream outward from the sun. On Earth, a global magnetic field and a substantial atmosphere protect against that radiation.
Observations made last year show bombardments of solar radiation can last more than a week. Presumably, astronauts on Mars would have to remain confined in some sort of shelter during such blasts of radiation, Zeitlin said.
``They're manageable, as long as the spacecraft has these refuge areas,'' Zeitlin said.
Mars Odyssey's science mission is expected to last 1 1/2 more years but probably will be extended. The spacecraft has been thrifty enough with its fuel to enable it to stay in orbit 20 more years, Plaut said.
On the Net:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/
http://marie.jsc.nasa.gov/
-------- terrorism
THE WEAPONS
Report Says Plan to Safeguard Nuclear Material Is Lacking
March 13, 2003
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/international/asia/13NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, March 12 - The United States lacks a comprehensive plan for protecting the world's supply of nuclear material from terrorists, according to a report issued today by Harvard University researchers.
The report, titled "Controlling Nuclear Warheads and Materials," is part of a three-year research project commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington foundation, to create a report card on nuclear security around the world.
The nations of the former Soviet Union present the biggest risk, the report said, given their vast supply of nuclear material and deteriorating financial state. There were reports today that the police in Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic, had seized nine pounds of radioactive mercury and arrested two people they said were trying to sell it.
Twelve years ago, the United States began a program sponsored by Sam Nunn, the former Georgia senator, and Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican, to protect the material and knowledge needed for nuclear weapons. Mr. Nunn and Mr. Lugar warned today that the pace and approach were inadequate, and they called for a high-level federal official to coordinate efforts full-time.
"Until you have someone who has day-to-day authority over this, things will fall through the cracks," Mr. Nunn said.
The report said that about 37 percent of the potentially vulnerable nuclear material in the former Soviet Union is being protected by initial security upgrades, and only 17 percent of the supply is protected under long-term security plans.
Some 80 percent of senior nuclear weapons scientists from the former Soviet Union receive salaries to lessen the economic incentive of cooperating with terrorists.
The report said the amount of nuclear material needed to create a bomb was insignificant compared with what is available worldwide. The report says that with enough highly enriched uranium, terrorist groups could create a crude nuclear bomb. With a more sophisticated design, the report says, terrorists would need only a baseball-size amount of plutonium or a softball-size amount of highly enriched uranium. The amounts are modest enough to be smuggled out of facilities by employees.
The report's authors, from the Project on Managing the Atom, at Harvard, gave a loose estimate of $50 billion needed to protect the supply of nuclear weapons worldwide. Last June, the leaders of the world's largest economies pledged $20 billion over 10 years toward the effort.
The report compiled a list of military security breaches from the Russian media in the last five years, many of which have not been reported in the American press. The report highlights efforts by Chechen terrorist groups, many of which have ties to Al Qaeda, to obtain nuclear material. It says that four incidents of Chechen reconnaissance of nuclear warhead storage and transport facilities in 2001 and 2002 have been confirmed.
Also, in April 2000, the Georgian police arrested four men who had about two pounds of highly enriched uranium.
The chief of the Russian customs service reported the detection of more than 500 incidents of illegal transportation of nuclear and radioactive materials across the Russian state border, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has recorded 18 confirmed incidents involving the seizure of stolen plutonium or highly enriched uranium.
Mr. Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said tension between the United States and Russia over Iraq was not helping the efforts.
"Russia has got to be a partner," he said. But he also had a list collected over the last 11 years showing international inspectors had been rebuffed by Russian officials.
"The reason Iraq nuclear inspectors won't ever find anything is that the Russians perfected long ago how to obscure all of this," he said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Ex-Official Defends Los Alamos Laboratory
Misdeeds Limited To Few, Panel Told
By Robert Gehrke
Associated Press
Thursday, March 13, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18111-2003Mar12?language=printer
The Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab harbors no culture of criminal conduct, as two former investigators have alleged, the former principal deputy director told a congressional panel yesterday.
Joseph Salgado said he fired the investigators -- Glenn Walp and Steven Doran -- because they had provided "incomplete, inaccurate information" to managers at the national laboratory in New Mexico.
The two pressed investigations into suspected mismanagement and misuse of money, prompting the House Energy and Commerce Committee to hold hearings while other federal inquiries continue.
Salgado acknowledged a lab culture in which money was, at times, treated as "Monopoly money." But, he said, misdeeds were limited to a few employees within the lab.
"It is not a criminal culture, but it is a culture that has to be addressed," Salgado said.
Seventeen Los Alamos employees have been fired or removed from management positions by the University of California, which has managed the lab since its inception 60 years ago. Salgado was fired Jan. 31 by the university.
The lab's legal counsel, Frank Dickson, and former security chief Stanley Busboom also testified yesterday, denying wrongdoing and disputing assertions by Walp and Doran that senior management knew of widespread corruption.
Walp said Tuesday that Busboom and his deputy, Gene Tucker, were among lab officials who hindered investigations into the misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Busboom and Tucker have agreed to leave the lab. The two refused reassignment to lower-paying lab jobs but agreed to take a severance package, said Bruce Darling, senior vice president at the university.
Darling said the settlement with Busboom and Tucker was worth about a year's salary for each. Busboom had been making $190,000 a year and Tucker $165,000 annually, he said.
The university rehired Doran to lead investigations and hired Walp as a consultant on its Los Alamos inquiry. But Doran's attorney said yesterday the deal with the university for the permanent position had fallen through.
Darling said Tuesday the lab is investigating possible disciplinary action against an employee who allegedly tried to buy a $30,000 Ford Mustang on her lab charge card.
The case of an employee alleged to have filed a bogus $1,800 travel voucher has been sent to prosecutors for review. The employee repaid the money and resigned.
Two others bought hunting and fishing equipment, tools, cameras, coolers, televisions and other items. None of the employees has been criminally charged.
Because of the financial mismanagement and problems in the late 1990s involving suspected espionage and misplaced computer hard drives, the Energy Department is considering whether to allow bidding on the nearly $2 billion contract to run the lab, held without competition by the university since 1943.
-------- south carolina
Public Meetings Open on Proposed MOX Nuclear Facility
March 13, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2003/2003-03-13-09.asp#anchor3
WASHINGTON, DC, The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold public meetings March 25 to 27 in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina to discuss environmental impacts of the proposed Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The meetings follow publication of the commission's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), which includes the staff's preliminary recommendation under the National Environmental Policy Act that, unless safety issues mandate otherwise, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approve a license for construction and operation of the plant, with conditions for enhancing protection of the environment.
Duke Cogema Stone & Webster, a contractor of the Department of Energy, is proposing to build the MOX facility at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina.
If the commission grants a license, Duke Cogema Stone & Webster could build a MOX facility that would convert surplus weapons grade plutonium, supplied by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), into fuel for use in a limited number of commercial nuclear power reactors.
Commercial nuclear power plants in the United States now use only uranium in fresh fuel, the mixed oxide fresh fuel would use a combination of uranium and plutonium. "Converting weapons grade plutonium into MOX fuel helps advance the cause of nonproliferation by converting the material into a form unsuitable for use in weapons of mass destruction," the NRC said.
The DEIS discusses the proposed action as well as alternatives, including the no-action alternative which evaluates the environmental impacts of continuing to store surplus plutonium in various DOE facilities nationwide, in the event NRC decides not to approve the MOX facility.
Alternatives considered, but not analyzed in detail, include alternative locations for the facility within the Savannah River Site, alternative technology and design options, and immobilization of surplus plutonium instead of producing MOX fuel.
Other alternatives are the deliberate manufacture of off-specification MOX fuel, which would be unsuitable for use in reactors and placed directly into spent fuel storage facilities, and the Parallex Project, which involves irradiating the MOX fuel in Canadian CANDU reactors.
After issuing the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the commission discovered that the accident consequences in the statement are overestimated. The NRC will revise the estimated one year public dose of radiation from hypothetical accidents to lower values. NRC has notified stakeholders and plans to discuss this issue at the public meeting and in a Federal Register notice. NRC will also post information regarding the error and changes to the statement on the MOX web site listed below.
But Dr. Edwin Lyman, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington based watchdog organization, warned in a letter to the NRC last August "new information has recently come to light that suggests that the additional risks posed by MOX fuel compared to uranium fuel are even greater than previously assumed."
"During the recent NRC expert elicitation exercise on accident source terms from MOX fuel," wrote Lyman, "some expert panel members were of the opinion that available experimental data indicates that "higher in-vessel releases and faster rates of releases are expected for MOX fuels as compared with LEU [low enriched uranium] fuels."
"This observation, if validated, means that MOX source terms pose greater radiological risks than uranium source terms not only with respect to radionuclide inventories, but also with respect to the magnitude and timing of releases," wrote Lyman.
The public meetings will be held:
- March 25 at the Coastal Georgia Center, 305 Fahm Street, Savannah, Georgia
- March 26 at the North Augusta Community Center, 495 Brookside Avenue, North Augusta, South Carolina
- March 27 at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center, 600 E. Fourth Street in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Each meeting will include an Open House session from 5:30 until 7 pm, during which NRC staff will be available informally to discuss the MOX project and answer questions. The formal public meetings will be held from 7 until 10 pm. Oral presenters must register before the start of the meetings. Individual comments may have to be limited due to high demand and the time available, the NRC warns.
Public comments are welcome by mail if they are postmarked by May 14, a 30 day extension of the deadline originally published in the Federal Register. Comments may be submitted to: Michael Lesar, Chief, Rules and Directives Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, Mail Stop T-6D59, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555. Comments may also be submitted by email to teh@nrc.gov or by fax to 301-415-5398, Attention: Tim Harris.
The DEIS is available for public review through the NRC electronic reading room: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1767/
-------- us nuc waste
Real World Tests Urged for Nuclear Transport Casks
By Lauren Peña
March 13, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2003/2003-03-13-03.asp
LAS VEGAS, Nevada, Citizens urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to test nuclear waste transportation casks in real world situations at a workshop held by the commission in Las Vegas on Wednesday. The meeting was held to obtain public comments on an NRC proposal to test casks for transporting radioactive spent fuel by rail and by truck.
The proposal is described in a test protocols report that outlines full scale, high speed, spent fuel cask impact and fire testing experiments that the commission is considering sponsoring over the next few years. Twenty-five representatives from a variety of organizations, ranging from American Indian tribes to the state of Utah, participated in the cask workshop.
The casks would be used to transport high-level nuclear waste, including waste intended for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The radioactive waste, mostly spent nuclear fuel from power plants and waste from Department of Defense (DoD) activities, is now stored at power plants and DoD sites across the country.
The Yucca Mountain facility has been approved by Congress and by President George W. Bush. If the facility overcomes the hundreds of technical issues yet unresolved, and obtains a license from the NRC, high-level radioactive waste contained in casks would travel by truck or rail across 43 states.
The NRC's Package Performance Study consists of three tests for the casks: rail impact, truck impact and thermal testing. One cask is put through each test to determine how well it can withstand these hazards.
For both the rail and truck impact tests, a full size cask drops from a 250 to 300 foot tower. The cask reaches 75 miles per hour before it impacts an unyielding surface, which the NRC says is equivalent to a 150 mph collision.
After the two impact tests, thermal testing follows. An oil fire surrounds the cask until the cask is no longer visible.
At Wednesday's workshop, Dr. Bonnie Bobb, environmental protection director of the Yomba Shoshone tribe, expressed her concern about the unyielding surface used in the tests. She argued the public wants to know what happens when a cask damages the Earth.
Dr. Andrew Murphy of the NRC explained that the unyielding surface is composed of concrete and steel. He said the surface is 10 times the weight of the cask and therefore produces the most significant damage.
Citizens urged the NRC to test the casks until failure rather than predicting the cask's limits after tests that do not demonstrate failure.
John Hadder, Northern Nevada coordinator of Citizen Alert, an anti-nuclear advocacy group, emphasized that the NRC has failed to inform the public about what the casks are not capable of handling.
"Cask testing needs to reflect what can happen in the real world. Test until failure," Hadder said. "The public wants to know what it won't do."
Kalynda Tilges, executive director of the Shundahai Network, an organization dedicated to preventing nuclear waste in Nevada, agreed. "The public needs the reality of different types of surfaces," she said. "What happens when a cask hits the freeway and it's dragged away? I think that would be very telling."
Citizens also expressed concern about which casks would be tested. Tilges said, "I don't want anything licensed until random selection has been used to test the casks and they are tested until failure." Workshop participants also suggested testing casks that are in use today.
Dr. Murphy responded that the NRC's tests would be able to predict when cask failure would occur. The agency would also do an analysis of the casks so they would not have to check each one, he said.
Robert Halstead, representing the Agency for Nuclear Projects for the state of Nevada, presented a counterproposal. He said the NRC concluded in its report on test protocols report that the risks of transportation were down, but claims the agency has misused the report. "These risk estimates are so low they undermine my skills as an analyst," he said. "This report undermines ... any basis of public confidence."
Halstead also said the test protocols report was prepared in secrecy and was unavailable for formal review. "The misuse of this report has injured the state of Nevada," he said.
According to Nevada's counterproposal, the NRC does not require full scale testing of the actual casks but relies on scale model testing and computer analysis to assess cask performance under hypothetical conditions.
Some workshop participants questioned the NRC for holding the meeting on a workday during working hours, suggesting that the agency deliberately kept some people from participating by scheduling the workshop when they were at their jobs.
"This meeting runs to early evening for people who want to provide comments, and there is another meeting in Pahrump," said E. William Brach of the NRC in the agency's defense. "Plus, this is a roundtable discussion with people representing various organizations."
Brach also emphasized that no decisions have been made yet and the public's opinions will influence the NRC's future actions.
"We want the public to gain a broader understanding of what we're doing," he said. "Based on the comments we get, we will make determinations on what changes to make."
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission scheduled four public meetings to obtain comments on the proposal to test casks. One took place in Bethesda, Maryland on March 6, and the Las Vegas workshop was held on March 12. Tonight a meeting is taking place in Pahrump, Nevada; and on March 19 the public will be able to offer comments in Rosemont, Illinois.
A nationwide map of nuclear waste transportation routes posted by the state of Nevada is at: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/states/us.htm
The test protocols report (NUREG-1768) is available for comment at the NRC's website by clicking here.
Additionally, copies of the report and other related documents can be found at: http://ttd.sandia.gov/nrc/modal.htm or obtained by contacting Amy Snyder by email at ams3@nrc.gov or by telephone at 301-415-8580.
Written comments on the report will be accepted until May 30, and can be submitted by email or addressed to Ms. Snyder at the Spent Fuel Project Office, Mail Stop O13-D13, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-001.
-------- us politics
Blair hurt by Rumsfeld's friendly fire
UK Times
Foreign Editor's Briefing:
March 13, 2003
By Bronwen Maddox
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-608766,00.html
HOW badly has Donald Rumsfeld damaged Tony Blair? It is the first case of friendly fire in the war, and the bombing hasn't even started.
Whether the US Secretary of Defence meant to dismiss Britain's role quite as humiliatingly as he did, is - just perhaps - in doubt, after the Pentagon's attempt at backpedalling. In calling opposition in Britain a "work-around", Rumsfeld has brutally enriched the vocabulary of diplomacy. It has a direct translation in few languages, but was unambiguous in meaning and tone.
At home, he has hurt Blair severely. If anything could make the Prime Minister's relations with his party more difficult, it was a further demonstration of the Bush Administration's arrogance and impatience, even with its closest ally, and of Britain's redundancy in battle. No matter if British troops lack boots and toilet paper, the US doesn't need them anyway - that was the tone of Rumsfeld's spontaneous remarks.
Yesterday, Labour Party opponents of Blair were rushing delightedly to drive him towards the escape route that they believed had suddenly been blown in the side of his fortress. Perception that he now has an exit, a chance to say to Washington, "Well, you didn't really need me, so I'll bow out", can only increase opposition in Britain.
How about damage to relations between the US and Britain? It is pretty bad, despite Washington's best efforts to portray Rumsfeld's remarks as a sensitive appreciation of the pressures on Blair.
Although American diplomats have spent the week making clear that it is only to save Blair that they have been working so hard to get support in the UN, Rumsfeld showed how quickly that patience may snap.
After all, real differences between the US and UK are very apparent, scarcely below the surface. On Monday the Foreign Secretary, speaking to the House of Commons, said emphatically that Britain considered a serious attempt to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire an indispensable part of policy in the region. That is a line rejected by the Bush Administration.
But the most immediate question raised by the Rumsfeld brusqueness is the effect on the the vote in the United Nations. Here, the fallout is less obvious: the American-British campaign to gather support for a new resolution is struggling so badly that further damage is hard to discern.
On the face of it, Britain's desperate efforts to secure the nine affirmative votes on the Security Council for a new resolution cannot be helped by Rumsfeld's apparent view that Britain isn't needed.
Yes, Rumsfeld's arrogance will have annoyed even further those Council members who bridle at American unilateralism. That could well include Mexico and Chile; their opposition could clinch the death of a new resolution.
But in the end, the voting will be determined by the relations that Council members want to have with the US, not with Britain. It is Washington that has been in the powerful position to offer rewards for a "yes" vote, or to withdraw its favour for a "no". That still holds true. Those countries particularly interested in the most tangible representations of that goodwill - say Angola and Guinea - may be just as responsive now as they were before Rumsfeld's remarks.
The clear statement that the US is prepared to go it alone, without Britain and without the UN, if necessary, will no doubt infuriate Security Council members. But it will also remind them that the choice is a stark one: are you with us or against us? That abrasive challenge has inspired much of the Bush Administration's diplomacy. All Rumsfeld has done is remind Council members of that blunt fact.
----
Senator Patrick Leahy - Concerning Iraq
Friday, 14 March 2003
Speech: U.S. Senator
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0303/S00205.htm
U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY
CONTACT: Office of Senator Leahy, 202-224-4242 VERMONT
Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy On The Senate Floor Concerning Iraq The Countdown To War March 13, 2003
Mr. President, last Thursday at his press conference, the President gave his reasons to justify the use of military force to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
The President said again that he has not made up his mind to go to war, but his own advisers are saying that even if Iraq fully complies with UN Security Council Resolution 1441, Saddam Hussein must be removed from power.
The President said his goal is protecting the American people from terrorism, a goal we all share, but he offered no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with the September 11 attacks or any details of Iraq's links to al Queda.
He offered no new information about the potential costs of a war, either in American and Iraqi lives, or in dollars. Both Republicans and Democrats have urged the President to be more forthcoming with the American people, yet he is apparently ready to send hundreds of thousands of the sons and daughters of American taxpayers into battle without saying anything about the costs and risks.
The President repeatedly spoke of the danger of "doing nothing," as if doing nothing is what those who urge patience and caution - with war only as a last resort - are recommending. In fact, virtually no one is saying that we should do nothing about Saddam Hussein.
Even most of the millions of people who have joined protests and demonstrations against the use of force without UN Security Council authorization, are not saying that the world should ignore the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Yet that is the President's answer to those who oppose a preemptive U.S. invasion, and who, contrary to wanting to do nothing, want to give the United Nations more time to try to solve this crisis without war.
The President also failed to address a key concern that divides Americans, that divides us from many of our closest European allies, that divides our allies from each other, and that divides the UN Security Council. That issue is not whether or not Saddam Hussein is a deceptive, despicable, dangerous despot who should be disarmed. There is little if any disagreement about that.
Nor is it whether or not force should ever be used. Most people accept that the United States, like any country, has a right of self defense if faced with an imminent threat. And if the UN inspectors fail to disarm Iraq, force may become the only option.
Most people also agree that a U.S.-led invasion would quickly overwhelm and defeat Iraq's ill-equipped, demoralized army.
Rather, the President said almost nothing about the concern that by attacking Iraq to enforce Security Council Resolution 1441 without the support of key allies on the UN Security Council, we risk seriously weakening the Security Council's future effectiveness and our own ability to rally international support - not only to prevent this war and future wars, but to deal with other global threats like terrorism.
And this concern is exacerbated by the increasing resentment of the Administration's domineering and simplistic "you are either with us or against us" approach, which has already damaged long-standing relationships, both with our neighbors in this hemisphere and our friends across the Atlantic.
The President says that if the Security Council does not support the use of force today, it risks becoming irrelevant. But the President has it backward. The Security Council will not become irrelevant because it refuses to agree with the President of the United States. Rather, the Security Council's effectiveness is threatened if the United States, the world's only superpower, ignores the will of key allies on the Security Council regarding the enforcement of a Security Council resolution.
The President was also asked by several members of the press why there is such fervent opposition to his policy among Americans and some of our oldest allies, when only a year and a half ago, after the September 11 attacks, the world was united in sympathy with the United States. He had no answer.
The President should heed the words of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, who was an architect of the 1991 Gulf War. General Scowcroft has strongly criticized the Administration's ad hoc approach based on "coalitions of the willing," which he calls "fundamentally, fatally flawed." He said: "As we've seen in the debate about Iraq, it's already given us an image of arrogance and unilateralism, and we're paying a very high price for that image. If we get to the point where everyone secretly hopes the United States gets a black eye because we're so obnoxious, then we'll be totally hamstrung in the war on terror. We'll be like Gulliver with the Lilliputians."
Mr. President, for two hundred years, people of every nationality have looked up to the United States because of our values, our integrity, our tolerance and respect for others. These are the qualities that have set the United States apart. But today, while most countries share our goal of disarming Saddam Hussein, we are being vilified for our arrogance, for our disdain for international law and our intolerance of opposing views.
A distinguished American career diplomat, John Brady Kiesling, echoed General Scowcroft's concerns about the practical harm done to U.S. interests and influence abroad in a letter he recently wrote to Secretary of State Colin Powell, proffering his resignation as an act of protest about the Administration's policy toward Iraq.
I suspect Mr. Kiesling's eloquent and heart-felt explanation of how he reached the difficult decision to give up his career, expresses the feelings and concerns of some other American diplomats who are representing the United States in our embassies and missions around the world. I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Kiesling's letter to the Secretary be entered in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
Mr. President, while I was disappointed by the President's remarks last week, the Bush Administration and the Pakistani Government should be commended for the capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of al Queda's top leaders who was reportedly the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. Whether others within al Queda will quickly fill Mr. Mohammed's shoes remains to be seen, but the fact that the U.S. government, and other governments, are methodically tracking these people down sends an important message and should give some comfort to the American people.
This is encouraging, and let us hope that soon we can celebrate the capture of Osama bin Laden. Tracking down al Queda should be our highest priority.
But the world is increasingly apprehensive as the United States appears to be marching inexorably towards war with Iraq. Today, there are more than 250,000 American men and women in uniform in the Persian Gulf, preparing for the order to enter Iraq, and we hear that a decision to launch an attack must be made within a matter of days because it is too costly to keep so many troops deployed overseas.
In other words, now that we have spent billions of dollars to ship all those soldiers over there, we need to use them "because we cannot back down now," as I have heard some people say. Mr. President, it would be hard to think of a worse reason to rush to war than that.
We should not back down. Saddam Hussein must be disarmed. Doing nothing, and I agree with the President about this, would mean that the United Nations is unwilling to enforce its own resolutions concerning perhaps the most serious threat the world faces today - the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. That would be unacceptable. The UN Security Council ordered Iraq to fully disclose its weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq has not done so.
And I agree with those who say that the only reason Saddam Hussein is even grudgingly cooperating with the UN inspectors and destroying Iraqi missiles is because of the build up of U.S. troops on Iraq's border. I have commended the President for refocusing the world's attention on Saddam Hussein's failure to disarm. I also recognize that the time may come when the use of force to enforce the UN Security Council resolution is the only option.
But are proposals to give the UN inspectors more time unreasonable, when it could solidify support for the use of force if that becomes the only option?
Despite the President's assertion that Iraq poses an imminent threat to the United States, that assertion begs credulity when the UN inspectors are making some progress and a quarter of a million American soldiers are poised to invade. Absent a credible, imminent threat, a decision to enforce Resolution 1441 should only be made by the Security Council, if it becomes clear that the inspectors cannot do the job, not by the United States or any other government alone.
The President says war is a last resort. If he feels that way, why do he and his advisers want so desperately to short circuit the inspections process? Why is he so anxious to spend billions of dollars to buy the cooperation of friends who do not yet believe war is necessary? Why is he so unconcerned about the predictable, hostile reaction of the Muslim world to the occupation of Iraq, perhaps for years, by a U.S. military "government"? Why is the President so determined to run roughshod over our traditional alliances and partnerships, which have served us well and whose support we need both today and in the future?
I cannot pretend to understand the thinking of those in the Administration who for months or even longer have seemed possessed with a kind of messianic zeal in favor of war. A preemptive war against Iraq without a declaration of war by Congress or the UN Security Council's support, may be easy to win, but it could violate international law and cause lasting damage to our alliances and to our ability to obtain the cooperation of other nations in meeting so many other global challenges.
Just recently, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned that a war with Iraq could bring more threats and more terrorist attacks within the United States. The CIA Director has testified that Saddam Hussein is more likely to use chemical or biological weapons if he is attacked. Yet we are marching ahead as if these warnings do not matter.
I have said before that this war is not inevitable, and I still believe it can be avoided. But I fear that the President, despite opposition among the American people, in the UN, and around the world, is no longer listening to anyone except those within his inner circle who are eager to fight. I hope the Iraqi Government comes to its senses. I hope we do not walk away from the United Nations. I hope we do not decide that just because our troops are there we cannot afford to wait.
I yield the floor....
----
First and last war of the Bush Doctrine?
by Pat Buchanan
March 12, 2003
Creators Syndicate, Inc.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31485
As that latter-day Wilsonian Bill Clinton launched his war on a Serbia that did not attack us, George W. Bush intends to launch a war on an Iraq that has never threatened or attacked the United States.
Clinton bombed Serbia for 78 days for refusing his ultimatum to surrender Kosovo, cradle of that nation. But Bush is invading Iraq to validate a new doctrine he declared to the world a year ago, as his predecessor James Monroe declared the doctrine that bears his name.
Under the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, all European colonization of the Western Hemisphere was to end. But the Bush Doctrine is not confined to a hemisphere. It is universal. Its heart may be found in a single sentence in the 2002 State of the Union: "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
Inherent in the Bush Doctrine is "pre-emption." America claims an inherent right to initiate preventive wars on nations that do not threaten us or attack us, but may threaten or attack us someday in the future.
In June at West Point, Bush declared U.S. Cold War policy to be dead. "Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies. ... If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.
"We must take this battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge." Thus, in 10 days, America launches her first pre-emptive war.
We are at the Rubicon, and Caesarism has led us here. But an even higher cause beckons us. In George W. Bush's mind, we are now at Armageddon, fighting for the Lord. "We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name," the president thundered to the cadets at West Point.
As the Iraqis are defenseless against us, they will be crushed - and the Bush Doctrine validated in the eyes of its evangelists.
Yet, if one looks to northeast Asia, another scene is being played out. The Bush Doctrine is being daily exposed as bluster and bluff. Since last fall, when Kim Jong Il brazenly conceded he was operating a secret program to enrich uranium for atom bombs, U.S. policy has seemed stumbling and incoherent.
North Korea has been acting, the United States reacting. After we cut off fuel, Pyongyang kicked U.N. inspectors out, re-fired its plutonium reactor, restarted a processing plant to extract fuel for atom bombs, sent fighters into the DMZ and fired a missile into the Sea of Japan the day South Korea's new president was sworn in.
Pyongyang then sent MiGs 150 miles offshore to force down a U.S. RC-135 in North Korea. Like the USS Pueblo in 1968, the plane was to be stripped of its secret instruments and codes, and the U.S. crew taken hostage and paraded to humiliate America. Now, North Korea has fired a second missile into the Sea of Japan.
What has been the administration's response to Kim's defiance of a doctrine that was to be the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy? Thus far, it has been conciliation and appeasement. We have politely told the North we are ready for talks, for a renewal of aid, for diplomatic recognition, for a public declaration that we will not attack. Secretary Rumsfeld last week held out the prospect of a total withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula.
No one is declaiming about "good and evil." No one is clamoring for a pre-emptive strike on the Yongbyon reactor - or to decapitate Kim's regime. Instead, reports are circulating here that the United States has recognized the reality that North Korea will soon join America, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India and Pakistan as ninth member of the Nuclear Club. If we do, the Bush Doctrine will be dead in Asia, even as Marines are fighting to validate it in Iraq.
Let it be said: America has an inherent right to strike first to prevent imminent attack. Had we sighted that Japanese task force north of Hawaii, before Pearl Harbor, we would have been within our rights to attack it. But to declare a new U.S. strategic doctrine that mandates pre-emptive wars on any rival powers that seek to acquire weapons we already have was an act of hubris.
One day soon, some nation - Iran, North Korea - will defy the Bush Doctrine and test an atomic weapon. When that day comes, the United States will have to go to war or jettison this "doctrine" and restore the foreign policy most consistent with our history, ideals and national interest: peace through strength, and non-intervention in the affairs of nations that do not threaten or attack us.
-------
The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire
by Michael C. Ruppert
March 13, 2003
Nexus Magazine
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/bushcheney.html
The Bush family's involvement in drug-running is an open secret, but Dick Cheney's direct link to a global drug pipeline through a US construction company is less well known.
Extracted from Nexus Magazine,
Volume 8, Number 2
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia.
editor@n... Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com
by Michael C. Ruppert
Publisher/Editor of "From The Wilderness"
PO Box 6061-350 Sherman Oaks, CA 91413, USA
E-mail: mruppert@c... Website: www.copvcia.com
FROM MEDELLIN TO MOSCOW WITH BROWN & ROOT
Halliburton Corporation's Brown & Root is one of the major components of the Bush-Cheney Drug Empire. The success of Bush Vice-Presidential running mate Richard Cheney at leading Halliburton, Inc. to a five-year, US$3.8 billion "pig-out" on federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans is only a partial indicator of what may happen, now that the Bush ticket has won the US presidential election.
A closer look at available research, including an August 2,2000 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) (www.public-i.org), suggests that drug money has played a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under Cheney's tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000.
This is especially true for Halliburton's most famous subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant Brown & Root. A deeper look into history reveals that Brown & Root's past - as well as the past of Dick Cheney himself - connects to the international drug trade on more than one occasion and in more than one way.
Last June,the lead Washington,DC,attorney for a major Russian oil company connected in law enforcement reports to heroin smuggling, and also a beneficiary of US-backed loans to pay for Brown & Root contracts in Russia, held a $2.2 million fundraiser to fill the already bulging coffers of presidential candidate George W. Bush.
This is not the first time that Brown & Root has been connected to illegal drugs,and the fact is that this "poster child" of American industry may also be a key player in Wall Street's efforts to maintain domination of the half-trillion-dollar-a-year global drug trade and its profits.
And Dick Cheney,who has also come closer to illegal drugs than most suspect and who is also Halliburton's largest individual shareholder($45.5 million), has a vested interest in seeing to it that Brown & Root's successes continue.
Of all the American companies dealing directly with the US military and providing cover for CIA operations, few firms can match the global presence of this giant construction powerhouse which employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries.
Through its sister companies or joint ventures, Brown & Root can build offshore oil rigs, drill wells and construct and operate everything from harbours and pipelines to highways and nuclear reactors.
It can train and arm security forces and it can now also feed, supply and house armies.One key beacon of Brown & Root's overwhelming appeal to agencies like the CIA is that, as it proudly announces from its own corporate web page, it has received the contract to dismantle ageing Russian nuclear-tipped ICBMs in their silos.
Furthermore, the relationships between key institutions, players and the Bushes themselves suggest that under a George "W" Administration the Bush family and its allies, using Brown & Root as the operational interface, may well be able to control the drug trade all the way from Medellín to Moscow.
Originally formed as a heavy construction company to build dams, Brown & Root grew its operations via shrewd political contributions to Senate candidate Lyndon Johnson in 1948. Expanding into the building of oil platforms, military bases, ports, nuclear facilities, harbours and tunnels, Brown & Root virtually underwrote LBJ's political career.
It prospered as a result,making billions on US Government contracts during the Vietnam War.The Austin Chronicle, in an August 28, 2000 Op-Ed piece entitled "The Candidate from Brown & Root", labels Republican Cheney as the political dispenser of Brown & Root's largesse.
According to political campaign records, during Cheney's five-year tenure at Halliburton the company's political contributions more than doubled to $1.2 million. Not surprisingly,most of that money went to Republican candidates.
Independent news service Newsmakingnews also describes how in 1998, with Cheney as Chairman,Halliburton spent $8.1 billion to purchase oil industry equipment and drilling supplier Dresser Industries.
This made Halliburton a corporation that will have a presence in almost any future oil drilling operation anywhere in the world. And it also brought back into the family fold the company which had once(also in 1948)sent a plane to fetch the new Yale graduate George H.W. Bush to begin his career in the Texas oil business.
Bush the elder's father, Prescott, served as a managing director for the firm that once owned Dresser: Brown Brothers Harriman. A bank that funfded --Hitler -- till their businesses were Confiscated under 1941
"Trading with the Enemy Act"
BROWN & ROOT'S SPECIAL OPERATIONS It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is Brown & Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown & Root also.
From Bosnia and Kosovo to Chechnya, Rwanda, Burma, Pakistan, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Mexico and Colombia, Brown & Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the US military. Now, instead of US Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown & Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms and rations to vehicles.
Dramatic expansion of Brown & Root's operations in Colombia also suggests Bush preparations for a war -inspired feeding frenzy as a part of "Plan Colombia". This is consistent with moves by former Bush Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady to open a joint Colombian & American investment partnership called --Corfinsura-- for the financing of major construction projects with the Colombian Antioquia Syndicate, headquartered in Medellín (see FTW, June 2000).
And expectations of a ground war in Colombia may explain why Brown & Root, in a 2000 Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, reported that in addition to owning more than 800,000 square feet of warehouse space in Colombia, it also leases another 122,000 square feet. According to the Brown & Root Energy Services Group filing, the only other places where the company maintains warehouse space are in Mexico (525,000 square feet) and the United States (38,000 square feet).
According to the website of Colombia's Foreign Investment Promotion Agency, Brown & Root had no presence in the country until 1997.
What does Brown & Root-which according to Associated Press(AP) has made more than $2 billion supporting and supplying US troops -know about Colombia that the United States public does not? Why the need for almost a million square feet of warehouse space which can be transferred from one Brown & Root operation (energy services) to another (military support) with the stroke of a pen?
As described by AP,during the "Iran-Contra" era Congressman Dick Cheney of the House Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of Marine Lt Col. Oliver North.
This was in spite of the fact that North had lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White House briefing. Oliver North's own diaries and subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector-General have irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine smuggling during the 1980s and the opening of bank accounts for one firm moving 4 tons of cocaine a month.
This, however,did not stop Cheney from actively supporting North's(unsuccessful)1994 run for the US Senate from Virginia - just a year before he took over the reins at Brown & Root's parent company, Dallas-based Halliburton, Inc.,in 1995.
As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990&endash;91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels in northern Iran.
The Kurds' primary source of income for more than 50 years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and Turkey.
Having had some personal experience with Brown & Root, I noted carefully when the Los Angeles Times observed that on March 22, 1991 a group of gunmen burst into the Ankara, Turkey, offices of joint venture Vinnell, Brown & Root and assassinated retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Gandy.
In March 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees, long-time assets of the CIA,were being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War. Saddam,seeking to destroy any hopes of a successful Kurdish revolt, found it easy to kill thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish security forces-trained in part by the Vinnell, Brown & Root partnership - turned thousands of Kurds back into certain death.
Today, the Vinnell Corporation(a TRW company)is one of the 3 pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp (see FTW, June 2000).
It is also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the Middle East.
Not surprisingly,the Turkish border regions in question were the primary trans-shipment points for Heroin produced in Afghanistan and Pakistan, destined for the markets of Europe.
A confidential source with intelligence experience in the region subsequently told me that the Kurds "got some payback against the folks that used to help them move their drugs".
He openly acknowledged that Brown & Root and the Vinnell Corporation both routinely provided NOC (non-official cover) for CIA officers. But I already knew that.
From 1994 to 1999, during US military intervention in the Balkans - where, according to The Christian Science Monitor and Jane's Intelligence Review,the Kosovo Liberation Army(KLA) controls 70% of the Heroin entering Western Europe - Cheney's Brown & Root made billions of dollars supplying US troops from vast facilities in the region.
Brown & Root support operations continue in Bosnia,Kosovo and Macedonia to this day.
Dick Cheney's footprints have come closer to drugs than one might suspect. The Center for Public Integrity's August 2000 report brought them even closer. It would be correct to say that there is a direct linkage of Brown & Root facilities - often set up in remote, hazardous regions - with every drug-producing region and every drug-consuming region in the world.
These coincidences, in and of themselves, do not prove complicity in the trade. Other facts, however, lead inescapably in that direction.
A DIRECT DRUG LINK TO DICK CHENEY
The CPI report entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton to Feast at Federal Trough", written by veteran journalists Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller, describes how, under five years of Cheney's leadership, Halliburton,largely through subsidiary Brown & Root,enjoyed $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer - insured loans.
The loans had been granted by the Export & Import Bank(EXIM) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). According to Ralph McGehee's CIA Base,both institutions are heavily infiltrated by the CIA and routinely provide NOC to its officers.
One of those loans,to Russian financial/banking conglomerate The Alfa Group of Companies,contained $292 million to pay for Brown & Root's contract to refurbish a Siberian oil field owned by the Russian Tyumen Oil Company.
The Alfa Group completed its 51 per cent acquisition of Tyumen Oil in what was allegedly a rigged bidding process in 1998. An official Russian Government report claims that The Alfa Group's top executives, oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven, "allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe".
These same executives,Fridman and Aven,who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family, were the same ones who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result, Brown & Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could continue - and expand.
After describing how organised criminal interests in The Alfa Group had allegedly stolen the oil field by fraud, the CPI story - using official reports from the FSB (the Russian equivalent of the FBI), oil companies such as BP & Amoco,former CIA and KGB officers and press accounts - then established a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of Heroin.
In 1995,sacks of Heroin disguised as sugar had been stolen from a rail container leased by Alfa Eko and sold in the Siberian town of Khabarovsk. A problem arose when many residents of the town became "intoxicated" or "poisoned".
The CPI story also stated: "The FSB report said that within days of the incident, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) agents conducted raids of Alfa Eko buildings and found 'Drugs and other Compromising Documentation'.
"Both reports claim that Alfa Bank has laundered drug funds from Russian and Colombian drug cartels.
"The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the now imprisoned financial mastermind of Colombia's notorious Cali cartel, 'to conclude an agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore zones such as the Bahamas, Gibraltar and others'.
The plan was to insert it back into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies.
"He [the former KGB agent] reported that there was evidence 'regarding [Alfa Bank's] involvement with the money laundering of...Latin American drug cartels'."
It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this, as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney, James C. Langdon, Jr, at the firm of Aikin Gump, "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fundraiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign."
The Heroin mentioned in the CPI story originated in Laos, where longtime Bush allies and covert warriors Richard Armitage and retired CIA ADDO (Associate Deputy Director of Operations) Ted Shackley have been repeatedly linked to the drug trade. It then made its way across Southeast Asia to Vietnam, probably the port of Haiphong.
Then the heroin was shipped to Russia's Pacific port of Vladivostok,from where it was subsequently bounced across Siberia by rail and then by truck or rail to Europe, passing through the hands of Russian Mafia leaders in Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Chechnya and Azerbaijan are hotbeds of both armed conflict and oil exploration, and Brown & Root has operations all along this route.
As described in previous issues of FTW, this long, expensive and tortuous path was hastily established after President George Bush's personal envoy Richard Armitage, holding the rank of Ambassador, had travelled to the former Soviet Union to assist it with its "economic development" in 1989.
The obstacles, then, to a more direct, profitable and efficient route from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey into Europe were a cohesive Yugoslavian/Serbian Government controlling the Balkans and continuing instability in the Golden Crescent of Pakistan/ Afghanistan.
Also, there was no other way, using Heroin from the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos and Thailand), to deal with China and India but to go around them.
It is perhaps not by coincidence again that Cheney and Armitage share membership in the prestigious Aspen Institute, an exclusive bi-partisan research think-tank, and also in the US & Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. In November 1999, in what may be a portent of things to come, Armitage played the role of Secretary of Defense in a practical exercise at the Council on Foreign Relations, of which he and Cheney are both members.
Many of the longest-serving and best Bush apparatchiks like Richard Armitage and CIA veteran Ted Shackley have heavy political baggage. Since governmental power is so evenly split after the long election as to appear contrived, it is unlikely that controversial nominees for cabinet positions like Armitage or Shackley will be placed before a 50 & 50 Senate which is unlikely to confirm them.
Armitage is more likely to appear as a quasi-official adviser in troubled European regions. This is similar to the roles he performed for George Bush in 1989 in Russia and in 1992 in Albania. Armitage's travels presaged both the Chechen and Kosovar conflicts and the rampant expansion of the drug trade through those regions.
DRUG PIPELINE STREAMLINED
The Clinton Administration took care of all that wasted travel for Heroin with the 1999 destruction of Serbia and Kosovo and the installation of the KLA as a regional power. That opened a direct line from Afghanistan to Western Europe - and Brown & Root was right in the middle of that, too.
The Clinton skill at streamlining drug operations was described in detail in the April 2000 issue of FTW in a story entitled "The Democratic Party's Presidential Drug Money Pipeline".
That article has since been reprinted in three countries. The essence of the drug economic lesson was that by growing Opium in Colombia and by smuggling both Cocaine and Heroin from Colombia to New York City through the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (a virtual straight line), traditional smuggling routes could be shortened or even eliminated.
This reduced both risk and cost, increased profits and eliminated competition.
FTW suspects the hand of Medellín cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder in this process, and it is interesting to note that Lehder, released from prison under Clinton in 1995, is now active in both the Bahamas and South America. Lehder was known during the 1980s as "the genius of transportation".
I can well imagine Dick Cheney, having witnessed the complete restructuring of the global drug trade in the last eight years, going to George W. and saying,
"Look, I know how we can make it even better".
One thing is for certain. As quoted in the CPI article, one Halliburton vice-president noted that if the Bush + Cheney ticket were elected, "the company's government contracts would obviously go through the roof".
THE DARK PAST
In July 1977,this writer,then a Los Angeles Police officer, struggled to make sense of a world gone haywire. In a last-ditch effort to salvage a relationship with my fiancée, Nordica Theodora D'Orsay (Teddy), a CIA contract agent, I had travelled to New Orleans to find her.
On a hastily arranged vacation,secured with the blessing of my commanding officer,Captain Jesse Brewer of LAPD, I had gone on my own,unofficially,to avoid the scrutiny of LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID).
Teddy had wanted me to join her operations from within the ranks of LAPD,starting in the late spring of 1976. I had refused to get involved with Drugs in any way, and everything she mentioned seemed to involve either Heroin or Cocaine, along with the guns which she was always moving out of the country.
The Director of the CIA then was George Herbert Walker Bush.
Although officially on staff at the LAPD Academy at the time, I had been unofficially lent to OCID since January when Teddy, announcing the start of a new operation planned in the fall of 1976, suddenly disappeared.
She left many people, including me, baffled and twisting in the breeze. The OCID detectives had been pressuring me hard for information about her and what I knew of her activities.
It was information I could not give them. Hoping against hope that I would find some way to understand her involvement with CIA, LAPD, the royal family of Iran, the Mafia and drugs, I set out alone into eight days of Dantean revelations which have determined the course of my life from that day to this.
Arriving in New Orleans in early July 1977, I found Teddy living in an apartment across the river in Gretna. Equipped with scrambler phones and night vision devices, and working from sealed communiqués delivered by Navy and Air Force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, she was involved in something truly ugly.
Teddy was arranging for large quantities of weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran. At the same time, she was working with Mafia associates of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to coordinate the movement of service boats which were bringing large quantities of Heroin into the city.
The boats arrived at Marcello-controlled docks,unmolested by even the New Orleans police she introduced me to,along with divers,military men,former Green Berets and CIA personnel.
The service boats were retrieving the Heroin from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, in international waters - oil rigs built and serviced by Brown & Root.
The guns which Teddy monitored,apparently Vietnam-era surplus AK47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships also owned or leased by Brown & Root. And more than once during the eight days I spent in New Orleans, I met and ate at restaurants with Brown & Root employees who were boarding those ships and leaving for Iran within days.
Once,while leaving a bar and apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot at in an attempt to scare me off.
Disgusted and heartbroken at witnessing my fiancée and my government smuggling drugs,I ended the relationship. Returning home to LA,I made a clean breast and reported all the activity I had seen,including the connections to Brown & Root,to LAPD intelligence officers. They promptly told me that I was crazy.
Forced out of LAPD under threat of death at the end of 1978, I made complaints to LAPD's Internal Affairs Division and to the LA office of the FBI under the command of FBI SAC Ted Gunderson.
I and my attorney wrote to the politicians, the Department of Justice and the CIA, and contacted the Los Angeles Times. The FBI and the LAPD said that I was crazy.
A 1981 two-part news story in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner revealed that the FBI had taken Teddy into custody and then released her before classifying their investigation without further action. Former New Orleans Crime Commissioner Aaron Cohen told reporter Randall Sullivan that he found my description of events perfectly plausible after his 30 years of studying Louisiana's organised crime operations.
To this day,a CIA report prepared as a result of my complaint remains classified and exempt from release, pursuant to executive order of the President, in the interests of national security and because it would reveal the identities of CIA agents.
On October 26, 1981, in the basement of the West Wing of the White House,I reported on what I had seen in New Orleans to my friend and UCLA classmate, Craig Fuller. Fuller went on to become Chief of Staff to Vice - President Bush from 1981 to 1985.
In 1982,then UCLA political science professor Paul Jabber filled in many of the pieces in my quest to understand what I had seen in New Orleans. He was qualified to do so because he had served as a CIA and State Department consultant to the Carter Administration.
Paul explained that, after a 1975 treaty between the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein of Iraq, the Shah had cut off all overt military support for Kurdish rebels fighting Saddam from the north of Iraq.
In exchange, the Shah had gained access to the Shatt al'Arab waterway so that he could multiply his oil exports and income. Not wanting to lose a valuable long-term asset in the Kurds, the CIA had then used Brown & Root - which operated in both countries and maintained port facilities in the Persian Gulf and near Shatt al'Arab - to rearm the Kurds. The whole operation had been financed with Heroin. Paul was matter-of-fact about it.
In 1983, Paul Jabber left UCLA to become a Vice-President of Banker's Trust and Chairman of the Middle East Department of the Council on Foreign Relations.
THE WORLD'S BIGGEST FREE ENTERPRISE
If one is courageous enough to seek an -"operating system"- which theoretically explains what FTW has just described for you, one need look no further than a fabulous two-part article published in Le Monde Diplomatique in April 2000.
The stories,focusing heavily on drug capital,are titled "Crime, The World's Biggest Free Enterprise".
The brilliant and penetrating words of authors Christian de Brie and Jean de Maillard do a better job of explaining the actual world economic and political situation than anything I have ever read.
De Brie writes: "By allowing capital to flow unchecked from one end of the world to the other,globalisation and abandonment of sovereignty have together fostered the explosive growth of an outlaw financial market...
"It is a coherent system closely linked to the expansion of modern capitalism and based on an association of three partners: Governments, Transnational Corporations and Mafias. Business is business: Financial Crime is first and foremost a market, thriving and structured, ruled by supply and demand.
"Big business complicity and political laissez faire is the only way that large-scale organised crime can launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds of its activities. And the transnationals need the support of governments and the neutrality of regulatory authorities in order to consolidate their positions,increase their profits, withstand and crush the competition, pull off the 'deal of the century' and finance their illicit operations.
Politicians are directly involved and their ability to intervene depends on the backing and the funding that keep them in power. This collusion of interests is an essential part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the wheels of capitalism turning."
After confronting CIA Director John Deutch on world television on November 15, 1996, I was interviewed by the staff of both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.
I prepared written testimony for Senate Intelligence which I submitted, although I was never called to testify. In every one of those interviews and in my written testimony and every lecture since that time, I have told the story of Brown & Root.
IN GOD (GOLD, OIL, DRUGS) WE TRUST
Make no mistake about it. The United States is preparing for war. Events immediately following the 2000 US election debacle are ominous predictors for the Bush & Cheney Administration. While not all of the cabinet posts are yet filled, the key posts of Treasury, Defense, Justice and National Security Advisor point to the most militarised oil-and-big-business-friendly administration in 35 years.
So thorough is the plan for control of the government that the son of Secretary of State(Designate)Colin Powell, in an appointment which has yet to receive much notice, has been appointed the new Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. This is the body which monitors and polices all commercial broadcasting in the United States.
With Colin Powell as Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and Dick Cheney as Vice-President, the highest levels of the US Government now house two former Secretaries of Defense and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The new National Security Advisor,Condoleeza Rice, while African-American, has a long track record of service to Republican administrations and also sits on the board of directors of Chevron Oil, which has recently named an oil tanker after her.
Her lacklustre operational credentials indicate that she will probably serve as the designated messenger between Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld and Cheney and as the African-American poster girl for coming military adventurism.
Of special interest as this story goes to press is the strongest rumour among my sources that current CIA Director George Tenet, appointed to the post by President Clinton in 1997, will remain in the new Bush Administration.
Based upon this writer's study of CIA operations and history, this strongly suggests two things. Firstly, it implies that the CIA,as a non-partisan servant of Wall Street, feels that its interests have been - and will continue to be - well served by Tenet, who is well liked at Langley.
Most importantly, however,it suggests that there are operations, both covert and otherwise,in motion under CIA control which are moving at a speed and with a force that will not accept a break in rhythm for a change in directors. Most critical among these would be the start of the planned conflict in Colombia.
Since the advent of the atomic bomb,the United States has always needed two kinds of enemies. On one level, it has needed a tactical enemy that it can go out and fight in the field in a shooting war. Since 1945, these enemies have been created a nd appeared as North Korea, North Vietnam, Grenada, El Salvador, Panama, Iraq and now Colombia.
On another level, however, the US needs a strategic enemy that will justify outrageous expenditures of capital for strategic weapon systems like ICBMs, Trident submarines and "Star Wars" missile defence systems.
With the new Bush Administration already contemplating a policy change that would make Colombian rebels (as opposed to drug traffickers)the targets of US military aid, as has been reported by AP, there is no doubt where the next shooting war is going to be.
And with the militarised Bush cabinet making a missile defence shield a priority, it looks as though either China or Russia will become the next big enemy of choice.
In the end, profitability will decide.For the moment, the less-than-credible paper threat is from unspecified "rogue nations". We can be certain, however, that the shifting economic pressure plates around the world will reveal our next demon soon enough.
Halliburton is uniquely placed to profit from either eventuality.
As it was in Vietnam, Central America and Kosovo, drugs continue to be a huge part of the financial plan for prolonged ground wars. As one cynic put it, "GOD" stands for "Gold, Oil and Drugs". We can be assured that an empire (as opposed to a republic) is emerging in the United States more quickly than many have expected.
And the Bush Administration is already acting in a "godlike" manner. It is an empire that may have little need of even the pretence of democracy as American corporate fascism removes its mask in the wake of our election circus, the prostitution of our Supreme Court and the virtual destruction of American government as a servant of anything other than money, greed and power.
--
Sources:
- Aspen Institute, www.aspeninst.org.
- Associated Press, "Study: US Could Save Cost in Balkans", October 10, 2000.
- Associated Press, "Cheney, North Relationship Probed", August 11, 2000.
- Austin Chronicle, August 28, 2000.
- "CIA Base" (c) 1992, Ralph McGehee.
- CIA Inspector-General, "Report of Investigation: Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States. Volume II: The Contra Story", Report 96-0143-IG.
- Christian Science Monitor, October 20, 1994.
- Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org.
- De Brie, Christian and Jean de Maillard, "Crime, The World's Biggest Free Enterprise", Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2000.
- Halliburton/Brown & Root, www.Halliburton.com/brs.
- Jane's Intelligence Review, February 1, 1995.
- Los Angeles Herald Examiner, October 11 & 18, 1981.
- Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1991.
- Newsmakingnews, "The Dick Cheney Data Dump", August 27, 2000, www.newsmakingnews.com.
- New York Press, January 8, 2000.
- New York Times Index, www.nytimes.com.
- Royce, Knut and Nathaniel Heller, "Cheney Led Halliburton to Feast at Federal Trough", Center for Public Integrity, August 2, 2000, www.public-i.org/story_01_080200.htm.
- Ruppert, Michael C., written testimony for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, dated October 1, 1997; see www.copvcia.com/ssci.htm, and From The Wilderness 4/99, 4/00, 6/00.
- Securities and Exchange Commission, "Edgar" Database, www.sec.gov.
- Tarpley, Webster Griffin and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Executive Intelligence Review, Washington, DC, 1992.
- US&endash;Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, www.usacc.com.
- Vinnell Corporation, www.Vinnell.com.
Editor's Note: This article is reprinted with permission from author Mike Ruppert, Editor/Publisher of From The Wilderness newsletter. It first appeared in the October 2000 issue (vol. III, no. 8).
From The Wilderness describes itself as "a nonpartisan, non-sectarian map from the here that is, into the tomorrow of our own making". Its website postings (www.copvcia.com) are at least 30 days old. Subscriptions (12 issues): US$35.00 for USA and Canada; $47.00 for Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. From The Wilderness Publications, PO Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413, USA, telephone +1 (818) 788 8791, fax +1 (818) 981 2847, e-mail mruppert@c...
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
KABUL
Untrained Afghan Police Force Needs to Be Overhauled,
Amnesty International Says
March 13, 2003
The New York Times
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/international/asia/13AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 12 - Earlier this month, residents in an ethnically Hazara neighborhood of Kabul took to the streets. Their target was the police, whom they accused of trying to kidnap a local woman. They demanded, as well, that members of their own ethnic group be hired to patrol their neighborhood.
The protest illustrated the depth of mistrust toward an unaccountable and unrepresentative police force that has built up during 23 years of war - through Soviet rule, warlordism, the Taliban and, still, under the new government.
Today, Amnesty International released a report saying that Afghanistan and the international community needed to make the overhaul of the country's police force an urgent priority to restore the rule of law.
The report laid out a picture of untrained and ill-equipped police officers who answer more to local military commanders than they do to their police superiors.
Amnesty also said police officers were engaging in torture, arbitrary arrest and extortion. "Rather than protecting all people in Afghanistan, some police officers are actually committing human rights violations," the report said.
Amnesty noted that approximately 50,000 people work as police officers in Afghanistan, but it argued that "they are not a united, civilian police service, having often no training or experience."
Much of the force consists of former mujahedeen with military backgrounds but little or no police training. Outside of Kabul, they are answerable to regional commanders for whom they fought against the Taliban. Amnesty reported unclear lines of control over the police, even at the top levels of government.
The police have also been severely afflicted by the dearth of resources that permeates every aspect of Afghan life. Provincial police officers interviewed by Amnesty had not been paid in four months. They lacked uniforms, boots and even pens and paper. In many cases, the only vehicle available to them was a commander's private car.
The lack of resources has numerous ramifications, the report noted. With police buildings crumbling around the country, for example, prisoners have to be kept in leg irons to prevent them from escaping.
The German government has helped reopen the police academy in Kabul, which is now training 1,500 cadets, and the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement plans to train another 7,000 police officers in Kabul.
But Amnesty cited a profound need for "in service" training for officers. Most have never received any. In Kandahar, only 120 of 3,000 officers have any training, Amnesty said. In Bamiyan, half of the officers in a force of 700 have police training; the rest are former mujahedeen.
The results are clear, the report stated. Police officers untrained in investigative techniques often resort to coercion. Former detainees described being beaten, subjected to electric shocks and hanged from ceilings by their arms.
Last November, at least two students were killed by police fire during a protest at Kabul University. Five officers were ultimately arrested for excessive use of force, but Amnesty said the handling of the demonstration showed the need to teach crowd-control techniques.
Detainees often reported being offered their freedom in return for money. The National Security Directorate, Afghanistan's intelligence service, also has the power to arrest and detain. It engages in arbitrary detention and torture, Amnesty said, often with the purpose of extorting money from detainees' families. There are no independent oversight bodies to report police violations.
-------- arms
Tomahawk Missiles May Spearhead U.S. War on Iraq
Reuters
Thursday, March 13, 2003
By Jim Wolf
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19612-2003Mar13?language=printer
MANAMA (Reuters) - Any U.S.-led attack on Iraq is likely to start with a hail of stubby-winged Tomahawk cruise missiles fired with supposed pinpoint accuracy by what may be the most powerful naval armada in history, military experts say.
In its combat debut, the long-range Tomahawk opened the U.S.-led war that drove Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991, cutting the initial risk to allied pilots and warplanes.
Since then, the U.S. Navy has used variants of the $1.4 million Tomahawk to start military campaigns in Bosnia in 1995 and in Afghanistan in 2001.
Britain began its supporting role against al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan with Tomahawks, which are 18 feet long, fired from a submarine.
"It's not tell-us-which-building, it's tell-us-which-window you want it to go through," said Lt. Garrett Kasper, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based naval component of the U.S. Central Command, which would run a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on March 4 that U.S. war plans entailed shocking the Iraqi leadership into submission with an attack "much, much, much different" from the 43-day Gulf War in 1991.
He declined to give details.
But other military officers have said the plan calls for hurling as many as 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles, including Tomahawks, in the first 48 hours of an air campaign, to be followed quickly by ground operations.
SHOCK START
"If asked to go into conflict in Iraq, what you'd like to do is have it be a short conflict," General Myers told reporters. "The best way to do that would be to have such a shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end was inevitable."
Tomahawks may be fired by destroyers, cruisers and submarines protecting the three U.S. aircraft carriers now cruising in and around the Gulf and the two in the Eastern Mediterranean.
A typical carrier battle group packs as many as 400 Tomahawks, according to retired Rear Admiral Stephen Baker at the private Center for Defense Information in Washington.
The Navy's declared land-attack weapon of choice, the Tomahawk would probably be used against high-value targets such as command and control centers, electrical generating facilities and weapons assembly and storage spots.
The missile, made by Raytheon Co., uses three separate guidance systems to close in on a target, ultimately comparing pictures with a version in its memory as it skims in at about 550 miles per hour 100-300 feet above the ground.
Its compactness, at 20 inches in diameter and with a wingspan of less than nine feet, also enables it to escape detection by many radars.
-------- britain
THIS IS THE COST OF BLAIR'S 'MORAL' WAR
EXCLUSIVE: The trickery used to create a threat
By John Pilger
Mar 13 2003
UK Mirror
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12729598&method=full&siteid=5014
Painful photos:
KILLED IN HER BED: Little girl, aged eight, lies dead in the rubble of her home after a US missile destroyed their home in a residential area of Basra killing six. Her ten year old sister also perished http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/mirror/mar2003/2/0/000EDE88-3404-1E70-B3DC80C328EC0000.jpg
KILLED IN HER BED: Little girl, aged ten, lies dead in the rubble of her home after a US missile destroyed their home in a residential area of Basra killing six. Her eight year old sister also perished http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/mirror/mar2003/3/0/00007E05-3412-1E70-B3DC80C328EC0000.jpg
THE Blair Government has known, almost from the day it came to office in 1997, that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were almost certainly destroyed following the Gulf War.
Of all the pro-war propaganda of Blair and Bush, and their current threats giving Saddam Hussein yet another deadline to disarm, what may be their biggest lie is exposed by this revelation.
Two weeks ago, a transcript of a United Nations debriefing of Iraqi general Hussein Kamel was obtained by the American magazine, Newsweek, and by Cambridge University analyst, Glen Rangwala (who last month revealed that Blair's "intelligence dossier" on Iraq was lifted, word for word, from an American student's thesis).
General Kamel was the West's "star witness" in its case against Saddam Hussein. He was no ordinary defector. A son-in-law of the Iraqi dictator, he had immense power in Iraq; and when he defected, he took with him crates of secret documents on Iraq's weapons programme.
These secrets have been repeatedly cited by George W Bush and his officials as "evidence" that Iraq still has large quantities of deadly weapons of mass destruction, and that only war can disarm it. Bush, his officials and leading American commentators, have frequently lauded General Kamel as the most reliable source of information on Iraq's weapons. The Blair government has echoed this.
In 1995, General Kamel was debriefed by senior officials of the United Nations inspections team, then known as UNSCOM, and by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The complete transcript, now disclosed for the first time, contradicts almost everything Bush and Blair have said about the threat of Iraqi weapons.
For example, General Kamel says categorically: "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear - were destroyed." All that remains, he says, are the blueprints, computer disks and microfiches.
Newsweek says that the CIA and Britain's MI6 were told this; and Blair and Bush must have been told the truth. In other words, it is likely that Iraq has been substantially disarmed for at least eight years.
With General Kamel now out of the way (he was killed when he returned to Iraq in 1996), his "evidence" was selectively made public by Washington and London. In his dramatic presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the truth about Iraq's nerve gas weapons "only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son in law".
What Powell neglected to mention was that his star witness had told them all the weapons had been destroyed.
GENERAL Kamel's sensational admission has been corroborated by the former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter who says that when he left Iraq in 1998, disarmament was "90 to 95 per cent". A United Nations verifying panel set up by the Security Council, confirmed that "the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated". This has seldom been reported.
Of course, none of these facts will deter the American and British security agencies from inventing and planting "evidence" of "Saddam's secret weapons" once Anglo-American forces take over Baghdad.
When America and Britain crush Iraq, a new phase of their black propaganda will emerge - for which the British public ought to be prepared. This new range of deceptions will be designed to justify attacking a sovereign state and killing innocent people: a crime under international law, with or without a second UN resolution.
Black propaganda of this kind has a long history. My own experience of it was the American invasion of Vietnam. In 1964, the US State Department published a White Paper with pages of "conclusive proof" of North Vietnam's preparations to invade the south. This "proof" stemmed from the "discovery" of a stockpile of weapons found floating in a junk off the coast of South Vietnam. The White Paper, which provided a quasi-legal justification for the American invasion, was known as a "master illusion". The whole episode was fake, a set-up.
Master illusion was the CIA's term for master lie. In 1982, I interviewed Ralph McGehee, a senior CIA officer who documented the planting of the fake evidence. He told me: "The CIA loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons ... They floated this junk off the coast of Central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place. They then brought in the American press and the international press and said, 'Here's the evidence that the North Vietnamese are invading South Vietnam.' Based on this 'evidence', the US Marines went in, and the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam."
As a result of this fakery, which included the elaborate fiction that an American destroyer had been attacked by a North Vietnamese gunboat, the United States dispatched its greatest ever land army to Vietnam, and dropped the greatest tonnage of bombs in the history of warfare, and forced millions of people to abandon their homes, and used chemical weapons that profoundly damaged the environment and human genes, leaving a once beautiful land petrified.
AT least two million people were killed, and many more were maimed and otherwise ruined. Now replace "Vietnam" with "Iraq" in this story of lies; and you have the essentials of the same justification for another great criminal act.
Watch how the propaganda unfolds once the bombing is over and the Americans are running Baghdad and their spin machine. There will be the "discovery of Saddam's secret arsenal," probably in the basement of one his palaces. This will be accompanied by the "discovery" of gruesome evidence of Saddam's oppression. This will not come as news to the many dedicated anti-war campaigners, who for years tried to stop the American and British governments from supplying Saddam with the tools of his oppression.
They include many Iraqis exiled in Britain, such as Khalid Sahi, who was tortured by the regime and opposes an attack "will bring nothing but more bloodshed, more misery"; and the anti-war Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, who has protested about the Iraqi dictator for more than twenty years and demanded that the British government prosecute British companies that sustained the Iraqi torturers.
Two years ago, Peter Hain, then a Foreign Office minister, blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full list of British companies that had illegally traded with Saddam Hussein.
The reason why became clear last week when the Guardian newspaper disclosed that the Blair government had secretly paid out more than £33 million in taxpayers' money to British companies claiming non-payment on the weapons they sold Saddam Hussein in the 1980s. The total loss to the taxpayer on sales to Iraq now exceeds £1billion. Add this to the £3.5billion that Gordon Brown has "put aside" for an attack on Iraq. Add this to the £1billion that the bombing of Iraq has already cost - the rarely reported bombing by British and American aircraft in the so-called "no fly zones", which now cover most of Iraqi airspace and were set up, according to Blair, to "protect Iraq's minorities". Who believes this now?
This week, the Ministry of Defence said: "We never target civilians [in the no-fly zones]... there's no evidence of civilian casualties."
The lie of this statement would be breathtaking were it not routine.
In northern Kurdish Iraq, I interviewed members of one family who had lost their grandfather, their father and four brothers and sisters when a "coalition" aircraft (British or American) dive-bombed them and the sheep they were tending. It was open desert, a moonscape with not a sign of other life, let alone a military installation. Amid the carcasses of blasted sheep were pieces of clothing and a single shoe.
The attack was investigated and verified by the chief United Nations representative in Iraq at the time, Hans Von Sponeck, who drove there especially from Baghdad. His findings are listed among dozens of similar attacks - on shepherds, farmers, fishermen - in a document prepared by the United Nations Security Section.
At a windswept cemetery near the town of Mosul, I caught sight of the shepherd's widow as she grieved for her husband and four children. "I want to see the pilot who did this," she shouted.
LAST week, "coalition" aircraft killed another six people in the southern city of Basra. Nothing unusual there. When I was last in Basra, an American missile killed six children when it "mistakenly" hit Al Jumohria, a very poor section of Basra's residential area.
I walked down the street where the missile had struck in the early hours; it had followed the line of houses, destroying one after the other. I met the father of two sisters, aged eight and 10, who were photographed by a local weddings photographer, Nabil al-Jerani, shortly after the attack. Their bodies were unlike the other four children, who were blown to bits, their limbs and flesh in the overhead wires.
These two little girls were left intact. In Nabil's photographs, they are in their nightdresses, one with a bow in her hair, their bodies perfectly engraved in the rubble of their homes, where they had been bombed to death, murdered, in their beds.
Look closely at their images on these pages; they are the faces of a stricken nation of whom 42 per cent are children. When Blair speaks about the "moral case" for sending hundreds of missiles against this nation of so many children, as well as new types of cluster bombs and bunker bombs and microwave bombs, and shells tipped with pure uranium, a form of nuclear weapon, the images of the two sisters provide an eloquent commentary on the Prime Minister's Christian "morality".
And when pictures of exhausted Iraqis greeting their "liberation" are flashed around the world, remember the faces that will be missing in the crowds - not only those of the children bombed and disposed of as "collateral damage", but more than a million faces declared expendable by the American-driven and British-backed economic embargo.
Remember the vaccines, cancer-treatment equipment, pain-killers, plasma bags, food treatment equipment and much else denied over fourteen years: $5.4 billion worth as of last July, to be precise, blocked by the US government, backed by the Blair government.
Remember the words of President Clinton's then representative at the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, when she was asked if the price of 500,000 Iraqi children was a price worth paying for the embargo. "We think the price is worth it," she said.
AND when you next hear Bush or Blair or Straw or Hoon talk about "the tyrant who gassed his own people", remember those American officials and British ministers who competed with each other to excuse and effectively reward Saddam Hussein for gassing 5,000 Kurds in the town of Halabja.
Barely one month after the atrocity in 1988, Tony Newton, Margaret Thatcher's Trade Secretary, flew to Baghdad to offer Saddam £340million of taxpapers' money in export credits. Three months later, the smiling Newton was back, this time to celebrate with Saddam the joyous news that Iraq was now Britain's third-largest market for machine tools, from which a range of Iraqi weapons was forged - some of them used against British troops in the Gulf War.
Newton was followed by Assistant US Secretary of State John Kelly who flew to Baghdad to tell Saddam that "you are a source for moderation in the region, and the United States wants to broaden her relationship with Iraq".
When the "liberation" of Baghdad is on the front page, remember the warmongering newspapers whose editorials defended Saddam Hussein throughout the 1980s by promoting the lie that his use of chemical weapons against Iran was purely defensive.
Remember, too, Blair's long silence. There is no record of Blair saying anything worthwhile about Saddam's "excesses" (as his crimes used to be known by British ministers when he was "one of us") until after September 11, 2001 when the Americans, frustrated at having failed to catch Osama bin Laden, declared the Iraqi dictator their number one enemy.
Like a discredited East European autocrat, attended only by his court of supplicants and propagandists, Blair has few left to deceive. He even claimed the other day that "no Iraqis marched" in the great demonstration of February 15. In fact, as many as 7,000 Iraqis and Kurds marched. Iraqi families stood on the roadside holding up home-made placards: "Thank you for supporting my people."
None, it can be assumed, has any time for Saddam Hussein; but none want their country strangled, attacked, poisoned and occupied by another variety of dictator.
-------- business
Lockheed Fighter Jet $1.3 Billion Deeper in Red
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17691-2003Mar12?language=printer
The General Accounting Office identified $1.3 billion in cost overruns in Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F/A-22 fighter jet program yesterday, putting the beleaguered venture at risk of further cutbacks.
The cost escalation follows an $876 million overrun announced last fall, according to the GAO.
The latest overruns were partially attributed to the expense of switching subcontractors and to program delays.
The GAO report illustrates that the program "continues to be out of control financially, despite repeated assurances from the Air Force that the problems would be resolved," said Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), who requested the study. "At the very least, this GAO report provides further evidence that the F/A-22 program should be reevaluated and that congressional controls must be strengthened."
Congress has long criticized the Raptor, a radar-evading superplane, for its escalating price tag and growing obsolescence even before a single aircraft has been delivered. The F/A-22 was conceived to combat the Soviet threat but will join the fleet at a time when rogue terrorists have become the nation's chief dangers.
"Now that Cold War threats no longer exist, we must ask if we need to fully fund the F/A-22," said Tierney, a member of the oversight committee on national security, emerging threats and international relations.
The Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a contract for 750 of the jets in 1991, with a delivery date of 1996. But as the program's costs have escalated the number of planes to be produced has dropped below 300. In 1997, Congress capped the program's cost at $37 billion, but the Pentagon has said it would need at least $43 billion. The first plane is not scheduled to be in use until 2005.
The latest cost overrun could create a political liability for Lockheed and the Air Force, industry analysts said. "It's possible that if the Congress decides not to relieve the cap, then the number of aircrafts will be even less," said Allen Li, GAO's director of acquisition and sourcing management.
The GAO report released yesterday chastised the Air Force for its failure to improve the production process in such a way that would help contain costs. "The Air Force has not addressed ongoing problems with the developmental testing and therefore remains at high risk for further schedule delays," the report said.
The Pentagon's current estimate of the program's cost does not include $1.3 billion identified by the GAO, the report said. The overrun includes $250 million in expenses related to switching the avionics subcontractor.
"We feel that we have good visibility in our cost estimate," said Teresa Connor, an Air Force spokeswoman. "It would be premature to respond until we have had a chance to review the final report in its entirety. The Air Force stands by the F/A-22 program and we believe that we have a plan to provide our nation with the world's most advanced air dominance jet that will serve a critical joint war-fighting mission and ultimately save American lives."
A Lockheed spokesman said company officials have not reviewed the report. "F/A-22 production costs have declined over time," spokesman Sam Grizzle said. "We anticipate that they will be reduced further as production quantities increase and further cost reduction initiatives are enacted."
The GAO report would likely have little impact on the debate over the future of the FA-22, said Richard Aboulafia, an aircraft analyst for the Teal Group, a defense research organization. Aboulafia praised the work of the GAO. "But," he added, "it's not always accorded a great deal of influence. Defense and air power are just too popular. I think the F-22 is breaking out of that death spiral it was in."
Lockheed has more incentive to contain costs now that the program has entered the production phase, Aboulafia said. Contractors are more likely to invest in cost-containment measures once a project has a diminished risk of being canceled, he said. "Serious metal is being cut. That makes for a survivable program, historically speaking," he said. "That $1 billion overrun might not mean anything in five or 10 years."
----
Billions lost since 'axis of evil' speech
Patrick Collinson and Rupert Jones
Thursday March 13, 2003
The Guardian
http://money.guardian.co.uk/businessnews/article/0,11507,913095,00.html
Millions of small investors have seen their pensions, endowments and shareholdings caught in the crossfire of President George Bush's war against terrorism.
Since January 29 last year when President Bush put the "axis of evil" in his sights, 40% has been wiped off the value of the average British investment trust and 30% off the average unit trust.
Someone who put £1,000 into the typical unit trust on January 29 last year has seen it fall in value to £710.30, according to Standard & Poor's, and that is before dealing charges are taken.
The payout on the typical endowment is down by more than a fifth over the same period, with more than four out of five of Britain's 10m policies now "off-track" and unlikely to generate enough cash to repay a mortgage.
At the time of President Bush's speech, a £50 per month endowment buyer could have expected a payout of £94,738 if premiums were paid for 25 years. Now the equivalent payout is just £72,323, according to figures from insurer Scottish Life.
Among the unluckiest investors are those caught up in the internet hype of the late 1990s. More than £3bn in small investors' cash poured into technology funds in 1999-2000 at the peak of the dotcom boom. But in the past three years the average technology fund has fallen more than 85%, and in a survey this week investment managers said it could take 20 years for investors to recover their losses.
Pensioners have suffered more than most. Many invested in what were thought to be safe income bonds from blue-chip companies such as Scottish Widows, Abbey National and Scottish Life. When they were launched, "back- testing" of markets showed they could not go wrong. But underlying these bonds are complex derivatives which result in total capital losses in extraordinary market conditions. But what was held to be unthinkable has occured, and many are now on the verge of collapse. This month a three-year Canada Life income bond matured but its holders were told their capital had been completely wiped out. Around £1bn is tied up in tranches of a Scottish Widows bond where holders, mostly elderly, are staring at massive losses.
Other walking wounded which may now collapse altogether include the remaining split-capital investment trusts. The trusts in this £10bn sector have fallen like dominoes, and the few survivors now look more precarious than ever.
But it is not all gloom. Investors who opted for bond funds rather than equities have enjoyed inflation-beating gains. Since January 29 last year, the average bond fund has increased in value by 4.5%, according to Standard & Poor's figures.
Gold, the traditional haven in times of international crisis, has jumped from $278 to $350 since January 29, although the gains have been less for British holders, because the dollar has fallen in value.
As for the super-rich, many have sidestepped plummeting markets. Hedge funds, open to investors with £100,000 cash to spare, have largely avoided the stock market rout. According to CSFB, the average hedge fund in 2002 saw a loss of just 1.6%, with many using short-selling techniques to make large profits as the market has fallen.
----
Developer Gets Rent-Free Deal on Federal Land
March 13, 2003
The New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/politics/13CORP.html
WASHINGTON, March 10 - The Army Corps of Engineers owns 456 lakes in 43 states, and under federal rules, private developers must pay fair market value to lease land from the corps along those lakes. But Ronald W. Howell, an Oklahoma lobbyist, a consultant and a prominent Republican fund-raiser, is one developer who recently found a cheaper way.
Last month, Mr. Howell and his company, StateSource L.L.C., signed a 50-year rent-free lease on 280 acres of lakefront at Skiatook Lake in Oklahoma, not far from Tulsa.
The deal was a sublease, between StateSource and the Skiatook Economic Development Authority, which had just leased the land free from the corps under an exemption that allows such arrangements for government agencies.
The authority then handed off the property to Mr. Howell, with the corps' full approval. Mr. Howell and his lobbying and communications company plan to build a $10 million marina, golf and cabin complex and, in the process, turn a profit.
The corps has granted roughly 1,300 rent-free leases to states, localities and other public agencies, and officials said they did not think the Oklahoma deal was atypical. But they make little effort to monitor such arrangements and keep no central records of them.
Critics of the arrangement say that the deal violates at least the spirit of the federal rules and that the deal is notable because of what is at least a curiosity: Mr. Howell has been finance chairman for Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who, as the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, oversees the corps. In letters and other communications, Senator Inhofe urged the corps to grant swift approval to the lease, agency officials said.
In interviews, officials at the corps defended Mr. Howell's arrangement as consistent with the corps' efforts to promote recreational development on public lakes.
"We're not in the business of telling the states how to operate," George Tabb, who heads the corps' natural resources division, said. "If they decide that they want to put this in the hands of a private developer at no cost, to stimulate the economy, then that's not our business."
A corps spokesman, David Hewitt, said the agency could provide details about rent-free leases only after soliciting information from its offices around the country, in what he said would be a time-consuming process. A spot check of several dozen rent-free leases in three states - Georgia, Mississippi and Washington - turned up no similar transactions, officials said.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Howell defended the rent-free lease as appropriate and said his company's development would help meet the corps' goal of promoting recreation at Skiatook (pronounced SKY-took) Lake. He said he did not believe that the corps' approval of the project reflected special treatment because of his ties to Senator Inhofe.
"All of what we're building is available for public use," Mr. Howell said. "We actually don't think that profit is a bad thing."
But some federal officials involved in the project said they wondered whether the corps was in part seeking to curry favor from Mr. Inhofe. He had urged the corps to speed development on the lake, which the agency chose in 2000 as one of a handful of demonstration sites that qualified for accelerated decisions on recreation projects.
"My whole impression of this since the beginning was that they were trying to railroad this thing through, trying to ram it down our throats, the corps and the Skiatook development agency and the developers behind them," said Kevin Stubbs, a biologist with the Tulsa office of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The officials did not allege any improper behavior on Senator Inhofe's part, and a spokesman for Mr. Inhofe, Danny Finnerty, said, "Neither the senator nor the senator's staff did anything for Mr. Howell over and above what they would do for any constituent."
Several critics of the agency, who said they had not been aware of the arrangement until contacted by a reporter, said they regarded it as an effort to circumvent federal rules.
"If we're going to do economic activity on federal lands, the federal government should be getting some return from investments," said Steve Ellis, a vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense, an advocacy group. "In this case, they're essentially laundering land to be used for private development, and the corps seems to have been a willing accomplice."
The Army Corps of Engineers owns 11.7 million acres of federal land, or about 2 percent of the total federal real estate. It attracts about 30 percent of visitors to federal land, primarily because of the popularity of recreation on corps lakes, said Mr. Hewitt, the agency spokesman.
Neither the corps nor the Skiatook authority tried to determine the fair market value of the 280 acres being leased on the lake.
As a matter of practice, the corps does not try to determine the market value of its property, even in the more than 500 existing deals in which corps land is directly leased to private concessionaires for a fee, said Dennis A. Hogan, chief of real estate for the corps' southwestern division, in Dallas, which oversees the Tulsa district. Those deals are awarded on the basis of competitive bidding, and as a rule, they require only that the corps receive a fair return, which usually amounts to a share of any profits or revenues, Mr. Hogan said.
In the case of the 1,300 leases of corps land to state or local agencies, all are rent free, Mr. Hogan said. He and other corps officials said the corps had never tried to estimate that property's value.
"We're not out to make money," Mr. Hogan said. "We're out to provide a recreational opportunity."
Still, at a minimum, federal officials who spoke on condition of anonymity estimated that a 50-year lease of the 280 acres involved in the Skiatook deal would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, even at the kind of highly concessionary rate being paid by another tenant on federal land on the lake, the Crystal Lake Marina.
"If anyone else in the world had approached the corps without the political influence, there'd be no way this would have been approved," said John Gruninger, the co-owner of that marina, who contends that the rent-free terms offered to the new project will undercut his business.
The rules governing lease agreements are spelled out explicitly in the corps' real estate regulations. The rules allow rent-free leases to government agencies but say in general that "when federally owned property is leased or sold, fair market value should be obtained."
In the case of the Skiatook deal, Blu Hulsey, the town manager for the community of 4,500, said it had been Mr. Howell and his associates who first approached the local development authority to propose the deal, rather than the other way around.
"This was our decision as far as giving the property to them because we wanted to aid them any way possible and to make this development feasible," said Mr. Hulsey, who also serves as the principal staff member for the development agency.
Mr. Howell confirmed that he had made the approach, but he and his associates said the idea of using the development agency as an intermediary to obtain a free lease had been recommended by officials at the corps' district office.
"They said, `Look, the way our regulations look and the way we do business, this sort of thing works best,' " said Kevin C. Coutant, a partner in the firm.
-------- chemical weapons
U.S. Army Chemical Weapons Incineration Draws Lawsuit
March 13, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2003/2003-03-13-09.asp#anchor2
WASHINGTON, DC, Organizations representing communities downwind of sites where the U.S. Army plans to destroy the nation's stockpile of chemical weapons have sued the federal government for violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in its pursuit of the incineration portion of the Chemical Weapons Demilitarization program.
Under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction which entered into force in April 1997, the United States must destroy its stockpile of chemical weapons within 10 years, by April 2007. Incineration has been the U.S. Army's preferred method of destruction, but the plaintiffs claim less harmful technologies are available but are not being used at all the destruction facilities.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Federal District Court in for the District of Columbia, claims the Army "failed to adequately assess and compare the impacts from the incineration of chemical weapons with non-incineration alternatives" and, "failed to update their assessments of the impacts expected from the baseline incineration program, including the impacts on workers."
The plaintiffs cite reports from federal agencies documenting the release of live nerve agents into the environment and the exposure of facility workers to agents. In addition, the emissions from two facilities contain greater quantities of toxic compounds than contemplated in the Army's original environmental planning documents, the lawsuit charges.
The plaintiffs seek to ban any additional spending on incinerator construction or operation until the Army complies with NEPA requirements to review and update its agent destruction plans.
The Army decided to build and operate chemical weapons incinerators at eight stockpile sites in 1982. Since then, public pressure has forced the abandonment of incineration plans for the sites in Maryland, Indiana, Colorado, and Kentucky, says Craig Williams, of the plaintiff Chemical Weapons Working Group based in Berea, Kentucky, just six miles from one of the chemical weapons stockpiles.
Those four sites have now transitioned to alternative technologies that are neutralization based, not incineration based, says Williams, who adds that the neutralization technology is less harmful to the environment and public health than incineration.
The lawsuit covers the sites in Umatilla, Oregon; Tooele, Utah; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; and Anniston, Alabama which all still are using or intend to use incineration. The Tooele site has been shut down since July 15, 2002 because of a serious worker exposure to GB agent also called Sarin, although no fatalities resulted. The other three are constructed but have never been operated.
So far, the Army has destroyed 8,082 tons of chemical agent, roughly 25 percent of the stockpile in the United States.
Michael Parker, Acting Director of the Army's newly created Chemical Materials Agency (Provisional) states that "safety remains the Army's number one priority" in destroying the weapons held at the eight stockpile sites and at numerous non-stockpile locations. "The cornerstone of the destruction program has been and remains the safety of the public, the workers, and the environment," he said.
In 2002, the Army accomplished much in its chemical weapons destruction program, including the destruction of GB agent at Tooele, building of a destruction facility at Pine Bluff, completion of testing efforts at a facility at Anniston, selection of destruction technologies at Pueblo, Colorado, and at Richmond, Kentucky; and acceleration of the neutralization programs at Aberdeen, Maryland, and Newport, Indiana.
Evelyn Yates, leader of Pine Bluff for Safe Disposal in Arkansas, summarized the plaintiffs' position, "If some communities are being afforded safer destruction methods, Why not here in Arkansas and at the other sites? We all deserve 'maximum protection' as directed by Congress and required by federal law."
-------- colombia
'Peasant' Force Takes Shape in Colombia
Under Watchful Eye Of Army, Units Begin Hometown Patrols
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 13, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17419-2003Mar12?language=printer
SAN JACINTO, Colombia -- A few months ago, David Garcia was washing cars in the seaside resort of Cartagena, making ends meet but little more. Now, with a uniform and gun, the 22-year-old is a recruit in President Alvaro Uribe's experiment to bring security to Colombia's countryside while avoiding the pitfalls of history.
Garcia is a "peasant soldier," one of 18,000 the government plans to deploy this year. The program represents a new way for Colombia's young men to complete mandatory military service, by remaining in home towns that for decades have been the primary battlefields of the country's civil war. Until now, conscripts had been dispatched to distant war zones, if they bothered to show up for military service at all.
Having promised a broader war against Colombia's various guerrilla forces, Uribe is hoping the stay-at-home incentive encourages young men such as Garcia to fight on the government's side, rather than join an insurgency that has operated in this northern Colombian town like a family tradition.
Garcia was raised in this parched valley along with the other members of his 36-member platoon that is now settling into a hilltop camp. But it is just those deep local roots that worry commanders, who are concerned that these unseasoned platoon members might harbor mixed loyalties, as the government tries for the first time in decades to impose its military authority on small towns.
"I know this place and these people," Garcia said, cradling a new Galil assault rifle. "For me this is the start of a new kind of life."
Uribe's effort to shift the balance of Colombia's long war in the government's favor will depend largely on his success in such places as San Jacinto, a grid of mostly dirt streets and tin-roof houses in the foothills of a strategic mountain range 360 miles north of Bogota, the capital.
The peasant soldier program is designed to free up Colombia's resource-poor military to become a more offensive force. Peasant soldiers will take over patrolling town centers, allowing combat forces to fan out into the countryside in search of guerrilla columns and camps.
In the past month, nearly 6,000 peasant soldiers have been deployed, bringing a permanent government security presence to 133 towns for the first time. Their training emphasizes social outreach over military tactics, but the program has recalled for many human rights organizations the government-sanctioned community defense groups of the late 1990s that, in some cases, evolved into anti-guerrilla death squads.
Colombia's largest rebel insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has drawn on San Jacinto's 28,000 residents for decades to fill its ranks and bank accounts. So deeply had the insurgency infiltrated community life that the government closed the main high school here after determining that classes had largely become tutorials in Marxist thought and guerrilla recruiting. The previous mayor is in jail, accused of diverting city funds to the rebels.
"The guerrillas in this region operate like a large family gang, and this program is an effort to break that," said Lt. Col. Cesar Augosto Cardona, commander of the 3rd Marine Infantry Battalion that operates here.
In August, Cardona said, the arrest of 58 members of a local FARC front revealed that every one of them was related, ties he is afraid may extend into the ranks of the peasant soldiers. His battalion has received three, 36-member peasant soldier platoons in the past month, as well as three, 50-member platoons of regular troops to work alongside them. The deployment increased his troop strength to 800 men, a level that exceeds guerrilla forces in his security sector for the first time in decades.
"Whether these new [peasant] platoons have been infiltrated is of great concern and something we are all watching very closely," he said.
At a farm called La Pujanza, occupying a hilltop overlooking the only highway through town, the platoon spent its first days painting barracks, burning trash and clearing tall grass that could be used as cover in a guerrilla attack. The lieutenant in charge watched over new troops, including Dario Jose Gonzalez, 20, a soldier who once worked on a remote farm passed frequently by guerrilla forces.
"There are many guerrillas here in civilian clothes," Gonzalez said of his town. "Now it's a matter of watching out for them."
The lieutenant is watching particularly for those who appear overly interested in operational details of future missions or in overhearing radio traffic. "There will be five or six guerrilla collaborators," the lieutenant said of his men. "That's the reality here, unfortunately."
In a plaza ceremony last week, 4,000 people turned out under a scorching sun as the peasant platoon swore its allegiance to the government. It was a hopeful gathering in the shadow of the turn-of-the-last-century city hall, which flies a white flag from its antique balcony. It is a plea to be left alone.
In the past, conscripts without a high school education would have been shipped out, in part to ensure that they could return home after their 18-month tours without automatically becoming guerrilla targets. That protection will be lost to peasant soldiers, whose home towns frequently feel the brunt of security policies set far away.
Uribe declared San Jacinto part of a special security zone in September, hoping to deprive the guerrillas of a vital corridor running from the Caribbean to the country's northern interior, used by the FARC to move guns and drugs. Two days after the announcement, the FARC kidnapped the brother of Mayor Ricardo Lentino, making clear in a taped statement that it was meant partly as a protest against Uribe's new security plan.
"I fear we will see the guerrilla response right here in a way that tells the government who is really in charge," said Lentino, who conducts most city business from a reinforced safe room inside his house.
In the past three years, San Jacinto has been battered by the arrival of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, a paramilitary force funded by local ranchers and business people who are the FARC's primary targets for kidnapping and extortion. The AUC works alongside the Colombian military in many regions against the guerrillas.
Until a month ago, the farm that is now the peasant soldiers' base served the same purpose for 30 to 40 paramilitary troops. It belongs to a cousin of the mayor who was approached by two AUC leaders late last year with a request that he allow a large-scale massacre on Christmas Eve. They showed him a list of would-be victims, including three town council members, but the mayor said he told them no.
"They said they would wait a few months to see if security improves under Uribe's plan, and the peasant soldiers are a big part of that," Lentino said.
From the spring of 1998 through the summer of 2001, the AUC carried out massacres in the villages around San Jacinto that had served -- sometimes involuntarily -- as guerrilla outposts for food, intelligence and recruiting. The town swelled with 4,000 refugees who now live in rented houses after their abandoned farms turn to dust.
The peasant soldiers are being groomed to help the displaced return to their villages, a collective municipal wish. Under the city hall's peaked tin roof and whirring ceiling fans, leaders of the displaced community met with the mayor and military officials a day after the peasant soldiers were sworn in. For the first time, a return appeared possible.
The meeting set a timeline for the people of Las Palmas to return to their village, which was the county breadbasket 10 miles to the east until it was abandoned following a September 1999 paramilitary massacre. A visit has been scheduled for this week under heavy military escort, followed by an inventory of what must be done to make the town inhabitable again: functioning wells, electricity, a public telephone and a passable road. The peasant soldiers will help work through the to-do list in the months ahead.
Rosa Serpa Herrera, a leader of the displaced Las Palmas residents, lives in a rented pink house off the plaza with her three children and the woman whom her son married since their forced flight. Her family worked a 600-acre farm for generations, raising cows, pigs, yucca, corn and yams for sale in San Jacinto. Without the farm, she said, she has no money to send her daughter Juliana to medical school.
"Not one family from our town has a child in university," said Serpa, her eyes tearing with frustration. But she believes that the peasant soldiers will allow her a chance to get back to her farm and her livelihood, calling their arrival "a huge step in that direction."
"We have always been completely alone," she said. "Until now, I hope."
-------- iran
Iran and Iraq Agree to Release POW's
March 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Iran.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq said Thursday it would release hundreds of Iranian prisoners next week in a gesture seeking to build popular support ahead of a threatened U.S. attack.
Iran said it would also be releasing hundreds of Iraqi prisoners, including some held captive since the 1980-88 war between the two countries. Details released in Baghdad and Tehran conflicted, however.
The Foreign Ministry in Baghdad said the agreement, signed Wednesday, applied to all Iraqi prisoners of war and all Iranian prisoners in Iraqi jails. Iraq does not acknowledge having Iranian prisoners of war.
The ministry said Iraq would release 349 Iranian criminals Monday and Tuesday, and Iran would release 941 Iraqi prisoners of war Thursday.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi confirmed an agreement but said Iran would release 1,241 Iraqi ``prisoners and captives,'' and that the exchange for the 349 Iranians held in Iraq would take place simultaneously on Monday.
``That means there will be no remaining Iraqi prisoners in Iran,'' Asefi said, according to Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Asefi also said Iran would continue to pursue the case of Iranian soldiers missing in action since the war.
Iran and Iraq have exchanged thousands of prisoners and remains of dead soldiers since the war ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire.
Such exchanges have become routine, but this announcement came as Iraq seeks to fan support among Muslims and Arabs whose governments it accuses of failing to do enough to support it against Washington.
Iran is no supporter of Saddam Hussein but has repeatedly said it opposes a unilateral U.S. attack against Baghdad.
In early March, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi proposed that instead of waiting for the United States to topple Saddam, Iraq's divided opposition should reconcile with Saddam and Iraq should hold U.N.-supervised elections. The proposal was rejected by the largest Iraqi opposition group, the Iran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and never gained momentum.
The problem of returning POWs has damaged relations between Iraq and Iran for years. Each state has accused the other of concealing how many prisoners it holds.
Since 1998, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been trying to repatriate all the remaining POWs, but the agency has said it does not know how many people were being held by both sides.
-------- iraq
Iraqi Officials Proudly Exhibit A Disputed, Dinged-Up Drone
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 13, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17650-2003Mar12?language=printer
AL-TAJI, Iraq, March 12 -- Seeking to rebut U.S. allegations that its newest and largest remote-controlled airplane can disperse chemical or biological weapons, the Iraqi government showed off the device today, revealing a makeshift contraption with wooden propellers, duct-taped wings and a dinged-up fuselage.
Perched on a stand at a military research complex north of Baghdad, the black-and-white drone appeared to have been fashioned from cannibalized aviation parts and standard craft-shop fare. The body was built with a torpedo-shaped fuel tank from a larger plane. The wings were constructed with cloth-covered balsa wood. Patches of aluminum foil were used for reinforcement.
The words "God is Great" were hand-painted in red ink on both sides.
"It's only a prototype," said the director of the drone project, Brig. Imad Abdul Latif.
Under normal circumstances, the Iraqi government would not have invited several dozen foreign journalists inside a military research facility to gawk at such an inelegant flying machine. But today, lack of sophistication was the point.
In a report released Monday, U.N. weapons inspectors stated that Iraq had not declared the drone as required under two separate Security Council resolutions. The Bush administration promptly seized upon the statement to bolster its argument that Iraq had been flouting U.N. disarmament rules. John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the drone could travel beyond U.N.-imposed limits, while Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said it could dispense biological and chemical weapons and "should be of concern to everybody."
Iraqi officials dismissed those comments as untrue, arguing that the drone was included in a weapons declaration submitted to the inspectors, that the aircraft's range is significantly less than the 93-mile limit and that it is not able to spread chemical or biological agents.
"He's making a big mistake," Latif said of Powell. "He knows very well that this aircraft is not used for what he said."
U.N. officials acknowledged today that the drone was mentioned in a semi-annual arms declaration that Iraq submitted in January. The U.N. officials also said they were not sure whether the aircraft could exceed range restrictions or carry prohibited weapons. One official privately cast doubt on those possibilities, noting that the drone did not appear to have guidance and cargo technology sophisticated enough to do those things.
Air Force Gen. Ibrahim Hussein said the radio-controlled drone had never flown more than two miles. Although its wingspan of 24.5 feet has prompted concern that it could fly long distances, Latif said the remote-piloted aircraft could not be guided from more than five miles away and needs to be close enough to be seen by ground controllers. He said the exact range could be determined only after more testing.
Hussein said the drone was designed to be used for "reconnaissance, jamming and aerial photography."
"These are common uses all over the world," he said. "We have full rights to do this."
He insisted that the Iraqi military had not considered using the device to distribute biological or chemical weapons, which Iraq claims it does not possess. "We have not even thought of this issue," he said.
The controversy over the drone erupted when the U.N. inspection commission released a 173-page document on its Web site Monday titled "Unresolved Disarmament Issues, Iraq's Proscribed Weapons Programs," which had been provided privately to Security Council members on Friday. The document stated that "recent inspections have also revealed the existence of a drone with a wingspan of 7.45 meters [24.5 feet] that has not been declared by Iraq."
U.N. officials conceded today that the statement was inaccurate. They said Iraq declared the drone in question but listed the wingspan as about 13 feet, not the actual 24.5, which probably prompted some confusion among the people writing the report.
Hussein said the error was a typo that was corrected in a Feb. 18 letter to the inspectors. "When a man is to prepare a lot of documents or to write a lot of things, it is quite natural that he makes some kind of typing mistakes," he said.
It was not clear why Iraq did not also include the drone in a Dec. 8 weapons declaration that was supposed to provide a full, final and complete accounting of its weapons programs.
Although the inspectors paid a visit on Feb. 10 to the military research complex here, known as the Ibn Fernas State Company, they did not see the drone, said Hiro Ueki, a spokesman for the inspection operation in Baghdad. The inspectors were looking for other, smaller drones during that visit. It was not until Feb. 17, during a search of the Samarra East flight-test facility in the town of Al-Mutassem, that the inspectors first saw the large drone, Ueki said. He said the inspectors measured the device.
The following day, Iraq sent the letter correcting the wingspan.
On March 4, the inspectors returned to Ibn Fernas to seek more information on the 24.5-foot drone, known as an RPV-30A, and two smaller drones. The next day, they went to the flight-test site, where they found the two small drones, and two even smaller devices called Pigeons, in addition to the RPV-30A, U.N. officials said. The RPV-30A was being dismantled when the inspectors arrived, the officials said, which fueled concern that the device was going to be destroyed or hidden from inspectors.
But U.N. and Iraqi officials said today that dismantling drones is a standard practice. The RPV-30A, which was put back together for the benefit of journalists today, was quickly disassembled after the presentation, according to a CNN reporter who arrived at the site late.
U.S. officials accused the chief U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, of playing down the drone in an oral update to the Security Council on Friday. Blix and other inspectors said the issue was not given more prominence because it was under investigation and no firm conclusions have been reached.
The inspectors have asked Iraq to provide "credible evidence" about the drones, including the names of scientists who worked on them and foreign suppliers involved in the project, as well as details about their engines and guidance systems. Latif said he is willing to answer any questions the inspectors ask him.
----
IRAQI WEAPONS
Iraq Shows One of Its Drones, Recalling Wright Brothers
March 13, 2003
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/international/middleeast/13DRON.html
AL TAJI, Iraq, March 12 - To hear senior Bush administration officials tell it, Iraq's latest pilotless drone has the potential to be one of Saddam Hussein's deadliest weapons, able to deliver terrifying payloads of chemical and biological warfare agents across Iraq's borders to Israel or other neighboring states. It could even, they say, be broken down and smuggled into the United States for use in terrorist attacks.
But viewed up close today by reporters hastened by Iraqi officials to the Ibn Firnas weapons plant outside Baghdad, the vehicle the Iraqis have code-named RPV-30A, for remotely piloted vehicle, looked more like something out of the Rube Goldberg museum of aeronautical design than anything that could threaten Iraq's foes. To the layman's eye, the public unveiling of the Iraqi prototype seemed to lend the crisis over Iraq's weapons an aura less of deadly threat than of farce.
The visit to the drone factory was nevertheless a master class in the problems confronting United Nations weapons inspectors in sorting truth from fiction in daily forays that have now taken them to nearly 800 different sites across Iraq in 15 weeks of searching.
At scores of other military factories and design centers, as well as airfields, laboratories, bottling plants, seed storage facilities and other improbable destinations, the Iraqis' professed determination to prove themselves free of banned weapons appears to have thrown up an endless array of vexing new questions.
At the Ibn Firnas factory, visited five times by inspectors looking into the issue of banned drones, the unresolved questions were many.
Was the RPV-30A the craft that American intelligence spotted last summer, flying a "racetrack pattern" at a nearby airfield, or were there other undeclared drones, perhaps less amateurish and fragile than the one put on display? If, as American intelligence officials have said, Iraq has been working on drones as weapons delivery systems for at least 10 years, the prototype shown today suggested that progress has been painfully slow.
Resting on trestles on a sidewalk, the drone seemed like a sad, patched-together affair. Its two tiny engines, each about the size of a whiskey bottle, and attached to minuscule wooden propellers, looked about powerful enough to drive a Weed Whacker, as one wag present suggested. Like a primitive biplane from the earliest days of flight, its wings and twinned tail fins were made of wood and stretched fabric. Swathes of plastic masking tape covered the wing joints.
Metal fastening plates had been crudely drilled for screws that appeared to have been forgotten, and electrical actuators for the ailerons and other flight surfaces were secured to the outside of the craft, unprotected against weather.
As if only divine providence could keep it aloft, the vehicle's white-and-black fuselage was painted at several places with the words of the Muslim prayer, "God is great," hand-lettered in red. The craft's name, "Al Quds-10," was taken from the Arabic name of Jerusalem, which Mr. Hussein has frequently vowed to conquer for the Arabs.
By summoning reporters to the information ministry at short notice, then escorting them on a viewing of the drone, Iraqi officials showed again the mixture of alarm and contempt with which they have reacted to intensifying American pressures. Faced with the imminent threat of war over Washington's allegations that it is continuing to hide and develop weapons of mass destruction, the Baghdad government has been keeping a minute-by-minute vigil on satellite television and news agency reports of American pronouncements, then reacting fast to those they consider most damaging.
The display of the drone today followed days of mounting agitation by the United States and Britain on the issue.
The subject was first broached at the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5 by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who set out American concerns about "unmanned aerial vehicles" under development by Iraq in the context of a crucial presentation of American evidence against Mr. Hussein's government. On that occasion, Mr. Powell warned that the drones could carry biological and chemical warheads outside Iraq's borders, and could even be smuggled into the United States.
On Friday, the issue came into still sharper focus when a written report delivered to the Council by Hans Blix, one of the two chief United Nations weapons inspectors, recorded the discovery of a drone with a wingspan of 24 feet that required further investigation to see whether it contravened United Nations weapons bans. A fact sheet put out by the State Department on Monday described the drone as having a "drop tank system," a spraying mechanism that could be used to spread lethal germs.
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said the discovery heightened concerns that drones with chemical or biological weapons could be used against American troops in coming weeks. Then today, Britain included a demand that Mr. Hussein admit to possession of banned drones as one of the conditions to be set in a new United Nations resolution that Britain and the United States have said they would like to see passed later this week, setting a deadline for Iraqi compliance that could be a trigger for war.
The Iraqi officer who identified himself today as the drone project manager, Brig. Gen. Imad Abdul Latif, said with a note of self-reproach that the RPV-30A's early test flights had been so wretched that it had ventured no further than two miles from the airfield, and that it had been grounded following "certain technical problems which had to do with aerodynamic design and engines."
In any case, he and other officials said, the vehicle could not be controlled from a distance of more than five miles, in good weather, since its controllers tracked it "with the naked eye."
As for the allegation that RPV-30A could deliver chemical and biological weapons, Gen. Latif scoffed. "This is impossible," he said. "This matter should be taken into consideration from the very beginning of the design - there should be safety measures, from the beginning, in the design."
In any event, he said, the plant had never received any instruction, "verbally or in writing" to develop drones that could carry chemical or biological payloads.
Another officer, Gen. Ibrahim Hussein, director general of the plant, said the craft had been designed with a view to "reconnaissance, jamming and aerial photography."
The vehicle on display, which appeared to have a fuselage about six feet long and was fashioned from a pod taken from the wing of a much larger aircraft, had no visible payload. Between the two engines, mounted fore and aft of the fuselage, the pod appeared to be empty.
Then there was the issue of the self-professed Iraqi typing error that was said to have confused the issue of whether the Iraqis had declared the RPV-30A to the inspectors, as required, or not. It is a niggling issue, but one characteristic of the manifold anomalies that have ensnared the inspections.
To the allegation that they had attempted to hide the RPV-30A, Iraqi officials said today that although they failed to list it in the 12,000-page declaration to the United Nations on Dec. 7 that set the stage for the inspections, they had done so in another report on Jan. 15.
"He's making a big mistake," Brig. Latif said of Mr. Powell. "He knows very well that this aircraft is not used for what he said."
----
Until war starts, Iraqis urged not to surrender
By PAUL DE LA GARZA,
St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
March 13, 2003
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/03/13/Worldandnation/Until_war_starts__Ira.shtml
TAMPA -- The rumor within the U.S. military spread like wildfire, from Kuwait to Qatar to the Pentagon.
A dozen or more Iraqi soldiers supposedly tried to surrender to U.S. and British forces Sunday night along the Iraqi border. But they were turned away because neither country is at war with Iraq at the moment.
A spokesman at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar, Col. Ray Shepherd, said he had heard talk of the attempted surrender but could not confirm it. British newspapers, citing intelligence sources, ran articles earlier this week detailing the surrender, although the British Defense Ministry denied the report.
If Iraqi soldiers do try to surrender before war starts, Shepherd said, there's not much U.S. forces can do except turn them over to the local authorities.
"We would do nothing. We would let Kuwait do that. It's their country," Shepherd said. "We're not at war with anyone."
Kuwait begs to differ.
It says U.S. forces would be responsible for Iraqi prisoners, or Iraqi refugees, for the very reason Americans cite for not accepting them. There is no war.
"Either they would turn them back or they would take care of them," said Tahani Al-Terkate, the press attache at the Embassy of Kuwait in Washington. "As Kuwait is not part of this war, the Kuwaiti authorities have nothing to do with it."
White House officials referred queries to the Pentagon, saying they did not know what procedure would be if Iraqis surrender before war breaks out.
Under international law, it appears both the U.S. Central Command and Kuwait could be right.
While Iraqi soldiers may not enjoy the protections offered to Iraqi civilians, there is nothing stopping the United States from helping them.
At the same time, experts say, there is nothing stopping Kuwait, or any other neighboring country, for that matter, from helping as well.
Joung-ah Ghedini, a spokeswoman for the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington, said the finer points of international law complicate the legal status of soldiers, especially when there is no war.
An Iraqi soldier seeking asylum, for example, for fear of persecution on religious, political or social grounds, could qualify for refugee status, Ghedini said. An Iraqi soldier merely wanting to surrender to U.S. forces would not.
For now, how to deal with Iraqi deserters is unclear. "How to classify them is completely a mystery at this point," Ghedini said.
As a result, Iraqi soldiers who want out will have to wait for the United States to invade to get help. Civilians face a similar dilemma in many cases, because neighboring countries do not want them.
Saudi Arabia, for example, has security forces on its borders equipped with thermal cameras to spot fleeing Iraqis.
In Kuwait, the United States and Kuwait plan to create a humanitarian operations center to coordinate relief efforts. But Al-Terkate said it will not be operating until war breaks out.
As of Wednesday, she said, "It sits empty."
In the event of war, the United Nations refugee agency expects up to 900,000 refugees.
Hiram Ruiz, a spokesman for the Washington-based U.S. Committee for Refugees, cites a litany of worries, including whether refugees will inadvertently flee to the front lines and whether neighboring countries will let them in.
"We envision people in essence trying to head virtually in every direction," Ruiz said. "The potential for a lot of people being put in harm's way is great."
In an effort to persuade people to stay in Iraq, war planners will offer temporary food and shelter as U.S. forces advance.
U.S. propaganda piped into Iraq suggests the U.S. military wants Iraqi soldiers to wave the white flag before the first shot is fired.
A radio broadcast reminds listeners that Saddam Hussein "sacrificed thousands of soldiers" during the Iran-Iraq war.
"When the Iraqi soldiers that were taken prisoner were returned," the broadcast says, "Saddam ordered their ears to be cut off as punishment for being captured."
"Saddam does not wish the soldiers of Iraq to have the honor and dignity that their profession warrants. Do not let Saddam tarnish the reputation of soldiers any longer.
"Make the decision."
The decision, Shepherd explained, is to persuade Iraqi soldiers not to fire at coalition forces patrolling the no-fly zones in Iraq.
"We're telling them to lay down arms and don't fire at war planes," Shepherd said, "not to surrender."
But stories published in the British press earlier in the week say that a "motley bunch" of about a dozen Iraqi soldiers, hungry and poorly equipped, tried to surrender to British forces.
They had heard firing, the press reports said, and thought it was the start of the war.
-- Paul de la Garza covers MacDill Air Force Base. He can be reached at 813-226-3403, or at delagarza@sptimes.com.
----
[War crime, for sure. et]
Proof The US Planned Genocidal Acts Against Iraq
Friday, 14 March 2003
Scoop (New Zealand)
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0303/S00194.htm
Clear And Irrefutable Proof The US Government Planned And Executed Genocidal Acts Against The Iraqi People.
Information Clearing House -
News You Won't Find On CNN
From: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2108.htm 03/13/03
Our Worst Fears Confirmed.
Washington professor Tom Nagy appeared tonight (March 13 , 2003) on the national Swiss TV-channel SFDRS 1:
This Washington professor presented Pentagon papers providing hard evidence on the past and present war-doctrines of the USAF and other US troops.
These documents are hard evidence and proof of intentional genocide against the entire Iraqi civilian population. These war crimes we committed by destroying the water systems with precision bombing .
The bombing of the Iraqi water systems never was an obvious intentional target ! It' worked well in 1991, so we can expect that they'll use it once again. These US-War Criminals should be brought to justice.
A further US attack on Iraq's water purification systems will bring untold deaths due to lack of clean drinkable water and will ultimately lead to the deaths of million of Iraqi Civilians.
We really have to face this clearly.
The US-Government is prepared to commit intentionally an unimaginable GENOCIDE.
We have the common duty to do whatever it takes to stop this war, everything possible which fits the concept of Peace and avoids the concept of War .
-
Our Swiss reader has been kind enough to provide this further update.
It's already late-night here in Switzerland , but this incredible war-craze merits every effort at any time to be stopped.
So this is what happened on Swiss-TV tonight :
Tonight, March 13, 2003 , approx. 21:15 Swiss Time , the Swiss National TV-Channel SFDRS 1 broadcasted its regular weekly show MTV (stands in German for Menschen, Technik, Wissenschaft = Humans, Technology, Science). In the prime-news at 20:00 they gave already a short info on this coming issue, that an interview with US Professor Tom Nagy on the Water-War and Genocide on the Iraqi population will be broadcast in the MTW-show . Professor Nagy works at the George Washington University , Washington DC, 20052 USA, in the Department of Management Science .
His email address is nagy@gwu.edu,
his website-url is: http://home.gwu.edu/~nagy/
both of these links were provided on the Swiss-TV homepage http://www.sfdrs.ch
and there under programs (Sendungen)/MTV, and there was also the link to the declassified Pentagon papers he cited and explained in the interview :
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_511rept_91.html
During his interview (about 15 minutes altogether), Mr. Nagy presented several Pentagon-files from 1991 to 1998.
He said these documents were strictly classified until they succeeded in their struggle to get them declassified not so long ago. He showed a Pentagon paper from 1991 and explained, that it contains the USAF's strategy to intentionally destroy the Iraqi water-systems, which is a very hard breach of the Geneva-conventions and therefore a warcrime to be prosecuted under international law .
When asked by the interviewer, if he shares this view, Mr. Nagy was sad because he had to agree completely. He showed then further Pentagon papers from 1998 which made the following statements and comments necessary from his part: the USAF concluded, that this method used in the first Gulf-war was very effective, even more in combination with the fact, that the US and the UK abused the embargo to prevent Iraq from the import of chlorine for water-desinfection.
This drama caused already the death of more than 500'000 Iraqi children, Mr. Nagy said, and currently are 6000 Iraqi children dying in a week due to nothing else than the lack of clean water ... .
And then he went on saying, that the US Generals found this method really convincing and working, and that the orders given to the USAF for the coming war give precise information on the planned and intentional destruction of the entire Iraqi water-supply-system .
He said, the USAF will therefore use their high-precision laser-guided missiles again to bomb the Iraqi water-systems definitely into the ground now, and that this will be officially communicated as 'collateral damages'. And then he made a kind of résumé of all these bitter facts and had to conclude, that there is no other way to look at this than as a clear attempt to commit intentional Genocide , because the USAF and the US Army knew and knows today that this strategy will kill literally Millions of innocent Iraqis . He said it will be only a matter of months then until probably the great majority of Iraqis will have died, the children first, for they are sick already now ..... .
-
THIS MUST BECOME PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE IN THE ENTIRE USA !!!
DIA's Declassified: "IRAQ WATER TREATMMENT VULNERABILITIES (U)"
Original Document: http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_511rept_91.html
Filename:511rept.91
DTG: 221900Z JAN 91
FM: DIA WASHINGTON DC
VIA: NMIST NET
TO: CENTCOM
INFO: CENTAF
UK STRIKE COMMAND MARCENT 18 ABC NAVCENT SOCCENT 7TH CORPS ANKARA
SUBJECT: IRAQ WATER TREATMMENT VULNERABILITIES (U)
AS OF 18 JAN 91 KEY JUDGMENTS.
1. IRAO DEPENDS ON IMPORTING-SPECIALIZED EQUIPMENT-AND SOME CHEMICALS TO PURIFY ITS WATER SUPPLY, MOST OF WHICH IS HEAVILY MINERALIZED AND FREQUENTLY BRACKISH TO SALINE.
2. WITH NO DOMESTIC SOURCES OF BOTH WATER TREATMENT REPLACEMENT PARTS AND SOME ESSENTIAL CHEMICALS, IRAO WILL CONTINUE ATTEMPTS TO CIRCUMVENT UNITED NATIONS SANCTIONS TO IMPORT THESE VITAL COMMODITIES.
3. FAILING TO SECURE SUPPLIES WILL RESULT IN A SHORTAGE OF PURE DRINKING WATER FOR MUCH OF THE POPULATION. THIS COULD LEAD TO INCREASED INCIDENCES, IF NOT EPIDEMICS, OF DISEASE AND TO CERTAIN PURE-WATER-DEPENDENT INDUSTRIES BECOMING INCAPACITATED, INCLUDING PETRO CHEMICALS, FERTILIZERS, PETROLEUM REFINING, ELECTRONICS,PHARMACEUTICALS, FOOD PROCESSING, TEXTILES, CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION,AND THERMAL POWERPLANTS.
4. IRAQ'S OVERALL WATER TREATMENT CAPABILITY WILL SUFFER A SLOW DECLINE, RATHER THAN A PRECIPITOUS HALT, AS DWINDLING SUPPLIES AND CANNIBALIZED PARTS ARE CONCENTRATED AT HIGHER PRIORITY LOCATIONS. ALTHOUGH IRAQ IS ALREADY EXPERIENCING A LOSS OF WATERTREATMENT CAPABILITY, IT PROBABLY WILL TAKE AT LEAST SIX MONTHS (TO JUNE 1991) BEFORE THE SYSTEM IS FULLY DEGRADED.
5. UNLESS WATER TREATMENT SUPPLIES ARE EXEMPTED FROM THE UNSANCTIONS FOR HUMANITARIAN REASONS, NO ADEQUATE SOLUTION EXISTS FOR IRAQ'S WATER PURIFICATION DILEMMA, SINCE NO SUITABLE ALTERNATIVES,INCLUDING LOOTING SUPPLIES FROM KUWAIT, SUFFICIENTLY MEET IRAQI NEEDS.)
6. IRAQI WATER QUALITY. SURFACE WATER FROM THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVER SYSTEM SUPPLIES ABOUT HALF OF IRAQ'S LAND AREA,INCLUDING URBAN AREAS AND THEIR ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES. IRAQ'S REMAINING AREA, PRIMARILY RURAL, RELIES ON GROUND WATER FROM WELLS.THE QUALITY OF UNTREATED WATER THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY VARIES WIDELY BUT GENERALLY IS POOR. HEAVY MINERALIZATION, SUSPENDED SOLIDS AND,FREQUENTLY, HIGH SALINITY CHARACTERIZE IRAQ'S WATER SUPPLY.ALTHoUGH IRAQ HAS MADE A CONSIDERABLE EFFORT TO SUPPLY PURE WATER TO ITS POPULATION, THE WATER TREATMENT SYSTEM WAS UNRELIABLE EVEN BEFORE THE UNITED NATIONS SANCTIONS SALINITY CHARACTERIZE IRAO'S WATER SUPPLY.ALTHOUGH IRAQ HAS MADE A CONSIDERABLE EFFORT TO SUPPLY PURE WATER TO ITS POPULATION, THE WATER TREATMENT SYSTEM WAS UNRELIABLE EVEN BEFORE THE UNITED NATIONS SANCTIONS WERE IMPOSED. MOST IRAOIS PREFER TO DRINK IMPORTED BOTTLED WATER.
7. THE MINERALS IN THE WATER INCLUDE CONCENTRATIONS OF CARBONATES, SULPHATES, CHLORIDES, AND, IN SOME LOCATIONS, NITRATES.DRINKING HEAVILY MINERALIZED WATER COULD RESULT IN DIARRHEA AND,OVER THE LONG TERM, STONES FORMING WITHIN THE BODY. FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS, PIPES AND OTHER EOUIPMENT WOULD SCALE (BECOME ENCRUSTED), EVENTUALLY CAUSING PLANTS TO SHUT DOWN. SCALING IN BOILERS WOULD CAUSE EXPLOSIONS IF NOT PREVENTED OR REMOVED.
8. MUCH OF IRAO'S GROUND WATER SUPPLIES ARE BRACKISH TO SALINE. THE,LARGE RESERVOIRS NEAR BAGHDAD--THE THARTHAR, -. HABBANIYAH, AND AL MILH LAKES--ARE SALINE. SINCE THESE LAKES SERVE AS CATCH BASINS FOR FLOODS ON THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVERS, THE IRAOIS MUST REDUCE THE WATER VOLUME IN-THE LAKES DURING THE LOW-WATER SEASON. EVAPARATlON DURING THE SUMMER -ACCOMPLISHES THIS IMPART. SINCE REDUCING THE WATER VOLUME IN THE LAKES ONLY INCREASES SALINITY, THE IRAQIS FLUSH THE LAKES BY DIVERTING FRESH WATER FROM UP STREAM ON THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES. THE FLOW IS DISCHARGED FURTHER DOWNSTREAM TO AVOID FILLING THE BASINS. SINCE THE DISCHARGE OCCURS WHERE THE RIVERS ENTER THE MESOPOTAMIAN PLAIN, THE DISCHARGE INCREASES THE NATURAL SALINITY OF THE WATERS DOWNSTREAM, AFFECTING IRRIGATED AGRICULTURAL LANDS IRAQ SPECIALIZES IN- SALINE-RESISTANT CROPS SUCH AS BARLEr AND DATES) AND URBAN AREAS, INCLUDING BAGHDAD.THE KARKH WATER TREATMENT PROJECT FOR WESTERN BAGHDAD HAS AN IN TAKE POINT ABOUT 40 KILOMETERS NORTH OF BAGHDAD, UPSTREAM FROM WHERE LAKE THARTHAR DISCHARGES INTO THE TIGRIS. WATER BELOW THE DISCHARGE POINT REQUIRES DESALINIZATION.
9. AT BASRAH, THE SHATT AL ARAB TENDS TO BE SALINE UNDER CONDITIONS OF LOW-RIVER WATER VOLUMES AND DEPENDING ON TIDE AND WIND DIRECTIONS. NORMALLY, THE SHATT AL ARAB AT BASRAH HAS A SALINITY OF 1,500 TO 2,000 PARTS PER MILLION (PPM). SALINITY HAS BEEN INCREASING OVER THE LAST 5 YEARS, AND IN THE FALL 1989, THE SALINITY HAD REACHED 6,000 TO 7,000 PPM, HIGHER THAN EXISTING DESALINIZATION SYSTEMS COULD HANDLE. (OCEAN SEAWATER IS ABOUT 36,000 PPM OF DISSOLVED SALTS; THE PERSIAN GULF IS APPROXIMATELY 42,000 PPM.BRACKISH WATER IS A MINIMUM OF 1,000 PPM. THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION STANDARD FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION IS 500 PPM OR LESS.GROUND WATER IN IRAO'S LOWER MESOPOTAMIAN BASIN RANGES FROM 5,000 TO 60,000 PPM, WITH SOME LOCATIONS REACHING 80,000). SALINE WATER IS UNFIT FOR DRINKING AND CORRODES INDUSTRIAL PIPES OR OTHER EXPOSED EQUIPMENT.
10. (U) SUSPENDED SOLIDS, PRIMARILY SILT, IN THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVER SYSTEM INCREASE WITH WATER VOLUME. UNLESS REMOVED FROM THE WATER, THESE PARTICLES WOULD CLOG PIPES AND FILTERS AND WOULD REQUIRE STRAINING BEFORE CONSUMPTION BY END USERS.
11. IRAQ'S RIVERS ALSO CONTAIN BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS,POLLUTANTS, AND ARE LADEN WITH BACTERIA. UNLESS THE WATER IS PURIFIED WITH CHLORINE EPIDEMICS OF SUCH DISEASES AS CHOLERA,HEPATITIS, AND TYPHOID COULD OCCUR.)
12. WATER TREATMENT REGIMES. WATER TREATMENT IS SPECIFIC TO THE IMPURITIES OF THE WATER TREATED AND TO THE APPLICATION FOR WHICH THE WATER WILL BE USED. THE BASIC PROCESS REQUIRES CLARIFICATION (REMOVING SUSPENDED SOLIDS), FILTRATION, AND, FOR DRINKING AND SOME INDUSTRIAL USES, PURIFICATION. IN IRAQ, THE PROCESS ALSO INCLUDES DESALINATING AND WATER SOFTENING.
13. CLARIFICATION REQUIRES ADDING FLOCCULANTS AND COAGULANTS TO THE WATER. THE IRAOIS USE ALUMINUM SULPHATE ALTHOUGH IRON SULPHATES ARE ACCEPTABLE TO BIND THE SUSPENDED SOLIDS INTO CLUMPS FOR SETTLING. IF NOT REMOVED, THE SEDIMENTS, OR SLUDGE, WOULD CLOG THE FILTRATION SYSTEM (PROBABLY SAND) AND SHUT DOWN THE WATER PURIFICATION PLANT UNTIL THE CLOGS WERE REMOVED. ALUMINUM SULPHATE SUPPLY LEVELS ARE KNOWN TO BE CRITICALLY LOW, SINCE IRAQ TRIED AND FAILED TO OBTAIN PRECURSOR CHEMICALS FROM JORDAN FOR ITS MANUFACTURE.
14. CHLORINATION NORMALY IS ACCOMPLISHED DURING SEVERAL STAGES OF PURIFICATION, INCLUDING THE INITAL TREATMENT STAGE TO PREVENT THE EQUIPMENT FROM LIMING AND TO KILL PATHOGENS JUST PRIOR TO STORING THE FULLY TREATED WATER. THE CHLORINE USED IN MOST PLANTS IS EITHER SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE, A LIOUID, OR CALCIUM HYPOCHLORITE, A POWDER. IF THEY ARE EQUIPPED WITH INJECTORS, LOW-CAPACITY PLANTS CAN USE CHLORINE GAS DIRECTLY. IRAO'S PLANT IN FALLUJA AND THE PC-I PETROCHEMICAL PLANT AT BASRAH PRODUCE SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE AND, AS A BY-PRODUCT, CAUSTIC SODA, WHICH IS USED TO ADJUST THE PH OF WATER SUPPLIES. NORMALLY, BOTH LOCATIONS PRODUCE RELATIVELY SMALL QUANTITIES OF CHLORINE FOR INDUSTRIAL AND SOME MUNICIPAL USE; CHLORINE FOR MUNICIPAL SUPPLIES ALSO IS IMPORTED.RECENT REPORTS INDICATE THE CHLORINE SUPPLY IS CRITICALLY LOW. ITS IMPORTATION HAS BEEN EMBARGOED, AND BOTH MAIN PRODUCTION PLANTS EITHER HAD BEEN SHUT DOWN FOR A TIME OR HAVE BEEN PRODUCING MINIMAL OUTPUTS BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF IMPORTED CHEMICALS AND THE INABILITY TO REPLACE PARTS. PREVIOUSLY WHEN SUPPLIES WERE LOW, THE IRAQI SHAVE STOPPED CHLORINATING THE DRINKING WATER, BUT ONLY FOR SHORT PERIODS. TO RETARD ALGAE GROWTH, WHICH COULD CLOG PIPES, COPPER SULPHATE NORMALLY IS ADDED TO THE WATER. BUT THIS PRACTICE HAS NOT BEEN VERIFIED IN IRAO, AND SUPPLIES OF COPPER SULPHATE ARE UNKNOWN.SULFURIC ACID TYPICALLY IS ADDED AS WELL, BUT IRAQ PROBABLY CAN PRODUCE SUFFICIENT SUPPLIES.
15. IRAQ APPARENTLY USES LIME, AT LEAST AT THE NEW KARKH TREATMENT PLANT, TO SOFTEN WATER. THE LIME PRECIPITATES COLLOIDAL CARBONATE IMPURITIES FROM THE WATER. SODA ASH AND ZEOLITES ALSO NORMALLY ARE USED TO REMOVE NONCARBONATE MINERAL IMPURITIES, BUT THEIR USE IN IRAO HAS NOT BEEN DETERMINED. LOCAL COMPANIES SELL BOTTLED SOFT WATER IN IRAO, SUGGESTING THAT MUNICIPAL WATER SYSTEMS DO NOT NORMALLY SOFTEN WATER. IRAQ SHOULD HAVE NO SHORTAGES OF LIME. HOWEVER, THE LACK OF SOFTENING CHEMICALS REPORTEDLY HAS INCAPACITATED THE BOTTLED SOFT-WATER INDUSTRY.
16. BETWEEN 1982 AND 1990, SOME IRAOI INDUSTRIES INSTALLED REVERSIBLE ION EXCHANGE ELECTRODIALYSIS MEMBRANE SYSTEMS, OBTAINED FROM AN AMERICAN SOURCE, TO SOFTEN AND DESALINATE WATER. THE MEMBRANES LAST 5 TO 7 YEARS AND DO NOT REQUIRE CHEMICAL PRETREATMENT OF THE WATER. THEY NORMALLY SERVE SMALLER VOLUME REQUIREMENTS.HOWEVER, A MAJOR OIL REFINERY, AL DAURA IN BAGHDAD, INSTALLED THIS SYSTEM IN 1985, AND IT PRODUCES 24,000 CUBIC METERS OF PURIFIED WATER PER DAY.
17. ABOUT ONE QUARTER OF ALL IRAOI WATER SUPPLIED FOR INDUSTRIAL AND HUMAN CONSUMPTION REQUIRES DESALINIZATION. IRAO RELIES ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY ON ION EXCHANGE OR REVERSE OSMOSIS SYSTEMS RATHER THAN MULTISTAGE FLASH UNITS. ION EXCHANGE AND REVERSE OSMOSIS MEMBRANES ARE SPECIFIC TO THE TYPE OF EQUIPMENT OF WHICH THEY ARE A COMPONENT, AS ARE THE CHEMICALS REOUIRED. PREVIOUS IRAQI USE OF SUBSTITUTES HAS NOT BEEN SATISFACTORY. IRAO REPORTEDLY DEPENDS ON IMPORTED MEMBRANES AND IMPORTS CHEMICALS FROM SEVERAL SOURCES. IRAQ HAD NOT COMPLETED THE MAJOR PURCHASE AND DELIVERY OF SPARE MEMBRANES BEFORE INVADING KUWAIT. ATTEMPTS TO PROCURE MEMBRANES SINCE THE UN SANCTIONS WERE IMPOSED HAVE FAILED. SINCE THE ATTEMPT TO IMPORT MEMBRANES CORRESPONED TO THEIR NORMAL REPLACEMENT PERIOD, IRAQ APPARENTLY DID NOT STOCKPILE ABUNDANT SPACE MEMBRANES OR CHEMICALS AND PROBABLY HAD NO MORE THAN A 2-MONTH SUPPLY PRIOR TO THE INVASION.
18. POLYAMIDE MEMBRANES WHICH IRAO USES IN SOME DESALINIZATION EOUIPMENT, DETERIORATE WHEN EXPOSED TO CHLORINE IONS.PRIOR TO PASSING THROUGH THE MEMBRANE, WAT-ER IS TREATED WITH SODIUM METABISULPHITE TO REMOVE THE CHLORINE USED IN PRETREATMENT. THE CHLORINE THEN IS RE-STORED FOR LATER PURIFICATION. THE STATUS OF SODIUM METABISULPHITE SUPPLIES IS NOT KNOWN, BUT SUPPLIES PROBABLY ARE DWINDLING, WHICH WILL ESCALATE FAILURES OF THIS MEMBRANE TYPE.IRAO ALSO USES CELLULOSE ACETATE MEMBRANES (AN OLD TECHNOLOGY),WHICH HAVE AN EXCEPTIONALLY SHORT LIFE AND ARE SUSCEPTIBLE TO BIOLOGICAL CONTAMINATION. IRAO REPORTEDLY CAN MANUFACTURE CELLULOSE MEMBRANES, BUT THE AVAILABILITY OF PRECURSOR STOCKS IS PROBABLY LOW.IRAQ HAD BEEN ACOUIRING REVERSE ELECTRODIALYSIS ION EXCHANGE MEMBRANES PRIOR TO THE UN SANCTIONS. HOWEVER, MOST SYSTEMS USE REVERSE OSMOSIS OR UNIDIRECTIONAL ELECTRODIALYSIS, WHICH, UNLIKE REVERSE ELECTRODIALYSIS MEMBRANES, REOUIRE CHEMICALS TO MAKE THEM WORK.)
19. INDUSTRIAL WATER TREATMENT. INDUSTRIES REQUIRE TREATED WATER, AND THE TYPE OF TREATMENT DEPENDS ON THE APPLICATION. NORMALLY, SOFTENING AND DESALINIZATION ARE REOUIRED TO PREVENT PIPE SAND EOUIPMENT FROM CORRODING OR SCALING. IN THE PETRO CHEMICAL INDUSTRY, WATER USED FOR COOLING IS PARTIALLY TREATED TO PREVENT SCALING. WATER USED IN THERMAL POWERPLANTS OR REFINERIES TO PRODUCE STEAM MUST BE PURE TO PREVENT BOTH CORROSION AND SCALING.OTHERWISE, LOSS OF CAPABILITY COULD OCCUR WITHIN 2 MONTHS. IN ADDITION, FOOD PROCESSING, ELECTRONIC, AND, PARTICULARLY,PHARMACEUTICAL PLANTS REOUIRE EXTREMELY PURE WATER THAT IS FREE FROM BIOLOGICAL CONTAMINANTS. LARGE INDUSTRIAL PLANTS, INCLUDING PETROCHEMICAL, REFINING, AND FERTILIZER PLANTS, COLLOCATE THEIR WATER TREATMENT FACILITIES. TURNKEY CONTRACTORS BUILT THESE FACILITIES, AND THE PARTS ARE SPECIFIC TO EACH SYSTEM, WHICH COMPLICATES THEIR REPLACEMENT. THE IRAOIS COULD NOT MANUFACTURE DUPLICATES AND THEIR IMPORTATION IS EMBARGOED.)
20. IRAQI ALTERNATIVES. IRAQ COULD TRY CONVINCING THE UNITED NATIONS OR INDIVIDUAL COUNTRIES TO EXEMPT WATER TREATMENT SUPPLIES FROM SANCTIONS FOR HUMANITARIAN REASONS. IT PROBABLY ALSO IS ATTEMPTING TO PURCHASE SUPPLIES BY USING SOME SYMPATHETIC COUNTRIES AS FRONTS. IF SUCH ATTEMPTS FAIL, IRAQI ALTERNATIVES ARE NOT ADEOUATE FOR THEIR NATIONAL REOUIREMENTS.
21. VARIOUS IRAOI INDUSTRIES HAVE WATER TREATMENT CHEMICAL SAND EQUIPMENT ON HAND, IF THEY HAVE NOT ALREADY BEEN CONSUMED OR BROKEN. IRAO POSSIBLY COULD CANNIBALIZE PARTS OR ENTIRE SYSTEMS FROM LOWER TO HIGHER PRIORITY PLANTS, AS WELL AS DIVERT CHEMICALS,SUCH AS CHLORINE. HOWEVER, THIS CAPABILITY WOULD BE LIMITED AND TEMPORARY. IRAQ PREVIOUSLY HAD ACQUIRED SEVERAL HUNDRED CONTAINERIZED REVERSE OSMOSIS MODULES FOR LOCALIZED USE THAT COULD BE RELOCATED. WITHOUT CHEMICALS AND REPLACEMENT MEMBRANES, THESE UNITS WHERE EVENTUALLY WOULD BECOME USELESS. HOWEVER, CONSOLIDATING CHEMICALS OR CANNIBALIZING PARTS AND MOVING UNITS WHERE NECESSARY COULD SUSTAIN SOME PURIFICATION OPERATIONS INDUSTRIAL PLANTS THAT ARE INOPERABLE FOR REASONS-OTHER THAN THE LACK OF WATER TREATMENT SUPPLIES COULD PROCESS WATER FOR MUNICIPAL NEEDS OR POSSIBLY RELOCATE THEIR PURIFICATION EOUIPMENT.
22. THE DIFFERENCE IN WATER TREATMENT SYSTEMS LIMITS THE BENEFITS TO IRAQ OF PLUNDERING KUWAIT'S WATER TREATMENT CHEMICALS. THE KUWAITIS RELY PRIMARILY ON DESALINATING SEAWATER, AND THEIR WATER NEEDS ARE CONSIDERABLY SMALLER THAN IRAQ'S. IRAQ COULD NOT USE CHEMICALS INTENDED FOR KUWAITI WATER TREATMENT SYSTEMS, EXCEPT FOR LIMITED QUANTITIES OF CHLORINE. ATTEMPTS TO CIRCUMVENT THE SANCTIONS TO OBTAIN WATER TREATMENT CHEMICALS SUGGEST THAT ANY USEFUL SUPPLIES FROM KUWAIT ALREADY HAVE BEEN LOOTED AND USED.
23. IRAO HAS INSTALLED A PIPELINE FROM THE DOHA DESALINIZATION PLANT IN KUWAIT THAT CONNECTS WITH DISTRIBUTION PIPES AT A WATERTREATMENT PLANT NEAR BASRAH. THIS SOURCE OF PURE WATER APPARENTLY HAS ENABLED THE PC-I PETROCHEMICAL PLANT TO OPERATE AND TO PRODUCE CHLORINE BY ELECTROLYSIS OF KUWAITI WATER MIXED WITH PURE SODIUM CHLORIDE. AT LEAST SOME OF THIS CHLORINE PROBABLY IS USED FOR MUNICIPAL WATER PURIFICATION, BUT THE OUANTITY PRODUCED WOULD BE INADEOUATE FOR NATIONAL REOUIREMENTS. MOREOVER, SOME OF THE CHLORINE PROBABLY IS USED AT THE PC-I PLANT TO MAKE POLYVINYL CHLORIDES TO CREATE THE PLASTIC SHEETS USED IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION. THE USE OF KUWAITI WATER PROBABLY WILL NOT LAST LONG SINCE THE DOHA PLANT USES THE MULTISTAGE FLASH DESALINIZATION PROCESS, WHICH REOUIRES ACID DOSING OR THE ADDITION OF POLYMERS TO PREVENT SCALING OF THE HEAT EXCHANGES. THE UN SANCTIONS MAY PREVENT RESUPPLY OF THESE CHEMICALS. INTENSIVE MAINTENANCE ALSO IS REOUIRED TO KEEP THE UNITS OPERATING, AND THAT PROBABLY WOULD REOUIRE THE SERVICES OF TRAINED KUWAITI EMPLOYEES SINCE IRAQ HAS LITTLE EXPERIENCE WITH MULTISTAGE FLASH UNITS.
24. IRAQ'S BEST SOURCES OF QUALITY WATER ARE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF THE NORTH AND NORTHEAST, WHERE MINERALIZATION AND SALINITY ARE WITHIN ACCEPTABLE LIMITS. FOR THE SHORT TERM, IRAO CONCEIVABLY COULD TRUCK WATER FROM THE MOUNTAIN RESERVOIRS TO URBAN AREAS. BUT THE CAPABILITY TO GAIN SIGNIFICANT QUANTITIES IS EXTREMELY LIMITED. THE AMOUNT OF PIPE ON HAND AND THE LACK OF PUMPING STATIONS WOULD LIMIT LAYING PIPELINES TO THESE RESERVOIRS. MOREOVER, WITHOUT CHLORINE PURIFICATION, THE WATER STILL WOULD CONTAIN BIOLOGICAL POLLUTANTS. SOME AFFLUENT IRAQIS COULD OBTAIN THEIR OWN MINIMALLY ADEQUATE SUPPLY OF GOOD OUALITY WATER FROM NORTHERN IRAOI SOURCES.IF BOILED, THE WATER COULD BE SAFELY CONSUMED. POORER IRAQIS AND INDUSTRIES REQUIRING LARGE OUANTITIES OF PURE WATER WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO MEET THEIR NEEDS.
25. PRECIPITATION OCCURS IN IRAQ DURING THE WINTER AND SPRING,BUT IT FALLS PRIMARILY IN THE NORTHERN MOUNTAINS. SPORADIC RAINS,SOMETIMES HEAVY , FALL OVER THE LOWER PLAINS. BUT IRAQ COULD NOT RELY ON RAIN TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE PURE WATER.
26. THE SALINE OR ALKALINE CONTENT-OF GROUND WATER IN MOST LOCATIONS WOULD CONSTRAIN DRILLING WELLS IN THE MESOPOTAMIAN PLAIN TO OBTAIN PURER WATER MOREOVER, MUCH OF THE POPULATION USES SEPTIC TANKS, AND THE UNDERLYING GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY WOULD CONTAMINATE WELLS IN MANY LOCATIONS.))OUTLOOK)
27. IRAQ WILL SUFFER INCREASING SHORTAGES OF PURIFIED WATER BECAUSE OF THE LACK OF REOUIRED CHEMICALS AND DESALINIZATION MEMBRANES. INCIDENCES OF DISEASE, INCLUDING POSSIBLE EPIDEMICS,WILL BECOME PROBABLE UNLESS THE POPULATION WERE CAREFUL TO BOIL WATER BEFORE CONSUMPTION, PARTICULARLY SINCE THE SEWAGE TREATMENT SYSTEM, NEVER A HIGH PRIORITY, WILL SUFFER THE SAME LOSS OF CAPABILITY WITH THE LACK OF CHLORINE. LOCALLY PRODUCED FOOD AND MEDICINE COULD BE CONTAMINATED. LACK OF COAGULATION CHEMICALS WILL CAUSE PERIODIC SHUTDOWNS OF TREATMENT PLANTS FOR UNCLOGGING AND CLEANING FILTERS, CAUSING INTERRUPTIONS OF WATER SUPPLIES. AS DESALINIZATION EQUIPMENT BECOMES INOPERABLE, SALINE WATER SOURCES WILL BECOME INCREASINGLY UNUSABLE. TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT SHUT DOWNS OF INDUSTRIAL PLANTS THAT RELY ON TREATED WATER WILL MULTIPLY.CANNIBALIZING LOWER PRIORITY OPERATIONS WILL ACCELERATE THE TREND.
28. THE ENTIRE IRAOI WATER TREATMENT SYSTEM WILL NOT COLLAPSE PRECIPITOUSLY, BUT ITS CAPABILITIES WILL DECLINE STEADILY AS DWINDLING SUPPLIES INCREASINGLY ARE DIVERTED TO HIGHER PRIORITY SITES WITH COMPATIBLE EQUIPMENT. KARKH, IRAO'S LARGEST WATERTREATMENT PLANT (AND ONE OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST), WAS DESIGNED TO STORE 30 DAYS OF SUPPLIES ON SITE. THE QUANTITY OF SUPPLIES, IF ANY, NORMALLY STOCKPILED IN CENTRALIZED WAREHOUSES BEFORE SHIPMENT TO TREATMENT PLANTS IS UNKNOWN, BUT A 6 MONTH TO I YEAR SUPPLY OF CHEMICALS IS THE NORMAL INDUSTRIAL PRACTICE. HOWEVER, CURRENT IRAQI EFFORTS TO OBTAIN CHEMICALS AND MEMBRANES AND THE INSTALLATION OF A PIPELINE TO OBTAIN PURE KUWAITI WATER SUGGEST THAT THERE WAS NOT ADEOUATE STOCKPILING PRIOR TO THE INVASION OF KUWAIT. SOME CHEMICALS ARE DEPLETED OR ARE NEARING DEPLETION, AND OLDER MEMBRANES ARE NOT BEING REPLACED ON SCHEDULE. CONSEOUENTLY, IRAQ PROBABLY IS USING UNTREATED OR PARTIALLY TREATED WATER IN SOME LOCATIONS. FULL DEGRADATION OF THE WATER TREATMENT SYSTEM
PROBABLY WILL TAKE AT LEAST ANOTHER 6 MONTHS.
ENDS
-------- israel / palestine
ISRAEL BEGINS COURSES FOR INTELLIGENCE CORPS
Middle East News Line,
13 Mar 2003
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/march/03_14_2.html
TEL AVIV [MENL] -- Israel's military has begun new courses for the intelligence corps that reflect changes in battle doctrine.
Military officials said the courses are being held by the Field Intelligence Corps, part of the Ground Forces Command. The corps, established in 1999, focuses on tactical intelligence up to the level of division.
The corps has opened a school for field intelligence and the courses include training in understanding enemy tactics, navigation and reconnaissance as well as wireless communications. Much of the course is said to focus on urban and guerrilla warfare.
"Regular regiments in every command, which form sources of intelligence and combat intelligence gathering capabilities, provide the primary fighting ability against the Palestinian terror," Ground Forces Command chief Maj. Gen. Yiftah Ron-Tal said.
----
Bereaved Palestinians Get $245,000 from Saddam
Reuters
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
By Nidal al-Mughrabi
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16248-2003Mar12?language=printer
GAZA (Reuters) - Families of Palestinians killed by Israel received $245,000 in checks from Saddam Hussein on Wednesday, underscoring the Iraqi leader's continued support for a Palestinian revolt as he faces the prospect of a U.S.-led war.
Leaders of a pro-Iraq Palestinian group handed out the checks after delivering fiery speeches extolling the Iraqi president's virtues to hundreds of relatives of "martyrs" packed into a dingy YMCA hall in Gaza City.
Officials of the Palestinian Arab Liberation Front staging the ceremony said Saddam had now paid $35 million to support the kin of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip and West Bank since militants rose up against Israel there 29 months ago.
"Saddam Hussein considers those who die in martyrdom attacks as people who have won the highest degree of martyrdom," an official of the Arab Liberation Front said.
"Iraq and Palestine are in one trench. Saddam is a hero," said a banner over a mural of Saddam and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who sided with Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War against U.S.-led forces but has kept a low profile this time.
A family of a Palestinian suicide bomber received a check for $25,000 and 22 families of militants killed in fighting or of civilians killed during Israeli army offensives, incursions or air strikes got $10,000 each.
Bereaved family members, some of them weeping, chanted slogans in support of Iraq as the United States and Britain press for a U.N. Security Council ultimatum ordering Baghdad to fulfil disarmament demands by March 17 or face attack.
Palestinians under Israeli occupation rallied in support of Saddam during the Gulf War, some cheering when Iraqi Scud missiles crashed into Israeli coastal cities.
During the current uprising, Palestinian militants have staged rallies in support of Iraq against the United States.
Arafat urged the international community in a speech to parliament on Tuesday to prevent war against Iraq and give more time for weapon inspectors to say determine whether Baghdad remained in violation of Security Council disarmament edicts.
ISRAEL ACCUSES SADDAM OF FUNDING "TERROR"
Israel, which strongly favor that its guardian ally the United States take military to remove Saddam, have said that Saddam's funding for the Palestinian uprising encourages "terror."
But Palestinians say the money is used to rebuild homes destroyed by Israel and raise the children of those killed in the revolt.
"Saddam supports the families of the martyrs, not support terrorism. It is a shame that Arabs stand silent as America prepares to occupy Iraq," said Ahmed Sabah, 69, whose son was killed by an Israeli missile strike in December last year.
Israel said Sabah's son Mustafa was behind bomb attacks on three Israeli tanks which killed seven soldiers last year.
Some families said they would use the money they got to repair houses damaged or destroyed in Israeli incursions, others would use it to raise the children of dead relatives.
"America is the chief terrorist state and Israel is its deputy and representative in the Middle East," said Sabri Salama, a relative of two Palestinian teenagers killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza in January.
Ibrahim al-Za'anin, a leader of the Arab Liberation Front, hoped Wednesday's ceremony to distribute Iraqi funds to Palestinian families would not be the last.
--------
Army Kills Two Israelis by Mistake in West Bank
March 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-shooting.html
HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers and a helicopter gunship shot dead two Israeli armed guards in the West Bank on Thursday after mistaking them for Palestinian gunmen, the army said.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli troops killed four Palestinians when an army incursion in a village turned into a gun battle, military sources and witnesses said.
The army said the shooting of the Israeli guards -- which drew criticism from Israel's leading human rights group -- began when troops at Pnei Hever settlement, southeast of the city of Hebron, spotted a suspicious car approaching from around a hill.
``The unit ordered the car to stop, and after identifying the occupant as armed, shot and killed him,'' an army statement said. ``After hearing the gunfire, a second armed man ran off (from the hill). He was shot dead by a helicopter gunship.''
The army said its troops had been on high alert for a ``terrorist attack'' by Palestinian gunmen, who have carried out a spate of shootings in the area over recent days, including the killing of two Jewish settlers and a soldier.
Palestinians waging a 29-month-old uprising for statehood have often accused Israeli soldiers of being trigger-happy at checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At least 1,924 Palestinians and 726 Israelis have been killed since the revolt began.
Israeli television footage from Pnei Hever showed the windshield and bonnet of the car peppered with bullet holes.
``Perhaps this tragedy will bring home to Israelis the laxity of the army's open-fire regulations in the territories,'' said Lior Yavne, spokesman for the Israeli rights group B'Tselem.
STRICT RULES
The army insists its soldiers follow strict rules of engagement that include spoken challenges and warning shots when confronting suspects. Citing witnesses, Israeli media said the soldiers had indeed ordered the men to stop -- but in Arabic.
According to Channel 2 television, before he was killed the second man called police to report that Palestinians disguised as soldiers had ambushed him and his partner.
Military sources said the two men worked as security guards at a privately owned antenna on the hill.
The army expressed regret at the incident and said it was investigating.
In the village of Tamoun, south of the Palestinian-ruled city of Jenin, residents said four locals had been killed in exchanges of fire with Israeli troops, but had no more details.
An Israeli military source said the clash erupted after troops entered the village: ``Our forces entered Tamoun on a mission and came under fire. Troops killed four gunmen, and the clash is still going on.''
Israel has been stepping up operations in parts of the West Bank and Gaza which it believes harbour Palestinian militants.
The army said it had arrested 11 ``terror suspects'' in overnight swoops. Israeli engineers also demolished the family homes of three Palestinian militants in the West Bank, a punitive measure which Israel maintains deters attacks.
Palestinian witnesses confirmed that the houses belonged to two members of the militant group Islamic Jihad and another from al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
Such house demolitions have drawn condemnation from international human rights groups and Palestinian officials.
``Israel is continuing its policy of collective punishment and state-sponsored terrorism,'' chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters.
-------- mideast
Ocalan's war warning
Kurdish fighters train in northern Iraq
March 13, 2003
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2847991.stm
Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has warned Turkey it faces "100 years" of war if it enters Kurdish northern Iraq.
Turkey, which fears the creation of a Kurdish state, is expected to enter the north if Ankara finally allows the Americans access from its territory.
"A nationalist scramble will leave the Kurdish problem unsolved for a 100 years more," said Mr Ocalan, who led rebels inside Turkey's own Kurdish region until his capture in 1999.
The veteran Kurdish leader, who is serving a life sentence in Turkey after a trial condemned this week by the European Court of Human Rights, was speaking in a statement released through his lawyers.
He also appeared to be warning local Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq against "nationalist means".
"This applies to Turkey and to Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani," he said.
If Turkey does intervene in northern Iraq, it will ostensibly be to stem a potential tide of refugees.
Kurdish groups in northern Iraq have enjoyed effective self-rule since Saddam Hussein's defeat in the Gulf War but do not have formal statehood for themselves.
Kurdish leaders have been warning they will not accept Turkish forces on their soil.
Turkey may also be planning to track down bases of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Mr Ocalan's group, believed to be located in northern Iraq.
-------- un
U.N. civility degenerates to displays of anger
By Bill Nichols,
USA TODAY
3/13/2003
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-03-13-chaos-usat_x.htm
UNITED NATIONS - Diplomacy is not supposed to be a contact sport, particularly in this gleaming monument to international civility. But as the United States and Britain tried desperately to forge a compromise on the Iraq crisis, tensions that had been building for six months have burst into the open.
Chaos and open displays of anger have displaced decorum in the usually staid hallways of the United Nations, as backers of a U.S.-British-Spanish resolution that would open the way for war in Iraq grew increasingly fed up with war opponents - principally France, Germany and Russia.
At a March 7 council briefing to discuss the progress of weapons inspections in Iraq, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw shocked U.N. purists by referring, in a sharp aside, to French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin as "Dominique." At the U.N., first names aren't used in formal public meetings.
But as it has turned out, that was just the beginning of a descent into behavior more common in state legislatures and county boards. After a tense, three-hour meeting Wednesday night, officials from all sides complained of bullheadedness, deceit and rudeness - qualities forbidden in the genteel world of international diplomacy.
Diplomats eager to find a compromise on a second Iraq resolution were furious the French rejected a British proposal almost before it was offered - and before the Iraqis themselves had said no.
"That was an ambush," snarled a normally unflappable diplomat for a country that supports the resolution. U.S. and British officials have given up trying to conceal their anger and frustration with resolution opponents, particularly the French, who they say are determined to kill a resolution, no matter what it says.
One diplomat from a country that supports the resolution said there is now a sense that if the U.S. and Britain offered to pass 17 more Iraq resolutions over a seven-month period, France would ask for 18 resolutions over seven months and one day.
On the French side, officials sarcastically dismissed a British proposal that would hold Iraq to six disarmament benchmarks while moving the deadline for compliance out of the resolution and into an unofficial side agreement. "Must we resort to tricks?" sniffed a French official.
Russia seemed almost gleeful at the predicament U.S. and British diplomats found themselves in as they tried to sell the notion of disarmament "benchmarks." "How are those benches? Are they leaving marks?" Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov joked to reporters, expressing Russia's disdain for the latest U.S-British approach.
There was a growing feeling here that the rift within the Security Council, which many diplomats felt could somehow be papered over, was instead widening and could damage the United Nations' ability to work effectively.
Those tensions were reflected in public Thursday, when Straw called France's seeming opposition to any compromise "extraordinary." Straw said in London that "without even proper consideration, the French government have decided that they will reject these proposals."
Some diplomats held out hope for compromise, and the negotiations seemed destined to continue throughout the weekend, notwithstanding an earlier vow by the White House to force a vote this week. President Bush said at a March 6 new conference that the United States would demand a vote no matter what, but administration officials said Thursday that they might skip a vote if it was clear they would lose.
The six council members who remain officially undecided on the measure - Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan - pleaded with the big powers to find a way out. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the deadlock a "crisis."
Diplomats from the six swing countries navigated the hallways here like football wide receivers trying to avoid encroaching defensive backs. By the hour, rumors swirled about where allegiances are, and reporters swarmed ambassadors to demand the latest.
Exhausted U.S. and British officials have not given up their hope that a last-minute diplomatic gambit will break the logjam. But Washington and London seemed increasingly resigned to the idea that France or Russia would veto the measure even if backers could scrape together the nine votes needed for passage. U.S. officials believed they were close to nine votes - Chile and Mexico remained elusive and Pakistan would like to abstain - but British diplomats weren't quite so sure.
If they got nine votes, the United States and Britain would argue that the resolution gave moral authority for a war and that opponents were thwarting the will of the international community. Opponents would doubtless ask whether the hundreds of resolutions vetoed by the United States over the years - most about Israel and tensions in the Middle East - also had the force of moral authority.
That kind of impasse could create enduring divisions on the Security Council and make cooperation on issues such as North Korea's nuclear program extremely difficult to forge.
U.N.-watchers say the rancor could poison relations between council opponents. Will Russia, for example, get any U.S. help in recovering its multibillion-dollar debt from Iraq in a post-Saddam Hussein era? Or will France, Russia or Germany get any access to Iraqi oil projects in a post-war Iraq governed early on by Washington?
British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock virtually pleaded with his council colleagues late Wednesday night to find a middle ground, comparing the Iraq resolution to a badly damaged ship that will sink unless extreme measures are taken.
"We all face an important decision, probably a historic turning point," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer told the council March 7. At the moment, that sentiment may be the only thing diplomats here can agree on.
----
U.S. Raises Prospect of Abandoning Effort for U.N. Vote
March 13, 2003
The New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/international/middleeast/13CND-IRAQ.html
WASHINGTON, March 13 - The Bush administration, acknowledging today that its drive to build support for a new United Nations resolution on Iraq had bogged down, said it was willing to postpone the vote until next week, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell even suggested that Washington might simply drop its push for a vote altogether.
"The options remain - go for a vote and see what members say, or not go for a vote," Secretary Powell told a Congressional committee. "All the options that you can imagine are before us, and we will be examining them today, tomorrow and into the weekend."
For the last week, President Bush insisted that Friday was the iron-fast deadline for a decision, and that the United States would call for a vote by then no matter what the vote count appeared to be. But with the diplomatic situation deteriorating, Secretary Powell's statement showed that the Bush administration was moving to hedge its bets.
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair also said that chances were dimming for passage of the resolution, which would provide broad United Nations backing for a military move against Baghdad.
The Conservative opposition leader Duncan Smith said after meeting with Mr. Blair at 10 Downing Street, "The prime minister today told me that although they want to try to secure a second resolution in the U.N. and will continue to do so, that second resolution is now probably less likely than at any time before."
As their prospects darkened, both Washington and London angrily laid blame today on the French.
One day after Britain floated a new compromise proposal before the Security Council, the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "France rejected the British proposal even before the Iraqis did." That sentiment was echoed in London. "I find it extraordinary that without even proper consideration, the French government has decided they will reject these proposals," Foreign Minister Jack Straw said.
The British proposal set out six benchmark tests that Iraq would have to pass in the next week or so to avert an invasion, like producing the anthrax and VX nerve gas that United Nations inspectors found in past years or providing documentation that it had been destroyed.
Washington offered only qualified acceptance of the British plan on Wednesday. By today it was clear that the proposal had not turned the tide.
On Wednesday, Washington and London counted Guinea among three countries on the 15-member Security Council that had informally agreed to back the resolution, which is sponsored by the United States, Britain and Spain. But today, Guinea announced on state radio that it might abstain, putting among the six undecided members. The other two nations said to be willing to vote for the resolution, Angola and Cameroon, have said nothing publicly about how they intend to vote.
Chile is another country that Washington had looked to for support. Chile recently completed a free-trade agreement with Washington that awaits Congressional ratification. But when reporters asked President Ricardo Lagos today if he would vote with the United States, he responded, "No, that is not true."
The White House said President Bush, as he has all week, was continuing to call world leaders to seek support. Britain, meanwhile, was furiously working to tailor its new proposal to try to gain support.
One important provision calls on Saddam Hussein to give a televised address in which he will admit that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction, something Iraq has steadfastly denied, and will give them up.
Mr. Straw, the British foreign secretary, said London was willing to drop the television idea, given that other Security Council members had objected to it.
"If the only issue between us, our partners in the Security Council and Saddam Hussein is whether or not he makes a TV broadcast," Straw said, "then we'd happily drop that."
Iraq issued a blistering rejection of the British proposal today, particularly that provision.
Foreign Minister Naji Sabri called the British proposal "an aggressive plan for war." And referring to the demand that Mr. Hussein appear on television, he added: "Britain and the United States, in their attempts to personalize the issue and distract from the real intentions of their colonialist and Zionist plot against Arabs and Muslims, are trying to focus on individuals. There is no reason whatsoever for this."
Even as Iraq attacked the British plan, it issued another statement that seemed intended to undermine it. Baghdad said it would submit a report to United Nations weapons inspectors on Friday that would detail how it had disposed of its VX nerve agent. A similar report on its anthrax stores would be forthcoming "in a few days," the Iraqis said.
The United States has asserted since last summer that Iraq maintains vast stores of these and other chemical and biological agents, but Iraq has repeatedly insisted that it destroyed those stockpiles long ago. For months, weapons inspectors have been pushing Iraq to provide documentation of that.
At the Untied Nations today, Secretary General Kofi Annan repeated his call for compromise, saying, "I would urge all council members to cooperate and work in search of that compromise."
But no one seemed to be in a compromising mood. France's foreign minister, Francois de Villepin, quickly rejected the new British proposal. "It's not a question of giving Iraq a few more days before committing to the use of force," he said. "It's about making resolute progress toward peaceful disarmament, as mapped out by inspections that offer a credible alternative to war."
Within hours, Germany and Russia fell in line with France rejecting the new proposal, with Russia repeating its threat to veto any resolution calling for military action, even indirectly.
Asked today why the United States and Britain were finding it so difficult to win support for their resolution, Secretary Powell said that some council members had apparently not understood that "the U.S. was deadly serious" when the council approved a resolution last November threatening "serious consequences" if Iraq did not disarm.
As the diplomatic situation grew murkier, war planning continued. A United States military spokesman confirmed that several B-2 stealth bombers had left their base in Missouri overnight and now were in the Persian Gulf. And Britain dispatched 850 more troops to the region.
The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, acknowledging the uncertainty of the current situation, said the additional forces would provide "further flexibility to respond to a range of possible tasks and circumstances."
--------
Bush Considers Dropping U.N. Resolution
March 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Forced into a diplomatic retreat, U.S. officials said Thursday that President Bush may delay a vote on his troubled U.N. resolution or even drop it -- and fight Iraq without the international body's backing. France dismissed a compromise plan as an ``automatic recourse to war.''
Amid a swirl of recrimination and 11th-hour posturing, the White House called France's position unreasonable while U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan raised the possibility of a global summit ``to get us out of this crisis.''
Iraq braced for war, lining the streets of Baghdad with fighting positions and foxholes, while the Pentagon moved B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to bases close to Iraq.
The government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein exulted in the diplomatic tumult over a U.S.-British backed resolution that would demand that Iraq disarm by Monday. The allies ``have lost the round before it starts while we, along with well-intentioned powers in the world, have won it,'' the popular daily Babil, owned by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son, Odai, said in a front-page editorial.
Bush spent a fourth day on the telephone, consulting leaders of Britain, Bulgaria, South Korea, Poland, El Salvador and Norway.
The U.S. diplomatic drive was centered on Chile and Mexico, both members of the U.N. Security Council, a senior administration official said. Their support would ensure the United States of the minimum nine votes need for adoption of the resolution.
But France's threat to veto is taken seriously, and the administration may decide not to give France the chance by withdrawing the resolution, the official said on condition of anonymity. Bush was ready to drop the resolution, several aides said, if British Prime Minister Tony Blair didn't want it put to a vote.
Aides said the president has pushed for a U.N. vote thus far out of respect for Blair, whose support of Bush has drawn severe criticism in Britain.
Trouble loomed at every diplomatic turn.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, visiting Bush at the White House, said, ``If there is not a resolution, Ireland cannot engage in support of military action, because we work under the U.N. resolution.''
Bush sent a letter to incoming Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vice President Dick Cheney called the leader in hopes of securing permission to invade Iraq through Turkey. Hours later, Navy ships armed with Tomahawk missiles were told to move out of the Mediterranean into the Red Sea, a move that indicates weakening U.S. confidence that Turkey will grant overflight rights for U.S. planes and missiles.
The chief U.N. nuclear inspector urged the Security Council to compromise on proposed disarmament conditions for Iraq, with staggered deadlines and no ultimatum for war.
``I think there's a keen desire globally to do everything before resorting to war,'' Mohamed ElBaradei told The Associated Press.
In Baghdad, Sabri rejected a British compromise plan that would list six disarmament requirements Baghdad would have to meet or else face ``serious consequences.'' Bush had signaled he would be willing to push back the March 17 deadline seven or 10 days if the gesture would help Blair.
Russia said it would consider the plan. China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Yingfan, said he doubted the plan could lead to consensus.
The French dismissed the effort outright, sparking a trans-Atlantic shouting match.
``We cannot accept the British proposals insofar as they are part of a logic of war, a logic of automatic recourse to war,'' said French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said of France: ``They rejected it before Iraq rejected it. If that isn't an unreasonable veto, what is?''
Bush, meanwhile, backpedaled on his pledge to have a U.N. vote by Friday. Fleischer told reporters a tally could slip beyond the weekend.
Several top administration officials said a growing number of advisers believe the resolution is doomed and they want the president to cut his losses and withdraw it. Others still hold out hope for the measure.
The officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed that a key is whether Blair wants Bush to give diplomacy another weekend.
Bush and his advisers debated Thursday whether to press forward with the vote or withdraw the measure and pivot quickly to war footing. Bush has long planned to address the nation shortly after the U.N. debate is resolved and give Saddam a final ultimatum, probably including a deadline, for war.
``We are still talking to members of the council to see what is possible,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell said. ``The options remain, go for a vote and see what members say or not go for a vote.''
That's a change of policy since last week, when Bush said he wanted U.N. members to ``show their cards'' even if that meant the measure failed.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, didn't call for a vote Friday and diplomats doubted one would be called for Saturday.
In London, Iain Duncan Smith, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, emerged from a meeting with Blair to say the prime minister believed war was more likely because ``the French have become completely intransigent.''
Powell, testifying on Capitol Hill, said the ``day of reckoning is fast approaching'' for Iraq.
He cited several allies that stand ready to back the United States if the U.N. won't, including Britain, Australia, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Japan and eight eastern European countries.
-------- us
U.S. may order missile ships to Red Sea
White House: U.N. debate may stretch into next week
Thursday, March 13, 2003
CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/13/sprj.irq.main/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Navy may order about a dozen warships to move from the Mediterranean into the Red Sea as early as Thursday, as part of the preparations for a possible war with Iraq, U.S. military sources told CNN.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could sign the order later in the day, sources said.
Those warships -- equipped with surface-to-surface missiles -- then would begin rapidly moving through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea.
The ships include cruisers, destroyers and submarines, all of which fire satellite-guided Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, or "TLAMS," precision weapons with a range of approximately 1,000 miles.
Pentagon officials will not say exactly how many ships might be involved, but it is understood that there are 10 to 15 Tomahawk-capable ships that may shift position.
Once the ships are in the Red Sea, any missile launched would fly over Saudi Arabia on the way to targets in Iraq.
The shift in position was required because of Turkey's refusal to grant overflight rights. WH: Vote could be pushed back
The White House said Thursday that the debate on a new U.N. Security Council resolution that would set a deadline for Iraq to comply with previous orders to disarm could stretch into next week to give council members more time to consider a British compromise proposal.
The resolution currently on the table set a Monday deadline, and the United States had been pushing for a vote this week.
That plan would require Iraq to meet a series of benchmarks, including handing over supplies of anthrax, or proving they were destroyed; allowing Iraqi scientists and their families to travel outside the country to be interviewed by inspectors; and accounting for unmanned aircraft that the United States and Britain allege can be used to spray chemical or biological weapons.
A British official said the initial reaction from the council's six officially undecided countries -- Pakistan, Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico and Guinea -- was positive.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said rejected the British proposal saying the benchmarks "do not answer the questions put by the international community."
"It is not a question of granting a few additional days to Iraq before engaging in the recourse to force," de Villepin said, "but advancing resolutely the peaceful disarmament followed by the [U.N. weapons] inspections, which are a credible alternative to the war." (Full story)
One diplomat accused Britain and the United States of "sneaky games," saying they were trying to trick the council into authorizing the use of force against Iraq.
The council is scheduled to reconvene at 3 p.m. EST Thursday to discuss the proposal.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri also rejected the plan, saying that Great Britain and the United States are trying to get international cover for launching a war. Arab League puts off Iraq trip
The Arab League has postponed indefinitely a trip to Baghdad by a high-level delegation at the request of the Iraqi government, an official with the Bahrain Foreign Ministry said Thursday.
It was unclear why the trip was put off, but a Lebanese Foreign Ministry source explained that the delegation would not act as a mediator between the Security Council and Iraq.
Kuwait's state-run news agency quoted a Bahraini official as saying the group would "look into the necessary means for a way out from the current crisis" but would not push Saddam to step down. Some Arab leaders have supported such a proposal.
----
Shinseki Repeats Estimate of a Large Postwar Force
Reuters
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Washington Post; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18110-2003Mar12?language=printer
The Army's top general yesterday repeated his estimate that a postwar occupying force in Iraq could be as large as several hundred thousand troops, a number disputed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told a House subcommittee on defense appropriations the military could only estimate what forces might be needed after any invasion of Iraq. "It could be as high as several hundred thousand," he said, but added, "We all hope that it is something less."
Shinseki explained to reporters after the hearing that he did not mean to suggest the postwar force would be all U.S. troops. "That doesn't presume that it will be done all by us," he said.
Last month, after Shinseki voiced the same estimate in another Capitol Hill hearing, Rumsfeld told reporters that the number "is far off the mark," especially for U.S. troops. The defense secretary said other countries had promised to take part in any stabilization effort in the event of a war.
Rumsfeld also said he did not think it was logical that it would take as many forces after the conflict as it would to win the war. Defense officials say there are more than 200,000 U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf region ready for any order from President Bush to launch an invasion.
Shinseki told reporters yesterday: "This is just an estimate of what it might take. There are no specifics about what it [the postwar force] would do; those tasks are yet to be determined."
----
Pentagon seeks freedom to pollute land, air and sea
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
13 March 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=386524
The Pentagon is quietly seeking exemptions from some of America's main environmental laws, which would give the military free rein to dump spent munitions, pollute the air and poison endangered species at its bases without risk of liability for any damage.
The proposal, slipped into the fine print of the 2004 military budget last week, is enraging environmentalists and some senior figures on Capitol Hill, who say the Pentagon is taking shameless advantage of the 11 September attacks and the looming war against Iraq to wriggle out of its responsibilities to public health and the country's natural heritage.
"There is no justification whatsoever for the exemptions they are seeking. They do not even present examples of why they are seeking this exemption," John Walke, a clean air specialist with the National Resources Defence Council, said.
Among the laws the military is seeking to circumvent are the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, important pieces of legislation governing the clean-up of environmental disasters and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Navy sonars have been blamed for the deaths of whales found washed up on beaches.
The Pentagon argues that it needs the exemptions because environmental laws get in the way of training troops. That assessment is contradicted by a recent report from Congress's General Accounting Office, which saw no negative impact from environmental statutes on military readiness.
Environmentalists point out that the White House already has the authority to grant case-by-case exemptions where national security might be at stake - something that has rarely happened. They also cite last year's Pentagon budget report estimating the military's liability for environmental degradation at about $28bn (£17bn). "This is not about military readiness," said Brock Evans, a former marine now with the Endangered Species Coalition. "There are alternatives to exempting themselves from environmental laws."
The Pentagon made a similar exemption proposal last year, only to see it shot down by the Senate, controlled by Democrats at the time.
The move appears to be controversial even within the Bush administration. Christine Todd Whitman, the White House's top environmental official, told a Senate committee recently: "I don't believe that there is a training mission anywhere in the country that is being held up or not taking place because of environmental protection regulation." And John Ashcroft, the ultra-conservative Attorney General, said protecting the environment was an important element of national security. "These laws do more than just protect the health and safety of our citizens," he said. "Compliance with and enforcement of these laws makes a real difference in our level of national preparedness."
The issue will be discussed today by two congressional subcommittees on armed services readiness. One leading Democratic congressman, John Dingell of Michigan, said the military had been trying for years to "get out from under" environmental laws. "But using the threat of 9/11 and al-Qa'ida to get unprecedented environmental immunity is despicable."
Pollution from the military has provoked regular environmental scandals - from rocket fuel contaminating drinking water to reports of cancer clusters and other illnesses possibly caused by jet fuel emissions or pipelines carrying heavy-duty fuel beneath houses.
----
Military seeks exemption from laws
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030313-94404796.htm
The Defense Department is asking for exemptions from environmental laws they say are burdensome and restrict military training that leaves troops unprepared for battle.
"National security concerns mandate that the military be able to train effectively, test systems adequately and realistically before fielding, and conduct military operations," said the proposal to Congress, which begins hearings today.
Extensions of environmental laws have significantly restricted the military's use of testing ranges, as well as live-fire testing and training, according to the proposal.
The Readiness and Range Preservation Initiative would give the military immunity to the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and Superfund law. The Pentagon, instead, would operate under the Sikes Act, which requires the military to integrate natural-resources protections with actions and training.
Environmental groups oppose the exemptions, saying the government is using an impending war with Iraq as an excuse to roll back the rules.
Brock Evans, spokesman for the Endangered Species Coalition, called the potential exemptions a "shocking occurrence" during a teleconference yesterday with several other environmental groups.
"This is not about military readiness, we all want the troops to have training, but there are alternatives to exempting environmental laws," Mr. Evans said.
Environmentalists say the military has found solutions to pursue training in compliance with laws on a case-by-case basis.
John Kostyack with the National Wildlife Federation said the Endangered Species Act is the "crown jewel" of American environmental laws and a military rollback would be an "incredible loss for species protections."
"Defense Department land managers have routinely found a way to work things out where training goes forward and species are protected," Mr. Kostyack said.
However, Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, said it is the environmental groups who are using the laws to block military training.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has filed a lawsuit to list the gnatcatcher as an endangered bird, which would require Camp Pendleton in California to designate 57 percent of its property as "critical habitat" and cut off training and readiness exercises, according to a congressional memo.
Additionally, a Marine Corps study found that because of other endangered species on the base, elements of a Marine expeditionary unit performed only 69 percent of established standards for non-firing field training.
"Because of the extreme agenda of some environmental groups, our men and women in uniform are facing a growing crisis in training and readiness," Mr. Inhofe said.
In California's Mojave Desert, Marines can only train during the daytime so as not to trample endangered tortoises. Live or simulated fire is off-limits and all vehicles are restricted to roads.
Hawaii's Makua Military Reservation was shut down in 1998 in response to lawsuits seeking to protect a tree snail, and Navy SEAL training on Coronado Island in California is restricted because of the snowy plover bird.
Michael Jasny with the Natural Resources Defense Council said the environmental consequences of not operating under the law are "severe and complicated."
"To ram this legislation through Congress at this time and this way is cynical, even by the standards of this administration, and shows no concern form the public's health and the environment," Mr. Jasny said.
----
Aid groups run up against Pentagon cult of secrecy
By Marian Wilkinson
March 13 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/12/1047431099477.html
The leading aid organisation in the United States has accused the Pentagon of undue secrecy and obstruction in its planning to provide humanitarian aid to Iraq in event of war.
Sandra Mitchell, the head of the International Rescue Committee, told US senators that the United Nations and private aid agencies were "struggling" to put together plans for relief efforts if large number of Iraqis try to flee.
"US planning has so embedded humanitarian tasks and activities with the military war plan that vital information remains classified," Ms Mitchell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She pointed out that over two weeks ago, the UN's top humanitarian official had said food stocks and supplies being sent to the region by the US Government were not enough to meet the needs of Iraq.
If the US attacks, the UN's oil-for-food program, run with the Iraqi Government, is expected to collapse. Nearly 60 per cent of Iraqis are dependent on it. The US military hopes to take over the program quickly.
Secrecy over its humanitarian plans was underscored when the man who has been nominated to run the program declined to appear at the Senate hearings. General Jay Garner told the senators he was "unavailable".
A senior Pentagon official briefed the media on the general's role and planning for post-war Iraq. This included plans to keep much of Iraq's regular army, public servants and oil workers in place. The US Government will take over their payroll.
To placate opposition leaders in exile, the Pentagon said it intended to "hire and enlist free Iraqis" from the US, Britain and Europe as advisors to the new US administration in Iraq. Several are already on the payroll. The civil administration would be answerable to General Tommy Franks, the military commander.
The State Department also confirmed that US companies were approached on January 31 to put proposals for a massive rebuilding program, which would include contracts for building ports, airports, schools and hospitals.
A company associated with Vice-President Dick Cheney, Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton corporation, has been contracted to preserve Iraq's oil wells against sabotage.
------
Tomahawk Missiles May Spearhead U.S. War on Iraq
March 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-tomahawk.html
MANAMA (Reuters) - Any U.S.-led attack on Iraq is likely to start with a hail of stubby-winged Tomahawk cruise missiles fired with supposed pinpoint accuracy by what may be the most powerful naval armada in history, military experts say.
In its combat debut, the long-range Tomahawk opened the U.S.-led war that drove Iraqi invaders from Kuwait in 1991, cutting the initial risk to allied pilots and warplanes.
Since then, the U.S. Navy has used variants of the $1.4 million Tomahawk to start military campaigns in Bosnia in 1995 and in Afghanistan in 2001.
Britain began its supporting role against al Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan with Tomahawks, which are 18 feet long, fired from a submarine.
``It's not tell-us-which-building, it's tell-us-which-window you want it to go through,'' said Lt. Garrett Kasper, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based naval component of the U.S. Central Command, which would run a U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on March 4 that U.S. war plans entailed shocking the Iraqi leadership into submission with an attack ``much, much, much different'' from the 43-day Gulf War in 1991.
He declined to give details.
But other military officers have said the plan calls for hurling as many as 3,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles, including Tomahawks, in the first 48 hours of an air campaign, to be followed quickly by ground operations.
SHOCK START
``If asked to go into conflict in Iraq, what you'd like to do is have it be a short conflict,'' General Myers told reporters. ``The best way to do that would be to have such a shock on the system that the Iraqi regime would have to assume early on the end was inevitable.''
Tomahawks may be fired by destroyers, cruisers and submarines protecting the three U.S. aircraft carriers now cruising in and around the Gulf and the two in the Eastern Mediterranean.
A typical carrier battle group packs as many as 400 Tomahawks, according to retired Rear Admiral Stephen Baker at the private Center for Defense Information in Washington.
The Navy's declared land-attack weapon of choice, the Tomahawk would probably be used against high-value targets such as command and control centers, electrical generating facilities and weapons assembly and storage spots.
The missile, made by Raytheon Co., uses three separate guidance systems to close in on a target, ultimately comparing pictures with a version in its memory as it skims in at about 550 miles per hour 100-300 feet above the ground.
Its compactness, at 20 inches in diameter and with a wingspan of less than nine feet, also enables it to escape detection by many radars.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Rights Group Faults Afghan Police
Salaries, Equipment and Loyalty Are Lacking, Report Says
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18057-2003Mar12?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, March 12 -- Afghanistan's 50,000 policemen are frequently not paid, ill-equipped and often owe their allegiance to local warlords rather than to the people they are supposed to protect, the human rights group Amnesty International reported today.
In an investigation conducted last fall, the group also found that prisoners are sometimes tortured, that many are detained for months without charges and that police and guards mistreat prisoners with impunity.
But the London-based watchdog group also concluded that the Afghan government was eager to change the situation and create a professional police force for the first time in decades. The report concluded, however, that given the breadth of the problem, Afghanistan needs substantially more international support than it is currently receiving.
"That the Afghan government had made verbal commitments to having a professional police force committed to protecting human rights is extremely positive," said Margaret Ladner, head of the group's Kabul office. "But the problems are so great that Afghanistan can't do this without considerably more help from outside."
The German government is helping to train police recruits, as it did during the 1960s and 1970s, and the United Nations has created a trust fund to support the Afghan government's efforts to improve security and policing. Most of those resources, however, are being spent in the Kabul area, the Amnesty report found.
The bulk of the nation's police force consists of men who served under local commanders during the long fight against Soviet occupation and then in the years of civil war and Taliban rule that followed. Their loyalties, the report found, still rest with their commanders.
"Many of the former mujaheddin have been involved in armed conflict for much of their lives and are accustomed to acting with impunity," the report said. "While there are some committed police officers, they are in the minority, and their presence is insufficient to counter the overwhelming magnitude of the problems that prevent necessary police reform and professionalization."
Interior Minister Ali Jalali has come to similar conclusions about the police forces he oversees and has promised an overhaul of the system. But because the central government has limited authority in many parts of the country, reform will be difficult.
Among the other problems identified in the report are that Afghan police have no standard uniform and therefore cannot be easily recognized, they often have no way to communicate or even drive to the scene of crimes and disturbances, and most don't have even basic equipment. In the central province of Bamian, the group found, "the deputy criminal investigator had no office and no pens or paper." In addition, local and regional militias often take the role of police, even though they have no authority to do so.
Given the nature of the police force and its limitations, the Afghan public fears officers more than it trusts them, Amnesty concluded. Early this month, for instance, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in west Kabul to demonstrate against the local police, who they believed had assaulted a woman.
-------- courts
Legal Bid to Block War Rejected by U.S. Court
Thu March 13, 2003
By Greg Frost
(Reuters)
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=2377470
BOSTON - A U.S. appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling rejecting a legal bid by a group of soldiers and lawmakers to keep President Bush from invading Iraq without a formal declaration of war by Congress.
But the lawyer who filed the lawsuit said its rejection by a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals contained a silver lining that could allow him to bring the case back depending on the outcome of U.N. diplomacy.
"This case is still very much alive," John Bonifaz, the plaintiffs' lead attorney, told Reuters.
Unlike U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro, who threw out the case on political grounds last month, the appeals court dismissed the lawsuit on "ripeness" grounds -- essentially saying the timing was not right for it to get involved.
Bonifaz said that meant he could take the matter back to court depending on a number of unresolved issues -- including whether the U.N. Security Council authorizes the use of force in Iraq.
"If the president moves us closer to war without U.N. authorization, this case will be ripe for the court's review and will demand judicial intervention to prevent an illegal and unconstitutional war," he said.
The Department of Justice did not immediately comment on the ruling.
Some 200,000 U.S. and 50,000 British troops are poised to invade Iraq, and Bush has vowed to go to war to disarm Iraq without U.N. backing if necessary.
The United States said on Thursday it might drop its search for a Security Council majority to authorize an invasion of Iraq as its diplomatic efforts encountered new setbacks.
COURT LEAVES DOOR OPEN
The civil lawsuit, brought by three members of the military, six parents of U.S. troops and members of the U.S. Congress, sought an injunction to stop potential U.S. military action on the grounds that only Congress has the right to declare war.
The suit, which named Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as defendants, said the framers of the U.S. Constitution aimed to deny presidents the imperial war-making powers of European monarchs.
Although Congress passed a resolution in October backing the possible use of U.S. military force against Iraq, the plaintiffs said that was an unconstitutional measure and did not amount to a formal declaration of war.
Tauro found in his ruling that the lawsuit boiled down to "political questions ... which are beyond the authority of a federal court to resolve."
Judge Sandra Lynch, writing for the appeals court, disagreed with that reasoning and cited the question of "ripeness," or timeliness. While the panel dismissed the case, it left open a door for the plaintiffs.
"This conclusion does not necessarily mean that similar challenges would never be ripe for decision before military action began," she wrote in a footnote to the ruling. "Here, too many crucial facts are missing."
Lynch noted the Iraq situation remained fluid and that "many important questions remain unanswered" about whether a war would actually take place. The answers to those questions, she indicated, could ultimately make the case ripe.
----
Soldiers Suing Bush Case Not Ready For Review
Plaintiffs Pledge to Return to Court Within Days
Press Release: Legal Challenge To Iraq War
DATE: March 13, 2003
Scoop (New Zealand)
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0303/S00207.htm
FEDERAL COURT SAYS SOLDIERS SUING BUSH CASE NOT READY FOR REVIEW:
ULTIMATE DECISION -- WHETHER PRESIDENT CAN WAGE WAR UNILATERALLY -- RESTS WITH COURTS
-- U.N. Vote Hangs in the Balance --
Statement from Plaintiff Attorney John Bonifaz Regarding Doe v. Bush Ruling:
It is clear from this ruling that this case remains very much alive. The federal appeals court rejected the lower court's dismissal on political question grounds. Instead, it granted dismissal solely on ripeness grounds, saying: "[T]his issue is not fit now for judicial review." The Court adds that, "[t]o evaluate this claim now...[w]e would need to assume that the Security Council will not authorize war, and that the President will proceed nonetheless." The Court further says that "many crucial facts are missing" for it to review the merits of the plaintiffs' claims.
In light of this important ruling, we will file a petition for rehearing before this appellate court panel as soon as these facts are more defined. Specifically, if the Security Council does not authorize war and the President demonstrates he will proceed nonetheless, we will return to this Court and seek a review of its ruling based on these new facts.
This case is far from over. At this extraordinary moment in United States history, this Court has a duty to act. If the President moves us closer to war without UN authorization, this case will be ripe for the Court's review and will demand judicial intervention to prevent an illegal and unconstitutional war.
CONTACTS: Carol Klenfner (646) 495-4978 carol@andymorrisandcompany.com Andy Morris (646) 495-4958 andy@andymorrisandcompany.com John Bonifaz (Lawyer), (617) 524-2675 or (617) 529-4611 (cell) Charles Richardson and Nancy Lessin (Parent Plaintiffs), (617) 522-9323, (617) 320-5301 (cell), (508) 277-9466 (cell)
-------- death penalty
Texas Death Row Inmate Gets a Last-Minute Stay
March 13, 2003
The New York Times
By PETER T. KILBORN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/national/13DEAT.html
AUSTIN, Tex., March 12 - Just minutes before the scheduled execution tonight, the United States Supreme Court granted an indefinite stay to Delma Banks Jr., 44, a black man sent to death row after an all-white jury convicted him in the murder and robbery of a white teenager 23 years ago.
Defense lawyers said the court's order suggested that the justices were undecided about the case and wanted time to consider whether to take it on.
Members of Mr. Banks's family and George Kendall of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., who is leading Mr. Banks's appeal, were outside the death chamber in the prison in Huntsville where Mr. Banks was to have been killed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Mr. Kendall said: "We were told, `A stay has been granted. You're free to go.' "
Mr. Banks, who would have been the 300th person executed in Texas since the Supreme Court allowed states to resume capital punishment in 1976, had already had his last meal - cheeseburgers - and was to be strapped to a gurney for his execution when the stay was granted.
In its order, the Supreme Court said that the stay of execution would remain in effect pending the court's decision on hearing the case. If it decides not to hear the case, the order said, "this stay shall terminate automatically."
Mr. Banks's execution could be rescheduled as soon as 30 days later, and he could have another chance to appeal his conviction and sentence to the state.
Mr. Kendall said the stay suggested "serious debate that could not be resolved" among the nine justices. Jim Marcus, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents Texans sentenced to death, said, "Clearly, it's rare for the court to step in and stay a case at the last minute, so it's clearly troubled by one or more aspects of this case."
In the face of questions raised about the Banks case, prosecutors have acknowledged errors in the trial but said they remained confident of the outcome. "Do I have any doubts that Delma Banks did this?" said James Elliott, the assistant Bowie County prosecutor. "Absolutely none. It's beyond reasonable doubt. It's no doubt. This is no Girl Scout cookie salesman."
Mr. Banks's prospects for a 11th-hour stay of execution appeared more hopeful than those of other inmates because a team of former federal judges and prosecutors, including William S. Sessions, a former F.B.I. director and federal judge, had appealed to the Supreme Court to halt the execution.
Mr. Sessions was joined by John J. Gibbons, former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia; Timothy K. Lewis, a former Third Circuit judge; and Thomas Sullivan, a former United States attorney.
They cited findings, some uncovered since Mr. Banks's many earlier appeals, that included suppression of evidence, undisclosed payment of a critical witness, perjured testimony, indifferent defense counsel at the trial and racial discrimination in the jury selection.
Prosecutors never found witnesses to the crime, evidence directly tying Mr. Banks to it, or established a motive. Mr. Banks never confessed and said he was in Dallas when prosecutors said it occurred.
Fifteen years ago, he turned down a plea agreement that would have given him a life sentence with a possible parole in return for a confession. He continued to maintain his innocence.
His mother, Ellean Banks, said after visiting him on Tuesday that he was at peace with his Lord.
Mr. Banks's stay of execution came a day after Bobby Glen Cook, 41, who admitted killing a sleeping man with six shots and leaving him in the back of a pickup truck, was put to death in Texas. He became the 10th person in the state executed this year. Texas now has 439 men, including Mr. Banks, and 8 women who await execution.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that another black death row inmate in Texas, Thomas Miller-El, should have a new hearing and criticized Texas courts for ignoring strong evidence of racial bias in the selection of the nearly all-white jury that found him guilty of murder 17 years ago.
By all accounts, Mr. Banks, then 21 and an 11th-grade high school drop-out with no criminal record, and Richard Wayne Whitehead, 16, a high school student who had won awards as a bowler, were acquaintances from work at a restaurant in Texarkana, near the Texas-Arkansas line. They and a girlfriend of Mr. Whitehead met at a bowling alley on Friday, April 11, 1980, after Mr. Whitehead and the girl left a high school dance.
After bringing the girl home, the state contends that Mr. Banks and Mr. Whitehead, whom witnesses described as on friendly terms, went to drink beer in a nearby park. The following Monday morning, Mr. Whitehead's body, shot in the head and shoulder, was found in the park, and his 1969 Ford Mustang was gone.
At 8:30 a.m. Saturday, about four hours after the state said Mr. Whitehead was killed, Mr. Banks was in Dallas, 180 miles away, visiting a friend, Charles Cook, a twice-convicted felon then facing charges of arson. Mr. Banks said he was already in Dallas at the time of the shooting. Mr. Banks soon returned to Texarkana, and prosecutors recruited an informer they often used, Robert Farr, to ask Mr. Banks to help him buy a gun.
Mr. Banks and Mr. Farr drove back to Mr. Cook's home, and police found a .25 pistol that ballistics experts said was the murder weapon. At the trial, Mr. Cook testified that Mr. Banks had told him that he had killed someone and took his car. The car was never found.
Years later, Mr. Cook recanted much of his testimony. Four years ago defense investigators obtained a long-suppressed transcript showing prosecutors giving Mr. Cook, whose arson charges were subsequently dropped, intensive coaching before he testified. At the trial, Mr. Cook denied he was coached.
Mr. Farr, the informer, has also said that he lied at the trial. Throughout the trial and following the sentencing phase, Mr. Banks's current lawyers and the Sessions team contend, Mr. Banks's lawyer then, Lynn Cooksey, provided an indifferent defense. He did not challenge the prosecution's removal of blacks from the jury pool or scrutinize witnesses for Mr. Banks.
Efforts to reach Mr. Cooksey tonight were unavailing.
-------- police
F.B.I. Warns of Possible Hate Crimes in United States
March 13, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/national/13ATTA.html
WASHINGTON, March 12 - A war with Iraq or a terrorist attack against American interests could prompt a wave of hate crimes against Arab-Americans, Muslims and other minorities in the United States, the F.B.I. said today.
The F.B.I. said the September 2001 hijackings led to a "spike" in attacks against Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans and members of Indian, Sikh and other minorities. But, it said, after about three weeks, such attacks decreased sharply.
The F.B.I. said the attacks seemed to be "isolated acts directed at targets of opportunity" rather than the result of a conspiracy against specific groups.
From Sept. 11, 2001, to Feb. 14, the F.B.I. said, it opened 414 hate crime investigations involving attacks or threats against Arab-American targets, resulting in more than 140 federal and local prosecutions. Among the crimes were murders, attempted murders and assaults and arson attacks against mosques and Arab-American-owned businesses.
-------- terrorism
REVEALED: AL QAEDA PLOT TO KILL BUBBA
BILL CLINTON Canceled trip to Malaysia.
By AL GUART,
March 13, 2003
NY Post
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/031303clinton.htm
This crude map reveals an al Qaeda plot to kill then President Bill Clinton.
Handwritten plans uncovered in Afghanistan reveal that Osama bin Laden's terrorists wanted to assassinate then-President Bill Clinton at an international economic summit in Malaysia, an al Qaeda expert says.
In the never-before-revealed plot, al Qaeda obtained a map of the summit site and inside info on security before the leaders of 21 nations gathered in Kuala Lumpur in November 1998 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
The crude map, hand-drawn in red and black ink, was found in Afghanistan in late November 2001 by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, said Green Beret Keith "Jack" Idema.
An Arabic legend on the right side of the map detailed the locations of security gates, a "surveillance room" and part of a mosque just outside the complex.
On the back of the map was an insider's report on the conference's security.
Clinton canceled two days before the event, and sent then-Vice President Al Gore in his stead. No attack was attempted.
A chilling note was scrawled under the security measures that read "Azmurai, an Afghani man, tried to assassinate Clinton in Kenya" - perhaps a reference to Clinton's March 1998 trip to Africa - in which he skipped Kenya but visited Uganda.
"It was one of some 700 documents we captured on al Qaeda prisoners or in two houses used by their instructors," said Idema, whose work as an unofficial civilian advisor to the Northern Alliance is chronicled in a new Random House book, "The Hunt for Bin Laden."
"President Clinton was aware he was a target of al Qaeda, but his focus was on preventing these terrorists from targeting Americans in general," said Clinton spokesman Jim Kennedy.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Netherlands Approves 18 Climate Friendly Projects
March 13, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2003/2003-03-13-04.asp
AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, The Dutch Environment Ministry today announced approval of 18 projects to cut greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries under the UN Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The Netherlands buys those reductions and uses them to meet part of its own reduction commitments.
All 18 projects focus on sustainable energy and clean technologies and will take place in Bolivia, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, India, Indonesia, Jamaica and Panama, said State Secretary for Environment Pieter Van Geel.
The projects support renewable energy, including hydroelectric, geothermal and wind power initatives. A Ugandan hydroelectric power project that had been contested by environmental groups has not been included.
Van Geel Dutch State Secretary for Environment Pieter Van Geel (Photo courtesy University van Tilburg) The development gives the Netherlands a world lead in implementing the mechanism, under which industrialized countries can claim emission credits towards their Kyoto Protocol commitments if they fund projects in developing countries. Formal approval from the CDM Executive Board of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change is still required, a process that could take up to nine months.
Although the protocol awaits Russia's ratification before it can enter into force, member states of the European Union have ratified the international climate agreement, and most are taking action to meet their commitments to reduce their emissions of gases responsible for global warming.
The Netherlands has taken on a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by six percent compared with 1990 levels during the protocol's first five year commitment period 2008 through 2012. This corresponds to a cut of 200 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas.
The Dutch government has said that it will seek to achieve half of its committed greenhouse gas emission reductions through the protocol's flexible mechanisms. Nearly two-thirds of these emissions - 62 million out of 100 million metric tons - is to be delivered through the Clean Development Mechanism.
The 18 projects announced today should cut emissions by 16 metric tons.
The government aims to achieve the planned balance of 46 million metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions in developing countries through memorandums of understanding with various governments and through contracts with financial institutions.
{ENDS Environment Daily contributed to this report. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London}
-------- environment
EPA Hosts Electronics Recycling Events
March 13, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2003/2003-03-13-09.asp#anchor8
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, This month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will offer a number of electronics recycling, or eCycling, collection events for residents and especially local, state, and federal government employees who live and work in the Philadelphia and Washington, DC, metropolitan areas.
Electronics recycling keeps dangerous materials such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium from possibly harming the environment and saves precious landfill space, the EPA says. All electronics will be refurbished or recycled.
Government and industry will share the cost to collect, transport, and process the equipment collected during these eCycling events. Electronics manufacturers Panasonic, Sharp, and Sony will pay to recycle their respective brands of electronics that are collected during these events.
The eCycling events will take place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania; Camden County, New Jersey; Montgomery County, Maryland; and Arlington County, Virginia, and will be open to all residents of these counties. These events will not accept electronics from government agencies, organizations, or businesses.
The first event will be held at the Camden County Public Works Complex on Saturday, March 22 from 10 am until 3 pm at 2311 Egg Harbor Road, Lindenwold, New Jersey.
"I want to encourage residents, and especially government employees, to recycle their outdated personal computers and electronic equipment. This eCycling collection event in Lindenwold is a the perfect opportunity to start a new life for the electronics that have been collecting dust in your basement or garage," said Donald Welsh, EPA mid-Atlantic regional administrator.
The eCycling program is the nation's first of its kind collaboration among the U.S. EPA, state environmental agencies, and the electronics industry to collect, reuse and recycle old computer equipment, televisions, and other electronics.
Since October 2001, eCycling has collected more than 2,700 tons of electronics from residents in the mid-Atlantic states and has prevented more than 22,000 cathode ray tubes from going into landfills and incinerators.
For more information, visit the EPA website at: http://www.epa.gov/reg3wcmd/eCycling.htm
-------- ACTIVISTS
New York passes anti-war resolution
By Liz Trotta
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030313-68969941.htm
NEW YORK - Political leaders in this city devastated by the September 11 attacks have voted against war with Iraq except as a last resort, joining at least 125 municipalities nationwide that have passed some kind of anti-war resolution.
New York's City Council voted by roll call 32-17 for the resolution, which says war is permissible only if "other options for achieving compliance with United Nations resolutions calling for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and the means of their development have failed."
Peter F. Vallone Jr., a Democrat who opposed the resolution, said: "I'm very disappointed. New York City was attacked by terrorists a few blocks from where this resolution is being debated. I can't forget that.
"If we don't disarm [Iraqi leader] Saddam [Hussein] now, we won't have enough streets to name after the victims of the next attack."
The recognition that the World Trade Center attacks still traumatize the city did not head off a movement by liberals to secure an anti-war resolution. Although three of the 51 council members are Republicans, views on the issue did not always follow party lines.
Yvette Clarke, a Democrat who supported the resolution, said, "If we're going to be looking for a fight, let's fight poverty, let's fight firehouse closures, let's fight racism and sexism."
Democrat Alan Jennings said that after losing one of his closest friends in the World Trade Center, he was in no mood to vote for an anti-war measure.
"Our troops are in the Middle East at this time to fight for our democracy," Mr. Jennings said. "I think this resolution sends the wrong message to our men and women in uniform."
The bitter debate in the council was fueled by last month's anti-war demonstration in which an estimated 10,000 anti-war protesters turned out in the vicinity of the United Nations. Citing security considerations, the city refused to give the marchers a permit.
A first draft of the City Council resolution opposed a war "without the authority of the United Nations." The first indication of conflict within the council emerged Feb. 26, when a scheduled vote on the proposal was postponed at the last minute.
Sources said the bill was deadlocked in the Cultural Affairs Committee, where it had originated.
To garner enough votes, sharp criticisms of the Bush administration and predictions of dire consequences for the United States were dropped from the proposed resolution.
Since September, anti-war resolutions have been approved in such cities as Los Angeles; Chicago; Milwaukee; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and Portland, Maine.
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Student rights guides offered
By Judith Person
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030313-18964544.htm
A major educational foundation devoted to preserving free-speech rights on campus has developed a new strategy for educating students about their rights at colleges and universities across the country.
In response to hundreds of requests for help from students, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has created the FIRE Guides to Student Rights on Campus, as well as a Web site, in an effort to protect the rights of students at colleges and universities.
FIRE, a nonprofit organization, hopes the guides will become indispensable tools to challenge and end censorship, double standards, arbitrary practices and the violation of basic rights, which it says are prevalent on too many campuses.
"The prerequisite to defending your rights is knowing what they are," said Nadine Strossen, a board member of FIRE's new program and president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The guides are part of FIRE's Know Your Rights program aimed at educating students and parents about the legal and moral status of their rights on the nation's campuses.
The guides also seek to educate administrators, trustees and college and university attorneys about their legal obligations both in private and public institutions of higher learning.
"It is a blight on us if we can't do something about what is happening on our college campuses," said Paul McMasters, board member for the program. Mr. McMasters said at a press conference this week at the National Press Club that instances of assaults on free speech and academic freedom are occurring on campuses across the country.
He said that two recent examples of abuse include some campuses establishing "free-speech zones" where students may express their opinions only in certain places, and instances such as the professor at Citrus College in California, who required her students to write anti-war letters to President Bush and penalized those who refused to do the assignment.
Board members of the program said that students are routinely intimidated by school administrators regarding their rights, and if they understand their rights, they will be better able to defend them.
The educational organization is publishing five guides that aim to protect the rights of students. They are: FIRE's Guide to Religious Liberty on Campus; FIRE's Guide to Student Fees, Funding, and Legal Equality on Campus; FIRE's Guide to Due Process and Fair Procedure on Campus; FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus; and FIRE's Guide to First-Year Orientation and to Thought Reform on Campus.
They will all be available to students free of charge and can also be downloaded from the group's Web site (www.thefireguides.org).
----
Students excused to protest war plan
By Matthew Cella
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20030313-68468894.htm
A Montgomery County high school that closed for more than a week after last month's snowstorm excused students from afternoon classes yesterday so they could participate in an anti-war walkout.
About 400 students showed up for the afternoon assembly in the cafeteria of Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda. The students cheered anti-war remarks made from a podium microphone set up in a corner of the cafeteria.
The students then walked out of the building into the sunshine and marched in front of the school, behind a colorful canvas banner that read "Promote the peace." The students chanted anti-war slogans and carried signs that read "No blood for oil" and "Books not bombs" before ending the rally at 2 p.m. - in time for the 2:10 p.m. dismissal.
"I think peace starts right here," said Isabelle Carbonell, a 17-year-old senior who organized the event. A self-described activist, Isabelle said she was upset that a war with Iraq could divert funds from education and promote terrorist activity against the United States.
A few counterprotesters also participated in the walkout. They chanted "USA" and held signs that read "One decade of Saddam is enough."
Isabelle said she came up with the idea about the rally last week and pitched it to the school's principal, Kevin Maxwell. "Our administration was very cooperative," she said.
Mr. Maxwell, a Navy veteran, said that he never dealt with a protest at the school, but that county policy allowed students to demonstrate peacefully.
School staff "must respect the rights of students to assemble for discussions of issues of importance to them and to demonstrate peacefully," says the Montgomery County Public Schools Student Rights and Responsibilities handbook. The rules also allow students "to be excused from class during the activity."
"I felt like they had a viable plan, a viable agenda," Mr. Maxwell said.
He said several parents questioned him about the protest after hearing about it from their children. He said he didn't send a letter home alerting parents to the protest because he didn't want an appearance that the administration was endorsing or encouraging the demonstration.
Montgomery County schools spokeswoman Kate Harrison said the demonstration was "a local principal's decision, if he felt this was in some way an educational experience."
While most of the students participated in the protest, not all who attended had politics on their mind. Some students socialized in small groups while others played cards. One student played an acoustic guitar.
Rules governing student demonstrations vary among local school districts.
The Code of Student Conduct in Prince George's County states that "causing a disruption to the atmosphere of order and discipline necessary for effective learning" is a "gross misconduct."
Students in Fairfax County may express themselves through speech, assembly and petition, says the county's Student Responsibilities and Rights handbook. But the handbook does not mention whether protests are allowed during class or if they are considered excused absences.
Mr. Maxwell said one of his concerns was more lost class time. Students throughout the county have missed 10 days of school because of heavy snowfall. "This is not about closing Walter Johnson High School at all," he said. "Class time was an issue. I think what went on this afternoon was certainly an educational experience."
He also said teachers were told to continue with classes in case students chose not to attend the protest. Almost all of the classrooms in at least one hallway were empty.
----
Activists Rush to Rally Again In Last-Ditch Antiwar Effort
By Manny Fernandez
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17562-2003Mar12?language=printer
Antiwar activists are gearing up for a march on Washington on Saturday, the latest for a global peace movement that has mobilized with increasing frequency as the nation prepares for a war with Iraq.
In Burke, psychologist Suzanne Doherty, 56, has worked to assemble a squad of grandmothers to join her on Saturday. "This is not exclusively a young person's movement," said Doherty, founder of the Northern Virginia chapter of Grandmothers for Peace.
In Philadelphia, Betsy Payet has taken an avalanche of calls from protesters looking for seats on 20 charter buses. "The people in this so-called democracy are being ignored," she said.
And in Princeton, N.J., the Rev. Robert Moore has helped fill a five-bus caravan of homemakers, students and retirees. "They realize that this is our last best chance to try to avert a war," said Moore, 52, pastor of two United Church of Christ congregations.
The demonstration is part of a loose-knit local, national and global campaign to oppose the use of military force to disarm Iraq. The march and rally are part of an effort that will stage simultaneous rallies in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as in other nations.
The U.S. protests have been organized by International ANSWER, the coalition that on Jan. 18 assembled the largest antiwar rally in Washington since the Vietnam War. Organizers said it was too early to tell whether they would match the size of that crowd, which police estimated at 100,000 but activists said was more.
They said they had just a few weeks to organize, not the three months that preceded the January protest. The number of organizing centers around the country is about 70 fewer this time, and some activists said they are bringing fewer vehicles. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey doesn't doubt the crowd will be large, pointing out that last time organizers asked for a permit for 20,000 -- as they have for Saturday.
Urgency is what ANSWER activists hope will bring out the crowd, as the drama in the U.N. Security Council plays out.
"We call this an emergency convergence because of the sense that this may be the last chance to show a big outpouring of antiwar sentiment before the initiation of all-out war by the Bush administration," said ANSWER organizer Brian Becker, 50.
The rally is set to begin at noon at the Washington Monument, followed by a march to the White House and the Department of Justice. Organizers said speakers will include Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Jesse L. Jackson as well as religious and labor leaders. Musical performers will include country singer Willie Nelson and hip-hop artist Mos Def.
The ANSWER coalition has drawn the ire of critics, some of whom contend it is a front group for the socialist Workers World Party, of which Becker and others in ANSWER are members. Kristinn Taylor, 40, co-leader of the D.C. chapter of the conservative group Free Republic, which plans a counter-demonstration Saturday, described ANSWER as pro-Saddam and anti-American. "There's strong overtones of anti-Semitism at their rallies, and the organizers themselves support violent communist revolution," Taylor said.
Becker said such comments are without merit and said ANSWER is not a political supporter of the Iraqi government. "Antiwar activists care about stopping this war. There is no political or ideological litmus test," he said.
Ramsey said he expected the protest to be peaceful but plans to deploy teams of officers trained in responding to protests. The police also will activate about two dozen permanent and temporary surveillance cameras along the route. The U.S. Park Police will augment its force with additional mounted officers.
The antiwar movement in the United States has gained momentum following worldwide peace demonstrations last month. Between 6 million and 12 million protesters rallied in about 75 countries Feb. 15 against war. ANSWER had called a protest for March 1, anticipating that the war might be underway. But the group changed the date after the U.S. stance on disarming Iraq was challenged in the Security Council.
Washington area activists have increased the frequency of small and large protests and boosted their ranks with more students. In recent days, protesters have held antiwar poetry readings, descended on the White House dressed in pink and conducted student walkouts at colleges and high schools. Yesterday, about 35 activists rallied outside the 15th Street NW offices of The Washington Post to protest what they called "dramatically hawkish" editorials.
Those who plan to attend Saturday and who consider themselves part of the movement include gray-haired former hippies, high school honor students and suburban mothers. Those new to protesting have joined activists from other causes, such as the anti-globalization movement, in an online and on-the-street community, particularly in the Washington area, where antiwar protests are frequent. Using Web sites and e-mail, which serve as borderless petition-gatherers, fundraisers and bulletin boards, activists are linked as never before.
The Suburban Activist Calendar, a listing of actions distributed through one of Washington's protester e-mail groups, lists 35 vigils, meetings and marches this month alone. The list includes information on such groups as Kensington Neighbors Opposed to War (KNOW), which formed after a January potluck dinner. "I think that war is never the answer, but this particular war I think is completely unjustified," said KNOW member Molly Jackman, 42, a mother of three and co-president of a Silver Spring PTA.
As war appears to draw closer, protesters have begun discussing what to do if hostilities break out, planning to rally at Lafayette Square, stage student walkouts at high schools and tie up morning rush hour with a bike rally from Dupont Circle. Many others have pledged to commit nonviolent civil disobedience if the United States attacks. "If in fact it does come to war," said Gordon Clark, 42, of Silver Spring, national coordinator of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance, "we will see a level of protest and social unrest that we have not seen in this country since Vietnam."
Protesters from other coalitions have said they would risk arrest Monday, with sit-ins at congressional offices on Capitol Hill.
Staff writer David A. Fahrenthold contributed to this report.
----
'Faces of Iraq': Weapons of Mass Peace
By Nicole M. Miller
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18181-2003Mar12?language=printer
Faces of Iraq at the Warehouse,
1021 Seventh St. NW,
is open Friday 6-9 p.m. and
Saturday and Sunday 1-9 p.m.
$5 suggested donation. 202-543-6176.
A man gets a haircut in a barbershop. A mother -- her face grim with concern -- waits for her son outside a doctor's office. Another woman looks around a house that was turned to rubble by a U.S. missile.
These are images in "Faces of Iraq," an exhibition that includes the work of seven photographers on display at the Warehouse through Sunday.
There's no ambiguity about the work or the show: This is art for peace's sake.
The Education for Peace in Iraq Center mounted the exhibit as a glimpse of ordinary life in the country. Many of the photographs and accompanying text identify effects of the Gulf War and sanctions on average people.
Photographer and political activist Gabriela Bulisova, 28, initiated the project after spending 10 days and about 10 rolls of film in Iraq last May.
"The face of Saddam Hussein is the only one we see here" in the United States, she says.
While touring Iraq, Bulisova, who is from the former Czechoslovakia and lives in Mount Rainier, carried around a flier written in Arabic that explained her project. One man who had waved her off before seeing the flier ended up agreeing to be photographed. "Baghdad is a city of peace, take my picture, and tell America about me," Bulisova quotes him saying.
The other photographers in the exhibition are a combination of amateurs and professionals from around the United States. Most are political activists, a few of whom traveled with Bulisova to Iraq.
This is the exhibit's second run in Washington. The show first opened to packed crowds for a weekend in January; it was the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, when antiwar protesters flooded the Mall. That's when Andy Shallal, a local Iraqi American, saw the photos.
"It's important to know what's behind the bombs that we're sending there," he says of Iraqi civilians. "[War] should be an absolute final choice."
Zaid Albanna is also from Iraq and lives in Reston. He saw some of the photos on the Web site, www.facesofiraq.org. He says some of the smiling faces seemed "abnormally cheery," which made his experience of looking at the photos more sad.
"I do recognize that many changes must take place in that country," Albanna says. With regard to Hussein, he continues, "If he should be in power or if he should not be in power is a question that should be answered and acted upon by the empowered Iraqi people."
Last week the exhibition reopened with a small gathering, when Bulisova said that she hopes lawmakers will either come to see the show or that the exhibition can move to Capitol Hill.
"Once we start connecting faces with the tragedy, it will become very hard to put more suffering on the Iraqi people," she says. "The people in Iraq are no different from us. They could be our neighbors."
----
A Call to Conscience from Veterans
by VETERANS CALL TO CONSCIENCE
Thursday, March 13, 2003
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=2&contentid=727
A Call to Conscience from Veterans A Call to Conscience from Veterans to Active Duty Troops and Reservists
We are veterans of the United States armed forces.
We stand with the majority of humanity, including millions in our own country, in opposition to the United States¹ all out war on Iraq.
We span many wars and eras, have many political views and we all agree that this war is wrong.
Many of us believed serving in the military was our duty, and our job was to defend this country.
Our experiences in the military caused us to question much of what we were taught.
Now we see our REAL duty is to encourage you as members of the U.S. armed forces to find out what you are being sent to fight and die for and what the consequences of your actions will be for humanity.
We call upon you, the active duty and reservists, to follow your conscience and do the right thing.
In the last Gulf War, as troops, we were ordered to murder from a safe distance.
We destroyed much of Iraq from the air, killing hundreds of thousands, including civilians.
---------
ADVERTISING
MTV Refuses Antiwar Commercial
March 13, 2003
The New York Times
By NAT IVES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/13/business/media/13ADCO.html
TV has refused to accept a commercial opposing a war in Iraq, citing a policy against advocacy spots that it says protects the channel from having to run ads from any cash-rich interest group whose cause may be loathsome.
Nonetheless, viewers in New York and Los Angeles will be able to see the rejected spot from Not in Our Name starting today on MTV's "Total Request Live" and "Direct Effect," because its backers did an end-run around the channel by buying time on local cable providers.
As other advocates have butted up against similar policies prohibiting advocacy ads at most national television channels, they have increasingly resorted to making local buys. A few minutes of commercial time are reserved each hour for local cable operators or broadcast affiliates.
Commercials for and against a war, with celebrities like Susan Sarandon, Janeane Garofalo and Fred Thompson, have lately been rejected by networks, cable channels and affiliates, before finding safer haven on regional cable operators like Time Warner Cable and Comcast. A commercial starring Martin Sheen, who plays the president of the United States on NBC's "West Wing," appeared in Washington and New York via local cable companies, without even trying any national buys.
The commercial just rejected by MTV was directed by Barbara Kopple, winner of two Academy Awards for her documentaries. In the ad, young people speak to the camera about their opposition to a war, with scenes from recent antiwar marches interspersed through the spot. Although MTV included parts of the rejected commercial in one news segment on March 5, timed to coincide with youth protests, network executives said accepting money to show it would cross a line.
"The decision was made years ago that we don't accept advocacy advertising because it really opens us up to accepting every point of view on every subject," said Graham James, a spokesman at MTV in New York. (MTV also turned down an ad from the group True Majority that featured Ms. Garofalo.)
Most networks and cable channels share that view. For example, CNN, in accordance with its policy against advocacy ads related to regions in conflict, rejected ads from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well as a group trying to bolster support for Israel.
But in times of crisis, when such policies block the plans of advocacy groups trying to influence events, the rules become more visible and the object of intense criticism.
"It is irresponsible for news organizations not to accept ads that are controversial on serious issues, assuming they are not scurrilous or in bad taste," said Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard. "In the world we live in, with the kind of media concentration we have, the only way that unpopular beliefs can be aired sometimes is if the monopoly vehicle agrees to accept an ad."
Miles Solay, a youth representative of Not in Our Name, said, "From the very beginning, the antiwar movement has had to buy some free speech." He added that even MTV's coverage of antiwar sentiment has not made up for what his group viewed as promotional segments on military life or an hourlong forum with Tony Blair, prime minister of Britain and President Bush's closest ally on Iraq.
For the network to reject an anti-war spot when it routinely runs recruiting commercials for the military is inconsistent, Mr. Solay said.
Despite anticipating resistance at MTV, Not in Our Name and its allies decided to try to make a commercial for the channel.
"It's important for young people to be heard and have an outlet," Ms. Kopple said. She and the staff at her production company, Cabin Creek Center in New York, worked free to film and edit the spot.
Supporters of an invasion of Iraq have seen doors slammed on them as well.
The Citizens United Foundation, a group that ran commercials in 1991 supporting the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, made its own commercial supporting President Bush and a possible war in Iraq. Starring Fred Thompson, a former Republican Senator and an actor now appearing on "Law & Order," the spot was produced to counter the celebrity factor of the Sheen spot and others from the antiwar camp.
When the group tried to buy commercial time during "Meet the Press" on the NBC affiliate in Washington, the affiliate declined, saying it had refused the Sheen commercial, too, and needed to be fair.
"It's wrong for them to reject Martin Sheen's ad and the Fred Thompson ad," said David N. Bossie, president of the Citizens United Foundation in Sterling, Va.
"They should reserve their right to reject things," he added, "but they should not reject everything, just to protect themselves from having to make hard decisions."
Broadcast operations with blanket no-advocacy policies include CBS, ABC, NBC, and Fox Broadcasting, along with cable channels like CNN and MTV, a Viacom subsidiary.
The policy at CBS protects the integrity of its news department, the public discourse and local sensibilities around the country, said Martin Franks, executive vice president. He added that local affiliates were free to accept such ads if they deemed them inoffensive to the community. "How could you take an advocacy ad and have it reflect the values of the entire nation?" he asked.
"On the CBS television network," he added, "we think that informed discussion comes from our news programming."
Fox News, a News Corporation sibling of Fox Broadcasting, said it reserved some flexibility in its decision making.
"We evaluate everything on a case-by-case basis," said Kevin Brown, vice president for Eastern sales. Controversial commercials must be checked for accuracy and any legal liability they might create for Fox, he said.
Advocacy groups, however, have discovered one benefit of having their ads blocked: they often get news coverage for their causes by holding news conferences to denounce the rejection of their commercials. And Mr. Thompson was even invited onto "Meet the Press," where the ad was shown in its entirety and he got to argue in favor of war in Iraq.
But the flurry of free news coverage is just a consolation prize, said Mr. Jones of the Shorenstein Center. "That's a game of very highly diminishing returns. Maybe that happens for a couple of days, and then it goes away."
-----
If not war, then what?
The wide draw of the antiwar movement, speeded by the internet, has left a long and mixed list of alternatives
By Kim Campbell
The Christian Science Monitor
March 13, 2003 edition
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0313/p01s03-woiq.html
Watch CNN and you can't miss the footage: Protesters - sometimes without a stitch of clothing - using their bodies to spell out "NO WAR" or to create a peace sign on the lawn. You roll your eyes and prepare to dismiss these latest activists.
But then, in church the next day, your minister offers a carefully reasoned sermon about why a US attack on Iraq is morally wanting. No gimmicks, just a clergy member and a congregation searching for the high ground - and coming down on the side of nonviolence - at a time of confusion and fear.
It's easy to wonder if the antiwar movement is ridiculous or sublime. If it's peopled by the anti-Bush left, or thoughtful Americans of all political stripes. If it is strident or reasoned.
The reality is, it's all of the above - and every- thing in between. In adopting a "big tent" philosophy, organizers have welcomed all comers, all shows of support. And their efforts have resulted in the fastest-growing antiwar movement in US history, allowing them to draw crowds the size of which only showed up in the Vietnam era after years of conflict. Its factions include clergy and anarchists, college students and veteran '60s protesters, internationalists and Hollywood celebrities - all united, at least for now, under the No War With Iraq banner.
"A lot of folks are saying, 'You know, isn't it time to find other, perhaps more constructive or creative ways to deal with problems between people? Do we always have to rely on military, and therefore violent, solutions?' " says Leslie Cagan, a veteran organizer and cochair of United for Peace and Justice, a four-month-old coalition.
It's often easier for people to agree on what they don't want - in this case an invasion of Iraq - than it is to reach a consensus on a trickier issue: If not war, then what? Still, interviews with prominent antiwar thinkers and activists indicate a sincere wrestling within the movement over what the nonwar solutions to the Iraq conflict might be.
"How we respond to this threat will shape the kind of people we're going to be. And that's the moral question. How do you not become something terrible in your response to something terrible?" asks Jim Wallis, cofounder of Sojourners, a Christian ministry that focuses on justice and peace.
He and others in the religious community have looked beyond the current chorus of more inspections and containment to offer other alternatives.
Their six-point "Religious Initiative," made public last Friday, includes removing Saddam Hussein from power by establishing an international tribunal and indicting him, letting the world know he has no future. It also suggests enforcing coercive disarmament, including intensified, military-backed inspections and better monitoring of the arms embargo. And it makes demands on foreign policy, asking for a "road map to peace" in the Middle East, one that would make Palestine and Israel separate states, and send the message that a moral and political link exists between the troubles there, the war on terror campaign, and the Iraq situation. (The entire initiative is at sojo.net.)
Such ideas are the result of overwhelming opposition from churches around the US and the world. The religious community reached a consensus much faster on Iraq than it did during the Vietnam era, able to offer the current movement a moral conscience much sooner. With the exception of the Southern Baptists, who generally support President Bush, church leaders from Pope John Paul II to the National Council of Churches in the US have called a war with Iraq "unjust."
"That's never, in my experience or knowledge, happened before, that there's such unity in the churches against this war," Wallis says.
More impressive than just the clergy's quick response is the speedy mobilization of mainstream America at the grassroots level. Using the modern bullhorn - the Internet - online organizers have rallied tens of thousands to participate in a variety of public protests in recent months.
Since August, the membership of MoveOn.org, a leading lobbying group, has grown from about 400,000 to about 1.6 million, including more than 1 million US members.
"[The Internet] is an incredibly efficient way to allow people to get involved," says Joan Blades, who founded MoveOn with her husband, Wes Boyd. "A huge number of our members wanted to participate in some way and had no idea how to do so."
The site makes it easy by giving them posters to download, petitions to sign, and e-mail alerts when their contributions are needed to keep trumpeting diplomacy as an alternative to war.
This week, MoveOn - a member of the equally moderate Win Without War coalition - delivered a petition to the United Nations Security Council. Signed by more than 1 million people worldwide, it urged the international body "to back tough inspections, not war." "We've never had a response this overwhelming," says Ms. Blades. "We really want [the UN] to understand how broad and how deep the support for a diplomatic resolution is."
That kind of ingenuity - combined with the weakness of the Bush administration's case - is what has helped attract the grandmothers and the soccer dads of mainstream America to the antiwar movement, says Todd Gitlin, a former Vietnam protest organizer who now teaches sociology at Columbia University in New York.
They come to be counted among those opposed to war, and to be part of the discussion of alternatives, but critics say there are not enough of them to matter.
The movement, they argue, is still just a small portion of the overall population. And between 55 and 66 percent of Americans polled recently supported military action.
Some critics suggest that by allowing lots of different opinions about the war to be expressed at rallies, organizers dilute their message and lose support.
"That's the real moral failing of these demonstrations, that they are absolutely blind to the evil of the Saddam Hussein regime, and I think that turns ordinary people against them," says Max Boot, a pro-war analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations.
A Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll conducted last week found that 52 percent of respondents said the antiwar movement had been very effective or somewhat effective in presenting its case to the public. Forty-five percent said it had not been very effective or not effective at all (see chart).
Activists maintain that American sentiment isn't consistent with the polling numbers. "I don't really believe that 60 percent of the country is for war," says historian and longtime antiwar speaker Howard Zinn, noting that when he addresses public forums, "the reaction to my antiwar pitch is very enthusiastic and strong."
Rather than looking at their lack of a majority as an inability to sway public opinion, activists choose to see it as an accomplishment that so many people are saying "no" when the Bush administration controls the microphone.
The real gauge, says Mr. Zinn, should be the protests that are happening spontaneously in little towns across the US. "We don't have radical organizers going into Bozeman, Montana," he says.
For Gary Springston, a 40-something retail administrator who recently attended an antiwar talk by Zinn in Boston, the strength of the antiwar effort lies more with its actions than its words. "I think their existence is the most important message," he says. "[They] show people like me that we're not alone, that there is something wrong with this war, even if you can't put your finger exactly on it."
Some in the antiwar effort, like Zinn, suggest solutions that would require fundamental changes in US foreign policy, such as toning down the nation's superpower status. One of the antiwar coalitions, International ANSWER, advocates similar tactics, but more stridently.
It supports lifting the sanctions and letting the Iraqis decide what to do about their leader, rather than allowing the Bush administration's "empire building." Organizers say ANSWER's stand is about more than just one conflict in one country.
"Really, the question is: What is to be done about the nature of our interactions around the world, and the living conditions of the people all around the world?" says Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a 30-something attorney on the national steering committee of International ANSWER and cofounder of Washington-based Partnership for Civil Justice - Legal Defense and Education Fund. "It is a movement for social justice. It is not a simple, 'Don't bomb Iraq,' and then if they do, we go home."
Other coalitions, such as United for Peace and Justice, also formed with an eye to evaluating what this crisis means in terms of the role of US foreign policy around the world.
ANSWER is controversial, however. Created shortly after Sept. 11, its leaders are master mobilizers, but their critics can be found on both the left and the right. Mr. Gitlin calls them "left-wing sectarians." Mr. Boot calls the views of some of their organizers "pro-dictator."
Gitlin points out that all the talk about the group's message is healthy. "The debate about International ANSWER is really a debate about what the movement believes, and that's an important debate, that's a debate worth having," he says.
If a war starts, the movement will need to decide what position it will take with regard to troop withdrawal and the new administration of Iraq. "For International ANSWER this is a no-brainer, because they're simply 'US out of everywhere,' " he says. "But I think many other people in the antiwar movement will wonder what the movement should say. And they won't all agree, which is fine."
A war won't be a complete defeat for their cause, organizers say. They will try to keep facilitating the public discussion about the issues related to war, while supporting Americans in uniform. "There may be some demoralization and some confusion that sets in," says Ms. Cagan of United for Peace and Justice, "but I don't think we're going to see significant falling off of the antiwar movement."
She and others see signs that a worldwide peace movement is forming. "What's been happening is really the development of an antiwar movement, not just an anti-Iraq war movement," Cagan says.
That environment could foster the ideas presented by another antiwar thinker, US Rep. Dennis Kucinich (see story, page 12). The Democrat from Ohio and presidential hopeful would like to see the US take a firmer stand for peace. For him, a burgeoning peace movement is a hint of what's to come.
"That direction is the path toward the future," he says. "And it's interesting to see ... the present that is so weighted and freighted with war, colliding with this tide of human unity." He sees a society ready to ban war
Voices: Peace idealist
WASHINGTON - US Rep. Dennis Kucinich is looking to make war archaic - and he says society has evolved to the point where it is primed to accept such a notion.
His is an idealistic vision, more demanding than others coming from the antiwar movement. But Mr. Kucinich - a longtime peace activist, four-term congressman, and now a Democratic candidate for president - insists the time is ripe for humanity to make that giant leap in conflict resolution.
"The evolution that has taken place has been an evolution of the human spirit and the human heart, where we do have greater sensitivities to the effect of our actions on other people," he says during an interview in his corner office here.
In his reception area hangs a colorful peace quilt - a gift from elementary school students in Fairfax, Va., to commemorate one of his most singular ideas yet: A US department of peace. The Ohio lawmaker proposed the cabinet-level agency in July 2001, saying, "too often we have overlooked the long-term solution of peace for the instant gratification of war."
That bill never made it out of committee, but the world has changed since then. Now that war with Iraq is coinciding with Kucinich's bid for the presidency, his long-held ideas are suddenly getting more exposure.
He describes a society in which a superpower like the US can use military might to defend itself, but not to be an aggressor. "The United States should not be about looking for wars to fight," Kucinich says. "That was not the intent of our founders, and it certainly wasn't the intent of most of our presidents, and it's not the intent of our citizens."
In the past century, wars have often brought calls for world peace, but aggression continues. About 100 million people perished in 20th-century wars, he notes, most of them civilian noncombatants. But Kucinich doesn't think that's a reason to stop trying, especially as people in different nations have become more aware of how connected they are.
"Now is the time we need to insist on our own humanity and pull back from the abyss. That's why the visibility of the peace movement at this time becomes so important, because government is proceeding without listening."
He is adamant that deaths of "hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis" during a US attack would destroy America's moral authority in the world, its leadership on democracy. The precedent for preemptive strike could then prove dangerous to others, he says.
"When we commit to an aggressive war, what does that mean with Russia and Chechnya, with China and Taiwan? What does that mean with Pakistan and India over Kashmir?"
This year Kucinich plans to reintroduce his department of peace legislation, which he says would help foster nonmilitary conflict resolution. He arrived at the idea in the late 1990s after seeing the impulse toward war in the House that led to the US/NATO bombing of Belgrade. The original bill called for, among other things, creating an academy, like the US military academies, that would train people to resolve conflicts worldwide using nonviolent methods.
In the meantime, if the US does attack Iraq, he says that will only help to spread his ideas. "War doesn't nullify the peace effort," he says, "it empowers it." One Christian's quest for a way out
Voices: The moral conscience
It's not enough to just say "no" to war. That's what religious leader Jim Wallis tells the church groups he speaks to these days. Somewhere between bombing Iraq and doing nothing, he says, are morally acceptable alternatives that the faith community can get behind.
Finding those will test the character of Americans, who need to figure out how to address terrible situations that scare them - terrorism, cruel dictators - without becoming something terrible themselves, he suggests.
"George Bush says he wants two things: He wants regime change and the disarmament of Iraq. I want those same two things, but I don't want to bomb the children of Baghdad," says the cofounder of Sojourners, a Christian ministry that emphasizes peace and justice.
More churches are taking a stand against war for a simple reason, he says: "The unintended and unpredictable consequences of a war with Iraq are simply too dangerous, too great, too terrible."
On his list are high civilian casualties, the potential for negative reactions in the volatile Middle East, compounding the suffering already felt by the Iraqis, and endangering the lives of US servicemen and servicewomen.
"Would removing Saddam decrease the suffering of the people of Iraq? Yes, it would. But further destruction of the electrical grids and sanitation departments - the UN predicts half a million casualties from this war - no, that is just not tolerable."
Like many Christians, he recoils at casualty estimates, one of the criteria for evaluating whether a war is "just" in the Christian tradition. Some Christian denominations, such as the Quakers, prefer nonviolent solutions. Other faiths allow for war if certain criteria are met. Among them, war must be a last resort, protect against significant civilian casualties, and have proportionality - the harm it causes won't be greater than the problem it's solving.
To analyze the US approach, he draws on something the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, told him recently: "When all you have is hammers, everything looks like a nail." America, says Wallis, doesn't know other ways to conduct this new war on terrorism. "What we want to do is what we know how to do. We know how to win these wars and flatten small countries. So if we pound this nail of Iraq, we'll somehow feel more secure."
He and others in the religious community have come up with alternatives for getting rid of Hussein, other than by war. Among them are indicting him in an international tribunal, thus making it clear that he will not stay in power, and conducting more coercive, military-backed inspections.
Wallis continues to try to bring the message of his community to world leaders. He and others met with Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair last month, and he is pursuing a meeting with Mr. Bush, with whom he has met previously to discuss poverty and faith-based issues.
"Some in the antiwar movement hate President Bush. I don't," Wallis says. "My fear is that he's walled himself off.... He doesn't have to agree with those who are raising questions, but he should listen." She taps a reservoir of hope that inspections can still work
Voices: The antiwar switchboard
When the history of the current antiwar movement is written, the name Joan Blades will surely be among its pages.
She and her husband, Wes Boyd, are the founders of MoveOn.org, a website with a staff of six and more than 1.6 million members. On a daily basis, she is in a position to influence one of the antiwar movement's key lobbying constituencies - average Americans.
"Our approach [to opposing war] is very mainstream, sensible: Let's do the right thing," says Ms. Blades. "The right thing in my mind is to look for the diplomatic solution, to work with the world community. I think we will make the world a more dangerous place for ourselves and everyone else if we condone preemptive strikes."
She draws on her professional training to reach that conclusion. "I'm an attorney," she says, "so I think precedents are important."
That other countries could follow the US example troubles her - particularly when she reads in newspapers and political speeches that the government hasn't ruled out using nuclear weapons when defending the nation.
"Wars can spin out of control. No matter how powerful we are, we can't control all the forces at work in the Middle East," she says.
Blades, who remembers marching in a Vietnam War protest when she was 15, brought her website into the antiwar effort last August in order to help dispel the myth that most people supported the war.
"What makes MoveOn so powerful," she says, "is it gives very conventional ways of communicating with the world to these people who are very mainstream America."
MoveOn was started in the late 1990s, when the married duo - Silicon Valley entrepreneurs - thought Congress was spending too much time on the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Their role as chief networker for the antiwar movement was set in motion when they joined forces early last year with a 22-year-old New Yorker, Eli Pariser, who had successfully launched a petition of his own urging a peaceful response after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Blades doesn't like to think too much about what will happen if America goes to war. She says the website will still be an active part of the discussion, but she doesn't know how.
If that time comes, she says, "I will feel like we did everything humanly possible to communicate with our leadership [in Washington] in a responsible and clear fashion. And I am proud of that."
For now, she chooses to concentrate on exhausting all the diplomatic avenues available, "to see that inspections are still a successful solution. That's my goal." An activist and historian counts the human toll of war
Voices: Champion of the little guy
Howard Zinn frames his opposition to a war with Iraq in terms of the casualties.
"I believe that people who die in wars, whether they are civilians or soldiers, are innocent," the historian and activist told an audience last week at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. "A lot of innocent people will die in this war."
Mr. Zinn's focus on the human toll of an attack is not surprising, given his interest in telling American history from the bottom up, from the view of the factory workers, women, and minorities - not the officials - who lived through it.
Politically, Zinn stands to the left of the left. His recent UMass talk, for example, was sponsored by the on-campus International Socialist Club. But his bestselling "A People's History of the United States," first published more than 20 years ago, is regularly assigned in college classes across the nation. That and a long tradition of activism ensure that his name is well-known among a significant segment of the antiwar movement.
Zinn starts from the perspective that wars never solve fundamental problems, "that war by its nature has unpredictable consequences. That the means of war are inevitably horrible and ends of war are always uncertain."
He is not dissuaded by the argument that more Iraqis could die if Saddam Hussein remains in power. "That is a permanent argument for any atrocity," he says. "The only way you can justify something which is obviously atrocious is by claiming that it will prevent something that is more atrocious."
Mr. Hussein is a tyrant and is tyrannizing his own people, Zinn says, "but that's true of many, many places in the world."
Zinn, a bombardier in World War II, who later became an antiwar activist, is not a pacifist. "I don't argue for an absolute stance against the use of violence or military action," he says. "But I place very rigorous barriers against military action."
He proposes, rather, a solution that he believes would reduce the dangers of terrorism against the US. He wants America to stop being a military superpower, to pull its forces out of countries all over the world, and not antagonize people.
He's probably among a small minority who think bombing Afghanis-tan was not the appropriate response to the Sept. 11 attacks. The US is no safer from terrorism, argues the professor emeritus from Boston University. Any thwarting of the terrorist network is offset by "the increased number of people hostile to the United States as a result of its policy."
To win the war on terror, he says, the US needs to get at the roots of that hostility. "If it doesn't do that, no military action ... is going to have any effect in diminishing terrorism."
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Resignation fuels more war dissent
March 13 2003
By Mark Forbes Defence Correspondent Canberra
The Age (Australia)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/12/1047431096275.html
Disquiet over Australia's backing for a war on Iraq is widespread across the intelligence, foreign affairs and defence sectors, key insiders say.
The resignation of Office of National Assessments senior analyst Andrew Wilkie in protest at the Howard Government's stance reflected views held by many senior officials, former top ONA official David Wright-Neville said.
Concerns over the Government's increasing use of intelligence for political purposes were also widespread, he said.
Several senior members of the Defence Force have expressed reservations about involvement in a war in Iraq to The Age.
One key officer said he would consider resigning if Australia joined a war without United Nations sanction.
An intelligence analyst said that opposition to joining a war was common among defence intelligence officials.
"We don't think this is an issue for Australia. It's all about US strategic interests," he said.
"There are a lot of other things we could be doing in South-East Asia."
On Tuesday night, Mr Wilkie sparked controversy by resigning, saying an invasion of Iraq would make Australia a more likely terrorist target and cause a humanitarian backlash. Mr Wilkie had been compiling reports for ONA, Australia's main intelligence body that reports directly to the Prime Minister.
Yesterday the Prime Minister's office was forced to apologise to Mr Wilkie after a senior staff member told journalists that Mr Wilkie was unstable because of family problems. The office also said Mr Wilkie had not breached the Crimes Act so far, although it was monitoring his public comments.
Dr Wright-Neville, who left the ONA to join Monash University's Global Terrorism Project last year, said a "fair number of people in intelligence, foreign affairs and the Prime Minister's Department would express the same point" as Mr Wilkie.
As with the broader community, there were a range of views on the Iraq crisis, Dr Wright-Neville said. But there was also widespread concern about the "politicisation of intelligence".
He said concerns over the way the Government used intelligence, particularly in the Tampa dispute, extended beyond the ONA to other military intelligence agencies.
Opposition Leader Simon Crean said Mr Wilkie had contradicted Mr Howard's claims of a link between Iraq and the war on terrorism.
He had also revealed that Saddam Hussein was not an immediate threat but could be forced to use weapons of mass destruction by an invasion, Mr Crean said.
"He has to be convinced that Australia is threatened by attack and what Mr Wilkie's evidence suggests is that that link isn't there."
Mr Howard must use his National Press Club address today to prove the intelligence analyst wrong, he said.
Independent senator Brian Harradine called for an urgent meeting of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee early next week to hear evidence from Mr Wilkie.
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Anti-war protesters arrested trying to enter Capitol
3/13/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-03-13-war-protestors_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Four people protesting war in Iraq were arrested Thursday after trying to enter the Capitol via an entrance closed to the public.
The group approached officers blocking the steps on the West side of the building, allowing themselves to be arrested. Their hands bound in plastic handcuffs, they were escorted away while the remaining protesters cheered them on.
The action starts a weeklong campaign in Washington by anti-war activists committing nonviolent acts of civil disobedience. Calling it a last resort as the United States heads closer to war in Iraq, activists plan to stage acts of civil disobedience at government and Congressional offices starting Monday.
Preceding the arrests were speeches denouncing President Bush's drive toward using military force in Iraq. Holding enlarged photos of Iraqis, about 20 people gathered with the Capitol as a scenic backdrop.
At one point they were drowned out by dozens of middle schoolers from Broussard, La., singing God Bless America, who were waiting to take a group picture on the same spot.
Arrested were Kelly Campbell, whose brother-in-law died in the Pentagon; Nancy Lessin, whose stepson is a Marine stationed in the Persian Gulf; Molly McGrath; and Bob Wing.
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Religious Groups Go Online for Peace
By Cynthia L. Webb
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, March 13, 2003; 10:14 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19961-2003Mar13?language=printer
The American religious community, much like the general population, is divided on whether or not the United States should lead a military intervention to disarm Iraq. But groups representing Christians, Jews and Muslims are using the Internet to express antiwar sentiments and, in some cases, rally support for the broader peace movement.
The Catholic Church (www.vatican.va) leadership in Rome has been vocal in its stance against military action in Iraq, and scores of Catholic organizations in the U.S. are organizing opposition. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (www.usccb.org) last fall sent a letter to the White House questioning President Bush's decision to extend the war on terrorism to Iraq. The group has a section on its Web site calling for peace and providing links to church statements from around the world on the Iraq situation. The conference's Web site suggests that church members contact "government leaders to express your views after learning more about the situation in Iraq, and after praying and reflecting carefully on the moral issues at stake."
Agape, a lay Catholic community in Massachusetts, links from its site (www.agapecommunity.org) to information on the peace movement. Catholic Relief Services (www.catholicrelief.org) is one of several church organizations that provide humanitarian assistance in Iraq. The group's site does not mention opposition to an Iraq war, but it urges people to contact lawmakers to voice support for humanitarian efforts.
Some groups that aren't tied to the Catholic Church are tipping their hats to the Vatican's preeminent voice in the antiwar movement. Dr. Helen Caldicott, president of San Francisco-based Nuclear Policy Research Institute (www.nuclearpolicy.org), posted a letter on the organization's Web site calling on activists to urge Pope John Paul II to travel to Baghdad in an effort to avert a war. "To persuade the Holy Father to take this unusual but potent action, he must hear from you and millions of others around the world who have already been inspired to stand up and speak out for peace. A mountain of surface mail, email, faxes, and phone calls are our devices to inspire him," Caldicott writes, providing a sample letter for readers to send and an e-mail address for the Vatican. No Strangers to Antiwar Movement
Quakers traditionally have opposed U.S. military action, and the potential Iraq conflict is once again putting the religious group in the public eye. The church has been using grassroots message board postings to spread the peace message. A number of Quaker organizations link to different information about antiwar rallies and provide downloads of posters and fliers. For example, the St. Paul-Minneapolis Friends For A Non-Violent World (www.fnvw.org) Web site lists event information, including weekly vigils outside the offices of a local defense contractor.
The Religious Society of Friends Web site (www.quaker.org) links to various peace group, including the www.antiwar.com Web site and the Western Quakers For Peace Web site, which provides a list of various religious organizations that are opposed to a war with Iraq. Last year, the Friends General Conference (www.fgcquaker.org) issued a joint statement against war in Iraq.
The American Friends Service Committee (www.afsc.org) used its Web site to promote protests last Sunday in Washington, D.C., and urges readers to sign an online peace pledge and a "resistance pledge" The group also links to information about planned protests across the nation, including last Saturday's "Code Pink" women's march against war.
The Unitarian movement also boasts a long history of opposing armed conflict. The Unitarian Universalist Association Web site (www.uua.org) posts information about candlelight vigils and promoted last month's worldwide antiwar protests. The church group has an online resource guide about the Iraq crisis, with links to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance program. Other Christian Voices
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) Web site (www.pcusa.org) features an entire section on Iraq, including a planned live chat today at noon. "The one-hour chat -- 'International Voices on Iraq' -- will feature a number of Muslim and Christian leaders from around the world, including two people who participated in last fall's Interfaith Listening Project," according to a statement on the Web site. The organization also posts its position against the war.
The National Council of Churches provides a grassroots toolkit on its site, which it describes this way: "Here is a grassroots tool, roughly based on the Sherrod Brown amendment, that activists can use to request information from their Member of Congress on Iraq. Can be distributed at events, 'nailed' a la Martin Luther on District doors, etc." The Minnesota Council of Churches Web site (www.mnchurches.org) features links to various Christian churches that oppose a war against Iraq, including information about a meeting the executive director of the American Baptist National Ministries held with congressional leaders to voice opposition to the war.
The World Council of Churches (www.wcc-coe.org) -- an international group of 342 Christian churches based in Geneva -- last month sent representatives to lobby the U.S. Congress against a war in Iraq. One of the group's members in Brazil has created an antiwar cartoon, with information in both English and Portuguese.
The United Church of Christ has published a statement online opposing a U.S. war against Iraq. The church lists resources on Iraq, which are primarily links to antiwar statements issued by affiliated churches.
The Washington-based group Churches for Middle East Peace (www.cmep.org) primarily focuses on issues related the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it has also lobbied U.S. leaders to stop a war in Iraq, sending a letter to President Bush signed by a number of religious organizations. The site links to other groups opposed to using force in Iraq. Another Middle East-focused group, the Middle East Council of Churches (www.mecchurches.org), has a statement from August 2002 opposing action in Iraq. Earlier this month, the Lebanon-based group said it was preparing for a possible humanitarian crisis in Iraq should war strike.
The Seekers Church Peace Witness group (www.peaceprayer.org) has participated in antiwar demonstrations, including last month's protests in Washington. The group is circulating "peace prayer resources" on the Internet, including links to Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu prayers for peace. The site also links to a flier (PDF) that urges people to ring bells every day at 11 o'clock to protest war -- a symbol of being at the 11th hour of the crisis, according to the group's Web site. Jews Join Peace Effort
American Jews are also making their voices heard in the antiwar movement. The Philadelphia-based Shalom Center (www.shalomctr.org) calls on Jewish leaders to speak out against a war in Iraq. The center links to Americans For Peace Now (www.peacenow.org), a group that advocates peace in the Middle East and mostly concentrates on issues related to Israel and the Palestinians.
The Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism (www.rac.org) has an online resource guide to help readers "better understand both the current situation in Iraq and the organized Jewish community's response." The group offers an Iraq crisis e-mail update list.
Most Jewish groups dedicated to peace are focused on Israel, including www.jewishpeacefellowship.org, www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org, www.jewishpeacethread.com/, www.peacelobby.org and www.junity.org American Muslims Make Their Voices Heard Online
The Young Muslims of North America Web site (www.ymusa.org) publicizes the "emergency" march on Washington on March 15 and features an online poll for readers asking about the effectiveness of antiwar protests in January. The American Muslim Council's Web site has an e-mail update list that readers can join (see bottom of the group's homepage).
The Islamic Circle of North America Web site (www.icna.com) posts updates on protests against a war, including a link to ANSWER's Web site for details on a March 15 antiwar march in Washington. The Islamic Circle also has a comprehensive guide to other Islamic resources on the Internet.
The Muslim Peace Fellowship site (www.mpfweb.org) has a prominent link to talking points explaining the group's opposition to a war in Iraq. The portal IslamOnline features a "Spotlight on Iraq" page with information about various letter-writing campaigns and protests.
Tomorrow, this feature will look at the online movement supporting President Bush and the need for military action to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from power.
Cynthia L. Webb is a staff writer for washingtonpost.com. Her e-mail address is cindy.webb@washingtonpost.com.
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