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NUCLEAR
'Silver bullets' that kill, and kill again
Health and environmental impact of depleted uranium
A real concern about Pakistan's nuclear weapons
Foes conduct rival missile tests
Blix Has No Evidence Iraq Has Used Banned Weapons
Iran Denies Claim Buying Western Nuclear Technology
North Korea boosts military spending as nuclear crisis persists
N. Korean Nuke Dispute Looms in Iraq War
Russia successfully launches test ICBM
Tiny Moldova Could Block Nuclear Waste Shipments
Colo. judge rules against unusual defense in nuclear missile vandalism
Simultaneous Attacks an Issue for Indian Point, Agency Says
NRC RELEASES EVALUATION OF EFFECTS OF BALTIMORE TUNNEL FIRE
Kucinich Calls for Immediate End to War
U.S. Mongolian Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq
Perle resigns from Defense Policy Board
Hands Out for Shares of War Budget
War and taxes
Senate Approves $2.2 Trillion Budget
Key Rumsfeld Adviser Perle Resigns Post
MILITARY
Urban Warfare: Long a Key Part of an Underdog's Down-to-Earth Arsenal
Briefly - Africa conflicts
U.S. Hunts for Bio-Agents and Gas at an Iraq Depot
British Forces Destroy 14 Iraqi Tanks on Way Out of Basra
Army Depots in Iraqi Desert Have Names of Oil Giants
Spending Seen as Lifting Economy
U.S., U.K. Forces Blast Iraqi Tanks
Iraq Accuses U.S. of Targeting Civilians
U.S. to Intensify Attacks on Iraqi Forces
U.S. General Accuses Iraq of Killing POWs
Initial aid for Iraqis arrives in the south
Banned Weapons Remain Unseen
Marines 'Contested Every Inch, Every Mile'
Up to 1,000 Iraqis Confront U.S. Troops in Surpise Attack
US soldiers 'are using Jordan to enter Iraq'
Iraq denies US marines wounded in friendly fire
They are fighting for their independence, not Saddam
From "Plain Sailing" to "Where the Hell Are We?" to "Up the Creek"
U.N. Expert: Israeli Barrier Is Illegal
Amnesty International Calls for Immediate Halt to Use of Landmines
The 'Palestinization' of Iraq
Trying to Sort Out the Enemy From the Innocent
Iraqi Soldiers Say It Was Fight or Die
Japan Launches Spy Satellites Amid N.Korea Fears
Washington Trying to Curb U.N. Role in a Postwar Iraq
Rumsfeld and all the Army's men
Drowned Marines in full gear
U.S. Releases List of the Dead in Iraq Fighting
Delicate Calculus of Casualties and Public Opinion
A Look at Attack Aircraft In Iraq War
Don't Censor War's Horror
Unembedded Journalist's Report Provokes Military Ire
Franks to sweeten image of U.S. campaign
How the warriors have learned to control news
U.S Says Iraqi Missile May Have Hit Baghdad Market
War coverage falters amid harsh realities
Better Coverage In Iraq
Censorship Is Patriotism to Big Board
U.S. Sees Inflammatory Reporting by Some Arab Media
Pentagon Expels CSM Reporter From Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Interpol puts ex-leader Fujimori on wanted list
AFGHANISTAN - Security forces arrest four former Taliban
Delays Are Rare at U.S. Borders
Three Americans dead as reconnaissance plane crashes in Colombia
Afghanistan's Farmers Growing More Opium
Agents Seize On a Scope That Betrays Forged Documents
Half of Undercover Force Is Moving to Safer Work
ENERGY AND OTHER
Student group converts diesel-powered car
Panel Finds Manipulation by Energy Companies
Desalination plant at work
Rules Approved to Reduce Pollutants at Power Plants
Key to Strains of Anthrax Is Discovered
Heart patients advised against shot
China Raises Tally of Cases and Deaths in Mystery Illness
Survey Finds 1,800 Sleep on N.Y. Streets
W.T.O. Rules Against U.S. on Steel Tariff
I.M.F. Says Iraqi War Threatens Global Economic Recovery
ACTIVISTS
Violence erupts at Australian war protest
Press and Public Abroad Seem to Grow Ever Angrier About the U.S.
CAIRO Rights Groups Accuse Egypt of Detentions
Antiwar Demonstrations Jam Midtown
New Yorkers' Sharp Divisions Fall Roughly on Racial Lines
Lebanese Children Call for Iraq War's End
Tormented protesters give us no moment of peace
HAVE YOU HATED ANYONE TODAY?
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
'Silver bullets' that kill, and kill again
(Inter Press Service)
Mar 27, 2003
By Cristina Hernandez-Espinoza
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EC27Ak01.html
SAN FRANCISCO - The hundreds of tanks that are leading the way for the invading forces in Iraq, part of the largest US offensive since Vietnam, are carrying a dangerous metal that has triggered alarm among environmentalists around the world: depleted uranium.
In the 1991 Gulf War, the US introduced this element, considered the champion of munitions. Known as the "silver bullet" for its high density and low cost, it allows a tank to fire from a distance and achieve penetration while remaining out of reach of enemy fire. But in parallel to its formidable capacities in war, depleted uranium is also blamed for frightful environmental and health impacts.
The Iraqis say that the metal is responsible for rendering their lands infertile and for increased rates of cancer, childhood leukemia, spontaneous abortions and physical deformities. There are US veterans of the 1991 war who believe that depleted uranium is responsible for the so-called Gulf Syndrome, a mysterious set of chronic diseases from which they suffer.
According to the Pentagon, during that operation - Desert Storm - the country's forces fired 320 tons of munitions from their A-10 fighter jets, some 50 tons from the M1 Abrams tanks and 11 tons from other tanks and AV-8 aircraft, the same type of armaments being utilized in Iraq this time around, only with much greater firepower.
Depleted uranium, says the Pentagon, played a key role in the land battle launched against Iraqi forces that ended in victory for the coalition of 33 nations on February 27, 1991. History is expected to repeat itself 12 years later, though with a much reduced coalition and a longer time in the field of battle.
Richard Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, explained that the most important trait of depleted uranium is its high density, "much higher than iron", which allows it to penetrate enemy targets. On impact, said Muller, depleted uranium not only does not explode - as opposed to tungsten, which is also used in missiles - but rather heats up, and thus increases its destructive penetrating power.
In its natural state, uranium is a radioactive element, chemically toxic and abundant in nature. It is found in water, soil the air and in food. Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the enriching process in which natural uranium is used to produce fuel for nuclear reactors and atomic weapon components. It is said to be 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium, but of a similar chemical toxicity.
"The risk of exposure to depleted uranium lies in its chemical toxicity, not its radiation," said Steve Fetter, a University of Maryland expert in nuclear weapons and radiation.
When the metal burns on penetrating the target it produces uranium oxides, which are not very soluble in water or in body fluids, Fetter noted. These oxides can remain highly concentrated in the air and inhaled by people near the attack site. They also endure in the soil and can be ingested, for example, by children playing on the ground.
Depleted uranium has been used by military forces in the conflicts in the Balkans over the past decade. A report by the European parliament estimates that around 3 tons of the metal were used in Bosnia and 10 tons in Kosovo in land-air attacks. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) investigated the presence of uranium in Kosovo in 2000, in Serbia-Montenegro in 2001 and in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2002.
The first two missions found remnants of depleted uranium and "the metal's presence in bio-indicators, like moss and lichens, and in the air," but at such low levels that it cannot be considered a significant risk to the human population, Pekka Haavisto, director of the UNEP depleted uranium assessment program, said. The results of the Bosnia-Herzegovina mission are expected to be released soon.
But Haavisto pointed out that "there is still a great deal of scientific uncertainty about the potential contamination of water sources". Not all remnants of the metal have been removed from the battle areas, and there are many several meters deep in the earth, meaning that there is a danger of contaminating aquifers and surface water sources, said the UNEP official.
Studies of the presence of depleted uranium in the Persian Gulf region have been few. The International Atomic Energy Agency investigated the area in 2002, but the results of that mission have yet to be publicized.
Meanwhile, non-governmental organizations are stepping up their global campaigns to denounce the potential effects of depleted uranium on the Iraqi population, and in the US the complaints of Gulf War veterans are multiplying. "I wasn't warned about depleted uranium, or about its possible risks," states Doug Rokke, a doctor who says that he is a victim of Gulf War Syndrome, expressed in damage to his respiratory and renal systems and vision problems.
Rokke, a member of the US Navy's preventive medicine command, was sent to the Persian Gulf in 1991 with just one mandate: make sure the troops returned home alive. He prepared soldiers to respond to possible nuclear, biological or chemical attacks. However, he says, he returned home with his own health compromised.
Serving as the Pentagon director of the depleted uranium project in 1994-1995, Rokke oversaw the clean-up of contaminated military vehicles. He says the authorities were aware of the possible health effects, but that he and his team were only provided surgical masks and gloves for protection.
The Pentagon has systematically denied the charges, and specialized agencies, including the World Health Organization, have reported not to have found significant health effects that can be attributed to the metal. During the 1991 Gulf War, acknowledged the Pentagon, depleted uranium oxides may have been inhaled by soldiers or entered their bodies through wounds.
However, a report from the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine concludes that there is little or no conclusive evidence of an association between uranium exposure and renal dysfunction or lung cancer. Available information is still insufficient, say some experts. According to the University of Maryland's Fetter, "It wasn't until 1994-1995 that they conducted medical tests of the veterans." If they had taken urine samples within 24 hours of exposure, the debate would have been resolved, he adds.
The US Defense Department concludes that depleted uranium has not caused harm to the health of Gulf War veterans, but says that those who have imbedded fragments in their bodies - difficult to remove due to their small size or the danger of the procedure itself - should be subject to ongoing medical observation.
Fetter says that of the more than 100 US soldiers who suffered direct exposure to depleted uranium, just 50 percent are alive today. Twelve years later, US troops and Iraqi civilians and soldiers alike have reason to fear the effects of the latest deployment of "silver bullets".
--------
Health and environmental impact of depleted uranium (DU) munitions
Press Release
The office of Representative Jim McDermott,
7th District, Washington
March 27, 2003
http://www.vaiw.org/vet/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=68&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) today introduced legislation requiring studies on the health and environmental impact of depleted uranium (DU) munitions, as well as cleanup and mitigation of depleted uranium contamination at sites within the United States where DU has been used or produced.
McDermott, a medical doctor, has been concerned about this issue since veterans of the Gulf War started experiencing unexplained illnesses. His concern deepened, he said, after visiting Iraq, where Iraqi pediatricians told him that the incidence of severely deformed infants and childhood cancers has skyrocketed.
"Depleted uranium is toxic and carcinogenic and it may well be associated with elevated rates of birth defects in babies born to those exposed to it," said McDermott. "We had troops coming home sick after the Gulf War, and depleted uranium may be one of the factors responsible for that."
Because of its density, the military uses depleted uranium as a protective shield around tanks. It is also part of munitions like armor-piercing bullets. Because it tends to spontaneously ignite upon impact, it is used to cause explosions.
But depleted uranium, a by-product of the uranium enrichment process, is also linked to grave health concerns because of its chemical toxicity and low-level radioactivity. When depleted uranium explodes, soldiers are exposed to DU in the form of alpha-emitting airborne particles that are inhaled and shrapnel that gets embedded in the body. They are also exposed through unprotected contact with equipment.
About 300 metric tons of depleted uranium was used in the Iraq during the Gulf War, and many citizens of Iraq as well as veterans of the Gulf War have experienced terrible health problems-many say as a consequence of depleted uranium. Increased rates of cancers, leukemia, and birth malformations are among the health problems that may be linked to DU.
The Pentagon has sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, at times claiming DU is not a health hazard, and at other times acknowledging the need for sophisticated protective gear and safety training regarding exposure to DU.
"The need for these studies is imperative and immediate," said McDermott. "We cannot knowingly put the men and women of our armed forces in harm's way."
The Depleted Uranium Munitions Study Act of 2003 has several original co-sponsors, including Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).
-------- india / pakistan
A real concern about Pakistan's nuclear weapons
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
March 27, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030327-12985208.htm#4
Pakistani spokesman Asad Hayauddin's latest riposte ("Pakistan's arsenal," Letters, yesterday) follows the pattern of his previous responses, in that he skillfully bypasses the main issues.
Indeed, Arnaud de Borchgrave's column "Islamist nuke in an uncertain arsenal?" (Commentary, Monday) raises a legitimate scenario: namely, of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the hands of hard-line Islamists. It is known that retired Gen. Hamid Gul, who is reputed to be the chief adviser to Pakistan's Islamist right, wields enormous influence among the pro-Taliban elements within Pakistan, as well as the religious parties that control half of the country today.
Even a cursory scan of Pakistan's media reveals the pathological hatred these elements display toward the Judeo-Christian West and their tendency to see a Jewish conspiracy behind every shadow. In that light, the notion of Pakistan's nuclear weapons being solely India-centric does not hold water.
Mr. Hayauddin's assertions notwithstanding, the concern about the dangers posed by Pakistan's nuclear weapons to the rest of the world, especially Israel and the United States, is truly legitimate.
KAUSHIK KAPISTHALAM
Atlanta
----
Foes conduct rival missile tests
By Nirmala George
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 27, 2003
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030327-9527400.htm
NEW DELHI - Tensions between India and Pakistan worsened yesterday when each conducted tit-for-tat missile tests and New Delhi linked Islamabad to a massacre of 24 Hindus by unidentified gunmen.
Hours after India fired a short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, Pakistan announced it had tested a similar missile. Each missile was capable of reaching cities in the other country.
Also, officials in Pakistan said troops along its border with India traded heavy artillery and mortar fire, leading to the death of one Pakistani civilian and the wounding of 14 others.
India successfully fired a Prithvi missile from its Chandipur testing range in eastern Orissa state. The missile has a range of 95 miles. Defense Ministry spokesman Baljit Singh Menon said the test was routine.
Pakistan tested one of its Abdali missiles, which can carry nuclear as well as conventional warheads and has a range of up to 132 miles. Aziz Ahmed Khan, spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, would not specify the time or the location of the test.
Tensions have increased since the massacre Monday in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The victims, including two children and 11 women, were upper-caste Hindus known as Kashmiri Pandits. A group of armed men dragged them out of their homes in the village of Nadimarg and shot them at close range, police and witnesses said.
Police said they believed the gunmen were Islamic militants, who have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir's independence from India. More than 61,000 people, mostly Kashmiri civilians, have been killed in the insurgency.
"The pattern, methodology and the nature of targets of these acts of terror are all too familiar and, therefore, the culpability of Pakistan is all too clear," said Navtej Sarna, a spokesman for the Indian Foreign Ministry.
New Delhi has long accused Pakistan of supporting the Islamic militants. Pakistan insists it does not provide funding or weapons.
The two countries came to the brink of war after similar attacks a year ago. Both sides rushed hundreds of thousands of troops to their shared border, raising concerns about a nuclear exchange, before international mediation defused the conflict.
Mr. Sarna took an indirect swipe at the United States and its war on terrorism, in which Pakistan is a key ally.
"The global war against terrorism can only be won when it is pursued without double standards and terrorism is eradicated wherever it exists," he said.
"The combat against international terrorism is ill-served if threats in some cases are met with military means, and in others with calls for restraint and dialogue."
Washington repeatedly has called on India and Pakistan to resume dialogue and was instrumental in getting the two to pull back from the brink of war last year.
-------- inspections
Blix Has No Evidence Iraq Has Used Banned Weapons
March 27, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-un-blix.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said on Thursday he had no evidence from U.S.-led forces waging war on Iraq that Baghdad had used any banned weapons of mass destruction.
``So far we have not identified or heard from the allies that anything that was proscribed would have been used,'' he told reporters. Blix said there had been reports from Kuwait that Iraq had fired illegal Scud missiles into that neighboring country but he believed these had turned out to be al-Fatah missiles, which do not exceed the permissible U.N. range of 90 miles.
Among those leveling the charges was Kuwait, whose U.N. ambassador, Mohammad Abulhasan, wrote the 15-nation U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to complain that Iraq had fired 11 missiles at its oil-rich neighbor to the southeast at the start of the conflict last Thursday.
``At least one (of these) was a Scud missile, which Iraq possesses while continuing to deny so, in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions,'' his letter said.
But Blix said he had heard from U.S.-led forces ``that they have not seen any Scud missiles.''
``In the beginning of the conflict there were some statements to the effect that Scud missiles had been sent, and this was later on withdrawn,'' he said. ``And I have not heard any assertion that there would have been proscribed missiles yet. It may come,'' he added.
Blix said he was relieved that Iraq had not used prohibited chemical or biological weapons so far in the conflict.
``I didn't think they would do it because, first of all, the world would say that they were liars,'' he said. Baghdad has denied having any weapons of mass destruction.
``And in the second place, it would also then change, I think, the attitude of the world toward the armed conflict. The skepticism about the armed conflict would, I think, give way to one of greater understanding,'' he said.
The Security Council ordered Iraq to destroy any weapons of mass destruction after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
U.N. inspectors whose task was to monitor the disarmament were sent back in to Iraq on Nov. 27 after a four-year hiatus.
But the inspectors were pulled out last week, before they could complete their work, after the United States and Britain notified the United Nations of an impending attack on Iraq.
-------- iran
Iran Denies Claim Buying Western Nuclear Technology
March 27, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-russia-nuclear.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran on Thursday denied Russian suggestions that it was buying uranium enrichment equipment from Western suppliers.
``The nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic are indigenous and Iran uses its own know-how and possibilities,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
The comments came after Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev -- in response to U.S. criticism of Russian sales of nuclear technology to Iran -- said Washington was ignoring similar activities by Western companies.
``It is always criticizing us, but its close economic partners supply Iran with sensitive technology,'' he said on Wednesday.
Rumyantsev was referring to media reports that an Iranian gas centrifuge, a sophisticated apparatus able to enrich uranium for both power stations and weapons, was made by Western companies.
Russia's technology sales and construction of a power station at the Gulf port of Bushehr in southwestern Iran have long irritated the United States.
Iran has said its nuclear program was aimed at producing electricity, but Washington says Iran -- which President Bush placed in an ``axis of evil'' alongside Iraq and North Korea -- is pursuing nuclear weapons.
Asefi, who was quoted by the official IRNA news agency, said: ``Nuclear activities of the Islamic Republic are very transparent and intended for peaceful purposes.''
A delegation from the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), last month inspected the gas centrifuge. Rumyantsev said Iran's cooperation with the IAEA showed it was not secretly developing nuclear weapons.
-------- korea
North Korea boosts military spending as nuclear crisis persists
AFP
Thursday March 27, 8:38 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030327/1/39h0u.html
North Korea has set aside a greater chunk of its limited resources to beef up its military while a nuclear crisis escalates, and announced a rare sale of government bonds to fill empty state coffers.
North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, at its annual session Wednesday, allocated 15.4 percent of this year's budgeted expenditure to defense, up from 14.9 percent last year.
Finance Minister Mun Il-Bong said the increase was needed to develop North Korea's defence industry and train troops "as an invincible army and thus consolidate the country's defences as an impregnable fortress."
Top priority will be given to the production of "quality raw and other materials" needed for boosting military power and also putting "all the people under arms and turning the whole country into a fortress," he said in a report to the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA).
North Korea boosted its overall budgetary expenditure this year by 14.4 percent, requiring the sale of state bonds for the first time since the 1950-53 Korean War, said the official Korean Central News Agency.
"The budgetary revenue envisages taking a step for issuing bonds for the people's life with a view to making an effective use of money to spare," Moon said.
South Korean Unification Minister Jeong-Se-Hyun said the bond issue highlights North Korea's economic woes aggravated by a five-month-old nuclear standoff with the United States.
"The bond issue proves their situation is worse than before," he said.
The impoverished country had been hit by food and energy shortages since 1995, with natural disasters aggravating its struggle for survival.
Its energy shortage deepened after the United States and its allies withdrew fuel aid after US revelations that North Korea had admitted to running a secret nuclear program in breach of a 1994 accord with Washington.
Pyongyang has vowed to fire up a nuclear power reactor mothballed under the 1994 accord to meet its energy needs.
The economic pinch, however, has failed to stop North Korea's push to strengthen its 1.1-million-strong armed forces, 70 percent of which is stationed close to the border with South Korea.
North Korea's supreme leader Kim Jong-Il and top military officials missed the crucial SPA session for the first time in five years, monitors in Seoul said.
Kim's public activities have not been reported since his last publicised appearance on February 12 for his 61st birthday. Since the nuclear crisis erupted in October last year, Kim made frequent visits to military units.
KCNA said the SPA also adopted a new military service law.
Under the law, lower-level party and government officials who have not completed military service are ordered to join the military for at least three years, according to the Donghwa Sinmun newspaper run by North Korean defectors.
The legislation is aimed at making up for a decrease in the number of troops that began in 1999 when North Korea shortened its military service period for ordidary people from 13 years to 11 years.
North Korea has recently stepped up propaganda to put its people on a war footing in preparation for what they fear is an impending US attack.
--------
N. Korean Nuke Dispute Looms in Iraq War
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-After-Iraq.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- If the United States ever threatens to bomb North Korea's nuclear facilities, one South Korean activist says he would try to send so-called ``human shields'' of civilians to protect the site from attack.
It's a whimsical idea: getting permission to enter North Korea is tough, even for its few sympathizers, and the Yongbyon nuclear complex is one of the most restricted military areas in a nation where travel is circumscribed.
Still, activist Ko Young-dae's improbable plan is an example of how some Koreans are beginning to think about -- and brace for -- a conflict in their region once the war in Iraq ends and the United States focuses on North Korea's suspected efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
``Our human shield plan is a way to stop a war from breaking out on the Korean Peninsula,'' Ko said.
The United States seeks a diplomatic solution to the nuclear dispute, but has not ruled out a military option. U.S. officials say they consult closely with South Korea, an ally that fiercely opposes military action against the North because of the threat of widespread destruction.
``There will be no war on the Korean Peninsula as long as we do not want a war,'' South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said Wednesday. He was quoted by his office.
Some analysts believe the standoff with North Korea is essentially on hold now that the Iraq conflict is underway. The North had staged a series of military maneuvers that were seen as attempts to goad the United States into talks, but has been quiet since U.S.-led forces attacked Iraq last week.
``North Korea had hurried to try to bring the United States to talks before the Iraq war. They missed the timing, and are now just observing the situation,'' said Koh Yu-hwan, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.
``North Korea believes that no matter what it does, the United States does not have time to pay attention,'' he said. ``It also fears the international community would turn its back on it if it crossed the red line now.''
The so-called ``red line'' is widely perceived as a possible decision to start reprocessing spent fuel rods at Yongbyon that could yield enough plutonium to make several nuclear bombs within months. North Korea earlier reactivated a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, but U.S. officials say any tampering with the fuel rods is a more immediate threat.
For now, North Korea appears to be hunkering down, announcing on Wednesday that it was pulling out of weekly military meetings with the U.S.-led U.N. Command at the border village of Panmunjom. It also canceled a round of economic talks with South Korea that were scheduled for this week.
North Korea has complained bitterly about U.S.-South Korean exercises now underway in the South, saying they are a preparation for war. But one analyst said the drills may have deterred further Northern military actions like the March 2 interception of a U.S. military surveillance plane.
``The timing of the exercise here, coinciding with the start of the (Iraq) war, has probably helped to reinforce the message that the U.S. really wants to focus on the situation in Iraq, but that it's also prepared for other contingencies,'' said Scott Snyder, head of the Asia Foundation office in Seoul.
Chung Jong-wook, former national security adviser to the presidential Blue House in the 1990s, said North Korea could try to develop nuclear weapons rather than wait for the United States to come to the negotiating table. Washington believes North Korea already has one or two atomic bombs.
``Perhaps we are in for a more serious situation,'' said Chung, comparing the confrontation to a 1994 crisis over North Korea's nuclear site. ``North Korea may be moving very fast to make it fait accompli before the end of the war in Iraq.''
That depends on how long the war lasts, and whether North Korea is technically capable and politically willing to push ahead rapidly with nuclear weapons development. But the fear that it could do so remains constant, however much the world is focused on Iraq.
Ko, the activist, says he will urge U.S., European and Japanese activists to try to go to Pyongyang if war looms. But he's fuzzy on the details of who will go, and when, and how.
``Our plan will materialize more clearly after the U.S. war on Iraq ends,'' he said.
-------- russia
Russia successfully launches test ICBM
AFP
Thursday March 27, 2003
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030327/1/39h5l.html
The Russian military successfully launched a test intercontinental ballistic missile from its northwestern Plisetsk base, military officials said.
The Topol rocket, which was 18 years old, was fired at the Kamchatka peninsula, the usual target for most Russian intercontinental test sights.
"It was a complete success," one military official told AFP.
The military stressed that the launch was in no way linked with the United States' decision to launch the Iraqi war.
"This has nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do with Iraq," an officer at the Russian Strategic Missile Forces press service told AFP by telephone.
"This has been in the planning for months," the official said.
Russia bitterly opposed strikes on Iraq, with President Vladimir Putin taking a tough stance against the war in recent days.
Analysts have interpreted Putin's comments to mean that there has been a rupture in Moscow's relations with Washington sparked by the war.
When contacted by AFP earlier, a Russian military space agency official had refused to answer whether the test had been planned before or after the US-British military attack on Iraq.
Officials said the Topol launch from Plisetsk was the 79th launch of this type of rocket since 1981.
----
Tiny Moldova Could Block Nuclear Waste Shipments
March 27, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/mar2003/2003-03-27-01.asp
MOSCOW, Russia, Representatives of environmental groups from across Europe and Japan are lobbying the members of the Parliament of Moldova who today debated ratification of an agreement on the transportation of nuclear waste between Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Bulgaria. The other three countries have already approved the agreement. Once ratified in Moldova, the agreement will allow nuclear waste transports through the four countries for the next 10 years.
Moldova, the second smallest of the former Soviet states with a population of 4.7 million, would be a transit country for nuclear transports between Bulgaria and Russia. Earlier this month, Moldova's Cabinet of Ministers adopted the draft bill authorizing ratification of the agreement on transit of nuclear waste through Moldova.
According to the head of the Moldovian Environmental Movement, Aleku Renitze, ratification of the nuclear waste transport agreement threatens environment, security and public health in Moldova.
Some 100 representatives of environmental groups from Russia, Moldova, Ukraine, Romania, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Denmark, Switzerland, Belgium, and Japan, as well as several members of the European Parliament, urged Moldova' parliamentarians to reject the agreement on nuclear transportation.
A campaign of faxes and emails to Moldova's Parliament organized by environmental groups Russian Ecodefense and Moldovian SalvaEco has been operating since Monday. In a letter to Moldovian lawmakers, the environmentalists point out that nuclear shipments could be targeted by terrorists or thieves.
Their statement addressed to Moldova's Parliament says, "Ratification of the agreement on nuclear transportation may lead to serious environmental and security problems as for Moldova as for Russia. Trains with nuclear waste are vulnerable to terrorist attack. Moreover, transportation creates numerous opportunities for theft of radioactive material that may lead to nuclear proliferation."
The environmentalists have been successful in preventing these waste shipments in the past. In 1998, under pressure of environmental groups from Russia and Bulgaria, Moldova's Parliament rejected a similar agreement on nuclear transportation. As a result, transportation of Bulgarian radioactive waste to Russia was suspended between 1998 and 2001.
In 1999, Bulgaria agreed to close four aging Soviet built nuclear reactors at Kozloduy, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the Bulgarian capital Sofia. Under the agreement, the two oldest reactors, dating from the mid-1970s, will be closed this year. Reactors 3 and 4, which came online in 1979-81, will close by 2006, although no exact date has been set. In return the European Union agreed to provide financial help so that Bulgaria can continue to operate the remaining two Kozloduy reactors. Nearly half of all Bulgarian electricity is generated by nuclear reactors.
Russia wants to import the nuclear waste generated in Bulgaria by the Kozloduy reactors and reprocess the spent fuel at its Mayak facility in Siberia. The anti-nuclear activists warn that would be dangerous for Russian citizens.
"For Russia the import of nuclear waste only means new threats to the environment and public health," the environmentalists wrote in their statement to Moldova's Parliament.
"Bringing nuclear waste from Bulgaria to Russia means that train would make several thousands of kilometers through four countries which keep its railroads in bad technical condition," said Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of Ecodefense, the Russian group that organized the fax campaign on Moldova' Parliament.
"Usually, these countries offer poorly trained guards that never dealt with nuclear materials. All that increases the threat of accident with radioactive release during nuclear transportation," Slivyak warned.
Mayak, Russia's only nuclear reprocessing plant, needs fundamental reconstruction that would cost $400 to 600 million. According to Mayak Director Vitaly Sadovnikov, if those funds not found, Mayak would close down in 3-5 years, the activists informed the Moldovan legislators.
Citing UN experts that call the Mayak facility the most radioactively contaminated place on Earth, the activists asked the lawmakers to "give no support for anti-democratic action of Russian government and reject proposed agreement on nuclear transportation."
Slivyak calls spent nuclear fuel reprocessing "environmentally harmful, economically unprofitable and politically controversial." It must be halted," he said.
But on January 16, Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin pledged to promote parliamentary ratification of the nuclear waste transport agreement. The promise was made during a visit of Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov to Moldova.
The two leaders agreed that Moldova will consult with Bulgaria on the process of EU integration, in which Sofia is far more advanced. Moldovan authorities say this is the year to negotiate an agreement of association to the European Union as the first step toward accession.
The European Union is admitting 10 new countries next year and is in accession negotiations with three others, including Bulgaria.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Colo. judge rules against unusual defense in nuclear missile vandalism
State News of National Interest
March 27, 2003
Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-State-Spotlight.html
DENVER (AP) -- A judge ruled that three nuns accused of vandalizing a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo can't use a Nuremberg defense at trial. The three cut down fences at the silo, defaced it with their blood and pounded it with hammers. The defense claimed the missile is a first-strike weapon prohibited by international law and the nuns tried to prevent crimes against humanity.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Simultaneous Attacks an Issue for Indian Point, Agency Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS,
March 27, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/28/nyregion/28INDI.html
WHITE PLAINS - Emergency planning around the Indian Point nuclear power plant should consider the threat of simultaneous terrorist attacks on the reactors and on the area around them, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said today.
In a report requested by Representative Sue Kelly, a Republican whose district includes the plant, the agency said that planners should consider "other terrorist attacks occurring simultaneously" with an attack on the nuclear plant.
Since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the power plant, about 35 miles from Midtown Manhattan, in Buchanan, N.Y., has been seen as a potential target. Some residents have voiced fears that if terrorists attacked Indian Point, they may also attack the bridges and roads that would normally serve as escape routes.
Ms. Kelly, who has called for a shutdown of the plant until questions about evacuation plans can be put to rest, had asked FEMA to address the impact of terrorism on emergency planning, among other issues. Her request came after Richard A. Meserve, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, criticized a state-commissioned report on emergency plans for Indian Point. Mr. Meserve said last month that the report "appears to give undue weight to the impact of potential acts of terrorism."
A lack of faith in the evacuation plans has prompted hundreds of officials to call for a shutdown of the plant. The four counties closest to Indian Point and the state emergency office have refused to certify the plans as up-to-date. They have cited the state-commissioned report, by James Lee Witt, a former FEMA director, which concluded that emergency planning for the communities around the plant was inadequate.
The new report said that the N.R.C. had informed the federal emergency agency that "the type of radiological release that could result from a terrorist attack would not be greater or faster than those already addressed" in emergency planning.
"That, however, would be independent of simultaneous terrorist acts that many have raised as new planning concerns," the report said.
The report defends much of the current plan, insisting it takes into account several "worst-case scenarios" like a quick release of radiation and airplane crashes at the plant.
The federal emergency agency is trying to get enough information from the state and the counties to decide whether emergency plans for the plant are adequate. It has set a May 2 deadline for cooperation. Otherwise, it will report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it cannot assure the public's health and safety.
Representative Kelly was not satisfied with FEMA's response, calling it "bureaucratic lip service."
"FEMA says it agrees that terrorism should be a factor in planning, but provides absolutely no specific steps being taken to protect our community," she said. "FEMA says it is providing guidance to local officials, but since the Witt report was released, local officials do not feel they are getting the help they need."
The federal emergency agency also takes issue in its latest report with Mr. Witt's statements about how people will respond to a radiation release. Mr. Witt said in his report that current plans appeared to be "based on the premise that people will comply with official government directions rather than acting in accordance with what they perceive to be their best interests." The agency said it believed "that if government messages are clear and concise and are provided by highly trusted figures, most people will follow those directions."
At several points in the latest 12-page report from the agency and in a cover letter from the acting regional director, Joseph Picciano, FEMA emphasized its need for help from the local and state governments.
"We continue to rely on the state to serve as a partner and a facilitator of this effort," Mr. Picciano said.
-------- us nuc waste
NRC RELEASES EVALUATION OF EFFECTS OF BALTIMORE TUNNEL FIRE ON RAIL TRANSPORTATION OF SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL
NRC NEWS U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Office of Public Affairs
Telephone: 301/415-8200
Washington, DC 20555-0001
E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov
No. 03-039
March 27, 2003
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2003/03-039.html
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released the results of two studies that calculated the potential effects of the Baltimore tunnel fire in July 2001 on a transportation cask carrying spent nuclear fuel. The studies concluded that the spent fuel transportation cask studied, when subjected to similar fire conditions, would not release radioactive materials, and public health and safety would be protected.
Following the derailment of a CSX freight train inside the Howard Street tunnel in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 18, 2001, the Commission directed the NRC staff to determine if current regulations for transporting spent fuel by rail provide adequate assurance that cask designs could withstand the fire conditions experienced in the tunnel after a tank car carrying approximately 28,600 gallons of liquid tripropylene ruptured and caught fire. (No nuclear materials were involved in the incident.)
The staff coordinated with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), with assistance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analysis (CNWRA), and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to calculate the thermal conditions in the tunnel during the accident. NIST calculated fire temperatures as high as 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit in the narrow flaming region of the fire. The hot gas layer above the cars, within three rail-car lengths of the fire, averaged 900 degrees F. The tunnel ceiling directly above the fire reached 1,500 degrees F, while three car lengths away the ceiling temperature reached 750 degrees F. These results were confirmed by a separate analysis conducted by CNWRA by examining the damage to box cars and tanker cars removed from the tunnel after the fire.
The NRC staff, along with thermal analysis experts at PNNL, developed a model to test two different scenarios involving a spent fuel transportation cask. In the first scenario, the cask was assumed to be located one rail car's length (about 65 feet) away from the source of the fire; NRC and Department of Transportation regulations require such a buffer zone between spent fuel casks and other cars carrying hazardous materials. In the second scenario, the cask was assumed to be 16 feet from the source of the fire, even though such close proximity would be extremely unlikely. Both scenarios were calculated through 150 hours of fire exposure at maximum temperatures, even though the liquid trypropylene fuel in the actual Howard Street tunnel fire is believed to have burned for only about three hours.
The staff's analysis indicated there would be no failure of the structural components of the transport cask, and no failure of the canister containing the spent fuel inside the transportation cask. Overall, the staff concluded that there would be no release of radioactive materials from such a hypothetical event.
The documents released by NRC include SECY-03-0002, summarizing the staff's research and findings, along with two attachments: NIST's "Numerical Simulation of the Howard Street Tunnel Fire, Baltimore, Maryland, July 2001," and CNWRA's "Analysis of Rail Car Components Exposed to a Tunnel Fire Environment." They are available online through the NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), accession numbers ML030840076, ML030280369, and ML023460584. ADAMS may be accessed through the NRC's web page at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. For help using ADAMS, contact the agency's Public Document Room at (800) 397-4209.
-------- us politics
Kucinich Calls for Immediate End to War
From: "Kucinich Campaign" <info@kucinich.us>
Date: Friday, March 28, 2003
Today, at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), who leads opposition to the war in Iraq, issued the following statement:
"This Administration has never made its case for war against Iraq. It is an unjustified war, which the Administration continues to misrepresent and exaggerate. The most recent example is the Administration's characterization of international coalition support for this war."
"This morning, President Bush once again exaggerated the extent of support for the war stating that the coalition of countries supporting this war is larger than the 1991 Gulf War. What Bush failed to mention was that back in 1991, all of the 34 coalition members offered military force, by contributing troops on the ground, aircraft, ships or medics. "
"This war involves the troops of only the U.S., Britain, Australia, Poland and Albania. Not even the three members of the Security Council that support the war, Spain, Italy, and Bulgaria are committing military support."
"This Bush Administration has been adding coalition member to their list based on statements of "moral" support. As the Washington Post reported last week, if this type of criteria was used back in 1991, the size of the coalition would likely have topped 100 countries."
"Further, the total cost of the Gulf War to the United States was around $4 billion dollars. This time, the President has come to Congress requesting a $75 billion bill, all of which will be paid by U. S. taxpayers. Clearly, military and economic support from countries is far more important than statements of 'well-wishes'."
"This war must end now. It was unjust when it started last week, and is still unjust today. The U.S. should get out now and try to save the lives of American troops and Iraqi citizens. Most importantly, ending the war now and resuming weapons inspections could salvage world opinion of the United States, which has been deteriorating since the talk of war began. After all, the greatest threat to the United States at this time is terrorism, which is breeding from this war."
Congressman Kucinich will issue daily statements on the war in Iraq. Please pass these statements on to your friends. Help empower America's leading spokesperson for peaceful resolution of international conflict. Please visit http://www.kucinich.us now to contribute to the presidential campaign. Your financial help will spread the message and enable a new vision for America to be brought forward.
----end message from Kucinich for President Campaign Office [see above site for local events, eg, Los Angeles DK speech Apr.5]
Join Kucinich4President support and discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Kucinich4President
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U.S. Mongolian Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq
Thu Mar 27, 2003
By MICHAEL KOHN,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=542&e=84&u=/ap/20030327/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/war_diplomat_resigns_2
ULAN BATOR, Mongolia - A senior diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Mongolia has resigned in protest over Washington's decision to wage war in Iraq and U.S. policy toward the Middle East and North Korea.
Ann Wright, who as deputy chief of mission was the embassy's second-in-command, also criticized the "unnecessary curtailment of civil rights" in the United States since Sept. 11.
"I believe the administration's policies are making the world a more dangerous, not a safer, place," she said in a resignation letter addressed to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Wright said Thursday she sent the letter March 19, the day before the U.S.- and British-led attack on Iraq began. She planned to leave Mongolia in early April.
An embassy spokesman in Ulan Bator declined comment.
Wright, 56, is at least the second American diplomat to resign in protest over policy toward Iraq. John Brady Kiesling, a political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, stepped down March 7.
In her letter, Wright said that by taking military action without U.N. Security Council backing, the United States could trigger a backlash in the Arab world.
"This pre-emptive attack policy will ... provide justification for individuals and groups to `pre-emptively attack' America and American citizens," the letter says.
She also cited what she called the Bush administration's "lack of effort" in trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its lack of contacts with North Korea amid tensions over the North's nuclear program.
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Perle resigns from Defense Policy Board
By TIM JOHNSON
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Thu, Mar. 27, 2003
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/5498573.htm
WASHINGTON - Richard Perle, one of the architects of the U.S. war on Iraq, resigned on Thursday from his post as chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board amid calls from Congress for a probe of his business dealings.
A sudden controversy over Perle's private lobbying efforts brought down the 61-year-old hawk, who was once styled as the "prince of darkness" for his pro-military, anti-arms treaty views.
Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense, sent a brief letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld saying he would quit as chairman because he could not "quickly or easily quell the criticism."
In a brief statement, Rumsfeld called Perle "a man of integrity and honor" and said he asked Perle to remain a member of the voluntary board, which advises the administration on major matters of defense policy.
Perle has become embroiled in criticism over his lobbying efforts on behalf of Global Crossing, a telecommunications company emerging from bankruptcy. Some branches of the Bush administration oppose the sale of the firm to Hutchison Whampoa, a Chinese conglomerate, as a possible threat to national security.
The FBI and other agencies say the Global Crossing sale to Hutchison Whampoa would give the Hong Kong-based company control of the world's most extensive fiber optic network and allow it to oversee existing contracts for secure Pentagon communications. Hutchison Whampoa is alleged to have many dealings with front companies for the People's Liberation Army in China.
A senior Democratic legislator, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, asked on Tuesday for the Pentagon to investigate Perle's business dealings. Since then, the request appeared to be picking up support from a growing bipartisan list of legislators.
"I have seen controversies like this before," Perle wrote in his letter to Rumsfeld. "And I know that this one will inevitably distract from the urgent challenge in which you are now engaged. I would not wish to cause even a moment's distraction from that challenge."
Perle's letter said he has agreed to forgo compensation if the sale of Global Crossing to the Chinese concern goes through.
According to bankruptcy papers, Perle was to receive a total payment of $725,000 for his advisory work, $650,000 of which would be contingent on the sale going through.
Perle said he would turn over fees already received "to the families of American forces killed or injured in Iraq."
As chair of the Defense Policy Board, Perle sat with more than a dozen other former government officials to offer advice on planning and "major matters of defense policy."
Among those on the board are former national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Richard Allen, former defense secretaries Harold Brown and James Schlesinger, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and former CIA Director James Woolsey.
Perle is among a group of neo-conservatives inside and outside the Bush administration that pressed hard for military action to topple Saddam Hussein, envisioning that such action would re-order the Middle East. They call for aggressive use of pre-emptive military action to defend U.S. national interests, and to change regimes that may threaten the United States.
Some members of the group were highly critical of the Clinton administration for accepting campaign donations that allegedly came from China.
They also attacked the Clinton administration for not attempting to block the 1999 sale of container ports at both ends of the Panama Canal to Hutchison Whampoa, saying it would give China undue control of the waterway.
----
Hands Out for Shares of War Budget
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By DAVID FIRESTONE and PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/politics/27COST.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - President Bush's request for money to pay for the war in Iraq became a magnet on Capitol Hill today, with competing groups seeking money for a host of indirectly related issues.
Democrats said they wanted considerably more money for domestic security needs than the president had proposed, and administration officials said they would probably have to give in to the pressure. Airlines and their supporters asked for money to help the troubled industry, and Republican senators said that was a strong possibility. And the chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks asked for money to be added to the spending bill to keep his panel from running out of money in a few months.
The $74.7 billion bill is immensely attractive to members of Congress because it has to pass in the next two weeks to pay for the war, and thus any measure attached to it has to pass as well. President Bush himself added two nonmilitary items to his request: $4.2 billion in domestic security money and $8 billion in foreign aid. Both he and House Republicans warned that they did not want partisan squabbling over the security money to hold up approval of the bill, and that the bill should not become the source of pork-barrel spending for lawmakers.
But Democratic leaders in both houses said more money would have to be spent on domestic security.
"We have felt from the beginning that the homeland security commitment, not only this year but next year, is inadequate," said Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader. "I just had a conference call with a number of mayors a couple of days ago, and they are very concerned about the implications of the costs that they are incurring as it relates to increased need for security at home. So we need to reflect those concerns."
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York proposed that government spending on domestic security be equal to 10 percent of the amount being spent on the war, which would mean increasing the amount to at least $7 billion. Mrs. Clinton said in an interview today that about $900 million of that amount should be set aside for the high-security needs of New York City.
Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York proposed an even larger amount, $10.8 billion.
Senator Bill Frist, the Republican leader, said he would not be surprised if more domestic security money made it into the final bill.
Administration officials acknowledged today that they would probably have to give in to the Congressional pressure and accept billions of dollars in additional spending for the Department of Homeland Security and related domestic security programs, both in the wartime budget request sent to Congress this week and in the overall budget for the 2004 fiscal year.
A senior administration official who is involved in budget negotiations over the Department of Homeland Security conceded that the White House was feeling pressure from Republicans as well as Democrats on Capitol Hill for a sharp increase in spending on domestic security beyond the amount sought in the emergency budget request.
"I think we can block these big, unnecessary spending increases for homeland security that are being sought by the Democrats," a senior administration official said. "But I can't deny that there is pressure on us to revisit our budget for homeland security. Some additional money will probably be appropriate."
Nonetheless, many Republicans said they would try to resist the use of the domestic security label as a vehicle for disguised pork-barrel spending. "The president should be given just what he asked for," said Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership. "To give homeland security money out everywhere in the country is not fair to the areas with high threat levels, and we'd be enriching some communities that frankly don't need the money. What we don't want is for this to become another form of revenue sharing."
The Sept. 11 commission, which is charged with investigating the causes of the attacks, was given $3 million when it was established by Congress last year, but Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey governor who is the panel's chairman, said it would run out of that money by late summer. The commission has hired about 50 staff members and rented offices, Mr. Kean said, and needs another $11 million to do its job.
Noting that the commission recently established to investigate the space shuttle disaster was given $50 million, Mr. Kean said he asked the White House to include the money in the war spending request but was turned down.
"We thought it was a logical fit there, but from their point of view, they wanted to keep the bill totally focused on the war," he said. "We hope that Congress will help us out."
Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, said the administration supported the request but was looking for methods other than the war bill for supplying the money. Congressional officials said they had just learned of the request and did not know whether it would be included in the final spending bill.
Republicans in the Senate said they would try to add $1.5 billion to the bill to help the airline industry, but one leading House Republican said he was reluctant to begin adding such items to the bill.
"I hope it does not get more expensive," said Representative Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader. "If we're going to do it, I feel we need to keep it as clean as possible, and as close to what the president has asked for. You start adding things to the supplemental, and it will seriously inhibit our ability to get something to the president's desk."
----
War and taxes
Alan Reynolds,
March 27, 2003
Townhall.com
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/alanreynolds/ar20030327.shtml
Will the president's tax plan be counted among the first casualties of war?
A week after stocks staged a prematurely optimistic war rally, the Dow retreated 307 points in just one day, back to 8214.
That was up from the prewar blues, but it is still awful. After all, the Dow bottomed at 8236 shortly after the horror of Sep. 11, 2001. And the Dow was a thousand points higher last June, before Congress promised to "restore investor confidence" by burdening business with new regulatory and legal risks. Surprisingly, the latest setback occurred despite the fact that Coalition troops took control of Iraq's largest oil fields, pushing oil prices back below $30.
The stock market and military setbacks were immediately followed by a setback for the president's tax plan in the Senate. Only four days after decisively rejecting by 62 to 38 a proposal to shrink the 10-year tax cut to $350 billion, more than a dozen senators suddenly changed their minds about that. The president's plan would otherwise have "cost" about $663 billion ($388 billion from eliminating the second individual tax on dividends), according to the Congressional Budget Office, although serious newspapers have been uncritically echoing an unserious $726 billion figure.
The wayward senators seized upon the president's request for an extra $75 billion for temporary war-related expenses as a handy excuse for permanently trimming the tax cut by more than $300 billion. Nobody who passed the fourth-grade math could fall for that story.
You have to wonder if those senators would have been so fickle about suddenly withdrawing support for the president's tax plan if news from Iraq and the stock exchange had not just as suddenly turned against the president. A timely cut in tax rates and dividend taxes would boost investor and consumer spirits, and the resulting stock market rally would boost the president's clout with Congress -- and such presidential popularity would make it professionally risky for any senator to oppose sensible cuts in tax rates and dividend taxes. But that chain suddenly has a weak link: the Senate.
Another weak link is the fact that supporters and critics of the president's plan keep talking as though estimated revenue is all that matters, regardless of which tax is cut or how or why. What should be a thoughtful examination of the cost and benefit of each item in the tax package -- and perhaps adding a few other improvements -- has degenerated into a primitive Keynesian feud over its sheer size.
There are odds and ends in the president's package that have no meaningful impact on marginal incentives and could harmlessly be postponed. Accelerating the marriage penalty scheme, a 66 percent increase in the child credit, enlarging the 10 percent tax bracket and the AMT exemption -- together these account for $242 billion, nearly 40 percent of the Treasury's estimate of the total.
Letting such warm and fuzzy social policies take place gradually, as they will under the 2001 tax law, would certainly not be "a large economic setback." Yet even carving out that $242 billion would not meet the Senate's super-frugal standard. You can bet that the senators favoring the tight dollar cap are the same ones who would vote to keep the ineffective fuzzy stuff and discard the economic substance. And you can also bet that not one of them is nearly as frugal when it comes to spending the taxpayers' money as they are when it comes to letting taxpayers keep it. American families, farms and firms have budget problems, too.
From a supply-side (i.e., correct) perspective, only two parts of the Bush tax plan really matter -- cutting marginal tax rates now rather than later and ending or at least easing the double tax on dividends. Accelerating the tax rate reductions has only a small and temporary negative effect on tax revenues, well below $100 billion even on a foolishly static basis. Taxing dividends the same as capital gains could also be accomplished with little or no long-term revenue loss, particularly if dynamic benefits to the economy are considered.
There are numerous other tax changes that would be extremely helpful with no visible loss in revenue. One such free lunch would be killing the inexcusable corporate alternative minimum tax, which aggravates recessions by taxing unreal profits but subsequently returns the loot with tax credits during boom times. Another cheap fix would be eliminating the tax penalty on short-term capital gains, which is easily avoided with clever timing but which nonetheless hurts savings and the market by making stocks less liquid and more risky.
Chronic ignorance about such complex microeconomic incentives is the flip side of the simplistic macroeconomic alchemy of pretending to smooth-out the inevitable ups and downs of business through expert manipulation of budget deficits. Liberal Keynesians claimed budget deficits were a "fiscal stimulus" and surpluses a "fiscal drag." Conservative Keynesians made the opposite argument with equal ardor, claiming budget deficits raised interest rates while surpluses added to savings and investment.
Ironically, today's liberals sound like yesterday's conservatives. In a 1992 Wall Street Journal op-ed, I called President Clinton's economic advisers "Eisenhower Democrats." That label made Clinton scream at his staff, according to Bob Woodward. But it was just intended to highlight the contradictory irrelevance of both liberal and conservative versions of Keynesian demand-management.
When Chicago economist Robert E. Lucas Jr. was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995, they called him "the economist who has had the greatest influence on macroeconomic research since 1970." When the most influential macroeconomist of the past three decades talks it is smart to listen.
In January, Lucas presented a typically decisive paper on "Macroeconomic Priorities." He found that "there remain important gains in welfare from ... providing people with better incentives to work and save, not from better fine tuning of spending flows." He added that "the potential for welfare gains from better long-run, supply side policies exceeds by far the potential from further improvements in short-run demand management."
By contrast, President Bush's Keynesian critics, such as Paul Krugman of The New York Times, pretend that what we need is more short-run demand management, better fine-tuning of spending, rather than long-run supply-side policies to improve incentives to work and save. Keynesian diehards eschew policies that are known to work and promote policies that are sure to fail.
Veteran Washington Post columnist David Broder observed two year ago that "this year, as in 1981, you can see congressional Democrats recalculating how far they have to bend their principles and suppress their doubts in order to avoid being caught on the losing side of the tax debate." If your party keeps losing such debates, year after year, and also keeps losing elections, perhaps it is time to consider the possibility that you just might be wrong.
Broder, whose musings are often enlightening on other topics, will keep his job no matter how frequently he offers terrible economic advice. Senators using budgetary excuses to obstruct lower tax rates and lower dividend taxes, despite nearly three years of economic and investor disappointment, may need to be gently reminded before it's too late that they cannot be equally confident about their own job security.
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Senate Approves $2.2 Trillion Budget
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By DAVID E. ROSENBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/politics/27BUDG.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - The Senate today approved a $2.2 trillion budget for the next fiscal year, leaving intact the vote on Tuesday to slice President Bush's proposed tax cut in half.
Republican leaders considered offering amendments today to restore some or all of the tax cut, but they dropped the idea when it was clear they lacked the votes to succeed.
The vote on Tuesday was one of Mr. Bush's most serious political setbacks. Three Republicans joined the Democrats in voting against the president.
Those who voted against the full tax cut said it was irresponsible, given the large budget deficits and the unknown costs of the war in Iraq.
The budget measure, a nonbinding resolution that sets limits on the spending and tax legislation Congress will consider for the rest of the year, now goes to a Senate-House conference committee that will be dominated by allies of the president.
The House voted this month to allow the full $726 billion in tax cuts the president proposed in what he called his economic growth package. The Senate measure would lower the limit to $350 billion.
That resolution was approved today, 56 to 44, on a vote that mostly followed party lines. Only six Democrats voted for it - John B. Breaux and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, Max Baucus of Montana, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Zell Miller of Georgia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. One Republican, John McCain of Arizona, and the independent, James M. Jeffords of Vermont, voted against it.
Neither side was completely happy with the measure. Democrats maintained that even half of the president's proposed tax cut was too much given the large budget deficit, the approaching retirement of the baby boom generation and the uncertain costs of the war.
"At the same time we are asking our young people to fight a war for our security," said Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, "Republicans are passing a budget that will force those same young people to pay the bill for their recklessness."
Many Republicans said they were voting for it reluctantly. The Budget Committee chairman, Senator Don Nickles, Republican of Oklahoma, said: "This growth package is not what I want. I think it's about half a loaf. That's better than none."
Tonight, the White House issued this statement from Mr. Bush: "It is unfortunate that the full Senate has failed to pass a budget that provides for my entire economic growth and job creation plan. The House budget took the bold steps necessary to boost our economy, and we will work to ensure that the final House-Senate budget provides the growth measures American workers deserve."
Representative Jim Nussle, the Iowa Republican who will lead the House conferees on the budget resolution, said negotiations would probably begin in earnest next week. "Certainly our opening bid is the House version," Mr. Nussle said.
The final tax figure will be the most important element of the budget resolution because it will set the limit on how much the Senate can approve in tax cuts, which under the rules will not be subject to filibuster.
The president actually proposed a total of $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, and the plan approved today would allow $852 billion. But much of that is outside the limit protected from a filibuster. Cuts beyond the specified limit are problematic because they would probably require 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster.
Generally, the resolution sets guidelines for the tax and spending legislation Congress will consider for the year. The details are left to the actual tax and spending bills.
The resolution adopted today would allow $791 billion to be spent in fiscal year 2004, which begins Oct. 1, on everything for which Congress provides annual appropriations - from fighter jets to paper clips.
That figure is 2.5 percent higher than the amount allocated this fiscal year. But it includes no money for the war in Iraq and the occupation and redevelopment afterward.
President Bush has declined to say how much will be needed in the next fiscal year for the war and subsequent expenses in Iraq. The $75 billion he requested from Congress this week covers costs for six months.
The Senate vote to reduce the president's tax cut complicated Republican plans to begin work on the actual tax legislation. The House Ways and Means Committee had planned to write a tax bill this week and put it to the full House for a vote next week, but this schedule was abandoned because the lawmakers are no longer certain how large a tax cut will be permitted.
"I have to have a solid number I can write to," said Representative Bill Thomas, the California Republican who is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.
The debate on the budget measure began March 17, and the Senate took 51 roll call votes. On one last week, the Senate essentially blocked drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, another political defeat for the president, who made new exploration in Alaska a central element of his energy policy.
In theory, the measure holds in reserve $400 billion over 10 years for a prescription drug plan under Medicare and $100 billion to pay expenses in Iraq, but those set-asides do not carry the force of law.
Also in theory, the resolution would lead to a balanced budget in 2012. But the spending limits set for the fiscal years 2009 through 2012 are so low that many budget experts consider them unrealistic.
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Key Rumsfeld Adviser Perle Resigns Post
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Perle-Resignation.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Pentagon official Richard Perle resigned Thursday as chairman of a group that advises Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on policy issues, saying he did not want a controversy over his business dealings to distract from Rumsfeld's management of the war in Iraq.
In a brief statement, Rumsfeld thanked Perle for his service and said he was grateful that the former Reagan administration official had agreed to remain a board member. Rumsfeld made no reference to a reason for Perle giving up the chairmanship.
Perle said he was stepping aside voluntarily.
``I have seen controversies like that before and I know that this one will inevitably distract from the urgent challenge in which you are now engaged,'' Perle wrote in a resignation letter.
In the letter, made public by the Pentagon and dated March 26, Perle assured Rumsfeld that he had abided by rules applying to members of the Defense Policy Board. He has been chairman of the board since July 2001. The position is unpaid but is subject to government ethics rules that prohibit using public office for private gain.
The controversy centers on Perle's deal with bankrupt Global Crossing Ltd. to win government approval of its purchase by a joint venture of two Asian firms. Perle would receive $725,000 for his work, including $600,000 if the government approves the deal, according to lawyers and others involved in the bankruptcy case.
The deal is under review by a government group that includes representatives from the Defense Department.
Perle denied any wrongdoing.
``The guiding principle here is that you do not give advice in the Defense Policy Board on any particular matter in which you have an interest,'' Perle said in a recent interview. ``And I don't do that. I haven't done that.''
The Defense Policy Board is a bipartisan group that advises the secretary of defense on a wide range of policy issues. Its 30 members are a mix of former military and government officials. They include former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Vice President Dan Quayle, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Air Force Chief of Staff Ronald Fogleman.
Perle wrote in his resignation letter that he could not ``quickly or easily quell criticism'' in the Global Crossing controversy, adding that it was ``based on errors of fact.''
Nonetheless, he wrote, ``I would not wish to cause even a moment's distraction from'' the war effort.
Perle said he was advising Global Crossing that he would not accept any compensation from the pending sale and that any fee for his past services would be donated to the families of American forces killed or injured in Iraq.
In his written statement, Rumsfeld thanked Perle for his service.
``He has been an excellent chairman and has led the Defense Policy Board during an important time in our history,'' Rumsfeld said. ``I should add that I have known Richard Perle for many years and know him to be a man of integrity and honor.''
Perle was an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration.
He became involved in another controversy stemming from an article in The New Yorker that said he had lunch in January with Saudi-born businessman Adnan Khashoggi and a Saudi industrialist.
The industrialist, Harb Saleh Zuhair, was interested in investing in a venture capital firm, Trireme Partners, of which Perle is a managing partner. Nothing ever came of the lunch in Marseilles; no investment was made. But the New Yorker story, written by Seymour M. Hersh, suggested that Perle, a longtime critic of the Saudi regime, was inappropriately mixing business and politics.
Perle called the report preposterous and ``monstrous.''
Perle, 61, was so strongly opposed to nuclear arms control agreements with the former Soviet Union during his days in the Reagan administration that he became known as ``the Prince of Darkness.''
-------- MILITARY
HOUSE TO HOUSE
Urban Warfare: Long a Key Part of an Underdog's Down-to-Earth Arsenal
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27URBA.html
LONDON, March 26 - Each battered high-rise becomes a sniper's aerie, each deserted thoroughfare an ambush zone. In this kind of warfare, advances and retreats are measured in blocks or half-blocks, or even just houses. In the calculations of battle, the shield of technology gives way to human failings and human skills - speed and deception, close knowledge of streets and alleys.
Since Stalingrad and Berlin in World War II, to the American assault on Hue in Vietnam in 1968 and on to the war zones of Beirut or Nablus, Belfast or Mogadishu, urban warfare has become a central part of the underdog's arsenal - a fight without scruples for the high ground of propaganda that exploits civilian losses and denies the intruder's superior might.
It is precisely that messy, manipulative and murderous kind of fighting between conventional forces and elusive defenders that could confront the Americans and British as they try to enter Baghdad, despite their much-publicized reluctance to engage in a close urban brawl.
"The Iraqis will want to fight close and dirty, with Iraqi tanks darting in an out of garages and buildings; they will conduct small-scale offensive actions with dismounted soldiers supported by mortars," wrote Gen. Wesley Clark, the American former commander who led NATO forces during the Kosovo campaign in 1999.
"The fighting will be full of the tricks we have already seen and more: ambushes, fake surrenders, soldiers dressed as women, attacks on rear areas and command posts. The Iraqis will be prepared to conduct high-risk missions of a kind we would not consider," he said in an article for the Times of London.
For all that allied commanders in Iraq have expressed outrage at what they see as such dishonorable tactics, though, urban warfare has always set its own rules of guile and deceit - from the legendary use of a wooden horse at Troy over 3,000 years ago to modern times when war is broadcast live 24 hours a day.
In this post-cold-war era of asymmetric warfare - the conflict between conventional forces and zealous adversaries seeking the chinks in the high-tech Western armor - the fight has come to mean a contest to disable the technology that enables American forces to contemplate killing without losses of their own.
That was evident enough in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 when sophisticated Black Hawk helicopter gunships were brought down by crude, shoulder-fired Soviet-era RPG-7 rocket propelled grenades - a standard item in the kit of guerrilla armies around the globe along with AK-47 assault rifles, land mines and hand grenades. Indeed, similar tactics were popularized by the Afghan guerrillas who battled the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980's, courtesy largely of more sophisticated American-supplied Stinger missiles.
The downing of the helicopters in Mogadishu not only seemed a victory for the lightly equipped Somali street fighters. It also led to humiliating American casualties, 18 dead, that hastened the United States withdrawal - just as images of wounded and slain United States marines at Hue and other battle zones of the Tet offensive in Vietnam turned American opinion against the war.
Those memories underscore the perils of street fighting that face allied troops in Iraq. History offers little solace.
In recent decades, urban warfare has taken many forms, with many aims.
When battle-hardened Soviet troops pushed into Berlin in 1945 against the last feeble remnants of the Third Reich, lofting the Red Flag over the battered Reichstag, their intention was clearly conquest, not the liberation Washington says it seeks in Iraq.
In Beirut in the mid-1970's, by contrast, and in Sarajevo in the 1990's, cities were divided along lines of faith. In Sarajevo, it was a Serbian siege against Muslim-led defenders. In Beirut, the fighting between Muslim and Palestinian forces and Christian militias began with an incongruous war for luxury seafront hotels - the St. Georges, the Phoenicia, the Palm Beach and the Normandie, won and lost in room-to-room fighting.
The weapons were generally low-tech shoulder-fired antitank grenades, assault rifles and mortars, machine guns mounted on pickup trucks that put a premium on stealth and mobility. But when American marines intervened in Lebanon, an equally crude weapon, a suicide truck bomb, killed more than 230 of them in 1983.
In Berlin, Beirut and Sarajevo - as in successive waves of Russian assaults on the Chechen capital, Grozny - the fighting reduced large urban areas to rubble. But it is precisely the familiarity of the urban terrain to those who live there that enables them to use it to the advantages of ambushes, surprise attacks and rapid redeployment.
In Iraq, urban warfare "will negate the technological advantage of the coalition," said Clifford Beal, the editor of Jane's Defense Weekly, a leading publication on military matters. "The Iraqis will be jumping in and out of alleyways, he added. "It tends to become a low-tech, house-to-house situation, and that kind of combat can become very costly for combatants and others."
A war depending on low technology and high numbers of combatants and casualties is the opposite of what most of the modern American army is trained to do. Even the British Army, with three decades of experience fighting the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, would not be familiar either with the Iraqi terrain in cities like Basra or Baghdad or with the much greater firepower Iraqi troops could use in urban areas.
Indeed, said Tom Clonan, a military analyst in Dublin, a more likely comparison for allied troops in Iraq would be the experience of Russian troops fighting Chechen separatist forces in Grozny. "There are striking similarities between Grozny and Baghdad," he said. "Low-tech weapons would form a formidable arsenal in the narrow alleys and back streets of Iraq's capital."
Others draw comparisons to house-to-house fighting in Hue in 1968, which not only sent home bloody images of American casualties but also forced United States commanders to loosen the rules of engagement in a way the Pentagon says it is seeking to avoid in the Iraq war.
That reflects the differences in the role of public opinion for defenders and attackers in any urban warfare in Iraq, where ruthless irregulars and ultra-loyal forces would have few qualms about civilian casualties or using civilians as human shields. The United States and Britain face opinion at home that may prove fickle, constraining their ability to use overwhelming force, military analysts said.
"The allies are fighting with kid gloves on, but it'll be very difficult to keep this clinical if urban warfare ensues," said Mr. Beal of Jane's Defense Weekly. "Urban warfare takes longer. It can bog down large numbers of troops. This war is being fought on a clock. And the longer it goes on, the more carnage is seen, the more difficult it is for the Bush administration to continue."
In the region's recent history, there are some ominous parallels. When Israeli troops invaded Lebanon in 1982, they evicted Yasir Arafat from Beirut, only to find him depicting his departure as a victory, validated simply by his ability to survive superior force.
Moreover, as The Economist magazine noted last week, the Israelis' welcome was short-lived. "When Israel invaded here in 1982, we met them with showers of rice and roses," a spokesman for the Hezbollah Shiite Muslim militia in Lebanon was quoted as saying. "One hundred days later, we blew up their headquarters."
-------- africa
Briefly - Africa conflicts
March 27, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030327-75776182.htm
NIGERIA
More than 100 killed in delta region fighting
LAGOS - Ijaw militants battling soldiers and tribal foes in Nigeria's oil-rich delta region called for a cease-fire yesterday after they said state officials agreed to support their demands.
Bello Oboko, president of the militant Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities, whose fighters have spent two weeks battling government troops and rival Itsekiris, said Delta State Gov. James Ibori had agreed to help renegotiate electoral boundaries the Ijaws say favor their enemies.
At least 100 people, including 10 soldiers, have been killed in the fighting. Many witnesses say the actual death toll is far higher. Twenty-five villages - 15 Itsekiri and 10 Ijaw - either have been damaged or destroyed since fighting began March 12.
Two weeks of violence in the region, where nearly all of Nigeria's oil is located, prompted oil multinationals to evacuate their staff and cut oil exports by more than 800,000 barrels a day - 40 percent of the country's normal daily output of 2 million barrels. Nigeria is the world's sixth-largest exporter and fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports.
LIBERIA
Rebels on 3 fronts hit Taylor government
MONROVIA - Rebels battled forces loyal to President Charles Taylor on three fronts yesterday in the most sustained effort to oust the West African country's leader this year. Defense and humanitarian sources said there was fighting close to this capital, in the central city of Gbarnga and also in towns near the eastern border with Ivory Coast. This year's dry-season offensive has been the fiercest since the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) began their war against Mr. Taylor in 2000.
The fighting is over control of diamonds, gold and timber resources, as well as deep-seated tribal enmities that were exacerbated by a seven-year civil war in the 1990s that killed 200,000 people.
LURD rebels briefly seized Gbarnga last year before being driven out. The town was Mr. Taylor's main base during the civil war that ended in 1996. He was elected president in 1997 and is expected to run again in October.
UGANDA
26 LRA guerrillas die in one week
KAMPALA - The Ugandan army said yesterday that it has killed 12 fighters of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in two separate battles in the northern district of Kitgum.
Ten of the insurgents were gunned down when a helicopter gunship fired on them in the Acholi Ranch area Tuesday, army spokesman Lt. Paddy Ankunda announced. Two other rebels were shot by ground troops in the same area, he added.
The latest combat victims bring to 26 the number of rebels killed between March 19 and March 26, Lt. Ankunda said.
The army rescued 145 civilians abducted by the LRA during the same period, he added.
The LRA has battled President Yoweri Museveni's government for 15 years, saying it seeks to enforce the biblical Ten Commandments. But the group is better known for atrocities against civilians....
-------- biological weapons
WEAPONS
U.S. Hunts for Bio-Agents and Gas at an Iraq Depot
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27INSP.html
WITH THE 75TH EXPLOITATION TASK FORCE, northern Kuwait, March 26 - American military officials have found no traces of chemical or biological agents at a sprawling Iraqi ammunition storage facility south of Baghdad, weapons experts and military officers said today.
But officials said the site at Najaf, about 90 miles south of the Iraqi capital, remained suspicious because there were several indications that chemical or germ weapons might have been made or stored there.
Of greatest interest to intelligence officials is information being provided by an Iraqi general who was a senior official there and who surrendered to American forces when they entered the complex about four days ago. Officials said the general, who claims not to have had any involvement in Iraq's chemical warfare program, told military intelligence analysts that there were special bunkers and underground tunnels in the compound that neither he nor other senior staff were permitted to enter.
In addition, a site survey team found a biological hazard sign on a wooden pallet with a crate in bunker No. 36, and markings on other crates in bunker No. 37 indicating "CN-1," which is sometimes used to identify riot control agents. They also found wax on the surface of an artillery shell, a substance used at times in shells containing chemical agents. The soldiers and experts also found 40 Soviet-style gas masks with extra filters.
Hydraulic triple-locked doors barred the entrance to some of the more than 100 bunkers in the three-square-mile complex, much of which is protected by an electrical fence and trenches.
Weapons experts said they had reached no conclusions about whether chemical or germ warfare agents or weapons were stored at the facility. "Methodically exploring a site of this size and complexity shows how painstaking and slow a meticulous survey can be," said an officer with the 75th Exploitation Task Force, a group of weapons specialists, intelligence officers, Special Forces and other experts commanded and supported by part of an Army artillery brigade based in Fort Sill, Okla.
The team's work was further delayed when American intelligence officers transferred the Iraqi general, two colonels and two majors to an undisclosed location for questioning. That decision meant that the team of experts sent to follow up on initial reports of suspected chemical or biological weapons were unable to question the Iraqi officers in person, or to have the general show the team where the off-limits parts of the facility were located.
"We have never conducted a systematic hunt for weapons of mass destruction in a combat situation on such a large scale," said one weapons expert who has studied the reports filed by the site survey team working at Najaf. "We're still feeling our way."
The site was on a list of suspected facilities compiled by weapons experts and other government officials who are hunting for weapons of mass destruction. But it was not initially visited by either the small teams of Pentagon experts who are charged with surveying suspected sites, or by those responsible for studying such facilities in greater detail.
Instead, it was entered by forces of the Army's Third Infantry Division as they pushed north toward Baghdad. Reports from the field said that some 300 Iraqis were taken prisoner at the site, and that about 30 Iraqi troops, including the general and four other senior officers, surrendered to the Americans.
The Jerusalem Post, which has a reporter with the Army forces that initially entered the site, reported at the time that an American soldier was slightly wounded by an explosive that detonated as he was trying to clear part of the facility.
On Sunday, Lt. Gen. John Abizaid of the Army confirmed that an Iraqi general and two other officers were being held and were providing information. But he added that it was too early to say whether American forces had found chemical or biological agent at the site. "Suffice it to say," he added, "that so far we haven't found any conclusive evidence."
The small teams of weapons hunters consist mainly of representatives from several different government agencies, and include explosives experts, intelligence analysts, Special Forces operatives, scientists, laboratory technicians and former nuclear and other unconventional weapons inspectors.
British planners and experts are also working with the American teams and officers of the 75th XTF, as the task force is known. For this mission, they are employing a wide range of sophisticated new technology, some of which is being tested in the field on a large scale for the first time. They agreed to discuss this and other weapons sites only if they were not identified by name.
Their equipment includes highly sensitive detectors and two transportable laboratories that can test for the presence of chemical and biological agents, identify their composition or strain and conduct DNA fingerprinting.
-------- britain
British Forces Destroy 14 Iraqi Tanks on Way Out of Basra
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By JOHN M. BRODER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27CND-QATAR.html
CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar, March 27 - British forces encountered a column of 14 Iraqi T-55 tanks leaving Basra this morning and destroyed them in a "short, sharp engagement," British military officials said today.
The Iraqi tanks were accompanied by a small number of other vehicles, including several armored personnel carriers, which were also destroyed by a squadron of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the officials said. The British troops took no losses, they added.
Air Marshal Bryan Burridge, commander of British forces in the gulf, said at a briefing here today that Iraqi troops in and around Basra were poorly motivated and ill-led.
He said that soldiers who had no will to fight were forced at gunpoint into military vehicles and sent in the direction of allied forces. The convoy of military vehicles appeared to have no leadership or coordination, he said.
"This is a fighting formation that really doesn't know its business," he said.
Air Marshal Burridge said that the situation in Basra remained "a very difficult and confused situation."
Allied troops surround the city but conditions inside remain desperate for civilians, many of whom have been without water and electricity for much of the past week. Baath party militia members loyal to Saddam Hussein continue to mingle with and threaten the population, he said.
"These are dangerous and determined men who need sorting out, and sorting out we will," Air Marshal Burridge said.
American and British military officers said today that Iraqi men in Basra and Najaf were forced to fight by threats against their families.
Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, the deputy director of operations for Central Command here in Qatar, said that Iraqi fedayeen and other irregular forces are seizing children and telling fathers "they must fight" or the children "will all face execution."
General Brooks also said that units of the American V Corps had been attacked near Najaf and engaged in a 90-minute battle with Iraqi irregular forces. He said there were some American troops wounded, but he did not confirm reports that some casualties were the result of American fire.
General Brooks said that American warplanes and missiles had hit a missile production plant in Baghdad and destroyed television transmitting equipment that he said was used by the Iraqi government to communicate with military units.
In the continuing questioning of the bombing of a market in Baghdad on Wednesday, General Brooks said that coalition bombs intended to destroy surface-to-surface missiles may have killed 15 civilians. He said the investigation of the strike was not yet complete, but he raised the possibility that the deaths were caused by Iraqi air-to-surface missiles fired wildly into the air.
He also said that the Iraqis might have deliberately caused the marketplace explosion in order to blame it on American forces.
Relief aid shipments into the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr were delayed for another day after British minesweepers detected two mines beyond a channel that had already been cleared and declared safe.
Air Marshal Burridge said further mine-clearing operations would be needed before the ships carrying thousands of tons of food and other supplies for civilians in southern Iraq can tie up in Umm Qasr.
The Sir Galahad, a Royal Navy ship loaded with relief supplies, would not be able to reach port and deliver food supplies until Friday at the earliest, the ship's captain said today.
Six oil wells continue to burn in the southern Iraqi oil fields, officials said. British authorities estimated that it would take $1 billion to repair damage to the pumping equipment and resume Iraq's oil exports. The task could take three months, they estimated.
Adm. Michael Boyce, chief of the British defense staff, said at a briefing in London this afternoon that British forces had discovered a recently-abandoned Iraqi infantry outpost near the Rumaila oil fields in southern Iraq. Inside the post were a number of light weapons and about a hundred sets of chemical weapons defensive gear, he said.
He said that the chemical suits - along with several hundred such suits found in a hospital in Nasiriya on Wednesday - indicated Mr. Hussein's ability and willingness to use chemical weapons in battle.
Allied forces have not yet found any Iraqi chemical or biological agents or the weapons to deliver them.
-------- business
Army Depots in Iraqi Desert Have Names of Oil Giants
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By NEELA BANERJEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/business/27CAMP.html
The subtleties surrounding the sensitive role oil plays in the Iraqi war may have eluded the United States Army. Deep in some newspaper coverage yesterday was a report that the 101st Airborne Division had named one central Iraq outpost Forward Operating Base Shell and another Forward Operating Base Exxon.
The Pentagon shrugged off concerns that now might not be the time to mention the names of foreign oil companies on Iraqi soil. "The forward bases are normally refueling points - they're basically gas stations in the desert," a Pentagon spokeswoman said. "Whether or not we're going to lecture everyone that, due to political sensitivities, you should be careful what you call your gas stations, I don't know if that's something that should be done or would be done."
Neither Royal Dutch/Shell nor Exxon knew about the Iraqi bases. Cerris Tavinor, a spokeswoman for Shell, heard of the base only when a reporter called.
"We don't have anything in Iraq," Ms. Tavinor said. "Clearly they pick their names for whatever they want to use."
Tom Cirigliano, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, said he first heard of the bases when he read a press review on Wednesday morning, but the mention did not bother the company, the world's largest publicly traded corporation.
"My first reaction when I saw it was this was not a political statement in any way by the men and women of 101st," Mr. Cirigliano said. "I think the 101st was being pretty creative and naming things after what reminds them of home. And I think that's pretty neat."
But others involved in the oil industry say the Pentagon's indifference to the names of the bases was poorly considered. "You have this atmosphere of suspicion and apprehension now, and that's just among your allies," Jan Stuart, head of research for global energy futures at ABN Amro, the Dutch investment bank, said. "And in this atmosphere, you call your own supply effort this. It's mind-boggling the degree of insensitivity. There is little doubt the Americans will win the war, but you have to wonder how people who are so insensitive are going to win the peace."
----
Spending Seen as Lifting Economy
Stimulative Effect of Military, Security Outlays Overlooked in Tax Debate
By John M. Berry
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34117-2003Mar26.html
In the debate on Capitol Hill over how much more taxes should be cut to stimulate the lagging U.S. economy, little attention has been paid to the stimulus already flowing from large spending increases, mostly for defense and homeland security, enacted over the past two years. One analysis released last week estimated that increased spending is providing nearly as much boost to the economy this year as did the tax cuts passed in 2001 and last year.
"Fiscal policy has turned sharply stimulative, and in combination with easier monetary policy is providing the most potent policy support the economy has ever received," said the analysis by economist James E. Glassman of J.P. Morgan Chase Securities Inc. "The public -- and the politicians -- give the 2001 tax law much of the credit for this timely fiscal punch," Glassman said. "The truth, however, is a bit different. Federal spending has expanded over the past year and a half by an amount that rivals tax relief. Half of this year's fiscal boost comes from new federal outlays, not from tax cuts."
A recent Commerce Department report said that half the gain in the weak 1.4 percent annual rate the gross domestic product grew in the fourth quarter was due to federal spending, two-thirds of which was for defense.
And the Congressional Budget Office estimated Tuesday that President Bush's fiscal 2004 budget proposals would raise spending over the next five years by $348 billion -- not counting the $75 billion supplemental request to fund the war in Iraq -- nearly as much as the $454 billion the plan would reduce revenue by cutting taxes.
With the federal budget deficit soaring, many members of Congress have shied away from touting any stimulative effect from added spending, according to staffers on the House and Senate Budget committees.
Some of the biggest supporters of the Bush administration's budget, including its proposed tax cuts, "have been saying over the past few months that deficits caused by spending increases are the only ones that matter," Stanley E. Collender, managing director of federal budget consulting at Fleishman-Hillard Inc., noted this week.
The added spending has not been as noticeable as the large tax cuts Congress has enacted.
"Congress has approved at least 10 spending initiatives since the summer of 2001," Glassman said. "First, the tax-cut agreement of 2001 also boosted spending by increasing the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. A couple of weeks later, before the September 11 terrorist attacks, the 2001 Supplemental Appropriations Act boosted discretionary spending, principally for defense. After the terrorist attacks, Congress passed an emergency spending measure and boosted discretionary spending for both defense and nondefense programs."
Last spring, an economic stimulus plan "raised spending by about $50 billion annually for three years," he continued. "Other measures approved last year, related to trade, farm aid, terrorism risk insurance, unemployment insurance and defense, also . . . resulting in higher spending this year." And the final fiscal 2003 appropriations bill passed last month added about $5 billion more, he noted.
Glassman's analysis was based on an approach that eliminates the impact of economic fluctuations on the budget, such as changes in unemployment. It concluded that fiscal policy has swung in the direction of stimulus over the past two years by an amount equal to roughly 4 percent of the gross domestic product. Economists generally regard a change equal to about 1 percent of GDP as likely to have a measurable impact on economic activity.
Some other economists, such as Charles L. Schultze of the Brookings Institution, who estimate the amount of stimulus from discretionary spending somewhat differently, think it will be under 1 percent of GDP in the current fiscal year.
"That's not huge, but it is not to be dismissed either," Schultze said.
-------- iraq
U.S., U.K. Forces Blast Iraqi Tanks Trying to Break Out Of Basra
British Troops Bombard City
By Keith B. Richburg and Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, March 27, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35758-2003Mar27.html
NEAR BASRA, Iraq, March 27 (Thursday)--Coalition forces destroyed most of a column of 70 to 120 Iraqi tanks overnight after they broke out of the besieged southern city of Basra, and British troops continued to barrage Iraqi fighters there with artillery fire, British military officials said.
Two days after British military officials declared Iraqi positions inside Basra a legitimate military target and prepared to enter the city, it was still unclear whether there was a civilian uprising against the rule of President Saddam Hussein, as British officials reported Tuesday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that "a limited form of uprising" was underway.
British military officials said the attack on Basra would boost the city's majority Shiite Muslim population against the Sunni-dominated Hussein government. But unrest in the city on Tuesday appeared to die down Wednesday, and details remained sketchy.
The fighting moved outside Basra Wednesday night as the column of tanks poured out of the city and headed southeast toward the Faw peninsula, British officials reported. The top British officer in the region told reporters at Central Command field headquarters in Qatar this morning coalition forces destroyed most of the armored vehicles with a combination of artillery, airstrikes and ground fire.
For days, British forces have held off entering the city, hoping to avoid urban warfare and the civilian casualties that would result. But Basra is facing a worsening humanitarian crisis, with electricity and water supplies cut off on Saturday and only partially restored. British military officials now say they may have to enter Basra to defeat the Iraqi military and paramilitary forces that have blended in with the civilian population of 1.3 million.
No humanitarian aid has yet reached the city, though the British plan to start moving water and food supplies to Basra through the newly secured port of Umm Qasr.
"We will do it short steps at a time," said Maj. Steve McQueenie, a British liaison officer at Marine headquarters, which oversees the British forces. "What we have got to do in Basra is make sure civilians are protected."
British officials estimate there are about 1,000 fighters in the city, a mixture of Iraqi soldiers and special militias, including Saddam's Fedayeen.
North of Basra, British forces continued to fire heavy artillery toward the city. A brief barrage could be heard slamming into the city just before 7 p.m. Wednesday night, with another slightly longer barrage exactly a half-hour later. After that attack, a bright orange light flashed briefly over the city.
"That is British artillery and that would be aimed at targets in and around the Basra region," said Lt. Chris Head, 24, the platoon commander of the Fusiliers, on the highway about eight miles north of the city center near the Basra International Airport. With pro-Hussein security forces and militia interspersed among the civilian population, "it makes the question of target identification all the harder," Head said.
To aid the British, U.S. warplanes bombed two pontoon bridges in eastern Basra, preventing any Iraqi reinforcements from entering from that direction, or any forces from fleeing that way. British troops also said they captured two busloads of Iraqis believed to be paramilitary fighters in Zubair, just southwest of Basra. The British soldiers chased the buses down the road and stopped them, finding the passengers all dressed similarly and carrying large amounts of money.
On Tuesday, British officials reported signs of an incipient rebellion among the civilian population of Basra, saying that Hussein loyalists had begun firing on their own citizens. But today the details remained cloudy.
"Truthfully, the reports are confused, but we believe there was some limited form of uprising," Blair said Wednesday. "It is important that we give support to those people in Iraq who are rising up to overthrow Saddam and his deeply repressive regime."
Arab television reporters inside the city reported no signs of disturbance today. "The streets of Basra are very calm and there are no indications of violence or riots. There are no signs of the reported uprising," said a report on al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language television station.
Twelve years ago, in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, the people of Basra rose up in open revolt against Hussein at the encouragement of the United States. But the uprising was brutally crushed and thousands were killed. This time, Basra residents were believed to be remaining cautious about open defiance while Hussein remains in power.
The British troops, who replaced U.S. Marines in southern Iraq after the Americans swept north, have begun what they call their "hearts and minds" efforts on the outskirts of Basra, dismounting from their armored vehicles and conducting patrols on foot today through a village in the oil refinery area south of the city. They said they were able to restore electricity and water to about 300 people in the village.
The British said residents were helping them identify Hussein loyalists and members of his security forces. The soldiers said they were being cautious about responding to such reports, with one saying, "We could be drawn into something we don't want to be in."
"We're winning the hearts and minds of the local people, the vast majority of whom are anti-Saddam Hussein and his regime," said Head, the platoon commander. Speaking of the situation inside the city, he said, "We've been led to believe, by the people we've encountered, that the vast majority of the people are anti-regime."
British troops have also begun the tricky task of trying to disarm the local population. Besides members of the pro-Hussein security forces, many other residents were believed to have firearms, possibly for use in a rebellion against the Hussein government.
The troops said they were seizing arms for the security of their own forces. "We are taking a very robust attitude towards disarmament," Head said. "We consider anyone with weapons a threat to ourselves. We are trying to limit the number of guns and weapons that are out there."
Many of the Fusiliers said they had experience closer to home that would be useful in their current role.
"It's a similar situation to Northern Ireland," said Platoon Sgt. Barry Little, who spent 561/2 7 years there. "It's a terrorist threat more than an enemy threat."
But, he said, "It's a little bit different here. In Northern Ireland, the Catholics and the Protestants are in clearly defined areas. Here, you have a guy who's carrying a weapon one minute and the next minute he's not."
Glasser reported from Kuwait City. Correspondent Peter Baker with U.S. forces in Iraq contributed to this report.
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Iraq Accuses U.S. of Targeting Civilians
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
Mar 27, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_BAGHDAD?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's health minister Thursday said 36 civilians were killed and 215 wounded in U.S. air strikes on Baghdad a day earlier, and he accused the United States and Britain of deliberately targeting civilians to break the Iraqi people's will.
"They are targeting the human beings in Iraq to decrease their morale," Omeed Medhat Mubarak said. "They are not discriminating, differentiating."
He said the total number of civilian dead and injured since the U.S.-led war on Iraq began a week ago is more than 4,000, including 350 dead.
The U.S. military has denied targeting civilians and said it takes extraordinary measures to avoid hurting noncombatants.
Meanwhile, one of the fiercest sandstorms the people of Baghdad have ever seen gave way to blue skies Thursday, raising fears among the inhabitants that they were in for a day of intensive bombings.
They worried that allied forces would try to make up for two days during which the storm grounded U.S. warplanes and slowed down the advance on the Iraqi capital.
Parts of Baghdad looked almost normal, with hardly a shop shuttered, hundreds of shoppers milling around, and the streets jammed with what looked like the usual traffic. But Baghdad's defenders rekindled fires intended to obscure bombing targets, sending clouds of gray smoke drifting across the sky.
A witness reported that a missile hit an area not far from a television building and the Information Ministry early Thursday. Buildings shook, but there did not appear to be any damage.
Distant explosions, some sounding like artillery shells, could be heard in the city in the morning.
Iraqi TV was still on, but the picture was poor, and it was unclear whether the signal was being received outside Baghdad. Jomaa al-Qurishi, 29, sold newspapers in Abu Nawas Street, a road famous for its art galleries and fish restaurants, on the east bank of the Tigris River.
"I have been selling newspapers at this spot for 13 years and no bombs are going to stop me," he said. "Death comes to you at any time wherever you may be."
Baghdad residents woke up to find everything from cars to dining tables, windows and books under a coat of fine yellow desert sand.
On Wednesday, 14 civilians were reported killed in a northern Baghdad neighborhood in a blast that Iraqi officials blamed on cruise missiles.
"So you see, the American and British mercenaries are targeting civilians regardless of their age," Mubarak said. "They targeted shops and small public-sector installations."
He accused U.S. and British forces of dropping cluster bombs on civilian targets. "In Najaf, they destroyed a medical center," he said. "They bombed an ambulance and killed its driver."
The U.S. military has acknowledged using precision-guided weapons to target Iraqi missiles and launchers "placed within a civilian residential area."
Buy Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said he could not say whether the missiles that hit the neighborhood were Iraqi weapons or misguided U.S. missiles.
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U.S. to Intensify Attacks on Iraqi Forces
By DAVID CRARY
Associated Press Writer
Mar 27, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_RDP?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
With sandstorms finally ended and a new front opened in the north, U.S. commanders said Thursday they would swiftly intensify attacks on Iraqi forces. In the south, British troops destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks trying to break out of the besieged city of Basra.
In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, 1,000 Rangers and other paratroopers from the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade airdropped overnight onto an airfield that they were busy securing Thursday. It is the first large deployment of U.S. ground troops in the region; previously, only small groups of U.S. Special Forces were operating along with allied Kurdish fighters.
In central Iraq, where huge Army and Marine forces are gradually closing in on Baghdad, U.S. commanders were buoyed by arrival of good weather.
"You'll certainly see us increase our activity in the coming hours, days, given the clearing weather," an official at U.S. Central Command said, speaking on condition on anonymity.
In a news briefing at Central Command, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said several U.S. units battled successfully against Iraqi forces Thursday, destroying vehicles and inflicting casualties. He said some Marines were injured in fighting near the southern city of An Nasiriyah, but gave no details.
Brooks accused the Iraqis of increasingly flagrant violations of international conventions. Iraqi security forces were seizing children in order to force their fathers to join the military, and were executing men who resisted, he said.
In southern Iraq, British forces destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks that streamed out of the besieged city of Basra overnight, according to a British spokesman, Group Capt. Al Lockwood. It was the third time this week that Iraqi columns have been attacked while trying to get out of Basra.
Lockwood said militiamen of the ruling Baath were threatening families of Iraqi soldiers to force them into driving the military vehicles out of Basra.
"They are obviously coercing them into this action, whereas in fact we would have wished them to surrender," he said.
"The enemy's options are now limited," Lockwood said of the failed breakouts. "Military cohesion is sadly lacking."
Aid for Basra and other parts of southern Iraq is supposed to come through the port of Umm Qasr, which has been captured by the allies. However, British officers said Iraqi mines have been discovered in the port, delaying the arrival of a ship carrying 200 tons of aid until minesweeping is completed.
Near An Nasiriyah, more than 30 U.S. Marines were injured, two seriously, in an accidental exchange of fire between American units, according to reporters for French and British media who were with the Marines. ITV correspondent James Mates said two groups of Marines were dispatched during the night to repel an Iraqi contingent, but ended up firing at each other.
Brooks said U.S. officials were investigating the report.
Baghdad was jolted by more explosions Thursday
Skies cleared Thursday over Baghdad after one of the worst sandstorms in memory and the city was jolted by a series of explosions.
Iraq's health minister, Omeed Medhat Mubarak, said 36 civilians were killed and 215 injured Wednesday in allied air strikes on Baghdad, including what Iraq said was a U.S. cruise missile strike that hit a market area.
Nationwide, Mubarak said about 350 civilians had been killed and more than 4,000 injured since the war began. "Neither the Bush administration nor their bombs are 'smart,'" said Mubarak, accusing the United States and Britain of deliberately targeting civilians.
Brook said U.S. investigators were trying to determine whether a U.S. missile might have hit the Baghdad market area on Wednesday. However, he suggested the damage might have been caused by an errant Iraqi surface-to-air missile, or even by a deliberate Iraqi action aimed at discrediting the United States.
In London, British defense officials said the discovery of more chemical protection suits suggest Iraq was prepared to use chemical weapons against advancing coalition forces.
Soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment found about a hundred protection suits and respirators in an Iraqi command post, said Adm. Michael Boyce, chief of the defense staff.
"This kit was effective, well cared for and in good working order," Boyce said.
At his retreat at Camp David, President Bush conferred on strategy and postwar plans with his closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. One potentially divisive topic: how big a role to give the United Nations in Iraq's reconstruction.
The two leaders talked privately Wednesday night, and planned a series of meetings Thursday. Their principal foreign policy advisers, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, also were discussing war strategy and plans for Iraq's reconstruction.
Blair has advocated a more extensive role for the United Nations in administering postwar Iraq than has Bush.
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U.S. General Accuses Iraq of Killing POWs
By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer
Mar 27, 2003 4:03 AM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_EXECUTING_POWS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iraq has executed prisoners of war, the Pentagon's No. 2 general said Wednesday night as he listed a series of what he called unprecedented Iraqi violations of the laws of war.
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apparently was referring to some of the U.S. Army troops captured Sunday by Iraqi forces in the city of An Nasiriyah. Iraqi state television later showed video footage of five living POWs and the bodies of at least five U.S. soldiers.
Defense officials who have viewed the tape have said privately that several of the bodies had execution-style gunshot wounds to their heads.
Intelligence officials have received one uncorroborated report indicating that at least some of the dead soldiers had been captured alive and executed in public, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. The information - which did not come from an intercepted communication, as the New York Times reported Wednesday - is of undetermined reliablility, the official said.
Pace, interviewed on CNN's "Larry King Live," said Iraqis had engaged in many atrocities in the six days since the war began.
"They have executed prisoners of war. ... They have used women and children as human shields and they have pretended to surrender and then opened fire," Pace said. "I've never seen anything like this. It's disgusting."
Pentagon officials said Wednesday the International Committee of the Red Cross still had not been granted access to the five Army soldiers captured Sunday and the two Army helicopter pilots captured a day later. All seven were questioned in front of Iraqi video cameras and the tapes were later played on Iraqi television - which U.S. officials say violated Geneva Convention prohibitions on subjecting POWs to public humiliation.
The first group of Army soldiers captured were part of a maintenance convoy which made a wrong turn in the south-central Iraqi town of An Nasiriyah on Sunday and was attacked by Iraqi forces. Of that unit, the Army says, two soldiers are confirmed dead, five are confirmed as prisoners of war and eight are missing.
Pentagon officials say the prisoners thought to have been executed are among the eight formally listed as missing. Final determinations that they are dead and how they were killed can only happen once the bodies are located, officials said.
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Initial aid for Iraqis arrives in the south
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 27, 2003
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030327-98388.htm
UMM QASR, Iraq - Seven dusty, battered trucks rolled up with their precious cargo of food and water yesterday, defying sandstorms and defiant Iraqi gunmen to deliver the first humanitarian aid to reach this vital southern port.
British forces waiting in Umm Qasr immediately began to distribute yellow meal packets and bottles of water to cheering youths, who had been confined to their homes during days of fighting.
Hours earlier, the local headquarters of Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'ath Party had been set on fire and the town's top party official had fled as organized resistance - much of it from irregulars loyal to Saddam's brutal son, Uday - dissolved.
The major relief effort planned for southern Iraq will have to await the imminent reopening of the town's port, but yesterday's delivery served an important symbolic purpose for both U.S. military authorities and the food's Kuwaiti donors.
Scores of reporters accompanied the aid convoy from Kuwait, which was to have had as many as 30 trucks if not for a swirling sandstorm that cut visibility to about 100 yards.
"This is not a major distribution, but it demonstrates that we're here to help," said Col. Dave Blackledge, commander of the Army's 354th Civilian Affairs Brigade, based in Riverdale Park, Md. "It is important to us, and to the Kuwaitis, to show we support the Iraqi people."
A second three-truck food convoy organized by the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society arrived in the border town of Safwan, where dozens of hungry men and women scrambled for food packets, many of which split or landed in pools of rainwater.
Some Iraqis, apparently wary of government agents in the town, greeted the convoy with chants of, "With our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Saddam."
But one student made a thumbs-up sign and said in broken English, "We need water. America good, British good."
Coalition forces had declared themselves in control of Umm Qasr on the first day of the ground offensive last week but soon found themselves bogged down fighting irregular Iraqi elements, some of them in civilian clothes.
Much of the resistance, which held up the food aid for days, was believed to have come from henchmen of Uday Hussein, who for years ran an extensive smuggling network out of the town.
Distant gunfire and explosions yesterday indicated that the area was still not entirely subdued. Brig. Jim Dutton of the Royal Marines boasted to the Associated Press that "Umm Qasr is now secure - as a port and as a town," but U.S. military officials said it was still dangerous at night.
One Iraqi rocket struck near the port yesterday evening, sending off a shower of small explosions and prompting hundreds of British and U.S. troops to don full chemical gear and gas masks for half an hour.
More substantial food aid was expected to reach the town soon with the arrival of the British logistical ship, the Sir Galahad, carrying a cargo of water and a quarter-million daily food rations, as well as flour and rice. Officials said the military vessel had to be used because silt has made the port too shallow for conventional cargo ships.
The Kuwaiti government donated yesterday's truck cargo in a high-profile effort to show support for Iraqi civilians.
Kuwait has drawn criticism in the Arab world for hosting the U.S. invasion force. By delivering humanitarian assistance swiftly, it hopes to make peace with the Iraqi people while stabilizing the situation enough to keep hungry or frightened civilians from fleeing into Kuwait.
Umm Qasr, Iraq's only port, has been used to deliver more than 60 percent of the food items imported by Iraq under the 7-year-old U.N. oil-for-food program, and U.S. officials say it is an important showcase for coalition intentions to rebuild the country after it ousts Saddam's regime.
Iraqis have about five weeks of food left, according to estimates by the World Food Program, but the most pressing need at present is water.
U.S. officials say the Iraqis have sabotaged the pumping stations that provide the main supply of drinkable water for the region from Basra. Some water was trucked in Tuesday by British soldiers, who pumped it out of the back of a truck at the Umm Qasr marketplace.
British firefighters yesterday were rigging up a system to pump seawater, if necessary, from an enormous bladder on the back of a truck. Salt water rots and rusts the equipment, they say, but they suggested that no one whose house is on fire would complain.
In Rome, officials of the World Food Program said the U.N. agency would make the biggest single request for cash in its history - more than $1 billion to help feed the war-stricken nation for about six months.
"This could well turn into the largest humanitarian operation in history," said agency spokesman Trevor Rowe.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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Banned Weapons Remain Unseen
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34232-2003Mar26?language=printer
President Bush pledged again yesterday to rid Iraq of "weapons of terror," but coalition forces have so far failed to find proof of Iraqi biological or chemical weapons a week after the start of the U.S.-led invasion.
Pentagon officials pointed to the discovery Tuesday of Iraqi chemical protection suits at a hospital near Nasiriyah as evidence that Iraq's military had prepared for a chemical attack. Yet, the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -- either in the battlefield or in caches uncovered by U.S. troops -- has remained a notable feature of the military campaign so far, intelligence officials and weapons experts say.
Teams of weapons "hunters" acting on intelligence tips found no banned weapons yesterday during extensive searches of ammunition dumps near the port city of Umm Qasr. Earlier in the week, another team scoured a factory near Najaf that was initially thought to be a chemical-weapons plant. Numerous other sites identified as likely storage areas for biological or chemical weapons were searched by Special Forces units in the opening hours of the conflict, U.S. military officials have acknowledged. No unconventional weapons were found at any of the sites, the officials said.
The Bush administration has steadfastly maintained that such weapons would eventually be discovered. In his speech yesterday at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, home of the U.S. Central Command, Bush sought again to frame the Iraqi campaign as a bid to "prevent the Iraqi regime from using its hidden weapons of mass destruction."
But in recent days U.S. officials have faced questions from reporters and open skepticism from other governments critical of U.S. policy toward Iraq. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was confronted about the U.S. failure to find weapons in an interview with an Abu Dhabi television reporter. Powell said he was "quite confident" that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would be found, but "right now we're trying to finish these battles, and that's our priority."
Tuesday's discovery of about 3,000 chemical protection suits and an assortment of gas masks and chemical antidotes at the Nasiriyah hospital appeared to bolster the administration's case, suggesting that Iraq was planning a chemical attack. Powell said the suits "must have been purchased because they thought chemical weapons might be present on the battlefield -- and the only ones who could deliver such chemical weapons would be the Iraqi armed forces."
But much about the discovered suits remained unclear yesterday, including how old they were and how the Iraqis intended to use them.
Weapons experts offered several explanations for the U.S. failure so far to find weapons. Some speculated that Saddam Hussein had decided to hold in reserve his most lethal weapons for use as a last resort and had entrusted them to elite units closest to him in the Iraqi capital. Others suggested the Iraqi president may have smuggled chemical and biological weapons out of the country for safe-keeping.
It is also possible that U.S. officials far overestimated Iraq's weapons holdings. While Iraq is known to have possessed significant numbers of chemical and biological weapons before the 1991 war, much of its arsenal was destroyed by allied bombings or U.N. weapons inspectors. The recent U.N. inspections that ended earlier this year found no evidence of biological or chemical weapons, but inspectors also could not substantiate Iraq's claims that it had destroyed its stockpile.
Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Bush administration had consistently emphasized the high end of U.N. estimates for the amount of weapons Hussein might still possess.
"It is equally possible that Iraq has very few biological or chemical weapons -- we just don't know," Cirincione said. "It could be that Saddam Hussein destroyed all or almost all of his munitions but left scientific teams and core assets intact so these programs could be quickly reconstituted later. In any case, the bar for President Bush is now very high: He has to deliver a large number of weapons to prove not only that Saddam Hussein was lying, but also that his weapons pose such an eminent threat that war is necessary."
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Marines 'Contested Every Inch, Every Mile'
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By JOHN KIFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27CND-MARINE.html
WITH THE FIRST MARINE DIVISION, in Iraq, March 27 - Marine and other allied units pressing toward Baghdad are coming under nearly constant harassment and ambush by small bands of irregular Iraqi fighters and remnants of army units they bypassed in their rush, and officers fear the resistance will only stiffen as they get nearer the capital.
"We've been contested every inch, every mile on the way up," Col. Ben Saylor, the division's chief of staff said today.
Even as he spoke, a separate Marine unit, Task Force Tarawa, was engaged in the fifth day of a pitched battle in the city of Nasiriya, well behind their lines, more than 100 miles south of the First Marines' forward units.
Only hours later, Iraqi fighters spilled out of the town of Samawah, a little north of Nasiriya, and fought American Army troops in an effort to cut the vital supply lines along Highway 8.
Asked if the fighting would be more fierce as the allied forces neared the Iraqi Republican Guard divisions south of Baghdad, the colonel replied:
"Yeah, I think its going to be."
The attacks call into question the American strategy of sweeping past Iraqi Army positions and towns in order to reach Baghdad swiftly and, as officers here put it, "cut off the head" of the regime. It also calls into question the Americans' confident belief that they would be welcomed as liberators.
Instead, the Americans could find their long and vulnerable supply lines -convoys of thousands and thousands of trucks hauling food, fuel, water and ammunition stretching back into Kuwait - subject to attack and interdiction.
Delays could strengthen efforts by Saddam Hussein to turn a siege of Baghdad into political theater, portraying it to world opinion as a humanitarian crisis.
The planned assault on Baghdad is now about three days behind schedule, officers here say privately, but the delays are caused not by the ambushes but by the huge sandstorm that swept in for several days this week, disrupting the convoys - roughly 7,000 vehicles to move the division - blinding night-vision goggles and fouling equipment from pistols to helicopters to computers.
The critical thing, senior Marine officers say, is to maintain the sequence in which American Army troops under V Corps move forward simultaneously on the west, and British forces advance on the east, each protecting the flanks of the other.
Colonel Saylor and other intelligence and operations officers here at division headquarters characterized the attackers mainly as members of militias associated with Mr. Hussein and his sons, the Saddam Fedayeen and Al Quds Brigade, along with diehard Baath Party supporters. The officers believe they may be getting rudimentary military direction from Republican Guard officers.
Their weapons are the light equipment common to guerrillas and armies throughout the third world: shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenades, Soviet-era AK-47 assault rifles and some small mortars.
But while the marines say they have easily cut down most of the attackers with overwhelming firepower, they have been impressed in many cases with their tenacity. In one widely recounted incident, a force of about 20 guerrillas charged a Marine armored patrol head on. Only about eight survived the first devastating round of fire, but they got up and charged again.
"They're pretty gutsy, they're showing a lot of guts," said Capt. Dave Nettles, an intelligence officer with the Seventh Regimental Combat Team, whose light armored reconnaissance patrols have fought several scraps with the guerrillas. "Maybe they don't have anything to lose."
In a similar vien, Colonel Saylor added: "They come, they keep coming. They get up and they come."
"This isn't the varsity," he added. "Is this going to stop us? No, not on a bad day."
Colonel Saylor and other officers said that they had discovered arms caches along the route. Some of the guerrillas are traveling in Toyota pickup trucks. and most seemed to be operating in civilian clothes. The colonel added that in some of the towns, "It's the Baath Party headquarters, that where they pour out of."
Lt. Col. Clarke Lethin, an operations officer, said that "there are battalions stationed throughout the country in order to intimidate." adding. "The Baath Party and those people are still in charge."
Indeed, one reason why the resistance is springing up in the south, behind the advancing American lines, may well be that large units of Baath Party loyalists may have been based there as enforcers, to keep the restive Shiite Muslim majority in line.
The Americans had expected the Shiite population to rise up in favor of the invasion, but this does not appear to have happened as yet. Another factor yet to be weighed is the long tradition of nationalist and anticolonialist sentiment here dating back at least to the British mandate after World War I.
In addition to the machine-guns, rockets and automatic grenade launchers, the Marines are able to call in strikes by Cobra helicopter gunships against the attackers.
"We come back with decisive force and take them down immediately," Colonel Saylor said.
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Up to 1,000 Iraqis Confront U.S. Troops in Surpise Attack
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27CND-BATT.html
NASIRIYAH, Iraq, March 27, - Even as marine officers proclaimed that this river city would be soon secured after four days of street fighting, Iraqis launched the largest and most organized surprise attack yet on the American battalions south of the Euphrates River as the sun fell Wednesday.
United States infantry units reported as many as 1,000 Iraqi soldiers assembling at a railroad depot just south of Nasiriyah. Artillery units responded, but the Iraqi fighters had already fanned out, southward, toward major marine outposts. The regimental headquarters and the central command of the valuable artillery batteries both received machine gun fire and faced the harrowing threat of being overrun.
There were 31 injuries - most of them non-serious, like mild concussions and lacerations - and no reported deaths among the few hundred marines involved in last night's fighting. Iraqi casualties were unknown, and in keeping with the murky identities of the enemy forces in Nasiriyah, their numbers were called into question. It appeared that around 1,000 gathered at the railroad, but less than 100 actually fought. American military officers said it was impossible to tell in the darkness.
The attack startled an artillery unit heretofore removed by miles from flying bullets, from the almost-hoarse colonel cursing, standing and slamming his combat radio on the table in frustration to the young corporals ordered to the camp's perimeter berm with their rifles and night vision goggles.
When the long night ended with today's dawn, the camps went on the defensive. Artillery batteries pulled slightly back, closer to their headquarters. Bulldozers plowed thick berms around the camps. Throughout the day, the marines dug "fight holes" deep enough to stand in with only the head and shoulders exposed.
They dug in physically, and psychologically.
A plan to pull back to a safer spot further south was rejected by the artillery's commanding officer.
"I don't want to appear to be running from the battle," said. Col. Glenn Starnes, who has led the attacks and counter fire at Nasiriyah since Sunday morning. Also, he said, further distance from the infantry will threaten already temperamental communication lines. Radios routinely fail, and are quickly replaced in the middle of a battle.
It began at sundown on Wednesday. Marine units have been blocking roads that could be used by Iraqi fighters, but apparently ignored the railroad line. Inside the cramped command tent, an intelligence officer, Lt. Josh Cusworth, looked up from his map.
"That's how they're coming in," he said, pointing. "That railroad. We're not monitoring it whatsoever. We don't think they're using it. That's how they're getting in."
Suddenly, a captain from one of the howitzer batteries shouted over the radio that his unit was taking machine-gun fire. "I'm seeing green tracers," he said, referring to glowing rounds that help rifleman direct their aim. Marines use red tracers. The artillery battery returned fire.
South of there, at the headquarters camp, several marines heard the distinctive whining whoosh of small arms fire passing overhead. Officers ordered all spare bodies to the perimeter. "All marines are on the berm," an officer told the tent. "We've heard rocket sounds."
Nearby, the regimental headquarters was also taking fire, and officers quickly arranged to transfer command of the Nasiriyah fight to the artillery unit if the headquarters was overrun. In the dark, it was impossible to tell how close enemy fighters were, whether they lurked within a few hundred yards. A major, one of the senior officers of the artillery headquarters, passed his pistol to a younger marine, grabbed a rifle and ran for the berm. The Iraqis had chosen the first calm night in some days for their attack, and the camp was quiet and dark, all unnecessary light extinguished.
Throughout the night, artillery fired. Two infantry units fought very close together, with the enemy fighters in between so closely that, at one point, there was fear that friendly artillery may have struck marines. Today, that did not appear to have been the case, officers said.
An ambulance left the headquarters camp to collect wounded. "You've got to be careful sending your ambulance in there," Maj. Phil Boggs told a marine doctor, simulating rifle fire with his free hand.
A communications officer entered the tent and pulled several small, electronic boxes from a safe: the codes for the cryptographic system used to keep radio transmissions hidden. In the event of the command tent being overrun, they would be destroyed. Beside the boxes, he set a stack of papers detailing the coding system, and on top of the stack, one of the green books of matches that comes with every ready-made meal that feeds the troops. Under the table was an empty ammunition box, for burning the documents. "On your command, sir," he told Colonel Starnes, who nodded.
A marine on the berm spotted several civilian vehicles with his heat-detecting goggles. "The west side? That's this way," Major Boggs said inside the tent, pointing. "There should be no friendlies there." After a tense several minutes, the group of vehicles looked to be people who lived in the area. "There are mud huts, what do you call them, shanties," said Capt. Walker Field. "This is occurring where they are."
Then, as quickly as it began, the threat of an attack seemed to ebb as midnight approached. Men finally headed off for their cots, tucking into sleeping bags under the stars, their boots and helmets within arms reach.
Major Boggs looked up at the colonel. "Tonight was a large, coordinated attack," he said.
"I think so," the colonel replied.
Wreckage from the battle remained along the road north to Nasiriyah today. Two burned-out Humvees belonged to marines. Several shelled tanks belonged to the Iraqis, their top hatches thrown open. Flames spit from a gash in the side of a large oil tank; a marine artillery misfire dating back to Sunday, and still burning.
Fighting slowed today, but did not stop. "We had a good day," said Lt. Col. Brent Dunahoe, commanding officer of an artillery battalion outside Nasiriyah. "We captured a general, we captured an army captain. We found a Baath headquarters and captured about eight billion documents."
Colonel Starnes has said that there was always the expectation of resistance in Nasiriyah, since weeks ago, when the city's two bridges became part of the grand plan to move troops north toward Baghdad. But under him, younger marines were just today accepting the fact that they will stay bogged down outside Nasiriyah for perhaps days to come, looking over their shoulders.
"It's going to get worse," said Lt. Mark Empey. "Everybody thinks so. They know we're here now."
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US soldiers 'are using Jordan to enter Iraq'
By Justin Huggler in Maan, Jordan
28 March 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=391483
This dusty, impoverished corner of Jordan is making the country's authorities nervous. For one thing, there is the protest against the war in Iraq that the people of Maan plan to hold today - a protest they call the "march of the coffins".
Then there is the military base at Jafr, 50 miles away in the desert, where locals say they have seen hundreds of US soldiers arrive in the last few months, plus trucks carrying tanks and armoured vehicles.
It encapsulates Jordan's dilemma - how to juggle the pressure from its ally, the United States, to help with the war in Iraq, with the fury of a population that is opposed to it.
Salfa abu Tayi - the grand-daughter of Auda abu Tayi, the Bedouin fighter of Lawrence of Arabia fame - says she has seen US soldiers at the base, and tanks covered with canvas. It is an open secret that small teams of US, and possibly British, special forces are operating in western Iraq out of Jordan.
Out at the Jafr military base, Blackhawk helicopters could be seen flying in - confirming one part of her story. It was not possible to confirm any more before Jordanian security arrived to say the road was closed.
The Jordanian government has admitted there are 6,000 US troops here, but says they are only here to protect Jordan from Iraqi missile attack and train Jordanian troops.
But reporters have seen US army Jeeps speeding towards the Iraqi border. If Ms abu Tayi's claim about the tanks is true, it would raise new questions about how heavily involved this front is likely to get.
The possibility that American soldiers are in the base at Jafr is certainly infuriating the people of Maan, which is a problem for the Jordanian authorities. While the Jordanian capital, Amman, is a sleepy, peaceful place, Maan has been the most restive city in the country for decades. In 1984 the late King Hussein had to come here personally to calm protests. Last week, when protests against the war broke out all over Jordan, Maan's were by far the most violent.
Sheikh Adi Mohamid, one of the Bedouin tribal chiefs who control Maan society, says the police arrested him, but let him go after his supporters demanded his release.
Sheikh Mohamid is the head of a committee formed several years ago because of perceived government injustices towards Maan. He says: "The government of Jordan made a shameful decision to participate in this war by allowing these troops to go to Iraq."
He also claims he saw tanks being driven to Jafr on trucks. And he names Jordanian companies contracted to provide facilities for US soldiers at the base. The protest is called "the march of the coffins", he says, because "this is a message that we are ready to die, to condemn the government".
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Iraq denies US marines wounded in friendly fire
Middle East Online
2003-03-27
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=4901
Military spokesman denies losing 1,000 men in Najaf battle, says Iraqi forces attacked marines near Nasiriyah.
Republic Guard have engaged for the first time since war began [troops flashing peace sign]
http://www.middle-east-online.com/pictures/biga/_13570_rg-27-3-2003.jpg
BAGHDAD - Iraqi forces fired around 50 missiles at US troops parachuting into the Kurdish-held north of the country, a military spokesman said here Thursday.
"We fired 44 Tariq missiles and seven Raad missiles at the American forces as they parachuted into Sulaymaniya," Hazim al-Rawi told journalists here, without saying if the missiles had caused casualties.
As many as 1,000 crack US airborne troops parachuted into Kurdish northern Iraq on Wednesday, Pentagon officials said, opening a new front in the war in Iraq.
The troops from the US Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade parachuted into an airfield some 75 kilometres (50 miles) northeast of Arbil, the main city in the Kurdish enclave.
US transport planes landed in the eastern part of Kurdish-held northern Iraq early Thursday, witnesses said, with US troops seen being deployed near frontlines with the Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk.
Al-Rawi said reports that US troops were wounded by "friendly fire" near the southern city of Nasiriyah were false and that Iraqi forces had inflicted the casualties.
"Our forces carried out consecutive raids on enemy columns near Nasiriyah, causing deaths and injuries," al-Rawi said.
US officers on Thursday said that a number of US marines were wounded in a "friendly fire" incident when two groups fired at each other during an Iraqi attack near Nasiriyah overnight.
A total of 37 marines were wounded, the officers said, but it was not immediately clear how many were hurt by the "friendly fire" and how many by the Iraqi attackers.
A correspondent saw at least six vehicles destroyed in the compound, including three truck transporters, two Humvee all-terrain vehicles and one truck-mounted crane.
But al-Rawi said the friendly fire claims were "lies just like the allegations of aircraft accidents."
Several soldiers of the US-British coalition have died in what the US-led force says were accidents involving helicopters since the start of the war.
Al-Rawi said clashes were continuing in Nasiriyah and that Iraqi commandos had "raided an enemy column," forcing it to withdraw after destroying four armoured personnel carriers and killing those inside.
Another force from the same division raided another coalition column around Nasiriyah, "killing a large number of the enemy and wounding others," he said.
Also in Nasiriyah, the spokesman said tribesmen and ruling Baath party militia had engaged another armoured enemy column heading towards Gharraf, inflicting "various losses."
He said the elite Republic Guard had engaged for the first time since the war began, in the central Euphrates region.
Small groups of Republican Guard forces had managed to "kill a large number of the enemy" and destroyed six armoured vehicles, he claimed.
Meanwhile Fedayeen paramilitary forces had also destroyed four tanks during a "night infiltration" and two armoured personnel carriers in the central Euphrates region, the spokesman said.
He added that the al-Quds militia had also been active in the same region, destroying a total of four tanks, damaging another two tanks and destroying five armoured personnel carriers. He said enemy dead and wounded were seen in the area.
Al-Rawi denied reports from US commanders that it had lost around 1,000 men in fighting in and around the Shiite pilgrimage centre of Najaf.
"It's totally baseless," Iraqi armed forces spokesman said.
"If it was true, why don't the enemies show pictures of the dead on their televisions?" he asked.
US army commanders said Wednesday their troops had killed 1,000 Iraqis around Najaf, including 200 at a suspected chemical weapons plant in the town, 250 in two clashes on the east bank of the Euphrates and 100 on a bridge.
Najaf lies close to the Euphrates river some 150 kilometres (90 miles) south of Baghdad.
British and US authorities have expressed shock and horror at images of their dead soldiers being shown on Iraqi and Al-Jazeera television.
----
They are fighting for their independence, not Saddam
Resistance to the US-British occupation will not end with this regime
Seumas Milne
Thursday March 27, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,922710,00.html
The Anglo-American war now being fought in the Middle East is without question the most flagrant act of aggression carried out by a British government in modern times. The assault on Iraq which began a week ago, in the teeth of global and national opinion, was launched without even the flimsiest Iraqi provocation or threat to Britain or the US, in breach of the UN charter and international law, and in defiance of the majority of states represented on the UN security council.
It is necessary to descend deep into the mire of the colonial era to find some sort of precedent or parallel for this piratical onslaught. However wrong or unnecessary, every previous British war for the past 80 years or more has been fought in response to some invasion, rebellion, civil war or emergency. Even in the most crudely rapacious case of Suez, there was at least a challenge in the form of the nationalisation of the canal. Not so with Iraq, where the regime was actually destroying missiles with which it might have hoped to defend itself only a couple of days before the start of the US-led attack.
But there is little reflection of this reality, or of Anglo-American isolation in the world over the war, in either the bulk of the British media coverage or the response from most politicians and public figures. Little is now heard of the original pretext for war, Iraq's much-vaunted weapons of mass destruction, and regime change - that lodestar of the US hawks which Tony Blair struggled to dissociate himself from for so long - is now the uncontested mission of the campaign. Having lost the public debate on the war, Blair has demanded that a divided nation rally round British troops carrying out his policy of aggression in the Gulf. And under a barrage of war propaganda, the soft centre of public opinion has dutifully shifted ground - in the wake of those MPs who put their careers before constituents and conscience once Blair had failed to secure UN authorisation. Many balk at criticising the war when British soldiers are in action, but it's hardly a position that can be defended as moral or principled when the action they are taking part in arguably constitutes a war crime. And whether public support holds up under the pressure of events in Iraq - such as yesterday's civilian carnage in a Baghdad market - remains to be seen.
Events have, of course, signally failed to follow their expected course. The pre-invasion spin couldn't have been clearer. The Iraqis would not fight, we were told, but would welcome US and British invaders with open arms. The bulk of the regular army would capitulate as soon as soon as they saw the glint on the columns of American armour. The war might even only last six days, Donald Rumsfeld suggested, in a contemptuous evocation of the Arabs' humiliation in the Six Day war of 1967. His hard right Republican allies insisted it would be a "cakewalk". British ministers, as ever, took their cue from across the Atlantic, while the intelligence agencies and US-financed Iraqi opposition groups reinforced their arrogant assumptions.
But Rumsfeld's six days have been and gone and resistance to the most powerful military machine in history continues to be fierce across Iraq - in and around the very Shi'ite-dominated towns and cities, such as Najaf and Nasiriyah, that the US and Britain expected to be least willing to fight. Nor has the Iraqi army yet collapsed or surrendered in large numbers, while regular units are harrying US and British forces along with loyalist militias. One senior US commander told the New York Times yesterday, "we did not put enough credence in their abilities," while another conceded that "we did not expect them to attack". The International Herald Tribune recorded dolefully that "the people greeting American troops have been much cooler than many had hoped".
There was little public preparation for the resistance that is now taking place. Third World peoples have after all been allocated a largely passive role in the security arrangements of the new world order - the best they can hope for is to be "liberated" and be grateful for it. There has been little understanding that, however much many Iraqis want to see the back of Saddam Hussein, they also - like any other people - don't want their country occupied by foreign powers. No doubt Ba'athist militias are playing a coercive role in stiffening resistance. There are also those who cannot expect to survive the fall of the dictatorship and therefore have nothing to lose. But the scale and commitment of the resistance - along with reports of hundreds of Iraqis struggling to return from Syria and Jordan to fight - suggests that it is driven far more by national and religious pride. Most of these people are not fighting for Saddam Hussein, but for the independence of their homeland.
To fail to recognise this now obvious reality is not only condescending, but stupid. But then we have been subjected to such a blizzard of disinformation in recent days - from the reported deaths of Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein to the non-existent chemical weapons plant and Tuesday's uprising in Basra - that it should come as no surprise to hear everyone from British and US defence ministers to BBC television presenters refer to Iraqis defending their own country as "terrorists".
Of course, the US has the military might to break Iraqi conventional resistance and impose a puppet administration in Baghdad in order to change the regional balance of power, oversee the privatisation of Iraq's oil and parcel out reconstruction contracts to itself and its friends. But the course of this war will also have a huge political impact, in Iraq and throughout the world. This is after all a demonstration war, designed to cow and discipline both the enemies and allies of the US. The tougher the Iraqi resistance, the more difficult it will be for the US to impose its will in the country, and move on to the next target in the never-ending war on terror. The longer Iraqis are able and choose to resist, the more the pressure will also build against the war in the rest of the world.
Almost 86 years ago to the day, the British commander Lieutenant General Stanley Maude issued a proclamation to the people of Baghdad, whose city his forces had just occupied. "Our armies," he declared, "do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors, but as liberators." Within three years, 10,000 had died in a national Iraqi uprising against the British rulers, who gassed and bombed the insurgents. On the eve of last week's invasion Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins echoed Maude in a speech to British troops. "We go to liberate, not to conquer", he told them. All the signs from the past few days are that a new colonial occupation of Iraq - however it is dressed up - will face determined guerrilla resistance long after Saddam Hussein has gone; and that the occupiers will once again be driven out.
----
From "Plain Sailing" to "Where the Hell Are We?" to "Up the Creek"
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
March 27, 2003
CounterPunch Diary
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03272003.html
Barely into its second week Operation Easy Sailing is in big trouble. One simple way of measuring just how big is by adding up all the time you hear the phrases "all according to Plan", and the "Our strategy is sound".
That's the captain of the Titanic speaking. At the military level the US/UK force has been forced to suspend its advance on Baghdad. Every single dire prediction of the critics is coming to pass. The stretched lines of communication and supply running up west of the Euphrates past Nasiriya and Najaf, or further east , west of the Tigris past Basra towards Amarah are proving vulnerable to determined harassment by Iraqi forces. The Apache helicopters have taken a fearful beating, as have the Abrams tanks. The Shock and Awe overture saw around 400 cruise missiles, running at half a million dollars a copy achieve less than significant damage.
Already there's fierce hand-to-hand infighting inside the Pentagon, as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's numerous enemies in the military seek out favored journalist to inflict punitive retaliation for what they describe as his arrogance and folly. Those old lines from the Vietnam era, such as "light at the end of the tunnel", "credibility gap" and the other scarred veterans are back in active service.
Politically, the damage is equally, if not more serious. The entire strategy of Bush and his counselors, the relatively small military force, the "roll north" (or "roll south" until the Turkish people, bolstered by the world peace movement decreed otherwise) scenario, were premised on disintegration of the Saddam regime and amiable surrender of all enemy forces once the first missiles fell on empty palaces in Baghdad and tanks rolled across the Iraqi border towards Umm Qasr.
That political strategy lies in ruins as instructive as the gravestones of the British force caught and wiped out at Kut by the Turks almost a century ago. From Umm Qasr through to Najaf towards Baghdad Iraqis are resisting fiercely. The credibility of the Iraqi exiles, on call as figleaf leaders has dwindled to zero. Back in the homelands of the US/UK invaders the peace movement proved its durability, with huge demonstrations. Much of the world is revelling in Imperial Reverses, and that in itself is an event of vast political significance. The supposed news monopoly of the American Empire has similarly collapsed. The European audience of subscribers to Al Jazeera surged by four million in the first week.
Anyone with a laptop can find their way to informed sources, such as the daily bulletins of Russian military intelligence, or the knowledgeable commentary of US veterans, that demolish the parrot babble of the Embedded Ones.
Even the core Spokesfolk of Empire like the Washington Post are facing reality. Here's how the Washington Post addresses the political elites today, with a report by Thomas Ricks:
"March 27 - Despite the rapid advance of Army and Marine forces across Iraq over the past week, some senior U.S. military officers are now convinced that the war is likely to last months and will require considerably more combat power than is now on hand there and in Kuwait, senior defense officials said yesterday.
"The combination of wretched weather, long and insecure supply lines, and an enemy that has refused to be supine in the face of American military might has led to a broad reassessment by some top generals of U.S. military expectations and timelines. Some of them see even the potential threat of a drawn-out fight that sucks in more and more U.S. forces. Both on the battlefield in Iraq and in Pentagon conference rooms, military commanders were talking yesterday about a longer, harder war than had been expected just a week ago, the officials said.
"Tell me how this ends," one senior officer said yesterday. While some top planners favor continuing to press north, most Army commanders believe that the pause in Army ground operations that began yesterday is critical. A relatively small force is stretched thin over 300 miles, and much of the Army's killing power, in more than 100 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, has been grounded by persistently foul weather or by battle damage from an unsuccessful pre-dawn raid on Monday. To the east, the Marine Corps advance on the city of Kut was also hampered by skirmishing along its supply line and fuel shortages at the front."
And amid these reverses, the battle for hearts and minds inside Iraq is taking familiar forms. Here's Patrick Peterson of the Knight Ridder news chain, dateline Nasiriya,
"U.S. Marines, moving through this still-contested city, opened fire at anything that moved Tuesday, leaving dozens of dead in their wake, at least some of them civilians. Helicopter gunships circled overhead, unleashing Hellfire missiles into the squat mud-brick homes and firing their machine guns, raining spent cartridge cases into neighborhoods. Occasionally a tank blasted a hole in a house. Several bodies fell in alleys. It was impossible to know which casualties were civilians and which were members of the Iraqi militias that have ambushed Marine convoys here for days as the Marines tried to cross the Euphrates River on a rapid march north to Al Kut, where they are expected to engage elements of Iraq's Republican Guard...."
We are, remember, just past the anniversary of the My Lai massacre, March 16, 1968, when American Gis, part of Operation Phoenix, machine-gunned hundreds upon hundreds of women and babies and old men in a trench in Vietnam, where US forces tried to suppression resistance in an area far smaller than what they propose to control in the Fertile Crescent today. Now roll fast forward to today's US excursion: "'I saw a lot of bloodshed,' said Sgt. Ken Woechan, 23, a reservist and assistant Wal-Mart manager from Ocean Springs. Miss. Woechan said at Nasiriya he saw what he believed were militiamen hiding behind women and children. 'A family would run across and there would be a guy behind them,' he said." It doesn't take any imagination to see what's going to unroll in the next days and weeks, as the US/UK forces try to consolidate their lines through south and central Iraq.
The old Scorched Earth Strategy is already beginning to unfurl, as the talk of Precision Attacks fades, and the B-52s slowly widen their attack patterns, and "softening up" the Republican guard means bombing neighborhoods in Baghdad. Three hundred miles south, the British are already committing war crimes by cutting off the water supplies of Basra, an attack on a civilian population that has not gone unnoticed back in London, where Tam Dalyell, Labor MP for Linlithgow and Father of the House of Commons writes today in the Guardian of Blair as a war criminal who should be sent for trial in the Hague.
"My constituency Labour party has just voted to recommend that Tony Blair reconsider his position as party leader because he gave British backing to a war against Iraq without clearly expressed support from the UN .I agree with this motion. I also believe that since Mr Blair is going ahead with his support for a US attack without unambiguous UN authorisation, he should be branded as a war criminal and sent to The Hague. I have served in the House of Commons as a Labour member for 41 years,and I would never have dreamed of saying this about any one of my previous leaders. But Blair is a man who has disdain for both the House of Commons and international law. This is a grave thing to say about my leader. But it is far less serious than the results of a war that could set western Christendom against Islam.The overwhelming majority of international lawyers, including several who advise the government (such as Rabinder Singh, a partner in Cherie Booth's Matrix Chambers), have concluded that military action in Iraq without proper UN security council authorisation is illegal under international law. The Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser, Elizabeth Wilmhurst, resigned on precisely this point after 30 years' service. This puts the prime minister and those who will be fighting in his and President Bush's name in a vulnerable legal position. Already lawyers are getting phone calls from anxious members of the armed forces."
One final quote, from a Knight Ridder story describing the Pentagon in-fighting, quoting an anonymous officer:" He added ruefully: 'As in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, we are using concepts and methods that are entirely unproved. If your strategy and assumptions are flawed, there is nothing in the well to draw from... If these guys fight and fight hard for Baghdad, with embedded Baathists stiffening their resistance at the point of a gun, then we are up the creek,' said one retired general. Dr. John Collins, a retired Army colonel and former chief researcher for the Library of Congress, said the worst scenario would be sending American troops to fight for Baghdad. He said every military commander since Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese strategist, has hated urban warfare. "Military casualties normally soar on both sides; innocent civilians lose lives and suffer severe privation; reconstruction costs skyrocket," Collins said, adding that fighting for the capital would cancel out the allied advantages in air and armor and reduce it to an Infantry battle house to house, street by street."
It all comes from political arrogance. Here's a story from The Guardian last August, re-run gleefully by LSN. "The biggest war game in US military history, staged this month at a cost of 165m with 13,000 troops, was rigged to ensure that the Americans beat their 'Middle Eastern' adversaries, according to one of the main participants. General Paul Van Riper, a retired marine lieutenant-general, told the Army Times that the sprawling three-week millennium challenge exercises, were "almost entirely scripted to ensure a [US] win".
And Hitchens?
We always have a little space for him. Here's a story from the British Daily Telegraph by Tony Harndon in Washington DC, March 20.
"Last week, in a private and unpublicized lecture at the White House, Hitchens, a former Trotskyite who has called for Henry Kissinger to be indicted as a war criminal, addressed officials about the moral imperative to unseat Saddam Hussein."
Gee, maybe soon we'll be able to script The Trial of Christopher Hitchens. And here's a note of mine that the Washington Times just published.
From Alexander Cockburn To Washington Times Letters editor March 24, 2003
Sir, In their piece of March 21 about Christopher Hitchens' transition to the right your reporters Galupo and Wattenberg write that "Mr. Cockburn is publicly accusing his old friend of homosexuality." This is entirely untrue. I did recently comment on Hitchens' notorious enjoyment of alcohol, a taste on which he dwells at some length in a recent column in Vanity Fair, saying (optimistically in the view of many of his acquaintances) that it is his servant, not his master. Maybe in the virtuous offices of the Washington Times the two tastes are regarded as synonymous. In an effort to account for Hitchens' increasing seclusion in fantasy I discussed Korsakoff's syndrome, a condition of advanced drinkers where delusions attain paramountcy in the drinker's brain. Back in Clinton-time when Hitchens tried to get his close friend Sid Blumenthal nailed by Congress on a perjury rap I did allude in a column to Hitchens' habit of greeting friends with a proffered kiss on cheek or even lips, but my allusion there was to Judas Iscariot, not to Athenian practices.
Yours, Alexander Cockburn
-------- israel / palestine
U.N. Expert: Israeli Barrier Is Illegal
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians-Rights.html
GENEVA (AP) -- A barrier separating Israelis and Palestinians that Israel claims is needed for protection represents ``de facto annexation'' and is illegal under international law, a United Nations human rights expert said Thursday.
But Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva refuted that conclusion, saying the report by John Dugard was ``politically influenced'' and failed to consider the security situation created by nearly 30 months of fighting.
Dugard, a South African lawyer who is the U.N. expert on rights in the Palestinian territories, was to present his findings to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
``The wall is being used as a way of expanding Israel's territory,'' Dugard said. ``Israel responds that this is a temporary security measure but I think the reality is that this is a form of creeping annexation of Palestinian territory.''
The current plans for the barrier would enclose about 7 percent of Palestinian land, and proposals made earlier this week to extend it to protect a Jewish settlement in the heart of the West Bank would take much more land, he said.
``I have seen portions of that wall, and it makes the old Berlin Wall look very small,'' Dugard said. ``It has gone largely unnoticed in the West, but this is de facto annexation.''
Only a few miles of the barrier -- built of electronic fences and concrete blocks -- so far have been completed.
But Israeli Ambassador Yaakov Levy insisted the wall was ``a reluctant response to a concerted wave of Palestinian terrorism emerging from civilian populated areas.''
``The security fence is one of a series of defensive measures that Israel was forced to take after repeated overtures to the Palestinian leadership to resolve the security crisis had been rebuffed,'' Levy said.
``Its location has been determined purely by security considerations and Israel's leadership has clearly stated that it has no political significance.''
Dugard, whose mandate is rejected by the Israeli government, said the humanitarian situation in the Palestinian territories has worsened dramatically since his last report a year ago.
Although Israel has a legitimate right to protect itself from terrorists, it has reacted too strongly, he said.
``Israel has succeeded in gaining tremendous sympathy for its argument that it is engaged in defensive action in response to Palestinian suicide bombers, and I think one must acknowledge that Israel does have real security concerns,'' he said.
``But the action taken by the Israelis has been disproportionate. I point to the fact that there has been considerable loss of life ... This has often been justified as 'collateral action.' But collateral deaths have become the rule rather than the exception of the present conflict.''
-------- landmines
Amnesty International Calls for Immediate Halt to Use of Landmines and Cluster Bombs in Iraq
Civilians at Risk from 'Dumb' Indiscriminate Weapons
27 March 2003
Amnesty Inernational USA
http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/2003/iraq03272003.html
Source: Amnesty International,
600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Washington, D.C. 20003
Contact: Alistair Hodgett, 202 544 0200 x302
(Washington, DC) - Amnesty International today called for an immediate cessation of the use of landmines and cluster bombs in Iraq, as reports emerge of the dropping of cluster bombs over Basra by US/UK forces and the continued laying by Iraq of anti-personnel mines and booby-traps in southern Iraq.
"The civilian death toll in this conflict may be needlessly increased by the use of these 'dumb weapons,' which scatter the peril of death or injury across large areas," said Ariela Blätter, Director of Crisis Response for Amnesty International USA. "The high risk of violating the prohibition on indiscriminate military attacks necessitates an immediate moratorium on the use of cluster weapons."
Both US and UK officials have refused to rule out the use of cluster bombs; the Department of Defense has stated that "it retains the right to use landmines," and there have been reports that Iraqi forces have laid mines around the country.
Cluster bombs release numerous bomblets over a large area. At least 5% of these 'dud' bomblets do not explode upon impact, turning them into de facto anti-personnel mines because they continue to pose a threat to people, including civilians, who come into contact with them.
The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction (Ottawa Treaty), which entered into force on March 1, 1999, forbids the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and transfer of anti-personnel weapons. Neither the USA nor Iraq are parties to the treaty, which has been ratified by 131 states including the UK and Australia, and signed by 146.
-------- mideast
The 'Palestinization' of Iraq
THE ROVING EYE,
By Pepe Escobar
March 27, 2003
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EC27Ak05.html
AMMAN - American tanks are now ripping at the heart of Mesopotamia, the "land between the rivers" and the cradle of civilization; the US 5th Corps is already engaging the Medina division of the Republican Guards as B52s increase their bombing raids of the "red line" in the outer ring of defenses of Baghdad, over which hangs a surreal, dust-induced dark orange cloud.
For 280 million Arabs, the symbolic effect of the tanks in the country is as devastating as a lethal sandstorm. But Saddam Hussein seems to be one step ahead. It doesn't matter that Iraqi TV was silenced by a showering of Tomahawks (although domestic broadcasts, as well as the international signal, have been restored). Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi TV will be on hand to record the ultimate image that Saddam knows is capable of igniting the Arab world into an ocean of fire: an American tank in the streets of Baghdad juxtaposed with an American tank in the streets of Gaza.
To date, an estimated 5,200 Iraqis have crossed the Jordanian-Iraqi border, going back "to defend their homeland" as they invariably put it. In already one week of a war that was marketed by the Pentagon as "clean" and "quick" and which is revealing itself to be bloody and protracted, not a single Iraqi refugee has crossed the al-Karama border point into eastern Jordan.
Beyond Iraq, the most crucial development in the Middle East for decades is the fact that from Amman to Cairo, from Beirut to Riyadh, the bulk of the Arab nation is now "Palestinized". Marwan Muasher, the suave Jordanian foreign minister, insists that King Abdullah and his government are doing everything to end the war and "to try to help the Iraqi people" - basically through frantic telephone diplomacy with Bahrain, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The Arab League has meekly called for an end to the war. Washington didn't even register it. And the Arab street is not buying excuses any more.
The widespread anger directed at Arab leaders is overwhelming - from taxi drivers to art students, from construction workers to businessmen. For around half a century, the anger in a way channeled by the Palestinians - who by practical experience have learned not to trust Arab leaders. Now the loss of legitimacy is total - a long decaying process that originated in the early 1990s. The street knows that all Arab regimes - from reactionary Saudi Arabia to relatively progressive Jordan - have failed. They have been incapable of achieving Arab unity and independence. They have been incapable of providing social, economic and technological development. They have been impotent in their promises to try to help liberate Gaza and the West Bank. And they have been shamefully incapable of uniting against what their populations unanimously consider a neocolonialist war in Iraq.
One of the most extraordinary developments of the war so far is how the resistance of the Iraqi population against a foreign invasion has galvanized this sentiment of anger in the Arab world. "We are all Palestinians now," as a Bedouin taxi driver puts it. One of the first things anyone mentions in Jordan - be it a Jordanian, an Egyptian, a Lebanese or a Somali refugee - is their happiness about the way the Iraqi people are resisting the "invaders" (never qualified as "liberators"). Their intuition also tells them that every extra day in this war is further humiliation to the Pentagon - especially because the real war, and not the US version, is being followed by the whole Arab world, in Arabic, through Arab satellite channels.
In a cramped office in downtown Amman near the Roman amphitheater, answering dozens of phone calls, surfing the Internet and zapping incessantly between al-Jazeera and CNN, a Jordanian intelligence source muses on how the Americans will play the war. "They are going to encircle the big cities, Basra, Mosul and Baghdad. But the elite Republican Guard divisions are digging in. The Americans will be forced to attack the best Iraqi soldiers, and thousands, dozens of thousands are now inside Baghdad. The Americans can't occupy Baghdad, they don't have enough soldiers, the city has more people than the whole of Lebanon. They could stay outside and keep bombing. But for how long? They cannot afford a war lasting many months. They will go crazy."
The Pentagon plan for Baghdad is to encircle the huge, sprawling city of 6 million and then calibrate a series of urban attacks. But Baghdad is not Ramallah on the West Bank. The Jordanian intelligence source swears the still non-decapitated regime can survive a siege for months. Saddam - a huge admirer of Josef Stalin - is placing all his bets on the Stalingrad scenario. Of the six Republican Guard divisions, three of them, armored and with around 12,000 soldiers each, are firmly entrenched in Baghdad's inner defensive ring. The key elite Medina division is in the south of the city - ready to face the Americans and already under B52 bombing.
Behind the Republican Guards there are still four brigades of the Special Republican Guards, with at least 10,000 and as many as 25,000 soldiers either placed inside Baghdad or back in Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace 160 kilometers to the north. They are disposed in four motorized infantry brigades and are very well trained in urban guerrilla. This is of course Saddam's Praetorian guard, coming overwhelmingly from the Albu Nasr tribe in Tikrit, from Baiji and from villages near Baghdad and west of Mosul. Asia Times Online has already reported how Saddam can count on the support of a complex network of tribes, clans and sub-clans in the Sunni center of Iraq (What is the US really up against?, February 21) Saddam is rallying his troops non-stop: "Inflict damage on them, and although it may not be big, you'll see how they will flee because they are away from home and because they are aggressors." He has made another jihad call on TV to the tribal and clan chiefs, encouraging them on the guerrilla war path: "Fight them in pockets, and when their columns move, hit their front and rear. Those of you who have been reluctant to fight and are waiting for the order, consider this to be the command of faith and jihad and fight them." Much of the resistance encountered by the Americans and the British in the Shi'ite south was by tribesmen and clansmen, some equipped with very sophisticated weapons.
A mix of Republican and Special Republican Guards, civilian and military security, secret police and civilian militias will offer fierce resistance to the Americans. A well as Saddam, the 8,000 men of the Mudiriyah al-Am al-Amma (the secret police) all come from Tikrit: this is largely an extended family affair. Civilian militias - composed of five competing security forces - will be decisive in urban guerrilla warfare. These forces include the 5,000 men of the al-Amn al-Khas (the Special Forces) and the 4,000 men of the al-Mukhabasad al-Amma (intelligence services), which are spread out all over the country.
There are also the 6,000 men from the al-Idakhard al Askkariyya (military intelligence) and the 5,000 men of Amm al-Askariyya (military security) - a secret police that answers directly to the Ministry of Defense and controls the key central district of Baghdad (their headquarters has already been bombed). There are still the 8,000 men of the Mudiriyah al-Am al-Amma, the secret police which directly depends on the Ministry of the Interior (all of these men also come from Tikrit).
Thousands of Arab-Afghan mujahideen have also been deployed around Baghdad and Mosul preparing suicide commando - or "martyrdom" - operations against the invasion, as well as 2,500 Hezbollah from Lebanon. About 700 Algerian volunteers who received weapons training in Iraqi camps are also at hand.
Finally, around this dizzying web, we find what the Americans would call "combatants" - at least 150,000 men and women of the Jaysh al-Shaabi, a civilian militia that even includes elderly Shi'ite women in black brandishing their World War I-era rifles. The task of the militia is basically to corral the civilian population.
All these special and not-so-special forces have been strategically positioned by the regime among civilians. They will thus be deadly in a guerrilla scenario. This would be the ultimate nightmare for the Pentagon, barring the unthinkable - chemical, biological and even nuclear warfare.
-------- p.o.w.'s
DETAINEES
Trying to Sort Out the Enemy From the Innocent
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27PRIS.html
NASIRIYA, Iraq, March 26 - Four metal posts and barbed wire strung loose as bunting made the corners and walls of a makeshift holding cell, beside a pond of clay-orange water from the night's rain. Some 20 Iraqi men sat cross-legged or squatted in the damp sand, huddled together against the chill. One was allowed to walk a few steps away to relieve himself. Marines with M-16 rifles stood guard.
These were the low-priority detainees. Probably refugees, probably farmers, possibly soldiers once. Probably harmless, probably being sent home soon, but not just yet.
"They must feel like zoo animals," an American officer said. "Everybody coming by for a look." The name of the Marine unit overseeing their imprisonment is the Human Exploitation Team.
There were six other enemy prisoners of war in another wire-and-sand square receiving more attention, after marines searching them found cash and what appeared to be maps in their clothing. One by one, they were taken for questioning away from the pond, behind a truck.
Allied forces have taken more than 4,000 prisoners of war, an American general at Central Command said today. He may not be counting this ragged group by the pond. Little jails like these ring Nasiriya, holding more than 100 prisoners after four days of fighting that have left American forces with a tenuous hold on the city.
American troops have passed large convoys through what has come to be known as Ambush Alley without incident, but enough guerrilla fighters and irregulars remain in Nasiriya to keep three Marine infantry battalions engaged, searching city streets a block at a time. The battle has taken nine Marine lives.
The sharpest of today's engagements began at dusk, when the marines attacked an estimated 1,000 Iraqi troops gathering at a railroad station on the south side of the Euphrates. The marines called in artillery strikes on the formation, and with fighting continuing five hours later, officials said 21 wounded marines had been evacuated.
Col. Ron Bailey, commander of the troops in Nasiriya, said earlier that the marines were well established in the city.
But the battle of Nasiriya continues to frustrate the marines because so little has been learned about the enemy, described as a loose alliance of regular soldiers, Baath Party militants and fedayeen militiamen pledged to be "martyrs for Saddam." The marines have long ago given up on labels, calling them simply "bad guys" or "military-age males" over the combat radios. Eager to apply a sense of order, a uniform, to the enemy, marines have detained men wearing any black, even under other clothing, because that is said to be the fedayeen's preferred color.
The fighters have dressed as civilians, pretended to be civilians trying to surrender and have used schools and hospitals as headquarters during the battle, the marines said. They have hidden weapons all over town, so that in case they are stopped, they are unarmed. "As they go by, they wave and then grab their weapons," Colonel Bailey said.
As a result, all civilians around Nasiriya are suspect. Almost any man between boyhood and old age is a "military-age male" subject to detention.
Some of those held were captured in the heat of battle, but most have simply walked up to the several Marine units north and south of Nasiriya, carrying white flags and obediently sitting in the sand.
"The thing Americans don't understand, Iraq has been at war for years and years," an officer said. "To them, traveling in this type of environment is no big deal."
Some prisoners have been a source of intelligence during the battle, pointing the marines toward headquarters, tanks, mortar emplacements, ammunition stockpiles and buildings where the enemy fighters hunker down for the night, officers said. Referring to enemy prisoners of war, Colonel Bailey said: "E.P.W.'s have provided a tremendous source of information. Who they are, how they are organized, and how they plan to defend the city."
There were a few more than 100 prisoners captured in Nasiriya in the last two days, he said.
Most, however, are of no strategic help.
"Most E.P.W.'s say they're just down to visit their family, and we can't sort them out," said Lt. Josh Cusworth, an intelligence officer. "Those guys could very well be coming from the fight, but they're like, `Oh, we're sorry, we're civilians.' "
Interrogation is a slow process. There was only one interpreter for the 40 or so prisoners assembled today. He is a volunteer from Kuwait and identified himself as Abu Omar, a 28-year-old businessman. "I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to say a lot of stuff," he said, dressed in the same camouflage chemical suit as the marines were.
He said most of the prisoners wanted to help the allies get rid of Saddam Hussein. "They're deserters," Abu Omar said. "They don't want to fight."
A red pickup pulled up then, a white sheet tied to the radio antenna, and stopped as marines approached. A woman got out with two young children; she was largely ignored as marines questioned the men inside.
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THE MARINES
Iraqi Soldiers Say It Was Fight or Die
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By DEXTER FILKINS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27AMBU.html
DIWANIYA, Iraq, March 26 - The aftermath of the firefight was a tableau of twisted Iraqi bodies, tins of unopened food and the dirty mattresses where they had spent their final hours.
But the Iraqi private with a bullet wound in the back of his head suggested something unusually grim. Up and down the 200-mile stretch of desert where the American and British forces have advanced, one Iraqi prisoner after another has told captors a similar tale: that many Iraqi soldiers were fighting at gunpoint, threatened with death by tough loyalists of President Saddam Hussein.
Here, according to American doctors and Iraqi prisoners, appeared to be one confirmation. The wounded Iraqi, whose life was ebbing away outside an American field hospital, had been shot during the firefight Tuesday night with American troops. It was a small-caliber bullet, most likely from a pistol, fired at close range. Iraqi prisoners taken after the battle said their officers had been firing at them, pushing them into battle.
"The officers threatened to shoot us unless we fought," said a wounded Iraqi from his bed in the American field hospital here. "They took out their guns and pointed them and told us to fight."
As the American medics patched up the wounds of three other Iraqi soldiers, they said there was little they could do for the one who had been shot in the head. Much of his skull had come apart, and the medics labeled him "expectant," which meant he was expected to die. They gave him morphine, wrapped him in a green blanket and put him on a stretcher outside their tent.
"We think he was shot by his own," Dr. Wade Wilde, a Marine surgeon, said. "If he had been hit by an M-16, it would have taken his whole head off. It seems like it was an Iraqi gun." As Dr. Wilde spoke, his eyes drifted to the Iraqi soldier, still clinging to life, on the stretcher. "We've tried to make him as comfortable as possible," he said, "and let the wound run its course."
It is wild here near the front of the American advance, 110 miles south of Baghdad. The ambushes are more frequent, the Iraqi soldiers more desperate, the Americans more jumpy. At night, the perimeter of the American camp echoes with the sound of mortar fire and the yips of wild dogs. "The closer we get to Baghdad, the crazier it gets," Sgt. Robert Gardner, a marine at a base here, said.
The American marines making their way up the Baghdad Highway through central Iraq came under attack at least three times in the past 24 hours. Two of the attacks, including those in which the Iraqi soldiers said they were shot by their own officers, followed a similar pattern.
The Iraqis waited for the tanks and other armored vehicles to pass, then opened fire, as if hoping to hurt the American force but unable to match its heavier weapons. Twice on Tuesday, the Americans came under fire that way.
The first attack came before dawn, when a convoy of marines came under fire from Iraqi irregulars. The details were sketchy, but American officers said they had taken several Iraqi militiamen prisoner, killed several of the Iraqis and lost none of their own. On the road north, the only sign of the encounter was a pool of blood on the side of the road.
Hours later, during a swirling sandstorm, the American convoy again came under attack. A force thought to number about 150 Iraqis was waiting in trenches about 100 yards off the highway. That fight proved more deadly: an American marine was killed and another was wounded, along with at least a dozen Iraqis killed.
Cpl. Chad Stroup was riding with a group of his comrades in a personnel carrier when he heard the banging of bullets on the vehicle's armored shell. His driver, seeking to avoid the fire, swerved and flipped the carrier into an Iraqi trench. Corporal Stroup and the others piled out the vehicle and ran for cover, somehow avoiding the Iraqi soldiers thought to be in the trench. The fight, he said, ended abruptly with American artillery fire. "There were two loud explosions, then it went quiet," he said.
The scene after Tuesday night's battle suggested an Iraqi force that was not as spirited as some of those that American troops have encountered recently in Nasiriya and Najaf.
Scattered through the Iraqi trenches was an arsenal hardly up to the task of slowing the American advance: a few hand grenades, some rocket launchers, three dozen magazines for Kalashnikov rifles. A pair of filthy mattresses and moldy blankets were thrown together in a pile. A dozen corpses lay splayed about in the ditch. Perhaps the only ominous articles were Iraqi gas masks strewn about the trench line.
On the roadside, the Iraqi prisoners huddled together. Only a few had uniforms; most wore tattered clothing and battered shoes. They did not seem like men who lusted for battle. American marines guarding the prisoners said they had complained that their own officers had shot at them during the battle. "I have four children at home, and they threatened to hurt them if I did not fight," another one of the wounded Iraqis said. "I had no choice."
Perhaps because of those accusations, the Americans had taken the group's leader, an Iraqi brigadier general, and sat him on the ground away from the others.
By midafternoon, the marines were embroiled in yet another fight. This one was just three miles away, close enough for Iraqi mortar shells to fall near the American camp. A Marine battalion of about 600 men was dispatched to confront the Iraqis, and by nightfall the sound of artillery rumbled through the area.
By nightfall, the marines, so often a picture of tireless and cocksure youth, were on edge. Around 8 p.m., a sentry guarding the base opened fire, and soon he was joined by a volley of rockets and machine-gun fire from a number of his comrades. Afterward, the area went still. Yet with so little light and so little certain, no one seemed to know whether the young soldiers had been firing at Iraqi intruders or the wild dogs yipping outside the camp.
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Japan Launches Spy Satellites Amid N.Korea Fears
March 27, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-japan.html
TANEGASHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - A rocket carrying Japan's first two spy satellites blasted off on Friday in an intelligence-gathering effort that some fear may spur its heavily armed neighbor, North Korea, to test-fire a ballistic missile.
The satellites, one optical and one radar-equipped, separated from the rocket and went into orbit as planned but will not be fully operational for several months.
``We have received word that the launch was successful,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a meeting of the Upper House budgetary committee, attended by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The news was greeted with applause.
The Japanese-made H-2A launch rocket had been seen trailing a white plume through a cloudless sky above the launch site on the tiny island of Tanegashima, 620 miles southwest of Tokyo.
The satellite deployment, which will give Japan its first independent chance to scrutinize North Korea from space, was planned after Pyongyang's 1998 firing of a Taepodong ballistic missile, which passed over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean.
Tokyo plans to launch another two similar satellites later in the year in a $2.08 billion project.
The region has been jittery since Washington said in October that North Korea had admitted to a secret nuclear weapons program. Pyongyang has since taken a number of provocative steps including firing two short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan.
Some analysts have expressed concern that North Korea, which has criticized the satellite launch as a ``hostile act,'' could seize the opportunity to fire a Rodong ballistic missile capable of reaching Japan to grab international attention back from Iraq.
The smooth launch will be a boost for Japan's rocket launch program, which is due to be privatized in two years' time. Confidence in the program was severely damaged by two successive failures in 1998 and 1999.
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Washington Trying to Curb U.N. Role in a Postwar Iraq
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN with FELICITY BARRINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - The United States is battling France, Russia and others in Europe over American efforts to try to curb the role of the United Nations in governing and rebuilding a postwar Iraq, and once again Britain, Washington's staunchest ally in the drive toward Baghdad and the diplomatic war that preceded it, is trying to play the role of mediator.
The British prime minister, Tony Blair, who arrived here this evening for meetings with President Bush, has said he wants to use this trip to press Washington to accept some kind of United Nations blessing for the occupation, even though the Security Council failed to approve a resolution on the war this month.
Mr. Blair seemed to acknowledge a struggle ahead, telling reporters on his flight from London, "I have no doubt at all that there will be a whole process of consultation and discussion about these things, but the important thing is that we end up with something that is U.N.-endorsed."
As in the past, there is also discord behind the scenes on this issue within the Bush administration, American officials said today. The Defense Department was described as wanting the United Nations limited to coordinating certain aid programs and not involved in governing or peacekeeping. But Secretary of State Colin L. Powell advocates a significant role for the United Nations, in part to mute the expected adverse world reaction to a British-American occupation in Baghdad, the officials said.
"The United Nations will have a role to play," Mr. Powell said today in an interview with an Indian television network. He said that the role remained to be defined, but that there was no "major difference" between Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush in this regard.
Much of the dispute centers on the long-term future governance of Iraq. Early skirmishing over the issue erupted in the past week at the Security Council, where members were still recovering from the acrimonious split on Iraq.
The focus has been on a resolution to reactivate a six-year-old program supervised by the United Nations and Iraq that uses Iraqi oil profits to pay for food and medicine for millions of Iraqis who have no other source for either. The program was suspended when the war began.
A draft resolution from Secretary General Kofi Annan, largely supported by the United States and Britain, gives the United Nations broad authority to remake the program to fit the aid crisis on the ground, and coordinate with the "relevant authorities."
The Russian and Syrian representatives have argued against the mention of "relevant authorities," which they fear might effectively legitimize an American-installed government, and pushed to have language included specifying the aid obligations of the "occupying power."
Council diplomats said today that the current draft, including disputed portions of the text, would be sent to the home governments on Thursday. It was unclear late today whether a consensus could be forged and a draft presented for a vote before the end of the week. One diplomat who attended the expert committee meeting last night said that five issues remained in significant dispute.
American and other officials said ruefully that the dispute reflects the continuing bitterness of the clashes over the resolutions at the Security Council authorizing the war in the first place. "The French and Russians are going to make it difficult for the Americans to do anything on Iraq," said a diplomat involved in the negotiations on the oil-for-food measure. "That's becoming increasingly obvious."
President Bush has not yet decided what sort of arrangement to seek in a postwar Iraq, administration officials said. They added that his meeting with Mr. Blair on Thursday would be a significant exploration of the options.
But diplomats said that a sign of American intentions lay in its demands on the oil-for-food program, which an administration official said should be run by the United Nations only temporarily as "a limited, defined, short-term kind of program." The current draft resolution would reauthorize the program for 45 days.
Eventually, administration officials say, they want the oil-for-food program to be turned over to a new Iraqi governing authority, although it is not clear how much independence that authority would have from American and British occupation forces, which many expect to stay in Iraq for a year or longer.
Many diplomats involved in reconstruction of war-ravaged countries - from Afghanistan to the Balkans to East Timor - say the American plans to quickly install a new government are unrealistic. That is especially the view among relief agencies based in Europe, which are expected to raise much of the money for Iraq.
"What they're really thinking of is a puppet government in Baghdad, where they pull the strings," said a development official involved in talks about the future of Iraq, referring to Washington's intentions. "That's not politically possible."
The debate over this issue has been sharpened by the active involvement of Presidents Jacques Chirac of France and Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who have said they will not accept an American or British occupation force governing Iraq without participation by the United Nations.
Their comments were echoed by leaders of the European Union, which endorsed the idea of a broader United Nations authority a week ago.
"It's imperative for Tony Blair to use his influence on Bush," a senior European official said. "Europeans are frankly not anxious to see their assistance delivered under a military flag in a war whose validity is disputed by so many of us."
Asked today about the continuing reluctance of France to join in any undertaking that implied legitimization of the war, Mr. Blair said, "I have no doubt at all that France will be involved in the reconstruction."
But Mr. Blair's hard-line stance on Iraq and close partnership with Mr. Bush have cost him support in many Continental capitals and have undermined his capacity to be a leader trusted by Europeans to convey their concerns to Washington.
Some legal experts say United Nations involvement is virtually inevitable, whether the Americans want it or not. That is because Iraq is subject to stiff economic and political sanctions imposed by the Security Council, where France and Russia have a veto along with China, Britain and the United States. Only the Council can lift them, giving the veto-bearing members of the Council considerable leverage.
But by all accounts, Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush both oppose having the United Nations run the occupation directly. Rather they are said to prefer that the United Nations give its blessing or serve as a coordinator for international relief efforts, and perhaps a measure of the reconstruction efforts.
The secretary general emphasized today that his role would be determined by the Security Council.
But in an open session this afternoon he said two "guiding principles" should govern "all decisions on the future of Iraq." They are, he said, "respect for Iraq's sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence," and "respect for the right of the Iraqi people to determine their own political future and control their own natural resources."
He added: "In the last few months the peoples of the world have shown how much they expect of the United Nations, and of the Security Council in particular. Many of them are now bitterly disappointed." To restore the lost faith, he said, Council members must "make a concerted effort to overcome their differences."
American officials said they are adamant that an indigenous Iraqi civil authority get up and running as quickly as possible, perhaps even within a month after armed forces secure the country. Their approach, officials said, is to divide that authority between Iraqis now in the country and Iraqis abroad, many of whom are active opponents of Saddam Hussein.
"There's a useful role for the U.N., not only in humanitarian things but also other things," said an administration official. "But I would say we're talking about a U.N. role, not U.N. rule."
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Rumsfeld and all the Army's men
Michael O´Hanlon
March 27, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030327-24485963.htm
According to insider accounts, many U.S. military officers, especially in the Army, view Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the way most Europeans do - as headstrong, abrasive and arrogant. Mr. Rumsfeld, in turn, appears to view many Army officers as unimaginative. But somehow, when it comes to planning war, their adversarial relationship seems to work. It produced a generally successful battle plan for Afghanistan, and despite the recent setbacks, it is working for Iraq.
Operation Iraqi Freedom has several distinguishing characteristics. First, despite much public sniping to the contrary (mostly by retired Army officers), it is a big operation, with about 250,000 Americans in theater to date, another 25,000 Brits and up to another 100,000 or more U.S. troops on the way. Second, the air war has wisely been highly discriminating, focusing on political and military leadership targets rather than civilian infrastructure or even most fielded forces, in an attempt to decapitate Saddam's regime rather than take on the whole country. Third, the drive to Baghdad is not a classic armored assault. Major cities and many Iraqi army units are being bypassed; U.S. supply lines are not being guarded as forces race quickly to the capital. While this has had its downside, it has enabled U.S. forces to approach within 50 miles of Baghdad in less than a week's time. Fourth, the war plan has made excellent use of special forces in seizing oil fields and infrastructure, potential weapons of mass destruction facilities and key facilities such as airfields in the country's west and north.
These basic characteristics of the allied military strategy may seem obvious and inevitable. They weren't. Over the last year, there was vigorous debate between Mr. Rumsfeld's civilian team on the one hand and the uniformed military on the other. Mr.Rumsfeld's instincts were to go with a small force and a daring, modern battle plan building on the model of Afghanistan. The military's instincts, especially among Army officers, were to deploy a big enough sledgehammer to crush the entire Iraqi military with brute force. According to Bob Woodward, it took 20 drafts of the battle plan to reconcile these contradictory impulses and produce the final strategy.
In the end, each side got half of what it wanted, and the country got a good war plan. Operation Iraqi Freedom is being fought with the big force the U.S. military wanted and the creative concepts Mr. Rumsfeld desired.
Some now argue that the deployment of only 250,000 Americans reflects a victory for Mr. Rumsfeld, and an effective repudiation of the Powell doctrine's insistence on overwhelming force that most military professionals still espouse. But, they forget where this debate stood a year ago. Back then, civilians at the Department of Defense were pushing war plans involving just 50,000 to 75,000 U.S. troops. They lost that debate. In fact, our use of 250,000 Americans against 400,000 Iraqi troops actually gives us a more favorable force ratio than the United States possessed in Desert Storm (where we used 550,000 American troops against an Iraqi military of 1 million). Even though our deployed forces are not particularly armor-heavy, the expected fight for Baghdad places a greater premium on mobility, helicopters and infantry forces than on tanks alone, so there is nothing radical about using Marines and the 101st Air Assault Division for the coming battle. Finally, more armor is en route to Iraq just in case, including the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division and other units.
But, if the military won the debate over the size and character of the force, Mr. Rumsfeld appears to have provided much of the creative spark for the war's tactics. Focusing the battle on elite Iraqi forces while trying to use a combination of carrots and sticks to induce the capitulation of the regular army, and even elements of the Republican Guard, is a very good idea given Saddam Hussein's unpopularity within Iraq. Although the shock and awe idea is getting the headlines, it is an old-fashioned idea compared with Mr. Rumsfeld's discriminating targeting strategy.
Admittedly, this plan for selective attacks has not produced the quick decapitation or collapse of the Iraqi regime that many hoped for. But it is still the right way to go. There is such a premium on avoiding civilian casualties in this war that an all-out air attack on Baghdad would be strategic folly.
There has been much recent discord over whether 250,000 U.S. troops are too few. Perhaps it is; indeed, virtually everyone agrees that we would have wanted the 4th Mechanized Infantry Division to be part of this campaign from the start. Alas, Turkey said no, and President Bush, tired of diplomacy, decided to start the war without waiting for the 4th to re-route itself through Kuwait. But, even if that was a mistake, its military consequences will be limited. While the coalition waits for sandstorms to subside and puts down resistance from Saddam's Fedayeen irregulars in Basra and other southeastern cities, the 4th is gradually making its way to Kuwait, and the 101st is gradually making its way towards Baghdad. We should soon be in position to win this war decisively.
Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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Drowned Marines in full gear
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 27, 2003
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030327-73728048.htm
Two Marines drowned in southern Iraq after attempting to cross a canal without a safety line while wearing heavy gear and rifles, The Washington Times has learned.
The Marines were identified by the Pentagon as Cpl. Evan James, 20, of Hancock, Ill., and Sgt. Bradley Korthaus, 28, of Scott, Iowa. Both were part of a Marine Corps Reserve engineer company in Peoria, Ill.
A spokesman for the Naval & Marine Corps Reserve Center in Peoria said Sgt. Korthaus worked as a plumber and Cpl. James was a lifeguard and student....
Marine Corps Maj. Matt McLoughlin, another spokesman, said both men went under the water while attempting to swim across the Saddam Canal in southern Iraq on Monday....
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U.S. Releases List of the Dead in Iraq Fighting
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27LIST.html
Following is a list of dead in the Iraq war reported by the Department of Defense:
ADAMS, Lt. Thomas Mullen, 27, La Mesa, Calif. Exchange officer, Royal Navy's 849 Squadron.
ADDISON, Specialist Jamaal R., 22, Roswell, Ga. 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company.
AUBIN, Maj. Jay Thomas, 36, Waterville, Me. Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron, Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Ariz.
BEAUPRE, Capt. Ryan Anthony, 30, Bloomington, Ill. Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron, Marine Corps Air Station, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
BITZ, Sgt. Michael E., 31, Ventura, Calif. Second Assault Amphibious Battalion, Second Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
BUESING, Lance Cpl. Brian Rory, 20, Cedar Key, Fla. First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
CHILDERS, Second Lt. Therrel S., 30, Harrison County, Miss. First Battalion, First Marine Division, Camp Pendleton.
FRIBLEY, Lance Cpl. David K., 26, Lee, Fla. First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
GARIBAY, Cpl. Jose A., 21, Orange, Calif. First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
GONZALEZ, Cpl. Jorge A., 20, Los Angeles. First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
GUTIERREZ, Lance Cpl. Jose, 22, Los Angeles. Second Battalion, First Marine Regiment, Camp Pendleton.
HODSON, Sgt. Nicolas M., 22, Smithville, Mo. Third Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
JOHNSON, Pfc. Howard II, 21, Mobile, Ala. 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company.
JORDAN, Staff Sgt. Phillip A., 42, Brazoria, Tex. First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
KENNEDY, Cpl. Brian Matthew, 25, Houston. Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron, Marine Corps Air Station, Camp Pendleton.
ORLOWSKI, Lance Cpl. Eric J., 26, Buffalo. Second Tank Battalion, Second Marine Division, Camp Lejeune.
POKORNEY, Second Lt. Frederick E. Jr., 31, Nye, Nev. Headquarters Battery, First Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
ROSACKER, Cpl. Randal Kent, 21, San Diego. First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
SANDERS, Specialist Gregory P., 19, Indiana. Third Battalion, 69th Armor, Fort Stewart, Ga.
SEIFERT, Capt. Christopher Scott, 27, Williams Township, Pa. 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.
SLOCUM, Lance Cpl. Thomas J., 22, Adams, Colo., First Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, Camp Lejeune.
STONE, Maj. Gregory, 40, Boise, Idaho. 124th Air Support Operations Squadron, Idaho Air National Guard, Boise.
TOBLER, Reserve Specialist Brandon S., 19, hometown not available. 671st Engineer Brigade, Portland, Ore.
WATERSBEY, Staff Sgt. Kendall Damon, 29, Baltimore. Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron, Marine Corps Air Station, Camp Pendleton.
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Delicate Calculus of Casualties and Public Opinion
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By TODD S. PURDUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27CASU.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - In the climactic four-week Battle of the Bulge in World War II, 19,000 Americans were killed. On a single day, Sept. 17, 1862, at least 3,650 Confederate and Union soldiers died in the Battle of Antietam. At the height of the Vietnam War, roughly 200 Americans were killed each week.
In the first seven days of the war in Iraq, two dozen Americans have died.
Modest as the latest losses are by historical standards of combat, they have already prompted sharp shifts in public perceptions about how well the campaign against Saddam Hussein is going, though they have not, according to polls so far, reduced overall support for the war.
But as coalition forces face unexpected complexities on their march to Baghdad, the Bush administration faces the political challenge of preparing a public lulled by the relatively low losses in Afghanistan and the first Persian Gulf war for a conflict that could be costlier than some optimists predicted.
What level of casualties does the White House think the American public will tolerate?
"I'm not going there, because I don't know," the White House communications director, Dan Bartlett, said today, in a sign of the sensitivity of the issue. "
The first gulf war clearly influenced public views about probable casualties in this conflict. In Gallup polls conducted in 1991, 30 percent of the respondents expected that several thousand American troops would be killed and wounded, while one in 10 expected fewer than 100 casualties. In Gallup surveys taken this month, just 5 percent of respondents expected casualties of several thousand, while 4 in 10 expected fewer than 100 American casualties.
After the 1991 war, the Pentagon acknowledged that it had anticipated at least 10,000 allied casualties. (In fact, there were just over 600 American casualties, 146 killed in action and 467 wounded). The government's official post-mortem on the war also disclosed that its commander, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, had been given, among his "operational imperatives," an order to "accept losses no greater than the equivalent of three companies per coalition brigade."
That would have translated to about 10 percent of the 100,000 allied ground troops in the field. This time, senior White House and Pentagon officials say there has been no discussion of similar limits.
"Absolutely not," said the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer. "Absolutely not. The president looks at this knowing that when the commander in chief talks about the use of force, the American people understand that it may entail the sacrifices he has spoken of. And the president also views this in the post-9/11 context, in which failure to act could lead to the taking of even more lives."
A Pentagon official added: "There's no number, and we don't work with numbers." On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said: "The fact of the matter is we have said repeatedly we can't say how long it will last. We do not know. It is not knowable."
Still, there are hints. In the event of urban combat in Baghdad, for example, Pentagon planners have spoken of using advanced tactics to reduce American casualties, combined killed and wounded, to perhaps 10 percent per unit.
Clearly attuned to the concern about casualties, the Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, in her briefing today responded to suggestions that officials had been slow to provide casualty figures by saying they were releasing them as quickly as possible, after next of kin could be notified.
"It will never be as fast as some people like," Ms. Clarke said. "It will never be as complete as some people like."
Michael O'Hanlon, a defense policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said that "if the numbers stay in the ballpark of the first gulf war, I think the public would accept it, and see removal of Saddam Hussein as victory."
"As the numbers get much higher than that," Mr. O'Hanlon said, "then you really have to demonstrate success in other ways, by showing that the combination of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus other efforts, have forestalled or reduced terrorist attacks, for example."
Robert Teeter, a veteran Republican pollster who worked for the first President George Bush, said that so far there had been no sign that broad public support for the war was slipping.
"I think a lot of this is truly a Beltway phenomenon," Mr. Teeter added, of the disquiet, noting that in a poll he did during the first gulf war, 21 percent of respondents said the Iraqi military force had turned out to be tougher than expected, compared with 10 percent now.
"It seems to me that there is some public understanding as to what war really is," Mr. Teeter said.
Robert F. Turner, associate director of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia and an Army veteran of two tours in Vietnam, put it this way: "My own sense is that public support will decline a bit as people see firsthand how horrible war is, and it's good that they should. But I think they are also seeing the kind of people we are fighting against, the use of civilians as shields, and learning more about Saddam. And unless there's some horrible military blunder, I would expect support to endure long enough to get this done."
Experts on war and public opinion say there is no simple rule for determining when casualties prompt public reassessment of support for war, nothing comparable to the maxim that a politician facing re-election with approval ratings below 50 percent is in trouble. Instead, they say, a wide variety of factors come into play.
Eric V. Larson, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, said history suggested that the public's tolerance for casualties was higher than popular perception would have it. But, Mr. Larson said, such tolerance depends on the overall public support for war aims, together with the prospects for success and a consensus among political leaders.
By those standards, Mr. Larson said, tolerance of casualties for the war in Iraq "seems to be quite a bit more robust than for any of the peacekeeping operations of the 90's, like Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti and the latter stages of Somalia; perhaps not as robust as in Afghanistan, perhaps not as robust as World War II, but relatively very high."
Allan J. Lichtman, a historian at American University here, said President Bush had so far succeeded in persuading the public that this is a war for Americans' safety, "and to the extent that people still believe that, then I think the tolerance for casualties will be high. How high is hard to say."
"But," Mr. Lichtman added, "to the extent that belief in that wavers and this becomes less like World War II and more like Somalia, then in fact tolerance of casualties will sharply decline. I think they've done a very bad job of selling the sacrifices of this war. The president has talked in bland terms about it perhaps being longer and more costly, but he's never really issued a clarion call for sacrifice on the part of the American people."
Stanley A. Renshon, a professor of political science at the City University of New York and author of "The Political Psychology of the Gulf War," said that on one level, reports from the hundreds of journalists traveling with frontline units were bringing the travails of war home in unsettling ways.
"But it also gives people a sense of the difficulties involved, and allows the Bush administration to make the argument `This isn't so easy,' " Mr. Renshon said. " I think that's possibly going to be a sobering and stiffening thing for public opinion."
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A Look at Attack Aircraft In Iraq War
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Aircraft-Glance.html
APACHE AH-64D LONGBOW ATTACK HELICOPTER:
-Used by: U.S. Army; can identify and attack tanks miles away but is slow flying and easy target for anti-aircraft and small arms fire
-Crew: 2
-Length: 48 feet, 2 inches
-Height: 16 feet, 3 inches
-Rotor diameter: 48 feet
-Wingspan: 17 feet, 2 inches
-Speed: 167 mph
-Range: 300 miles
-Engines: Twin General Electric turboshaft
-Fuel capacity: 376 gallons internal
-Mission weight: 16,600 lbs.
-Weapons:
Up to 16 Hellfire anti-tank missiles or up to 36 2.75-inch rockets;
30 mm chain gun with up to 1,200 rounds
-Manufacturer: Boeing Corp.
--Cost: $22 million
AH-1 COBRA ATTACK HELICOPTER:
-Use: by U.S. Army for close air support and anti-tank missions.
-Crew: 2
-Length: 44 feet, 7 inches
-Height: 13 feet, 5 inches
-Main rotor diameter: 44 feet
-Wing span: 10 feet, 9 inches
-Speed: 141 mph
-Range: 315 miles
-Engine: one Avco Lycoming T53-L-703 turboshaft
-Fuel capacity: 259 gallons
-Mission weight: up to 10,000 pounds for takeoff
-Weapons:
one M197 three-barrel,
20 mm Gatling gun;
missiles, rocket packs
-Manufacturer: Bell Helicopter Systems
--Cost: $10.7 million
A-10 THUNDERBOLT II (sometimes called A-10 Warthog):
-Use: by U.S. Air Force;
a rugged aircraft designed to deliver a heavy-weapons load under intense anti-aircraft fire;
can attack a variety of targets, including tanks and other armored vehicles and missile launchers;
often used with AH-64 Apache helicopter
-Crew: 1
-Length: 53 feet, 4 inches
-Height: 14 feet, 8 inches
-Wing span: 57 feet, 6 inches
-Speed: up to 423 mph
-Engines: two General Electric TF-34-GE-100 turbofan
-Mission weight: up to 50,000 pounds for takeoff
-Weapons:
GAU-8/A Avenger seven-barrel,
30-mm gun; can fire 3,900 rounds per minute;
cluster or standard bombs;
AIM-9 Sidewinder;
AGM-65 Maverick
-Manufacturer: Fairchild-Republic
--Cost: $13 million
F/A-18 HORNET or SUPER HORNET
(also known as F/A strike fighter or E/A-18G Growler):
-Use: by U.S. Navy and Marine Corps;
has high maneuverability and can be used in air-to-air fight or air-to-ground attack
-Crew: 1 or 2
-Length: 56 feet (60 feet, 3 inches for Super Hornet)
-Height: 15 feet, 4 inches (16 feet for Super Hornet)
-Wing span: 40 feet, 5 inches, depending on wing configuration (44 feet for Super Hornet)
-Speed: up to 1,190 mph (up to 1,330 mph for Super Hornet)
-Mission Weight: up to 51,900 pounds, depending on plane configuration (66,000 pounds for Super Hornet)
-Engines: General Electric F-404-GE-400 or F-404-GE-402 turbofans
-Fuel capacity: 1,700 gallons
-Weapons: AIM-9M Sidewider air-to-air missiles;
six-barrel M61A1 Vulcan gun system can fire up to 6,000 rounds per minute;
AGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship and AGM-65 Maverick land-attack missiles;
many other guided and unguided dropped weapons
-Manufacturer: Boeing Corp.
--Cost: $29 million ($57 million for Super Hornet)
-------- propaganda wars
Don't Censor War's Horror
America's big media outlets should let Americans decide whether to look at pictures of dead U.S. soldiers -- and confront the reality of war
WAR IN IRAQ -- COMMENTARY
By Ciro Scotti, senior editor for BusinessWeek in New York
BusinessWeek
http://businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/mar2003/nf20030327_6370_db070.htm
On Sunday morning, Mar. 23, television viewers in the Arab world and beyond saw grisly footage of dead American soldiers who may have been executed. Excerpts of that tape, apparently made by Iraqi TV and broadcast by the Qatar-based satellite channel Al Jazeera, were shown on Face the Nation, the CBS news program, as correspondent Bob Schieffer was interviewing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (see BW Online, 3/26/03, "Al Jazeera: In an Intense Spotlight").
Except for even briefer images and a few still frames, however, other major American news outlets declined to air the tape. On NBC that Sunday morning, talk-show hosts Katie Couric and Matt Lauer -- whose jobs usually include talking to people in funny hats outside their Rockefeller Center studio -- described the "extremely, extremely disturbing images" but never displayed any, lest they upset the nation.
NO PURPOSE? According to The New York Times, Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo aired the video but claims it was a technical mistake that will not be repeated. ABC News President David Westin was quoted as saying: "I didn't see the showing of actual bodies as necessary or newsworthy." And Bill O'Reilly, resident angry man at Fox News -- the "we report, you decide" network -- said on Mar. 25: "We might not broadcast brutal images if they serve no purpose."
No purpose, Mr. O'Reilly and all you other U.S. TV journalists and network executives? Why don't you report what you're in the Gulf to report, and let America decide if there's no purpose?
Americans need to know and see what's happening to the young men and women who are being put in harm's way. War is cruel and frightening, but more than anything, it's gruesome. For many young people who have never lived through a war, the carnage of conflict is no more real than a violent video game that can be dispatched with the click of a mouse. And older Americans who have forgotten riveting images like the naked and napalmed little girl screaming down a road in Vietnam must reconfront the brutality of the course the nation has chosen.
MISTAKEN SANITIZATION. As Nightline anchor Ted Koppel says: "I feel we do have an obligation to remind people in the most graphic way that war is a dreadful thing.... To sanitize it too much is a dreadful mistake." Journalist/provacateur Matt Drudge, who posted images from the tapes on his Web site, wrote in an introduction to the photos: "The Drudge Report has wrestled with providing the complete video feed to its readers. The families of the murdered U.S. troops have been notified. And if anchormen and others in the media have viewed it, why can't the average citizen?"
Some might wonder: What about BusinessWeek Online? Yes, we're the Internet outlet for a major news organization, but we aren't covering the day-to-day combat of the war through visual images. As a matter of editorial policy, these pages don't feature pictures of dead soldiers any more than they feature people murdered or maimed in car accidents. It's just not relevant to what we do. But if we were doing a story that said such images are causing the Bush Administration to rethink its strategy in Iraq, for example, I'd say we should run the photos.
Beyond an almost sacred duty to understand the sacrifices that the country is asking of its troops, it's important that Americans not be spared the gore of battle or the horrific consequences that can befall the captured for this reason: Only by knowing the price that may be paid on our behalf, can we better assess any future call to arms.
KEEPING THE PENTAGON'S FAVOR. Although the U.S military has allowed the media unprecedented access to the Iraq invasion by "embedding" reporters and TV crews among the troops, the Pentagon isn't keen on having dead troopers shown on the nightly news. On one hand, images such as those of the possibly executed soldiers might serve to bolster the already damning case against the hideous rule of Saddam Hussein. On the other, a steady stream of graphic footage might help sway public opinion against the incursion into Iraq, much as it did during the Vietnam War.
Certainly the networks -- whose access and, therefore, ability to compete depend on the cooperation of the Pentagon -- understand this. For what other purpose can they be shielding American viewers from what the rest of the planet is seeing?
One further reason that we need to see those pictures that are worth a hundred sound bytes and a ream of written words is that we Americans must not be coddled if we're to comprehend the world in which we find ourselves -- and our image in it. If we wish, we must be allowed to witness incinerated civilians and soldiers cut down in our place.
White House spokeman Ari Fleischer sniffed recently that President George Bush prefers to get his information about the war from his advisers. That's probably smart, but maybe once in a while the President should bypass his filters and have a look for himself. The Al Jazeera tape might be one place to start.
For another view on media coverage of the war, see BW Online, 3/26/03, "Bombarded by War on TV"
----
Unembedded Journalist's Report Provokes Military Ire
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34758-2003Mar26?language=printer
A reporter who never signed up for the Pentagon's embedding program in Iraq has run afoul of the military.
Phil Smucker, who writes for the Christian Science Monitor, told his paper yesterday that military police were going through his belongings and were concerned that he had disclosed too much information in an interview, according to Monitor Foreign Editor David Scott.
Despite repeated attempts to contact Smucker, "that's the last we've heard from him," Scott said. "He was upset. I don't think he felt like he'd done anything."
"Some general in Qatar blew a fuse and said, 'Get rid of this guy,' " said Smucker's father, John, who lives in Alexandria.
Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke said she is looking into the report but could not confirm that Smucker had been detained. "Our overwhelming experience to date is that people are trying very hard to be very careful, very responsible," she said. "There have been less than a handful of incidents in which someone revealed information they shouldn't."
Smucker has been traveling with the 1st Marine Division even though he is not one of the 600 "embedded" journalists who formally agree not to disclose information deemed too sensitive by military commanders. Since Smucker is independent, said Bryan Whitman, Clarke's deputy, local commanders can "treat him as any other civilian on the battlefield." A spokesman at the U.S. Central Command in Qatar had no immediate information on the situation.
Smucker, 41, is a freelance reporter who has also worked for the Washington Times, U.S. News & World Report, the Miami Herald and the San Francisco Chronicle, according to his father. He added that Smucker was detained by Syria for two days while trying to enter Iraq without a visa.
Scott said Smucker told him about 6:30 a.m. that he "got a general mad" with an interview he gave to CNN 90 minutes earlier and that the reporter said he was told that "I gave out information I shouldn't have given out."
In the interview, Smucker told CNN's Carol Costello: "We're about 100 miles south on the main highway. It's an unfinished highway. It goes between the Tigris and Euphrates River in the direction of Baghdad."
Smucker continued to provide more geographic details about the Army and Marine forces, prompting Costello to interrupt him:
"Well, don't be too specific," she said. "We don't want exact specifics."
"Okay," said Smucker, who gave a similar description yesterday to National Public Radio.
Scott said he suspects that the Marines "have his gear and are not letting him call out." He said Smucker might be expelled -- or forced to join the embedding program, "which would be fine by me."
While Smucker has been writing about the warfare in Iraq, his 75-year-old father has been trying to stop it. John Smucker said he has been arrested twice in recent weeks, once for kneeling on the steps of the Pentagon and again for blocking traffic on King Street in Alexandria.
As for his son, Smucker said: "I'm torn. Someone's decided to take his income possibilities away. But we want him back in the country anyway."
----
Franks to sweeten image of U.S. campaign
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 27, 2003
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030327-38842111.htm
CAMP AS SALIYA, Qatar - Gen. Tommy Franks, moved by television pictures of Iraqi children enjoying candy handed out by soldiers in southern Iraq, wants to change the tone of pictures handed out to reporters.
Gen. Franks, the allied commander, has told his public-affairs officers to cut back on the "zapping pictures" of high-tech bombs hitting targets. Instead, he wants to emphasize efforts to help long-suffering Iraqis.
The pictures that so pleased the general came from an embedded British television crew, showing children receiving treats from British soldiers.
Not all the images of areas freed from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's control are quite so soothing.
More than one embedded crew has filmed wary and even hostile subjects in towns from which Saddam's forces had been expelled.
"I find these scenes disturbing," said one reporter from ABC News. Coalition public-affairs officers say hostility from civilians reflects continuing fear that Saddam's regime will return and exact reprisals once the allies are gone.
The use of the "zapping pictures" had been seen as necessary to show just how little damage is done to civilians in such precise attacks.
Unlike the Americans, the British military has not handed out bombing pictures.
Said one British officer: "We recognize that the war for hearts and minds is not helped by showing our overwhelming power - though it may well be intended to imbue middle-level officials and officers with a realization that there is no point holding out, as they are hopelessly outgunned."
----
How the warriors have learned to control news
27.03.2003
By DAVID MILLER
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3300623&thesection=news&thesubsection=dialogue
The attack on Iraq is set to be the most censored conflict of modern times. Coverage in mainstream media is being controlled as never before. The United States is determined to eliminate independent reporting and will go to unprecedented lengths to ensure its propaganda dominates media agendas.
The American and British Governments have shown themselves adept at learning propaganda lessons from successive conflicts. In both Suez (1956) and, most importantly, Vietnam they came to believe that propaganda and media control were key to winning wars.
The role of the media in Vietnam is believed by many to have been a key factor in the defeat of the US. But, in fact, the American media started to feature dissent only after the American ruling elite became split on the war.
Nevertheless, the US' future war planners decided not to risk uncensored press coverage of their own conflicts. They determined - evidently beginning in the Reagan Administration - that reporters would never again have the opportunity to "confuse" the public about the Government's war aims, whether deliberately or by accident.
The lessons of Vietnam were put into effect in the Falklands War in 1982. There was close control of the 29 journalists allowed to accompany the military to the South Atlantic, and no independent facilities for reporting. A dual system of censorship operated, which ensured that journalists' copy was censored on naval vessels in the South Atlantic and then again at the Ministry of Defence in London before being released.
Lieutenant-Commander Arthur Humphries, of the US Navy, commenting on the British policy, noted: "In spite of a perception of choice in a democratic society, the Falklands War shows us how to make certain that Government policy is not undermined by the way a war is reported ... Control access to the fighting, invoke censorship, and rally aid in the form of patriotism at home and in the battle zone." This policy was followed in the invasions of both Grenada (1984) and Panama (1989).
Commander Humphries also noted that if there was one deficiency in the policy, it was in failing to fill the resulting information void with pictures.
By the time of the Gulf War in 1991 this lesson had been well learned. In the Saudi desert journalists were isolated from the fighting and newsrooms were supplied every day with new footage of "precision" bombs hitting their targets.
This was the new clean war in which civilians would not be harmed as "smart" technology enabled "surgical strikes". This was a systematic charade. Only 7 per cent of the ordnance was "smart". The other 93 per cent was indiscriminate weaponry, including weapons of mass destruction.
The smart technology turned out not to be so smart and missed its target in 40 per cent of cases, according to official figures. Needless to say we did not see any of the footage of either the dumb bombs or the smart bombs which missed.
This time the US and Britain are claiming that most bombs will be of the smart variety and that the technology has been improved. According to the British Ministry of Defence, "greater attention to precision-guided weapons means we could have a war with zero civilian casualties". This statement was falsified on the first night of bombing when several Iraqi civilians were hit by shrapnel.
The emphasis on a clean war again is an attempt to divert attention from the fact that weapons of mass destruction, such as depleted uranium-tipped shells and bunker-buster and daisy-cutter bombs, will be used.
In past wars, including the 1991 Gulf War, the pool system has been the main means of control of journalists "in theatre". The pool allows the military to control the movement of journalists as well as almost everything they see. In 1991 the Pentagon tried to bully journalists not to operate outside the pool, and some adopted the value system so fully that they turned in any journalists who tried to report independently.
This time the Pentagon has become more sophisticated and more determined to eliminate the possibility of independent reporting. The pool has a new feature known as "embedding", which entails reporters operating in close proximity to military units. They are not allowed to travel independently.
These new rules mean that journalists don military uniform and protective clothing and, the Pentagon hopes, start to identify with the military. According to reports there are 903 journalists "embedded" with US and British forces, six times the number of journalists in Baghdad.
In an interview on Irish radio, veteran BBC war correspondent Kate Adie argued that the Pentagon was "entirely hostile to the free spread of information ... I am enormously pessimistic of the chance for decent on-the-spot reporting".
But the threat to independent journalism is potentially more severe. Adie reported being told by a senior officer in the Pentagon that if broadcasters' satellite uplink signals were detected by the military, they would be "targeted down", even if there were journalists there.
War does strange things to both military and media. Journalists suffer from the malaise of getting too involved. Former Daily Telegraph editor Max Hastings admits he got too close in the Falklands War. "I was accused of getting too involved with the troops - I have to plead guilty to that."
In Iraq now he worries for younger colleagues. "TV stations and newspapers tend to get overexcited in wars ... It's a case of boys with toys, but the hardest thing to remember is that this is ultimately all about lives."
On the first day of the attack, Iraqi missiles fired into Kuwait were unequivocally reported on the main BBC bulletins as consisting of Scud missiles, although this had not been confirmed and doubt was cast on the hypothesis by minority audience BBC programmes.
BBC News 24, the globally available service, continually repeated the propaganda. Just after midnight (GMT) on the morning of the March 21, BBC reporter Ben Brown repeatedly used the word "Scud" without any qualification.
As many news outlets pointed out, the use of Scuds would be a material breach of United Nations resolution 1441. But, in fact, the missiles were not Scuds, as was confirmed the next day. But by then the damage was done and the correction did not gain the prominence of the original reports.
A hackneyed phrase maintains that truth is the first casualty of war, but this does not suggest nearly clearly enough that it is a casualty because the US and British Governments are making a concerted attempt to destroy it.
Dr David Miller is a member of Stirling University's Media Research Institute in Scotland.
----
U.S Says Iraqi Missile May Have Hit Baghdad Market
Reuters,
March 27, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36240-2003Mar27?language=printer
AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar, - The United States said on Thursday an errant missile that fell on a Baghdad marketplace, killing at least 15 people, may have been fired by the Iraqis, perhaps in a deliberate attack.
Brigadier General Vincent Brooks said in a briefing at U.S. Central Command forward headquarters in Qatar that the Iraqis were using old missiles and firing them without radar guidance to prevent detection by U.S. and British aircraft.
"I think it's entirely possible that this may in fact have been an Iraqi missile that went up and came down, or given the behavior of the regime lately, it may have been a deliberate attack," he said.
----
War coverage falters amid harsh realities
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 27, 2003
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030327-30785780.htm
Reality check in progress: The war continues to unfold at its own pace despite press coverage centered around a rapid conclusion.
"This may not come as fast as some people would like," Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said yesterday after she was unable to immediately produce casualty figures of the day.
Military logistics are not necessarily meshing with news operations: Journalists are prematurely poised for a dramatic day of reckoning, to the point that they second-guess the military itself.
"People have to understand this isn't a video game, it's a war, it's a real war," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell Tuesday.
Pentagon officials have scolded journalists for treating skirmishes with the same shrill intensity as they do a major battle. The worst moments may be yet to come, and there will be a demand for unembellished coverage that is accurate and straightforward.
Some journalists blame the Pentagon for their woes, saying that briefing officials don't offer enough information. Some say the information is being "spun," or that former senior military officers now acting as press resources are setting forth Pentagon "propaganda."
But the chafing Western news media is not the only issue. Cable news channels in the Middle East are eager to lure viewers through intense reporting and graphic images. Qatar-based Al Jazeera signed up 4 million new subscribers in Europe the past week.
Al Jazeera, Abu Dhabi Television and Lebanon Television are in a "serious race to get the best and first pictures out," said CNN Middle Eastern media analyst Octavia Nasr.
Their emphasis, she said, is on showing "casualties, civilian losses and anti-war demonstrations."
They air footage of American dead and unsubstantiated reports of U.S. aggression. Such reports can spark premature coverage in the West, such as the multiple reports yesterday that U.S. forces had bombed a Baghdad residential area.
The Pentagon denied the United States was behind the attack.
Americans follow the war intently. More than 70 million watched the initial bombing of Baghdad, according to Neilsen ratings. In recent nights, NBC ranked first with 18 million viewers, followed by CBS (13 million) and ABC (11 million).
Among the news channels, Fox News won the race with 5.6 million, followed by CNN with 4.4 million and MSNBC with 2.1 million. Those numbers mark a 379 percent jump for Fox compared with this time last year. CNN's ratings rose 393 percent and MSNBC's increased 651 percent.
Several mental health groups, meanwhile, have cautioned viewers against war news overload. Even Fox's Bill O'Reilly told his fans to mind their psyches.
"If you watch too much TV news coverage, your perspective can get warped," he said earlier this week.
Pope John Paul II also had some advice - for journalists.
"Freedom to seek and speak what is true is essential to human communication," he said yesterday.
"Not only in relation to facts and information but also, and especially, regarding the nature and destiny of the human person, regarding society and the common good, regarding our relationship with God," the pontiff continued. "This is the challenge facing the men and women of the media."
• Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.
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Better Coverage In Iraq
On Democracy Now today (3/27/03), an 'embedded' NPR reporter said Iraqi television has been including everything: UK and US official interviews, speeches, war footage, plus what the U.S. citizens aren't seeing: the results of the war. She said the images of dead and imprisoned US soldiers weren't to humiliate, but to tell the truth. et in dc <et@nucnews.net>
----
METRO MATTERS
Censorship Is Patriotism to Big Board
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By JOYCE PURNICK
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/nyregion/27MATT.html
IN standard journalistic tradition, Ammar Sankari does not intend to let an unanticipated complication silence him. He will continue to tell the Arab world about the ups and downs of the stock market on Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network - but not from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
That's because Mr. Sankari was barred from the exchange on Monday, the day after Al Jazeera broadcast images of American prisoners and dead soldiers. The official who gave him the bad news said that the exchange was cutting back on the number of credentialed reporters because of crowding on the floor (though it has thinned the ranks of the 23 news organizations that broadcast from the exchange only by one: Al Jazeera).
"It is regretful not to let Arabic TV report from there," said Mr. Sankari, 32. "We are the only station that reports in Arabic to the Middle East, which has a big number of investors. It is good advertising for the market. But we are not going to stop. We do not have to be on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange." Or the Nasdaq, which told Al Jazeera that its reporters were not welcome.
Mr. Sankari said he found out about his banishment as he was preparing his Monday broadcast. "When I arrived, the director of the broadcast center asked to speak to me and said he had an order to cut back on broadcasters," he said, speaking from his home in northern New Jersey. "He wanted my I.D. He was very nice, very polite. All of the people were very polite."
Nobody at the exchange mentioned the Sunday broadcast to him. If that was the real reason, Mr. Sankari does not think it is justification for his banishment. "It is not a good reason to stop Al Jazeera from broadcasting from there," he said.
Robert Zito, the exchange's executive vice president for communications, said that while crowding was a consideration, "I think the stuff over the weekend, as I'm looking at where our priorities should be, led me to believe that if I was trying to accommodate responsible news organizations, I couldn't include Al-Jazeera in that group."
Had Mr. Sankari or the other business reporter for Al Jazeera, Ramsey Shiber, ever conducted themselves irresponsibly? "Not that I am aware of," said Mr. Zito.
Robert M. Steele, an expert in journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, a research center in St. Petersburg, Fla., said he was concerned that the expulsion of working journalists could create a bad precedent, and lead to retaliation against American journalists.
He was also struck, he said, by the incident's many ironies: Expelling reporters for an Arab network during a war that is in part about exporting American freedoms to Iraq. Punishing Al Jazeera, which is widely recognized as one of the most influential news organizations in the Arab world - where the United States is struggling to influence public opinion.
FREE speech allows the folks at the stock exchange and Nasdaq to voice criticism," said Mr. Steele, "But when they lynch those who are using the free press in justifiable ways, that's a bad decision - unwise and counterproductive."
Joel Simon, acting director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said it was unsettling that reporters had been told they were unwelcome because of what their network had broadcast. "It's troubling because of the message it sends."
Mr. Sankari sounded more saddened than angry, and a bit proprietary. "We enjoy freedom of speech, freedom of the press, all freedoms are allowed here," he said. "It is different. I love this country."
He came to New York from Lebanon in 1989 as a student, earned his master's degree in international business at Baruch College, was married last year and is applying for citizenship. He began working part-time for Al Jazeera four years ago, spending the rest of his time developing his own financial consulting business.
Mr. Sankari - who has shortened his family name of "Al-Sankari" - sounded almost surprised to be asked whether, as a Muslim born in the Middle East, he had ever been made to feel uncomfortable in New York or New Jersey, especially after Sept. 11. The answer is no, he said, he has not.
"You have to remember," he explained, without a hint of irony. "New York is what they call a salad - mixed up, a melting pot. You can't tell a Buddhist from a Muslim from black from white. We are living together. Maybe somewhere else there are problems, but not here."
--------
U.S. Sees Inflammatory Reporting by Some Arab Media
March 27, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-media.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department said on Thursday many in the Arab media misconstrue events and are inflammatory in reporting on the U.S.-led war in Iraq and asked that Washington get a fair hearing.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher cited as an example reporting about a missile that fell on a market place in Baghdad on Wednesday and killed 15 people, saying many jumped to the conclusion the United States was responsible but it was possible an Iraqi missile did the damage.
``I am afraid many in the Arab press have been misconstruing things and inflaming things. All we ask is that ... we get a fair hearing, that they look at the facts, that they not jump to conclusions,'' the spokesman said.
``We had a situation in a market place in Baghdad. There were many people who jumped to the conclusion that it must have been the U.S. bombing that had done that,'' he added.
``With the Iraqis firing unguided missiles everywhere and the fact that we didn't have any targets in that vicinity it is at least fair to say that it's entirely possible that it was an Iraqi missile that came down in that market place,'' he added.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters in Qatar the market place bombing could have been caused by an errant Iraqi missile, saying Iraq was firing old anti-aircraft missiles without radar guidance, and he suggested it might have been a deliberate attack by Iraq on its own people.
Separately, a senior State Department official said of some Arab media reporting on the war: ``What we're seeing is that it's very inflammatory and very biased.''
Media coverage of the war has itself become something of a battlefield, with U.S. television networks at times accused of providing glowing coverage of the U.S.-led forces and other news organizations, like the BBC, accused of an anti-war tone.
Arab-language media have received a mixed U.S. welcome.
Arab satellite TV network al-Jazeera, sharply criticized for running Iraqi television footage of U.S. prisoners of war, has obtained coveted interviews with Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
But its welcome has at times been less than warm, with its Internet news site hacked by cyber-vandals who put up a logo saying ``Let Freedom Ring'' and two of its reporters barred from making live reports from the New York Stock Exchange floor.
--------
Pentagon Expels CSM Reporter From Iraq
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Reporter-Expelled.html
BOSTON (AP) -- A reporter for The Christian Science Monitor has been ordered out of Iraq after the Pentagon said he revealed the location of a Marine unit during a television interview.
Philip Smucker, a freelance reporter for the Monitor and The Daily Telegraph of London, was not embedded but joined the First Marine Division on Sunday, along with a Monitor photographer.
Smucker reported the unit's location Wednesday during an interview on CNN, according to the Pentagon.
``My understanding of the facts at this point from the commander on the ground is that this reporter was reporting, in real time, positions, locations and activities of units engaged in combat,'' Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in a statement to the Monitor. ``The commander felt it was necessary and appropriate to remove (Smucker) from his immediate battle space in order not to compromise his mission or endanger personnel of his unit.''
Monitor Editor Paul Van Slambrouck wrote on the newspaper's Web site Thursday that Smucker did not reveal any information not already available.
``We have read the transcript of the CNN interview and it does not appear to us that he disclosed anything that wasn't already widely available in maps and in U.S. and British radio, newspaper, and television reports in that same news cycle,'' Van Slambrouck wrote.
Smucker, 41, an American based in Cairo, will be reassigned within the region, the Monitor said. The photographer who had been traveling with him remained in Iraq and the paper said it still had two reporters there.
On the Web:
Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Interpol puts ex-leader Fujimori on wanted list
World Scene
March 27, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030327-33604255.htm
PARIS - Interpol issued an international call yesterday for the arrest of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori on charges of murder and kidnapping in Peru.
An arrest warrant was issued in Peru in 2001 for Mr. Fujimori, who has been in self-exile in Japan. Tokyo has not extradited him to Peru because he is a Japanese citizen.
Mr. Fujimori, born in Peru to Japanese immigrants, fled to Japan in November 2000 as a corruption scandal toppled his decade-long regime.
---
AFGHANISTAN - Security forces arrest four former Taliban
World Scene March 27, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030327-33604255.htm
KABUL - Afghan security forces arrested four former Taliban officials southwest of the capital, state television reported.
Those arrested in Ghazni province include Akhand Sayed Shaheed, a former deputy education minister under the Taliban regime, which was ousted in a U.S.-led war in 2001.
-------- customs
Delays Are Rare at U.S. Borders
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By COLIN CAMPBELL with ELISABETH MALKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/business/worldbusiness/27BORD.html
TORONTO, March 26 - Heightened border security was widely expected to crimp the huge flow of goods back and forth across the United States' borders with Canada and Mexico when the war in Iraq began, just as it caused bottlenecks, delays and headaches after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But except for the first day or two, the opposite has happened. If anything, the border crossings are now smoother and more efficient than before the war.
In September 2001, trucks lined up at major border crossings like the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, faced delays up to 15 hours. And delays of up to five hours appeared immediately after the bombing began in Iraq.
But today there were no appreciable delays at all at the Canadian border, and at the busiest crossing point between the United States and Mexico, the World Trade Bridge in Laredo, Tex., the wait at noon was just 45 minutes, shorter than average.
Gerald Fedchun, president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association, said that both businesses and customs officials had made extensive preparations that were paying off now. "We now have a much better trained staff," Mr. Fedchun said of the customs stations at the Ambassador Bridge, which handles up to 70 percent of total trade in automotive goods between the United States and Canada. "They can process people and goods much better than they could before."
A barge service usually used to ferry hazardous goods across the Detroit River that are not permitted on the bridge has also been pressed into service to carry truckloads of auto parts, another reason truck traffic is moving so well, Mr. Fedchun said.
Customs officials in the three Nafta nations have coordinated their efforts to speed traffic at the border even while maintaining security vigilance. "The number of inspections of trailers crossing northbound has increased, but Customs is working extensive overtime and has basically minimized the delays," said Steve Russell, chief executive of Celadon Trucking Services, an Indianapolis-based company that is the largest trucker between the United States and Mexico and one of the largest between the United States and Canada.
Registration and prescreening systems have been set up for companies and drivers who regularly ship across the border, including the Big Three automakers.
"All of these things are in place that we didn't have before," Mr. Fedchun said. "It's running a lot faster than it would have. If we had had an `orange alert' a year and a half ago, there would have been chaos."
The scale of cross-border trade - $1.3 billion a day between the United States and Canada, somewhat less with Mexico - and the widespread adoption of just-in-time manufacturing methods that depend on reliable delivery of parts and supplies, have made tie-ups at the border a major worry for companies in all three countries. A study released Wednesday by the C. D. Howe Institute said that border disruptions could affect up to 45 percent of Canada's exports, 387,000 jobs and $2.5 billion in investments. So the smooth going at the border has come as a relief to many companies, though some have stepped up inventories on each side of the border, just in case.
Delphi Automotive, for example, may have 200 trucks a day crossing the border from its 55 factories in Mexico to deliver goods to its distribution centers on the American side. "Since Sept. 11, we have made some adjustments in the flow of materials and adjusted our lead times," said Michael Hissma, a Delphi spokesman in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. "What was normal back then may take an additional hour now."
Customs officials and companies that ship across borders say that a number of programs that were originally set up to fight drug trafficking from Mexico in the 1990's have helped speed up crossings now, despite the heightened levels of security. "The Mexican border was already tighter than the Canadian border," said Jim Giermanski, director of international business studies at Belmont-Abbey College in Belmont, N.C., and an expert in border transportation issues. "For the southern border, there wasn't a glitch because it is almost as though they've done most of this anyway. They have already increased the number of border patrols and Customs."
Officials have added tighter checks on the Canadian border as well, but shippers have said that the checks have caused few problems. "I think everybody is sensitive to the situation," said Ray Finnie, president of Wescast Industries in Brantford, Ontario, which makes engine parts. "People are trying to make the best of difficult circumstances."
It would take delays of 10 hours or longer to have a significant impact on business, Mr. Finnie said. "We're in touch with the big automakers several times a day just to confirm that there are no delays," he said. "We're keeping an eye on it."
The snags that appeared immediately after the war started disappeared within two days, said Robert Hamelin, customs operations manager at ROE Customs Services, a broker in Montreal. "Things at the border are back to normal."
Partly that is because shipment volume is down. "We've seen about a 20 percent slowdown going southbound," he said. "I think the shipping industry has slowed down a bit. There's not as much traffic at the border as there should be."
Still, the situation can change rapidly, shipping executives said. "The situation is fluid, and the question on everybody's mind is what happens if we move from Code Orange to Code Red, " Robert Keyes of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said. "People on both sides of the border want the border to stay open and don't want to see it slammed shut as it was on Sept. 11. Nobody wants a repeat of that."
Alan Foster, vice president of Sanyo North America, which makes televisions in Tiujuana for sale in Wal-Mart stores in the United States, said: "We all want the border to do what it is supposed to do. The inspectors should look for the bad stuff and try and stop it. On the other hand, we want to try to get our stuff across expeditiously, so we do everything they want us to do."
-------- drug war
Three Americans dead as reconnaissance plane crashes in Colombia
AFP
Thursday March 27
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030326/1/39fef.html
Three US nationals died when the US government Cessna they were using to search for three kidnapped Americans crashed in southern Colombia, an official said.
"There were no survivors," said a local government official who asked not to be identified.
The Cessna crashed against a mountain and burst into flames in the El Paujil area, 700 kilometers (440 miles) south of Bogota a little after 7:00 pm Tuesday (0000 GMT Wednesday), the official said.
Colombian troops retrieved the bodies and brought them to the city of Florencia, according to local officials.
Bad weather complicated initial recovery operations, already risky because of the presence of insurgents of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the region.
The three Americans aboard the ill-fated Cessna were searching for three US nationals kidnapped by leftist guerrillas when their plane went down in the same area on February 13.
An American and a Colombian aboard that flight were shot dead when FARC rebels reached the wreckage and took off into the jungle with the three survivors.
The FARC has said it included the three in a list of hostages it would exchange for some of its imprisoned members.
The insurgents said they shot down the plane, but US officials said it crashed because of mechanical failure.
Colombian authorities said the plane was on an anti-drug mission, and US officials said the three were US-contracted experts conducting a routine mission, but the FARC claim they were working for the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The insurgents said the three, along with the two shot to death, had been searching for Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian senator and one-time presidential candidate who was taken hostage by the FARC one year ago.
Since the February crash some 2,000 Colombian soldiers and 50 US officials have been involved in an operation seeking to rescue the American hostages from the FARC.
With 17,000 members, the FARC is the strongest and oldest insurgency in the western hemisphere, and has been fighting the government for four decades.
It figures on the US list of international terrorist organizations, and draws much of its funding from the cocaine trade.
Colombia is the world's leading cocaine producer, with an output of some 580 tonnes a year, much of which ends up on the lucrative US market.
--------
Afghanistan's Farmers Growing More Opium
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Opium.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Ignoring a presidential ban, Afghanistan's farmers are growing more opium poppies than ever throughout the country, including areas previously free of the crop, officials said Thursday.
``Farmers tend to cultivate opium poppy in increasingly remote and inaccessible areas,'' said Mirwais Yassini, chief of the government's Counter-Narcotics Directorate. ``As a result, opium poppy cultivation was reported in several districts for the first time.''
The findings were from a survey conducted last month in 134 districts by the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention and the Counter-Narcotics Directorate. The details of the report were not made public. Yassini said a more comprehensive survey will be conducted over the next four months and be released in September.
The production of opium, from which heroin is refined, was wiped out under the hard-line Taliban regime, but farmers began planting it again when the religious militia was deposed in 2001 during the U.S.-led war on terror. Some farmers ripped up their wheat fields to plant the lucrative drug-producing plant, which brings in hundreds of times the revenue.
But while overall production was up, Yassini said there was some good news: yields had declined in four provinces at the center of Afghanistan's opium production.
The U.N. drug agency said opium yields had soared to 3,750 tons in 2002, making Afghanistan the world's No. 1 producer again, a record it had held prior to the eradication of poppies by the Taliban in 2001.
In April 2002, the new government of President Hamid Karzai announced a ban and offered farmers $500 for every acre of poppies they destroyed.
But the ban did little to dissuade farmers in a country where growers can earn as much as $6,400 per acre for the crop.
Yassini said the government could not offer a similar cash incentive this year. ``We are out of resources,'' he said.
Yassini said the government is exploring alternative livelihoods and crops to wean farmers off poppy cultivation.
But beyond that, he said farmers have no choice.
``They are obliged to stop cultivating poppies. Carrying on with this is a crime and they are breaching the law. We are not going to bargain with them.''
-------- immigration / refugees
Agents Seize On a Scope That Betrays Forged Documents
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By DAVID F. GALLAGHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/technology/circuits/27micr.html
THE ProScope, a hand-held microscope that hooks up to a PC, was meant to help students get a better look at the eyes of a fly or the hair of a dog. But now it is also helping law enforcement officials spot the inconsistencies that can give away a forged passport and other bogus documents.
The device, which looks something like a hair dryer, is built around a low-end digital camera sensor with a magnifying lens and light source mounted in front of it. The ProScope sends a stream of images to a PC through a U.S.B. cable, which also provides its power. Software on the PC can capture photos or video clips.
"You can take this little scope and start scanning the document and, poof, there on the screen is what you're looking for," said Capt. David Myers, an identification expert in the law enforcement bureau of Florida's Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, which tests about 20,000 ID's a year in its forensic laboratories.
Captain Myers said his group had modified its ProScopes by adding glass filters that can highlight the special fluorescent inks used in many official documents.
Peter White, director of sales and marketing for Bodelin Distribution, which sells the ProScope on behalf of its Japanese manufacturer, said federal officials were also using the device. He said the first law enforcement purchase order came from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now known as the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, which uses the ProScope to detect forgeries of passports and visas.
"That was a real surprise to us," Mr. White said, "because we really saw it as a science education tool." He said he could not name other law enforcement customers, and a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration bureau, did not return calls seeking comment.
The basic ProScope, which costs about $230 at TheProScope.com and other online and offline stores, comes with a lens that magnifies objects 50 times, enough to clearly see the statue of Lincoln inside his memorial on the back of a penny. Higher-powered lenses are available, as is an adapter that allows the device to capture images from a conventional microscope. But Captain Myers said a crucial benefit of the ProScope was the way that, when used with a laptop, it lets investigators analyze documents, fibers, fingerprints and other evidence in the field.
Mr. White noted that it was unusual to find a gadget that appealed to first graders as well as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents. "The first graders are often better with the computer," he said.
-------- police
Half of Undercover Force Is Moving to Safer Work
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/nyregion/27UNDE.html
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday that he planned to reassign more than half the department's undercover detectives because they have been performing the dangerous work for more than three years, the informal limit, and many want new jobs.
"They've done great work, dangerous and demanding work, they've expressed a desire to leave and we're going to accommodate them," Mr. Kelly said yesterday in a briefing with reporters about the unusual mass transfers.
Mr. Kelly said he would transfer 192 detectives who have been masquerading as drug and gun dealers or as drug users to more traditional investigative work. He said the transfers would not interfere with police operations.
The moves will leave about 130 undercover detectives in the Organized Crime Control Bureau, according to officials, who said the number was adequate at a time when the city was scaling back drug and gun investigations in favor of increased counterterrorism efforts during wartime. The department will train and assign more detectives to do undercover work to replace some of those who have left, Mr. Kelly said.
The transfers come as the department is still recovering from the shock of the March 10 killings of two undercover detectives from the Firearms Investigation Unit during a gun-buying operation on Staten Island. The fatal shootings stunned the department and shook morale in the tightly knit community of undercover investigators.
While the transfers were not a "direct response" to the killings, Mr. Kelly said, "It's an issue." More broadly, he said, the reassignments were part of a series of changes through which the department will adjust to the loss of 4,300 officers since March 2000, a nearly 10 percent reduction of the force. The reductions are driven by the city's fiscal crisis.
Mr. Kelly and union officials said yesterday that the move had been in the works for some time.
Speaking at the briefing, the commissioner said supervisors in the Organized Crime Control Bureau, the department unit that oversees the detectives who investigate narcotics and firearms cases, polled the undercover officers and found that many who had been there for more than three years wanted to leave.
For more than a decade, as part of an informal and unwritten agreement with the detectives' union, police officers who volunteer to work undercover would make a three-year commitment.
The dangerous job is regarded as a ticket to the coveted gold shield of a detective, which they earn by law after 18 months of investigative or undercover work. After three years, they would move on to more prestigious investigative assignments, either in the Narcotics Division, elsewhere in the Organized Crime Control Bureau or in precinct detective squads, where they would investigate murders, robberies and other crimes.
Mr. Kelly, who praised the work of the soon-to-be-transferred undercover detectives, said yesterday that a substantial expansion of the Narcotics Division in 1997 brought a large influx of investigators working undercover. Many of them have not had the opportunity to leave. "This is a tough job, and there's certainly a burnout issue attached to it, and we have to be concerned about their physical and mental well-being," he said.
To some degree, the transfers grew out of a meeting Mr. Kelly held in January with a group of about 20 undercover investigators, he said,
Thomas J. Scotto, the president of the Detectives Endowment Association, the union that represents detectives, praised the transfer decision. "What he's doing is good for morale and good for the Police Department over all," Mr. Scotto said. "Where you make a commitment, whether it be verbal or otherwise, you abide by the commitments you make."
In the news briefing, Mr. Kelly also said the department was continuing to review the transmitters worn by undercover detectives, known as kels. One of the transmitters failed on the night the two detectives were killed early this month, causing their backup team to lose audio contact with them.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Student group converts diesel-powered car to run on vegetable oil
by Carol Hammerstein
Raleigh News & Observer
Thursday, March 27, 2003
http://www.h8sys.com/greens/files/Green_Rabbit_article.jpg
"Yes, it may smell like French fries," said Elena Everett with a smile. But that's a minor drawback for these North Carolina State University students, who are converting a 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit to run on vegetable oil -- used vegetable oil.
During the recent spring break, the Campus Greens, a student environmental and social justice organization associated with the Green Party, bought a diesel-powered Volkswagen Rabbit for $600.
"The owner was asking $700, but he knocked $100 off when we told him what we were going to do with it," said Everett.
With help from a couple of other campus organizations including SPAN (Student Peace Action Network) and SOS (Students Organizing for Sustainability), the Campus Greens bought a conversion kit and spent Friday afternoon converting the engine and painting the car green.
It's part of the Project Green Bus initiative," said Everett, "to tour the state this summer in vehicles powered by alternative fuels, and promote ecological wisdom, social justice, peace, and civic engagement."
The project is part of a world-wide movement to promote the development of alternative fuel sources that will protect the environment from pollutants released by gas-powered vehicles.
"It's also about the war," said Everett. The United States relies on oil from Iraq and the Middle East; less reliance on oil could mean less motivation for conflict in that region.
For these reasons, a range of alternatives are in development, including the use of hydrogen. The U.S. Department of Energy asked Congress this month to nearly triple what it spends on research and development of hydrogen storage tanks, from $11 million this year to $30 million in 2004.
And consumer interest in hybrid vehicles is increasing. Hybrids like the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight are powered by both gas and electric battery -- they do not have to be recharged. Toyota has sold 30,000 units of the Prius in the two-plus years they have been on the market, and the company is committed to the future of the technology.
Biodiesel is also gaining ground as an alternative fuel. Made from vegetable oils like soybean or recycled cooking oils, it can be used as a replacement fuel or an additive in a blend with petroleum-based diesel.
Any diesel-powered vehicle can be converted to run on biodiesel fuel, and most can run on pure vegetable oil after conversion -- vegetable oil is thicker than diesel, and will congeal if the engine is not modified.
The conversion kit cost the Campus Greens $400, and the process went smoothly. They were able to drive the converted Rabbit this weekend.
"The modification went great, and we took the car down to Wilmington to show off at the Cucolorus Film Festival," reported Everett. "We drove the car to a bunch of neighborhoods, parked, and showed the residents how it ran. Everyone loved it, especially in the lower income areas of the city."
The Rabbit will be displayed on the brickyard of the N.C. State campus on Wednesday, April 2.
As for finding a source of vegetable oil, the Campus Greens have worked out a win-win situation with the NC Seafood Restaurant at the Raleigh Farmer's Market. The restaurant will get rid of their used oil, and the Greens will have a free supply of fuel.
That leaves very few drawbacks for the use of this alternative fuel on a small scale. That fried food scent, they say, becomes an easy price to pay.
-------- energy
Panel Finds Manipulation by Energy Companies
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/politics/27FERC.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - California electricity and natural gas prices were driven higher because of widespread manipulation and misconduct by Enron and more than 30 other energy companies during the 2000-2001 energy crisis that threatened the state's solvency, federal energy regulators said today.
Despite those findings, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission strongly signaled that it was likely to refuse to overturn any of the more than $40 billion in long-term power contracts that California and others on the West Coast signed at the height of the crisis. The state had agreed to the high-cost contracts as a means of bringing raging power prices under control, but state officials now say that pervasive evidence of price manipulation means the deals should be abrogated.
At the same time, the commission today increased to $3.3 billion the refund it contends is owed to California to compensate for electricity overcharging. An administrative law judge had previously recommended $1.8 billion in refunds, but commission officials said manipulation of the prices paid for natural gas used to fuel many power plants in the state meant that the refund should be larger.
Because the state still owes the power suppliers $3 billion, it is unlikely to gain much money from this ruling. California signaled today that it was likely to go to court to try to increase its refunds.
In a series of reports and orders released today, the commission demanded that Enron, Reliant Energy Services and BP Energy show why their ability to trade electricity at market rates should not be revoked, citing "numerous" manipulations by Enron and "apparent manipulation" of electricity prices at the Palo Verde hub in Arizona by Reliant and BP.
Reliant noted that the commission had not taken formal action yet and said the episode was "an isolated incident" and that the employee responsible for those trades had been fired. Nevertheless, shares of Reliant Resources dropped 24 percent, to $3.05, in trading after the ruling today. Shares of other larger energy traders named by the commission also fell sharply.
In addition, the commission staff proposed requiring more than 30 other large companies, including Dynegy, Idaho Power, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Mirant and the Williams Companies, to return "any unjust enrichment related to their misconduct" that stemmed from inflated bidding, withholding of power or other violations of market rules. The commission will decide whether to take action against these companies later.
In an exhaustive report today, Donald Gelinas, who led the commission's investigation of market abuses, said investigators had found "significant market manipulation" but that the root causes of the state's meltdown were a shortage of electricity and a "fatally flawed market design."
All the same, Mr. Gelinas said investigators had found an "epidemic" number of efforts to manipulate gas prices. In one of the more blatant examples, Reliant was able to inflate the average price paid for gas in California during December 2000 by $8.54 per million British thermal units - what investigators described as a very significant amount - by "churning" gas trades.
In addition, the Gelinas report found that Enron's online trading platform was "a key enabler" of gas-price manipulation. The platform, Enron Online, generated more than $500 million in speculative profits for Enron in 2000 and 2001 by manipulating actual physical prices for gas and electricity that greatly boosted Enron's profits on derivative financial contracts tied to those physical prices, the report stated.
These high prices for electricity, Mr. Gelinas found, "significantly influenced" longer-term electricity sales agreements signed during 2000 and 2001. Mr. Gelinas also recommended a number of changes to ensure better reporting and monitoring of energy trading and price reporting. His report also found that accusations that Williams had "cornered" the market for gas in California in January 2001 were "unsubstantiated." A former Williams executive stated in a news article in June 2002 that the company had managed to drive up gas prices in California.
All of the rulings by the commission today are likely to be reviewed eventually by a federal appeals court.
For California officials, the decisions are a bittersweet result to more than two years of efforts to obtain refunds and penalties for what they have long maintained was widespread price gouging.
On one hand, the findings by the commission, which is made up of two members appointed by President Bush and one selected by President Bill Clinton, are likely to put to rest any serious arguments that manipulation and misconduct played little or no role in the California energy crisis. Initially, state officials were widely mocked for accusing the energy companies of profiteering, but an increasing body of evidence has emerged that illegal behavior contributed to price spikes.
On the other hand, the commission still made it clear today that the state's own deregulated electricity marketplace was naïvely constructed and severely flawed, and made possible the abuses since documented. Moreover, the commission has agreed to return only a small portion of what the state claims as overcharges. In addition to wanting to tear up the high-priced power contracts, state officials also want $9 billion in refunds.
"It took two years for FERC to confirm what we knew all along: there was widespread market manipulation and a massive rip-off of California ratepayers," Gov. Gray Davis of California said today. Mr. Davis, a Democrat, added: "Talk is cheap. Until California gets its money back, the FERC hasn't done its job. They still have an opportunity to do. If not, we'll see them in court."
The energy companies, by and large, blame the crisis on a shortage of electricity and California's poorly designed electricity marketplace, and they say that accusations of manipulation are vastly overstated.
Steve Malcolm, the chairman and chief executive of Williams, one of the largest energy traders, said in a statement this afternoon that he was "confident that further, detailed review of the outstanding issues will confirm that Williams operated in accordance with market rules and ethical business practices."
The three commissioners were deeply divided today over whether contracts for long-term electricity sales signed during the height of the crisis should be torn up.
William Massey, who was appointed by President Clinton, said the findings of widespread manipulation could not be squared with comments today by the other two commissioners, Pat Wood III and Nora Brownell, in which they indicated an extreme reluctance to overturn contracts.
"I do think that these two notions are kind of at war with each other," Mr. Massey said.
However, Ms. Brownell said, "I don't think it's fair to say there's an absolute correlation between the evidence of manipulation and the long-term contracts."
-------- environment
Desalination plant at work
March 27, 2003
(AP)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030327-21045264.htm
APOLLO BEACH, Fla. - The Tampa Bay area's burgeoning population of nearly 2 million people is tapping a new source for its drinking water - salty Tampa Bay itself.
The nation's first seawater-desalination plant built to serve as a primary source of drinking water is providing water to Tampa, St. Petersburg, New Port Richey and surrounding cities.
The initial output is between 8 million to 12 million gallons a day, but the plant is expected to reach full capacity by mid-April, generating 25 million gallons a day. That's 10 percent of the area's drinking water.
"We all like to wash our dishes and take long, hot showers. As long as we're going to do that, we have to find other sources of potable water," said Mark Luther, associate professor of marine science at the University of South Florida.
The plant has become operational despite concerns from some area residents that it will increase salinity in Tampa Bay and reduce oxygen in the water.
The basic process of desalination isn't new. Saltwater is pumped through filters under high pressure, squeezing out minerals. Israel and Kuwait have relied on desalination for decades, as have military vessels and cruise ships.
Worldwide, 13,600 desalination plants produce 6.8 billion gallons of water daily.
The Tampa Bay Seawater Desalination Plant, run by Tampa Bay Water, is expected to convert seawater efficiently enough to be able to sell it for about $2 per 1,000 gallons, far below the industry standard. The cost of regular groundwater sources is about $1 per 1,000 gallons, said Ken Herd, project manager for Tampa Bay Water.
It cost $110 million to build the plant and the 14-mile pipe to transport the water. The Southwest Florida Water Management District gave Tampa Bay Water $85 million to help defray the costs. In addition, the plant will use the 44 million gallons a day used by Tampa Electric's Big Bend Power Station, further lowering costs.
The 44 million gallons of seawater undergoes reverse osmosis, where it is pushed through a series of filters before passing through membranes, leaving 25 millions of gallons of freshwater and 19 million gallons of brine. The pure water is treated with lime and chlorine to ensure proper alkalinity, Mr. Herd said.
The highly salty byproduct will flow into the Big Bend power plant's cooling water canal, where it will be diluted in the 1.4 billion gallons the canal carries each day.
It is this byproduct that has caused the most concern for some area residents, although Mr. Luther led a study in 2000 that found the briny waste would not cause any long-term increases in salinity.
Apollo Beach residents formed Save Our Bays, Air and Canals and fought to have the permits to the plant denied, and eventually sued the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to contest the state permit for the plant. It lost that bid, but group attorney Ralf Brookes said they will monitor the area for any environmental problems.
--------
Rules Approved to Reduce Pollutants at Power Plants
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By KIRK JOHNSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/nyregion/27ACID.html
Power plants in New York State will have to sharply cut their output of pollutants blamed for acid rain, smog and other environmental ills beginning next year under rules approved yesterday by state regulators.
The regulations, which will be phased in over the next five years, are expected to reduce by tens of thousands of tons a year the emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides generated by the plants across the state. Those emissions combine in the atmosphere to produce smog, while also poisoning lakes and killing fish, especially in the Adirondacks.
Gov. George E. Pataki, in announcing the rules, said that they put New York ahead of the rest of the country in protecting air quality. He said the restrictions on sulfur dioxide will be the most stringent in the nation.
Environmentalists and health experts said they were less sure. They said the new rules - which seemed to be breaking new ground when Mr. Pataki proposed them in 1999 - should have been adopted two years ago, and will still leave New York's electricity plants, by some measures, producing dirtier air than some neighboring states.
They also said a provision added during the negotiations between the state and the power producers will allow plant owners to trade off emission cuts made in plants in other states to offset the New York rules, meaning that air in the immediate vicinity of the plants, where the health impact is considered greatest, might not be affected.
"New York should be setting the high-water mark, but these rules are at the shallow end of the pool," said Jason K. Babbie, an environmental policy analyst at the New York Public Interest Research Group, and environmental and social issue lobbying group.
Aides to Mr. Pataki rejected that assessment. The new rules, they said, are very broad, requiring deep levels of cuts in sulfur dioxide pollution for all power producers. And they say that New York will also be the first state to require emissions cuts in nitrogen oxides, or NOx, on a year-round basis, not just during the summer when smog is at its worst.
Once the rules are fully in place, state officials said, the annual emissions of sulfur dioxide will be reduced by 130,000 tons per year and NOx emissions will be cut by 20,000 tons a year. For sulfur dioxide, that is 50 percent below the levels specified by the federal government under the Clean Air Act's acid rain program.
Some environmentalists said that even though deeper cuts would be better - 75 to 80 percent reductions, they say, is possible and should be the national goal - New York's rules will still make a difference at a time when they say that federal action on power plant emissions has been weak.
"Governor Pataki is doing what Congress has failed to do," said Brian L. Houseal, the executive director of the Adirondack Council, a research and lobbying group focused on New York's Adirondack Park. "If this same level of cuts were applied nationally, acid rain damage would disappear across America."
But if it is a measure of government success that every affected party is left to one degree or another unhappy, the rules have at least achieved that. Electricity producers said that the state's own calculations suggested that the costs of achieving the new limits would drive up electricity rates for consumers, especially on Long Island, and perhaps result in thousands of lost jobs.
Wholesale electricity rates statewide could rise by up to 5.4 percent as a result of the regulations, according to state estimates, and perhaps as much as 16 percent on Long Island.
That does not mean, however, that an individual customer should expect to see monthly bills go up by that much since the wholesale costs are only a part of the utility equation. About one-half to one-third of a household bill comes from the wholesale price of the electricity produced, according to state figures.
-------- genetics
Key to Strains of Anthrax Is Discovered
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27ANTH.html
Scientists have discovered why different strains of the bacterium that causes anthrax differ so much in virulence, a finding that in theory could produce more effective vaccines and better tools for distinguishing and tracking the lethal germ.
But the finding could also aid the creation of designer varieties of anthrax that are potentially deadlier to humans. Because of that potential danger, a debate occurred over whether the discovery should be kept secret, scientists said. In the end, it was decided that the benefits of publication outweighed the risks.
The discovery was made by six scientists at Louisiana State University, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, the nation's top center for studying germ defenses. It is published in the current Journal of Clinical Microbiology.
The lead author, Dr. Pamala R. Coker, formerly at L.S.U. and now at the Livermore laboratory in California, spearheaded the research for her Ph.D. dissertation. The Livermore laboratory once pioneered nuclear arms but increasingly studies biology and germ defenses.
The team's finding centers on the anthrax genome, which consists of a single large chromosome and two small circles of DNA, known as plasmids, that carry extra genes. The scientists found that, contrary to common belief, each anthrax bacterium carries not just one set of plasmids but up to 243 copies of the first and up to 32 copies of the second, which is known as pX02. The more copies of this plasmid in a bacterial strain, the more it is capable of causing disease, the scientists said.
The research was conducted in guinea pigs. The scientists found, for example, that an anthrax strain from Mozambique that possessed just one pX02 plasmid killed 25 percent of the test animals. But a strain from Australia with 32 copies of the plasmid left all the guinea pigs dead.
The team of scientists also reported that added factors like subtle features of the bacterium's DNA chromosome appeared to help determine virulence. Thus, the anthrax that killed five Americans in the germ attacks of 2001 - the so-called Ames strain - was found to possess just two copies of pX02. But it nonetheless killed 62 percent of the guinea pigs.
The pX02 plasmid carries genes that let the anthrax bacterium fashion an outer protein coat that acts as a defensive shield to thwart the immune system of hosts. The scientists suspect that multiple copies of pX02 thicken that coating, letting the germ escape immune damage and multiply to do extensive harm.
Scientists had previously identified 89 types of anthrax as genetically distinct but had failed to discover what determined their wide differences in virulence. The plasmid findings, they said, opened a new window on that question.
"It's very interesting," said Dr. Sam Kaplan, a microbiologist at the University of Texas medical school at Houston. "But a lot more work needs to be done."
Dr. Martin E. Hugh-Jones, a team member at L.S.U., said the discovery would help scientists understand why some anthrax vaccines are effective and others weak. "This will allow us to do some very impressive things in coming on with new vaccines," Dr. Hugh-Jones added.
It could also aid investigations of germ attacks. Dr. Coker of the Livermore laboratory said the finding could help forensic scientists track down the country and laboratory from which the weapon arose. That, she said, was possible because the plasmid technique acted as a kind of microscope to reveal finer genetic distinctions among the 89 known varieties of anthrax. A match between the attack germ and a library of detailed fingerprints could help locate the perpetrator.
Dr. Coker conceded that the research in theory could also help a genetic engineer make a more deadly form of anthrax by increasing the number of pX02 plasmids.
Dr. Kaplan of the University of Texas, who heads the publication board of the American Society for Microbiology in Washington, said no reviewer or official of the society raised objections to publication of the plasmid paper, even though the White House has urged scientists to screen their work carefully for possible harm to national security.
Steve Wampler, a spokesman at the California laboratory, said the plasmid research was done before Dr. Coker came to Livermore but the laboratory nonetheless put the paper through a careful security review. "In the end," he said, "it was decided that it was fine to publish."
In addition to Dr. Coker of Livermore and Dr. Hugh-Jones of L.S.U., the paper's authors are Dr. Kimothy L. Smith of the Livermore laboratory, Patricia F. Fellows of the Army research institute, and Dr. Galena Rybachuck and Dr. Konstantin G. Kousoulas of L.S.U.
-------- health
Heart patients advised against shot
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 27, 2003
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030327-64258336.htm
Federal health officials are advising against the smallpox inoculation for those with heart disease until they determine whether the vaccine can contribute to cardiac problems.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta issued its "temporary deferral" advisory late Tuesday after a Maryland woman who had been vaccinated died of a heart attack. Six other persons also have experienced coronary problems after their inoculations.
"At this time, we have no cause-and-effect relationship ... but we're working with health officials to explore any possibility" of a link between the smallpox vaccine and heart disease, CDC spokeswoman Karen Hunter said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Three women, all health care workers in their 50s, suffered heart attacks. One died, another is on life support and a third is recovering, CDC Director Julie Gerberding said Tuesday night. The condition of the patient on life support was not available yesterday.
Two other persons developed angina, or chest pain, after their vaccinations, and another two experienced inflammation of the membrane surrounding the heart.
Dr. Gerberding said the five persons who suffered heart attacks or angina after volunteering for the smallpox vaccine had prior risk factors for heart disease. The other two patients did not, she said.
Primary risk factors include diabetes, smoking, high blood pressure and obesity.
Ms. Hunter said the smallpox vaccine, which in rare cases is known to cause life-threatening conditions and death, has never been associated with heart problems.
Data collected in the 1960s about the vaccine's side effects primarily involved children, who were required to receive the smallpox inoculation before attending school and who would not be likely to have heart problems, she said.
"But since this is an older population now getting the smallpox vaccine, we'll be looking at any type of health event that follows vaccination ... we're erring on the side of caution," Ms. Hunter said.
The Maryland woman who died, a nurse at a Salisbury hospital, was vaccinated March 18. She died five days later while attending a conference in Arlington. Her death prompted the CDC to take its emergency action Tuesday, with the approval of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.
Dr. Gerberding said the seven persons became ill five to 17 days after their immunizations.
She told reporters in a telephone briefing Tuesday night that medical specialists did not believe the smallpox vaccinations caused the heart attacks. But she does not rule out that the vaccine, which is made of a live virus that is a cousin to smallpox, can cause inflammation that could have worsened pre-existing medical conditions.
In interviews yesterday, J.B. Hanson, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and Lucy Caldwell, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Health, said preliminary evidence did not suggest a correlation between the vaccine and the woman's fatal heart attack.
"The woman clearly died of a heart attack ... but there is no reason to believe the vaccine was a major factor," Mrs. Caldwell said. More testing is under way.
Pregnant women, those with suppressed immune systems such as organ transplant recipients and HIV patients, and those with histories of skin disorders should not receive the smallpox vaccine.
Several hundred thousand members of the military have been vaccinated, a Pentagon spokesman said.
"We've encountered a few significant side effects, but all [those affected] have been returned to active duty," said the spokesman, who did not identify the side effects.
No smallpox cases had been reported in the United States since 1949, and routine vaccination ended in 1972.
President Bush in December announced a smallpox vaccination program that was mandatory for the military but voluntary for others - including health care workers and emergency responders - because of concerns that terrorists could use the deadly virus as a biological weapon.
The goal was to vaccinate 500,000 health care workers.
Because of concerns about the safety of the vaccine, only about 25,000 have volunteered to be immunized.
--------
China Raises Tally of Cases and Deaths in Mystery Illness
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL with LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/health/27INFE.html
GUANGZHOU, China, Thursday, March 27 - Chinese health officials on Wednesday significantly increased their estimates of the number of cases and deaths in China caused by a new mystery pneumonia that international health officials believe originated here late last year.
Officials in Guangdong Province, the center of China's epidemic, reported an estimated 792 cases and 31 deaths as of the end of February, a rise from the 305 cases and five deaths they had previously reported.
The new tallies mean that China now probably has had more cases and deaths than any other country, although the latest estimates have not been officially approved by China's Ministry of Health or reviewed by international health officials. About 500 cases have been reported elsewhere in the world.
The new figures are being released just days after a World Health Organization team arrived in China to help investigate this country's epidemic of the mystery pneumonia, which goes by the name SARS, for severe acute respiratory syndrome.
For months, Chinese officials tried to hide the problem, health experts said, and in recent weeks world health officials have applied increasing pressure on China to improve its cooperation and statistical reporting on the disease.
While all other countries that have experienced cases of the new pneumonia, including Vietnam, Singapore and Canada, send daily updates of cases and deaths to the World Health Organization, China has been consistently unwilling or unable to provide such information.
Even today's newly revised estimates, which officials of the World Health Organization praised as a "great step forward," cover only cases through the end of February and provide no information about cases in the past four weeks. The previous tallies covered only cases reported up to Feb. 10.
"We want to keep the spotlight on folks here and to encourage them to be part of the solution," said Dr. Rob Breiman, of the International Center of Diarrheal Disease Research Bangladesh, who is a member of the W.H.O. team currently in China. "We want to use the incredible amount of information they have collected here to help solve the problem."
Meanwhile, in one of the few encouraging developments, many of the first wave of patients in Hanoi, Hong Kong and Singapore are recuperating well enough to expect to go home soon, said Dr. Mark W. A. P. Salter, an expert in infectious diseases at the W.H.O.
The precise number of patients who are ready for discharge or who have been discharged was not available, Dr. Salter said. Some SARS patients have been hospitalized for more than a month.
Doctors do not know precisely when SARS patients can no longer transmit the disease to other people. Information so far from reports of people who have recuperated is that they pose no danger to others.
A clearer picture of the course of SARS emerged on Wednesday after 80 doctors who have treated cases in 13 countries held a teleconference moderated by Dr. Salter.
The participants said that SARS usually begins with high fever, chills muscle aches and a dry cough, and the way it progresses appears consistent in all countries.
After about a week, SARS patients tend to fall into either of two groups.
One group - an overwhelming majority of patients - begins to show improvement even without specific therapy.
In a second group, from 10 to 20 percent of patients develop increasing difficulty in breathing. Such patients usually required breathing assistance with a mechanical ventilator, and many have had to stay on ventilators for a long time. Most SARS deaths have involved patients in this group.
Patients 40 and older who have chronic ailments like those affecting the heart, liver, lung and bowel seem to be those who have become sickest. But a vast majority of patients had no known chronic disease before they became ill from SARS.
Officials from the World Health Organization first sat down on Tuesday with their Chinese counterparts to look at the internal data concerning the epidemic and said they were generally impressed with how the Chinese had investigated and sought to control the disease.
But they noted that data was painfully slow in emerging from that system, and W.H.O. officials in Beijing say they have still not been given statistic concerning the disease in other provinces, despite repeated requests.
In China, disease statistics are often regarded as politically troublesome and are not publicly released.
China first began providing information on its epidemic to the World Health Organization only about two weeks ago. Doctors and officials in southern China said that it started in November and peaked in mid-February, and that the number of cases has fallen off significantly in March. But the country has not provided recent data to support these claims.
The new statistics were released by provincial health officials here and have not yet been approved yet by China's Ministry of Health. Some scientists who have been in discussions with the ministry expect that they will be revised upwards over the next few days, especially as reports of more recent cases and of cases from other provinces trickle in.
With little hard information about SARS released by China's government, rumors of new cases have run wild in China's cities. The Chinese press has been banned from reporting on the topic.
Since scientists have not yet identified a reliable test for the disease, doctors caution that it can be difficult to distinguish SARS from other pneumonias that peak this time of year.
On Wednesday, Beijing city officials acknowledged nine cases of the disease and three deaths in the capital. As of last week, senior city health officials were still vehemently denying that Beijing had cases, despite the fact that two patients had died of a suspicious pneumonia at the People's Liberation Army 302 Hospital, and several doctors and nurses had fallen ill.
In Singapore, which has about 70 cases - all of them recent - health officials have quarantined 700 people with flu-like symptoms and ordered all schools closed through April 6. In Hong Kong, where many people have taken to wearing masks in crowded spaces, health officials reported 30 new cases in the last 24 hours, almost all of them hospitalized with pneumonia.
-------- homeless
Survey Finds 1,800 Sleep on N.Y. Streets
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-NYC-Homeless-Count.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- A new city survey estimates that nearly 1,800 people were sleeping on the streets of Manhattan last month rather than staying in homeless shelters.
Based on the estimate of 1,780 people, the city announced new initiatives Thursday to help address the problem, including outreach efforts and expanding capacity at drop-in centers.
``What you measure is what you manage, and by measuring this issue, we are committing to really challenging the status quo,'' said Linda Gibbs, commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services.
More than 38,000 homeless people were sleeping nightly in city shelters as of January, 7,400 more than the previous year, according to city figures.
But shelter figures reflect only part of New York's homeless, so the city enlisted hundreds of volunteers for a one-night street count. The city's other four boroughs were not surveyed.
The department divided Manhattan into small sections, each about 1/50th of a square mile. Volunteers asked the housing status of each person they encountered.
Groups went into some subway stations as well as parks and other public spaces, but did not go onto subway trains or into buildings.
``There's no question that this is a flawed number and severely underestimates the number of people sleeping outdoors,'' said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless.
Gibbs said it was necessary to have a point of comparison for future counts. She also said the count would be expanded over the next 18 to 24 months.
-------- imf / world bank /wto
W.T.O. Rules Against U.S. on Steel Tariff
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By ELIZABETH BECKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/business/27STEE.html
WASHINGTON, March 26 - The World Trade Organization ruled today that the steel tariffs imposed by President Bush last year were illegal.
The administration said it would appeal the decision.
While the trade decision was called interim, with the final report expected next month, it is rare for an interim decision to be reversed. If the United States loses next month, European and other nations could impose trade sanctions of comparable value against the United States.
Last spring, Mr. Bush imposed tariffs of nearly 30 percent on most types of steel imported from Europe, Asia and South America, the biggest government action to protect an industry in several decades. While it was praised by the steel industry and trade unionists, the move was criticized by free trade advocates and companies that use steel in manufacturing.
The case against the tariffs was brought by the European Union, which accused the United States of illegally protecting the steel industry. Pascal Lamy, the European Union's trade commissioner, called the tariffs "unjustified, highly protectionist U.S. measures."
"I am in no doubt that the U.S. will lose this case, as it has lost all six previous safeguard cases," Mr. Lamy said when the initial case was brought against the United States.
But there was no celebratory statement or any comment from the Europeans today. All spokesmen said they would not discuss an interim decision, but foreign officials also said Europe wanted to avoid creating a further division with the United States in a time of war.
Today's ruling, which was not a surprise, was the second major loss for the United States at the W.T.O. in the last year. The trade panel awarded Europe the right to impose $4 billion worth of trade sanctions against the United States for giving tax breaks to American exporters through foreign sales corporations.
When administration officials imposed the steel tariffs they said they were legal under provisions in the world trading rules allowing a response to a surge of steel imports.
The tariffs were meant to help the American steel industry find its footing in the global market. American trade officials said today that the strategy worked.
"The domestic steel industry has undergone an unprecedented level of consolidation and restructuring over the last year that have made it more competitive," said one American trade official, who insisted on not being identified.
Democratic lawmakers criticized the trade decision, citing a United States International Trade Commission study done before the tariffs were imposed that showed imports were seriously injuring important parts of the American steel industry. They said the W.T.O. had exceeded its authority.
"I support the goal of an international trading system," said Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana. "But we have a growing problem with dispute settlement decisions that are inventing obligations and requirements to which the United States and other countries never agreed. Ultimately, these types of decisions will only undermine confidence in the W.T.O."
Some Democrats said the administration was partly to blame for failing to adopt an aggressive strategy to end a series of rulings against the United States.
Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan and ranking minority member of the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee, accused the administration of overseeing the loss of 13 of 15 cases brought against the United States since 2001.
"This decision furthers a trend that jeopardizes the credibility of the W.T.O. dispute-settlement system and must serve as a wake-up call for the administration," Mr. Levin said.
In Congressional hearings today, steel officials and union representatives praised the tariffs. Leo W. Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers of America, told lawmakers that they should not forget the history that led to the president's decision to impose the steel tariffs. For several years, he said, the domestic steel industry was "under attack from foreign producers, aided and abetted by foreign governments through subsidies and other market manipulations."
"The consequences of this assault have been disastrous for our steelworkers and for the American steel industry," Mr. Gerard said.
The result, he said, was that 37 companies were forced into bankruptcy, 54,000 steel workers lost their jobs, and pension plans and health care programs were being scaled back for retirees, widows and other dependents.
But some manufacturers have complained that the tariffs have led to higher prices for steel and hurt their companies.
Wes Smith, the president of the E&E Manufacturing Company, with 250 employees in Plymouth, Mich., testified that the tariffs and rising cost of steel amounted to a new tax for him.
"We are willing to meet the challenge of competing with the Asians," Mr. Smith said. "However, we cannot do that with our hands tied behind our backs by having our government tax our largest input by 30 percent."
--------
I.M.F. Says Iraqi War Threatens Global Economic Recovery
March 27, 2003
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/business/27CND-IMF.html
Financial uncertainties related to the Iraqi war threaten to stymie a nascent global economic recovery, the International Monetary Fund said in a semiannual report released today.
Horst Koehler, the I.M.F.'s managing director, also told the German magazine WirtschaftsWoche in an interview published today that "a global economic recession cannot be ruled out" if the Iraqi war proves to be a prolonged engagement.
The I.M.F., a Washington-based agency that advises its 194 member countries on monetary policy and is a lender of last resort for developing economies, noted in its report that international financial markets were less risky than they were about six months ago. But it tempered this view with a warning.
"Normally, this would suggest the potential for a rebound in the economy and financial markets once investor sentiment turns," the report said. "However, this potential is currently overshadowed by the intensified uncertainty about the prospect of war in Iraq and its repercussions on growth and stability."
Specifically, the I.M.F. cautioned that the Iraqi war might lead to higher oil prices, anemic economic growth and depressed investor and consumer confidence, all combining to "reinforce the headwind against global economic recovery."
Some businesses say they have already begun to feel the impact of the Iraqi war and weaker consumer confidence.
"We are seeing reticence on the part of customers," Peter Hartz, a member of Volkswagen's board of management, said today in a written statement. "We're going to be facing some difficult times."
Global financial markets have seesawed in the last week, rising at first on initial expectations that the American-led invasion of Iraq would lead to a quick victory and diminish uncertainty about oil supplies. Then, as coalition forces became bogged down in sandstorms and met resistance from Iraqi soldiers, stock markets in the United States and Europe sank on the growing belief that the war would last much longer than initially anticipated.
On Wall Street today, stocks were little changed in afternoon trading; the Dow Jones industrial average was down 5.68 points, or 0.07 percent, at 8,224.20.
Overseas, Britain's FTSE closed down 64 points, or 1.7 percent, to 3,729.10; Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 174.77 points, or 1.93 percent, to 8,872.32; and Germany's DAX rose 4.72 points, or 0.18 percent, to 2,584.05.
"While markets may have priced in a short and decisive war, any departure from this scenario could weaken confidence further," the I.M.F. said in its Global Financial Stability Report. "Moreover, markets may have not yet focused on the possibility that uncertainty could persist for some time.
"Uncertainty could also persist despite a short and decisive military conflict owing to the potential for continued geopolitical instability and tangible threats of terrorism," the report added.
Prior to the Iraqi war, the United States economy was already showing signs of slowing from levels reached last fall. The Commerce Department said today that real gross domestic product - the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States - rose at a revised annual rate of 1.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2002. Real G.D.P. in the United States rose by 4 percent in the third quarter.
The I.M.F. said that a weakened dollar, which has fallen in value by about 20 percent against the euro over the last year, poses a threat if it falls precipitously in coming months. A weak dollar makes United States exports less expensive, threatening export-driven economies elsewhere in the world that rely on selling competing products.
Europe's insurance industry, as well as German and Japanese banks, received special attention in the I.M.F. report. The agency said all three sectors needed to address fundamental weaknesses in their structures. Europe's insurers need to be more effectively regulated and policed for risk management practices, Japanese banks need to address a lingering bad debt problem, and German banks need to consolidate, the report advised.
In emerging markets, countries like Brazil and Turkey face difficulty accessing funds in a weakened global economy, the I.M.F. noted, raising the specter of inflation and large debt defaults.
At the consumer level, the I.M.F. said that defined-benefit pensions in the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Japan were "experiencing sizable funding gaps" because of corporations' overdependence on asset gains tied to the once-booming stock market of the 1990's. Not only will this affect retirees, but it will also dampen corporate profits in the future as companies are required to divert larger sums into pension funds to close funding gaps.
"Subject to geopolitical developments, the improvement of confidence could best be achieved through continued sound macroeconomic policies and a flexible response to renewed signs of an economic downturn," the I.M.F. advised in its report, taking note of repeated corporate scandals at United States companies like Enron. "It will also require the consistent implementation of steps to address the deficiencies in corporate governance, financial market practices and accounting standards, which were starkly revealed with the bursting of the asset price bubble."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Violence erupts at Australian war protest
From combined dispatches
March 27, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030327-91513064.htm
SYDNEY, Australia - Thousands of protesters pelted Sydney police yesterday with bottles and chairs grabbed from street-side cafes in Australia's most violent demonstration against the war in Iraq.
Police in riot gear arrested at least 45 protesters, and one officer was injured when an object hurled from the crowd hit him on the head.
In South Korea, police arrested 30 protesters who scaled a wall at the U.S. Embassy and unfurled a banner reading "Stop the war."
The protests followed marches by hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East on Tuesday. One demonstration in Damascus, Syria, attracted a half-million protesters.
About 10,000 demonstrators marched yesterday in Sydney, most of them college and school students who boycotted classes. They burned American flags, set off firecrackers and chanted "No war."
Australia has about 2,000 troops fighting alongside U.S. and British forces in Iraq.
The violence broke out after two separate groups of protesters merged outside Sydney's Town Hall and then streamed to Hide Park, where they chanted anti-war slogans and taunted police.
The protesters later headed to Prime Minister John Howard's office, where they again began hurling bottles at police.
In Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city, more than 1,500 rowdy students marched through the central business district. About 800 students carrying banners rallied in the southern city of Adelaide.
In France, vandals attacked a copy of the Statue of Liberty in the southern town of Bordeaux, spraying it with red paint and setting it on fire.
Vandals also cracked a plaque on the statue commemorating the victims of the September 11 attacks. Police have begun a probe into the overnight attack.
The 8-foot-high copy of the famous statue given by France to the United States in 1886 was erected in Bordeaux in 2000.
Tensions between France and the United States have been on the rise since Paris refused to support the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. There have been calls in the United States for a boycott of French products, such as wine and luxury goods. Last week, anti-war demonstrators in Paris smashed the windows of a branch of McDonald's, spraying obscenities and scrawling "boycott" on the building.
In Seoul, protesters wrapped steel chains around their bodies and chanted "We oppose war. We oppose deployment of troops." Three protesters, one armed with a toy rifle and wearing a mask of President Bush, climbed a 50-foot-high McDonald's sign and shouted anti-war slogans.
South Korea's government submitted a bill to the National Assembly last week asking for approval to send about 600 military engineers and 100 medical personnel to support the war effort. Voting was delayed Tuesday amid rising anti-war sentiment.
Demonstrators in Spain attacked the offices of the ruling party, throwing excrement and scrawling graffiti to protest its support for the war, officials said.
There have been more than 120 anti-war incidents across the country in the past eight days, Popular Party Secretary-General Javier Arenas said.
Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Spaniards oppose Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's unflinching support for President Bush, and there have been street demonstrations against the war practically every day.
In Syria, schools, universities and government agencies closed in Damascus while an estimated 500,000 protested in the streets, holding banners that read "Stop this war" and labeling U.S. and British leaders "international terrorists."
Hundreds of thousands also rallied Tuesday in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, and about 10,000 demonstrated in Beirut.
--------
THE MOOD OVERSEAS
Press and Public Abroad Seem to Grow Ever Angrier About the U.S.
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27PERC.html
BERLIN, March 26 - The cover picture this week in Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly, shows explosions in Baghdad under the caption: "Terror Bombing for Freedom." In the magazine Tip, a popular weekly guide to events in Berlin, the cover illustration shows President Bush in cowboy gear sitting on a saddle that, in turn, is strapped onto a missile heading for Baghdad.
Nearly one week into the war in Iraq, the public mood in many countries around the world seemed to become angrier and more sarcastic than ever, suggesting that if, as Bush administration spokesmen say, the war is going as planned on the battlefield, it is nonetheless provoking widespread global anger.
Today, there were huge student demonstrations in Spain, smaller demonstrations in South Korea, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and one that involved angry clashes with the police in Sydney, Australia.
In Japan, a group organizing a "Peace Choice" campaign is urging boycotts of products of American companies like Pampers, McDonald's and Ford. Another day of global protest is being advertised on Web sites and posters for Sunday, April 6.
If there was a common image summoned up by the protests and angry commentaries, it was of the United States as an imperial power intoxicated by its military supremacy but receiving a lesson in the price of arrogance by unexpected Iraqi resistance.
An editorial in People's Daily in China accuses the United States of seeking international domination.
"Armed force and coercion are the antonyms of democracy," the editorial said, "so isn't using tanks and cannons to spit out `liberty' and `democracy' a mite ironic?"
China, of course, has for years accused the United States of seeking what it calls hegemonism, so the commentary on the Iraq war is hardly surprising. What may be of greater note is how media commentary and public sentiment is running against the United States among some of its closest allies.
In Germany, where public sentiment has long been against the war, most newspapers and the main television news programs have played up civilian casualties on one side and American military setbacks on the other.
One newspaper this morning showed a large photograph of an Iraqi girl with a heavily bandaged face. Others have run large headlines like "Baghdad Burns" or "Bush Playing with Fire."
Radio stations have been broadcasting commentaries criticizing the refusal of American television stations to broadcast pictures of the American prisoners of war paraded on Al Jazeera television network, contending that the stations are following orders from the government to shield the American public from the realities of the war.
To be sure, there are also voices expressing support for the United States and criticizing the demonstrators and negative commentators for failing to offer an alternative to the disarming of Saddam Hussein.
The conservative German daily Die Welt criticized the sensationalist headlines appearing elsewhere in the German press and argued, "Of course it is justified to be suspicious of the announcement of a `surgically clean' war with `intelligent' weapons, but it is our only hope that this war is being waged by the allied forces not as `terror' and not as a game."
In Italy, the newspaper Il Foglio called for a "U.S.A. Day" demonstration, complete with American flags, to counter what have become almost incessant peace protests.
"I'm fed up with these Saddam days that so-called pacifists keep presenting us," a commentator, Carlo Rossella, wrote in the newspaper La Stampa today.
In France, the philosopher and writer Pascal Bruckner, who is one of a small group of what are called pro-war intellectuals, denounced the sentiment in France that the real danger to peace is not Mr. Hussein but Mr. Bush as a return of the "old Frenchy passion for third-world ideologies."
"France is a concentrate of all the European contradictions," Mr. Bruckner wrote. "On the one side, there is a will to appear as a great and influential world power, and on the other there is a will not to dirty one's hands. Europe cannot offer itself the luxury of living in the middle of storms, as if she was in a sanatorium, only because it is protected by America's nuclear umbrella."
But condemnation and withering criticism have been more prevalent. In South Africa, Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and chairman of the nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, denounced American military action as "an immoral war" that sent an especially chilling message to majority-black countries.
"It is kind of a déjà vu, where white people told us what was good for us," he said. "The United States is deciding what is good for the people of Iraq."
The Russian newspaper Vremya MN, in a sharp condemnation of American policy, echoed the theme of imperial power operating without constraint or legality.
"In a world which has moved beyond the postwar half century of U.S.-Soviet confrontation, what is becoming more and more clearly entrenched is not the principle of international law, but the law of the overwhelming power of the world's only superpower," the newspaper said.
Cartoons were very visible in newspapers in Turkey, where polls show as much as 94 percent of the public opposed to the war.
One, published on the front page of the newspaper Sabah, reflects the perception of the United States as a powerful country that throws money around but still cannot get what it wants. It shows a huge patch of quicksand labeled "Iraq" and a person, the United States, sinking in it, the person's arm holding a wad of cash over the sand.
On the same page, Sabah's lead headline is, "We Can Resist Six Months." The phrase comes from Iraqi statements and shows a clear sympathy with Iraq as the embattled underdog.
In Germany, Der Spiegel wondered on its Web site whether the difficulties American troops have encountered in Iraq might spell the end of the American empire.
"The world's only remaining superpower is beginning to suffer from the disease with which every imperial power throughout history has been afflicted: the overestimation and overtaxing of its own capabilities," the magazine said. "Could the Iraq war herald its decline?"
Demonstrations have been called for this weekend at the American Rhein-Main air base near Frankfurt, Germany. In Italy, antiwar groups have been striving to organize boycotts against American oil companies, as well as against McDonald's, Microsoft and Coca-Cola.
One group, called the International Group for Direct Economic Actions against the War said the boycotts would be aimed at "putting pressure on Bush" to change his "warmongering policies.'
Le Monde, France's most prestigious newspaper, published a front-page cartoon by its caricaturist, Plantu, that showed an American soldier with an American flag marching over a heap of Iraqi corpses. The soldier says, "This sandstorm is terrible!"
In Japan, one popular magazine lumped Mr. Bush together with Mr. Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, as the "axis of idiots."
"What Bush is doing is conquering with military force anybody who opposes him," said Shinichi Iida, a 25-year-old university student. "I think it's the most barbaric act in the world."
Across the Arab world, editorials denounced the war, calling it an aggression carried out in the service of Israeli interests.
"The image of the war to the public now is occupation, not liberation," Nabil Osman, the chief spokesman for the Egyptian government, said in an interview.
Some newspapers, echoing comments in the European press, accused the American government of intimidating television stations into refusing to show images of American soldiers taken captive by Iraq. "The human sentiments embodied in the Geneva Conventions that American officials have referred to are not meant to be apportioned on racist grounds," Suleiman al-Aqili, wrote in the Saudi daily Al Watan.
"Had the Americans and their allies not circulated pictures of Iraqi prisoners of war on the first day of the invasion, and had they not denied truthful Iraqi accounts of coalition losses, the Iraqis would not have had to show the prisoners of war on television," the editorial said.
The war in Iraq has given Israelis and Palestinians one more issue on which to disagree.
The Israelis are supporters of the American-led war, believing that the fall of Mr. Hussein would remove a major threat and chasten radical Arab governments and groups throughout the region.
The Palestinians are overwhelmingly against the war, and some cheer Mr. Hussein for his willingness to confront the Americans.
At the P.L.O. Flag Shop in Gaza City, Tareq Abu Dayyeh, the owner, has been selling large numbers of Iraqi flags.
"Palestinian people are exactly like the Iraqi people," he said this week. "The Apache is hitting us, and it's hitting them too. The F-16 is hitting us, and it's hitting them too. It's the same fate."
In an interview this week, the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, called on the Arab world to fight what he called an "American Zionist war."
"The Americans want to destroy the Islamic faith, and to change the map of the Middle East, and to control not only the oil but also the society," he said. "Today is Iraq, tomorrow is Egypt, then Sudan, then Saudi Arabia."
Israeli commentators have been closely scrutinizing the American military campaign, often making analogies to Israel's fight with the Palestinians.
"Washington realized in many situations, accurate long-range fire is insufficient and that in order to win, it is not enough to use special forces, even in the large quantities employed in Afghanistan," Yaakov Amidror, a major general in the reserves, wrote in a front-page commentary in the daily Maariv. "Reality proves that in many situations there is a need to employ armored forces in order to win."
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CAIRO Rights Groups Accuse Egypt of Detentions
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By SUSAN SACHS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27EGYP.html
CAIRO, March 26 - Human rights groups have accused the Egyptian authorities of detaining hundreds of people in a brutal crackdown on people protesting the war in Iraq, including an opposition member of Parliament who was reportedly beaten so severely by the police on Friday that he remained hospitalized today.
"The message they want to send is that no one can say no to the government, and what is allowed one day is forbidden the next," said Ayman Nour, a lawyer who represents the injured member of Parliament.
Human rights groups in Cairo and the United States, citing what they said were witness accounts and statements by detainees, said security forces had used electric shocks, sticks and belts to beat prisoners in police stations and in prisons.
An account by Manal Khaled, a young woman who said she was threatened and punched in the eye on Friday during a protest, was typical of the treatment experienced by dozens of protesters, according to a report issued by Human Rights Watch and presented to the government.
"On the way to the car, the officer explicitly threatened me with rape, using filthy words," Ms. Khaled was quoted as saying. "He added that only my rape would make me give up politics. The bruise around my eye is the result of a punch in the face from him."
Egyptian officials denied that large numbers of protesters had been arrested, saying they have tolerated public gatherings as long as demonstrators have not attacked the police or damaged public property.
"There is no suppression," said Nabil Osman, a government spokesman. "But if they go astray, if they are violent, we have an obligation as a state to protect public order."
Human rights groups have frequently accused the Egyptian police of using excessive force, charges the government has also denied.
Since the attack on Iraq began last week, demonstrators have rallied daily in cities across Egypt to denounce the war and President Bush, in some cases throwing rocks at the police and smashing store windows. In Cairo, the police have used water cannons and bamboo sticks to prevent protesters from reaching the American and British Embassies.
While the antiwar demonstrations have been largely peaceful, clashes broke out on Friday after the main protest broke up and small bands of people started rampaging through downtown Cairo.
Muhammad Farid Hassanein, the member of Parliament, was arrested that day after he joined a group of protesters gathered in front of the headquarters of the Lawyers Syndicate.
Mr. Nour said the police beat Mr. Hassanein with sticks, leaving him with a severe concussion and both his legs and arms broken.
Mr. Hassanein's hospital room is guarded by the police, who prevented his relatives and other visitors from entering, according to hospital officials.
The police have also arrested dozens of people who said they had nothing to do with the protests.
Hossam el-Hamalawy, a translator for The Los Angeles Times's bureau in Cairo, said he was seized by security officers as he was leaving a Hardee's restaurant near Tahrir Square in the center of the city on Saturday afternoon.
He said he was shoved into a police van filled with other people who told him they had been arrested as they walked through the square or emerged from the Tahrir subway station.
"No one knew why they were picked up, but each one of us understood we were going to be scapegoats for what happened on Friday," Mr. Hamalawy said.
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Antiwar Demonstrations Jam Midtown
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Anti-War-Protests.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Hundreds of chanting demonstrators lined Manhattan's Fifth Avenue on Thursday, and dozens lay down in the street in a ``die-in'' to protest the war.
Officers, some in riot gear and on horseback, clamped plastic handcuffs onto about 150 protesters who refused to get up and half-carried them into police vehicles.
Anti-war groups also called for other civil disobedience in the city to protest media and corporate ``profiteering from the war.''
As helicopters hovered overhead, the protesters -- some beating drums or chanting ``Hey-hey, ho-ho, Bush's war has to go!'' -- jammed police pens near St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Saks Fifth Avenue store.
Organizers of the loose coalition, which calls itself M27, said the ``die-in'' was intended to symbolize Iraqi war victims. A single lane of Fifth Avenue was reopened to traffic after about a half-hour.
Later, a small group staged a mock funeral march, and some protesters took up a ``no business as usual'' theme, including a dozen who blocked an entrance to Tiffany's. But most protesters left the area promptly, and there was little disruption around midtown by late morning.
Organizers said the civil disobedience was aimed at getting their message out.
``Nothing else gets attention,'' said protester Johannah Westmacott. ``It's not news when people voice their opinions.''
Russ Forster, a filmmaker from Chicago, said, ``People are willing to risk life and limb, sitting in the middle of Fifth Avenue. I think that's a pretty strong statement.''
The demonstration attracted several counterprotesters, including a man with a red, white and blue bandanna under a hardhat who argued toe-to-toe with a young protester with a pony tail and sideburns.
One counterprotester held a sign that read: ``Traitors, have you forgotten Sept. 11?''
``Whether you're for or against it, we need to pull together,'' said Rachel Harary, 20. ``Put on your flag and get them home.''
Some protest signs were directed at the media. One protester held a sign showing a picture of parrots and the words, ``Don't Parrot the Right-wing Propaganda.''
Another, 44-year-old teacher Lee Whiting, held up a sign that said, ``Embedded? or In Bed?'' Embedded, she said, means ``journalists are presenting almost exclusively the military view of this war.''
Police and security officers placed a web of barricades at the adjacent Rockefeller Center, home of the GE Building, NBC and The Associated Press, to prevent the protesters from staging their ``die-in'' there.
On Wednesday, a similar but smaller protest had halted Fifth Avenue traffic for blocks.
The demonstrations are costing the city millions of dollars in police overtime, drawing resources away from crime-fighting and anti-terrorism operations, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Wednesday.
``This is more than protest, more than free speech,'' Kelly said. ``We're talking about violating the law.''
The traffic-blocking technique was used in recent protests in San Francisco, which led to thousands of arrests and complaints that police used excessive force.
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New Yorkers' Sharp Divisions Fall Roughly on Racial Lines
March 27, 2003
The New York Times
By RANDY KENNEDY and DIANE CARDWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27RACE.html
If part of the strategy of the war is trying to win more support for it at home, then a battle was being lost badly the other afternoon on a concrete bench in Harlem.
Magic Britt, a porter, and David Sinclair, a maintenance worker, were taking a break in front of the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building on 125th Street. Mr. Britt said that he had never supported the war in Iraq and that he now angrily opposed it, and he enumerated the reasons.
It is distracting the nation from the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, he said. It is being run by a conservative Republican administration, while Mr. Britt is a Democrat. It was ordered by a president who Mr. Britt does not even believe was legitimately elected.
But there is also a much more personal reason: Mr. Britt is black, and he said he could not trust a president who he feels has little concern for black Americans either at home or on the battlefield. "He's a racist, plain and simple," said Mr. Britt, 40.
"We're going to be in the front lines - blacks and minorities," he added. "The white folks are going to be way back here." He pointed into the distance of the sunny plaza behind him.
Mr. Britt's perceptions, true or not, offer a stark, but not unusual, example of the kind of divide among black and white Americans found by the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which was based on five days of interviews conducted after the war began.
The poll showed that black Americans were far more likely to oppose President Bush's policy in Iraq, and were much more likely to say that defeating Saddam Hussein was not worth the cost in American lives.
For example, 78 percent of white respondents to the poll said they approved of how Mr. Bush was handling the situation, while just 37 percent of blacks agreed with that position. At the same time, 59 percent of blacks said they disapproved of the president's handling of the war, while only 17 percent of whites said the same thing.
Among many black New Yorkers interviewed from Harlem to Brooklyn, opposition to the war seemed to have more to do, in fact, with animosity toward Mr. Bush himself than with disagreement over his administration's policies.
"You got a president who stole his way into the place, who went into it with this on his mind," said Willie Roper, 65, at the Bay View Houses public housing project in Canarsie, Brooklyn, referring to Mr. Bush's election. "That's why we have this war."
Those kinds of feelings speak directly to Mr. Bush's standing among African-Americans as expressed in the poll of 2,383 adults nationwide. Thirty-four percent of blacks said they approved of the job he is doing, compared with 75 percent of whites.
Although in a city as overwhelmingly Democratic as New York the division is undoubtedly not as sharp as in the rest of the nation, a wide variety of differences surfaced again and again in conversations with dozens of black and white New Yorkers.
Across the city, many blacks echoed Mr. Britt's sentiments, saying that poor people would feel the brunt of the conflict, both at home and on the front lines, and that the tens of billions of dollars being spent on fighting in a distant country would be better spent on education and social programs at home.
Many white New Yorkers seemed quicker to see Mr. Hussein as an immediate threat to domestic or international security who must be stopped.
"I hope that the United States should win," said Murray Sol, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz. Mr. Sol, 72, is now a barber at the Seaview Plaza Family Haircutters in Canarsie. "It's very important," he said, rolling up his sleeve to show the number tattooed on his forearm. "You can't have another Hitler."
But in numerous interviews Tuesday and yesterday, black New Yorkers said that they had not been convinced that Mr. Hussein was a Hitler-like threat, and they suspected other motives for the war, like power and oil. Some said they saw it as Mr. Bush's personal vendetta against a man his father failed to remove from power.
"Oh, they tried to kill my Daddy," Julias Dukes said in a mocking singsong. Mr. Dukes, a 47-year-old former marine who was sitting on a stoop along Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, added, "It's a personal thing."
Some also said that they identified at least somewhat with poor Iraqis, whom they saw simply as people of color being attacked by a rich, and largely white, American government.
"You know who I see as a threat?" asked Bashir Sultan, 39, a former computer technician, finishing a slice of pizza in Harlem with a friend, Dolores Jackson. "I see North Korea. Or China. I don't see Saddam as a threat." Ms. Jackson, 39, a licensed practical nurse, said she believed that Iraqi civilians were unfortunate pawns in a deadly political game.
"It's like Muhammad Ali said," she explained. "He said: `Why should I fight? The Vietcong never did nothing to me.' Well, the Iraqis never did anything to me or mine. Why should we fight?"
But she added that unlike Mr. Sultan, she did not see her opposition to the war at all in terms of black and white. "It's about greed and oil, that's what it's about," she said. "This isn't a black thing. It's a people's thing."
And people being people, the opinions they expressed along the city sidewalks hardly fell neatly along any sort of lines. For example, Darryl Jones, 25, a video producer whose cousin is serving in the Army in Iraq, said that although he believed that Mr. Hussein posed a security threat, he was against the war because it made America seem like an international bully.
Mr. Jones, who is black, said that he encountered difficulties as an American in Asia on a recent trip because of that reputation. "They forgot the fact that I am a black American, and thought that I definitely have those American traits, which is greed, a pigheaded mentality," he said, sitting in a friend's real estate office in Brooklyn.
Several New Yorkers of various ethnic backgrounds said they support the war because they believe it is necessary for the country's security.
"I feel very bad that so many young men will lose their lives, but we have to fight to stay free," said Louise Barlow, 71, who is black. Ms. Barlow was sitting near the tennis courts in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, with a friend of 40 years, Helen Nass, 67.
"There are a lot of people against Bush doing it, but you know he's got a lot on his shoulders," Ms. Barlow continued. "You have to do something; you just can't sit back. People so quickly forget. They forget 9/11."
Ms. Nass, 67, who is white, agreed. "With all the weapons he has, and won't give them up?" she said, adding, "He has intent to use them, you know."
Asked why they thought opinion diverged so sharply along racial lines, the women, both Democrats, grew quiet for a moment.
"You know the only thing I could say is that they've been in wars before, but when they come out they're not treated any better or any different," Ms. Nass said, looking toward her friend. "They're not treated equal." Ms. Barlow, her eyes fixed on the tennis players, paused, and then attributed the difference to party politics. "Well, most blacks, the majority are Democratic, and a lot of them don't go for Bush," she said.
In the end, though, the views of blacks and whites may move closer together if American casualties mount. In Harlem, Mr. Sultan and Ms. Jackson said that they would expect more white Americans, even conservative ones, to oppose the war.
"You watch," Mr. Sultan said. "Black or white ain't going to matter."
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Lebanese Children Call for Iraq War's End
March 27, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Mideast-Iraq-Protests.html
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- Waving flags from the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, about 4,000 Lebanese children chanted ``Death to America'' Thursday in one of the daily protests in the Middle East since the start of the U.S.-led war on Iraq.
Thousands of Palestinians also marched in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, urging Saddam Hussein to attack Israel with chemical weapons.
Thousands of others demonstrated in a half-dozen Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Jordan and Yemen.
In the Hezbollah-organized protest, the children, ages six to 10, carried a model of a U.S. missile that read ``Bush's gift to Iraqi children.'' They also waved Palestinian flags and shouted ``Death to Israel'' as they called for a halt to the U.S.-British attacks on Iraq.
In the eastern Lebanese village of Khiara, 6,000 students held a banner praising Germany and France for their strong opposition to war. ``Greetings to the Arab republic of France, and to the Arab kingdom of Germany,'' it read.
About 2,000 Lebanese students marched from their school in Sidon to the southern city's main square, where legislator Osama Saad praised the Iraqi people's ``heroic resistance'' and called for a boycott of American and British products.
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinians marched through the streets holding posters of Saddam, waving Iraqi and Palestinian flags and stomping Israeli and U.S. flags on the ground.
Fatima Mukhtar, 55, who wore a headband with the inscription ``We Love Saddam,'' said, ``All of us believe that this is a time that America should be defeated and only he is capable of doing that and bringing back the hope and joy of thousands of families who are victims of Israeli and American terror.''
In the Syrian capital of Damascus, some 1,000 Syrians and Palestinians in the streets carried effigies of President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
A senior Palestinian Liberation Organization official, Farouk Kaddoumi, said the war in Iraq was a battle for Arab national security.
``Everything depends on us,'' he said. ``An Iraqi victory is a must and would save the region from American plans.''
About 10,000 people in Bahrain, led by turbaned Muslim clerics, marched through the diplomatic district of Manama chanting ``Down! Down! USA!'' and carrying black flags in a gesture of mourning for Iraqi casualties. They also burned U.S. flags and an effigy of Bush.
The gulf island of Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet.
In Tripoli, Libya, about 1,000 Libyans fasted for one day and gathered in the evening at a mosque, where they prayed for protection and support for the Iraqi people.
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Tormented protesters give us no moment of peace
By Tom Knott
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 27, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20030327-17883262.htm
The antiwar protesters are taking up lots of Washington's valuable law-enforcement time.
This is their right, selfish though it is amid the Code Orange terror alert.
Our nation is engaged in the military operation in Iraq, our city's various law-enforcement bodies are being overextended in these uncertain times, and the loony antiwar protesters have a seemingly pathological need to be heard and acknowledged.
Right. We hear you already.
No blood for oil. War is not the answer. Give Hans Blix a chance.
The antiwar protesters are an inventive lot. Give them that.
They have held sit-ins, die-ins, lay-ins, smell-ins and bad-hair-ins. They care so deeply. They feel the world's pain. As tormented as they are, they probably pick at their meals and have trouble falling asleep at night.
Oddly enough, some of the protesters have a funny way of expressing their humanity around others, which is one of the ongoing concerns of Chief Charles H. Ramsey and the Metropolitan Police Department.
These protesters sometimes are peaceful only in a theoretical sense. They think it is perfectly acceptable to be a public nuisance, or worse, because they have a calling, a higher purpose.
If it conflicts with your life or, in some small way, aids the evil ones, that is just too bad. These are important people with an important message. They are trying to save lives. You have to understand.
Whenever someone sticks a microphone in the face of one, the person inevitably mixes outrage with compelling logic.
"War is wrong," the protester says.
It is a feeling, but it is a powerful feeling.
This seems to be the Sean Penn philosophy of peace. The Hollywood actor is not necessarily the most peaceful fellow around, if you consider his run-ins with Madonna and the paparazzi over the years. Yet there he was in Baghdad not too long ago, exercising his diplomatic right to be apprised of the situation while hoping against hope that a peaceful solution could be worked out.
Some of the protesters are sort of like that. They apparently are champions of peace, except when they feel compelled to put actions, illegal or otherwise, to their words. The hypocrisy sometimes doubles as an infringement on your right to live as you see fit.
Some self-serving Americans just want to go to work. They have families and bills to consider, along with other obligations, and they don't want to be tied up in traffic because of the protesters taking a nap on the road.
The protesters don't object to being in a compromising position, which is: complex lecture to dispense versus the basic courtesy of not napping on the road. But who knows? Maybe a roadway is a comfortable resting spot.
These tortured souls are creeping up in odd places, specifically in the third quarter of the Wizards-Trail Blazers game in Portland, Ore., on Tuesday night, when a protester walked out onto the court during a stoppage in play and found a resting spot on the floor. The crowd booed the person, then cheered the security guards who each grabbed a limb before carting the human luggage away.
This seems to be a growing phenomenon in America. A protest is liable to break out in the most improbable places. You could step up to the counter of McDonald's and order a Big Mac meal, only to be ignored by the server in protest of the war.
Your appendix just burst? Tough. Members of the rescue squad have picked this moment to be on protest.
There is an obvious disconnect with the protesters. They do not seem to understand that there are those in our midst who mean us harm, and it is the job of Tom Ridge, John Ashcroft, Chief Ramsey and the like to protect us.
That job, impossible as it is, would be made somewhat easier if the antiwar zealots did not require so many professional baby sitters wherever they gather, often in Washington.
Washington certainly understands the compulsion of the protesters to lend their hot air to the national discourse. This is the nation's hot air capital, after all.
Their predilection just seems so counterproductive at this time.
We know the evil ones are out there. We also know they are fond of the potential targets in Washington.
The evil ones have one note: Kill all Americans. That does not leave us a lot of negotiating room, hawks and doves alike.
In this Code Orange time, all we are saying is give those in law enforcement a better chance.
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HAVE YOU HATED ANYONE TODAY?
STORY BY LISA SORG
03/27/2003
San Antonio Current
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=7506276&BRD=2318&PAG=461&dept_id=484045&rfi=6
Like a Klansman hiding his face beneath a hood, hatred has shrouded itself under the guise of national security. Immigrants, in particular, have been the target of intense animosity: Those who arrive in this country searching for the American Dream are not to be embraced or welcomed to the U.S. - which once prided itself on being a "melting pot" - but are to be suspected, derided, and if possible, returned to sender.
Last week - Week 1 of Gulf War II - the competing values of animosity and acceptance were embodied in opposing demonstrations. Anti-immigration sentiment simmered at the Alamo, where the White Revolution espoused hatred toward immigrants and all non-whites. On the Northeast Side, in front of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, activists asked for peace and tolerance and condemned
About 20 demonstraters lined up in front of INS to protest the U.S.' new registration policy. Photo by Mark Greenberg the round-up and disappearance of Middle Eastern citizens.
The scene downtown felt surreal. On a perfect Sunday morning, as unknowing tourists strolled outside the Alamo, members of the White Revolution, a coalition of hate groups, gathered in the gazebo and chanted, "Save the white race!" Men, women, and children: Some sported swastikas, suspenders, and buzz cuts; others were neatly dressed and looked like your next-door neighbor.
The 40 or so hatemongers had arrived via sheriff's bus. "What is our Number 1 biggest threat to the white race?" one man asked rhetorically. "It's not the Jews, not the Mexican, not the blacks, not the Chinese - it's the white Africans, whites that collaborate with the other races." By white Africans, one must wonder if the man meant the white cops, who collaborated with 70 of their fellow African-American and Latino officers to stand guard, and offer the racists police protection.
The leader of the White Revolution, Billy Roper, who spearheaded the rally, is a dangerous man. Until he was kicked out of the National Alliance last year, he served as deputy membership coordinator of the neo-Nazi group, which was led by William Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries. (Even white supremacists differ on who is white enough. Roper got the boot from the NA for being too inclusive; while Pierce and his elitist followers wanted to keep the white supremacy movement free of the "freaks, weaklings, and morons" in the Klan, Aryan Nation, and World Church of the Creator, Roper is more of an interfaith kinda guy.)
The White Revolution "rally" seemed (fortunately) anti-climactic. Besides the white supremacists, the plaza was deserted, cordoned off from distant passersby. The hate speech crumbled as soon as it left their mouths, as counter-protesters either had not yet arrived or were forced to stand too far away to effectively express their views. Although the White Revolution had obtained a city permit for four hours of hateful spewings, after 90 minutes, the members gathered their personal items, took commemorative pictures of one another on the gazebo steps, and left - before having to answer to the opposition. The cops didn't have to use their riot gear. The tourists
A man identifying himself as a San Antonio police officer watches the crowd of pro-tolerance demonstrators from an unmarked vehicle across the street from the protest. Photo by Mark Greenberg continued streaming into the Alamo. The sheriff's bus drove away. And the White Revolution moved on to the next town.
However, police did not bus in the 20 peace activists, who two days prior, had lined Randolph Boulevard to protest the U.S. government's requirement that another round of Middle Eastern citizens register with INS. Nor did the cops form a protective wall around the protesters. But they did spy on them.
Day 2 of the war imposed a solemnity on the demonstration: No one chanted or yelled. A few people quietly made small talk. Yet, from a VIA Transit park-and-ride lot across the street, two men, who identified themselves to one protester as San Antonio Police officers, sat in a silver SUV and watched the demonstration through binoculars. In return, activists put their watchers under surveillance, and videotaped them.
Carrying signs that read, "Civil rights for all," and "And then they came for me," protesters endured slurs such as "Fuck y'all," but also received a few supportive honks, including one passionate lean on the horn from a man in a VW van that had painted on its windows: "Bush's destiny: war criminal" and "My Patriot Act is the Constitution."
Since the Bush administration mandated that male citizens from Somalia, Qatar, Oman, North Korea, Morocco, Lebanon, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Bangladesh, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan register with INS, many have disappeared, said Nicole Betters, an American Arab who helped organize the demonstration. The men go in. They never return, leaving their families to wonder what has become of them.
For many, the corralling of foreigners seemed reminiscent to another regime's oppressive practices. "The Nazis rounded up so-called undesirables as a means to control people in Germany," said protester Heidi Allen. "I can't stand by and let it happen here."
Two days later, the Nazis came to San Antonio. Yet, they didn't speak for the majority of whites in this city, or the U.S. While most Anglos would resent being lumped in with these extremists, nonetheless it has become permissible to paint immigrants as terrorists. Immigrants are always confronted by issues of race, and must always justify their existence in this country. That no one could confront the White Revolution should give everyone pause.
Photos:
- National Socialist Movement member Cliff Herrington shouts anti-Semitic rhetoric during a rally by a group of about forty white nationalists, held on Sunday, March 23, in Alamo Plaza.
Photo by Mark Greenberg
http://images.zwire.com/local/Z/Zwire2318/zwire/images/lstwrds_haterally-92_330.jpg
- About 20 demonstraters lined up in front of INS to protest the U.S.' new registration policy. ("Being Arab Is Not A Crime")
Photo by Mark Greenberg
http://images.zwire.com/local/Z/Zwire2318/zwire/images/lstwrds_INS_protest_59_330.jpg
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