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NUCLEAR
IRAQ: New Fears from Depleted Uranium
Death By Slow Burn
Finland's TVO says received nuclear reactor bids
U.S. Curbs Won't Hurt Nuclear Program - Pakistan
U.S. Rebukes Pakistanis for Lab's Aid to Pyongyang
IAEA Sees Postwar Role
U.S. Says Yet to Find Banned Weaponry in Iraq
N. Korean Jets Keep Their Distance During U.S. Missions
North Korea Fires Short-Range Missile
Confusion Swirls Over N.Korea 'Missile Test'
Gas Tanker to Pass Within Miles Of Calvert Nuclear Power Plant
Kucinich Takes to The House Floor To Call For An End to The War
US draws up secret plan to impose regime on Iraq
The Secret War Machine
Practice to Deceive
Bush Defends the Progress of the War
MILITARY
Afghan clerics call for new holy war
Rockets fired at UN bases
Air war weapon stockpile runs critically low
Hoon rules out any major reinforcements
Deal to sell water all wet, critics charge
New System Tracks Military Herbicides Used in Vietnam
EU Drafts Human Rights Resolution for War
Tehran rejects 'propaganda accusations'
U.S. Kills Scores of Iraqis Near Baghdad
Iraq: U.S. attacked American human shields
U.S. Battles Closer to Baghdad; Skirmishes in South
In the line of fire: two holy cities that the US dares not desecrate
Iraqis not afraid to show enthusiasm for GIs
As military police, women can do it all
U.S. lists human rights offenders
For Israel Lobby Group, War Is Topic A, Quietly
Commentary: Which war am I watching?
Iraq Checkpoint Deaths Stoke Arab Anger at War
Terror Fight Transforms NATO, Chief Says
Military Puts Its Story Online
Pentagon, State Spar On Team to Run Iraq
Strange Insistence that No Miscalculations Were Made
The Test for Rumsfeld
U.S. Precision Weapons Not Foolproof
Secrets and Lies Become Weapons in Basra Standoff
Pentagon Seeks to Oust Rivera From Iraq
THIS WAR IS NOT WORKING
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
FBI Planning to Add Offices Overseas
Bush Lauds Homeland Security Efforts
Homeland Security And the Bottom Line
Avoiding Chemical Catastrophe
ENERGY AND OTHER
Oil Eases as Nigeria Calls Off Strike
World Bank: U.N. Poverty Goals Off Track, Need Cash
ACTIVISTS
U.S. nuns go on trial for military break-in
Jury selection for trial of peace activist nuns begins
Nun says protest is worth 30 years in prison
US anti-war movement breaks ranks with the '60s
Indiana peace activist among 5 injured in Iraqi car crash
Iraq: U.S. jets hit human shields, buses
In New Delhi, Hindus Take A Dim View of America
Hackers Plan Attacks To Protest Iraq War
N.M. Teachers on Leave Over War Protests
French 'Spiderman' Makes Anti - War Climb
Affirmative Action Backers Gather in D.C.
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
IRAQ: New Fears from Depleted Uranium
Sanjay Suri,
Apr 1, 2003
(IPS)
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=17218
LONDON - New fears have arisen over the long-term damage that can result from use of depleted uranium in the coalition attacks on Iraq.
"We are particularly worried because the tactics have changed in this war," Henk van der Keur from the Laka Foundation, an independent group based in Amsterdam that researches nuclear energy told IPS. "The guerrilla tactics employed by Iraqis mean more tanks and fighting vehicles are operating in towns, and that means greater danger for people living there."
Depleted uranium, a form of low-grade uranium is used in shells and rockets, usually alloyed with titanium to make them harder. These shells are fired to pierce the armour of tanks and against heavy concrete installations.
Depleted uranium is extremely dense material that remains when enriched uranium is separated from natural uranium to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. The fissionable isotope Uranium 235 is separated from uranium. The remaining uranium is called depleted uranium.
The U.S. and British forces are firing these weapons hardened with depleted uranium from the U.S. M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams tanks, from the Bradley Fighting Vehicles and from the A10 ground attack aircraft known as the tank-buster. The British Challenger tanks are also firing weapons using depleted uranium, Keur says.
"The danger is that when these weapons hit their targets, microscopic particles are liberated, and people inhale these particles," Keur says. "Many soldiers who fought in the last Gulf War are reported to have fallen ill from depleted uranium, but these reports have not been fully investigated."
The Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence in London both deny vigorously that depleted uranium can be harmful either to troops using those weapons or to people living in areas where they are used. Keur acknowledges that fears from depleted uranium have "not been backed by a full empirical study."
But the lack of a full investigation is itself cause for worry, he says. A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) study in the Balkans expressed concern about long-term consequences and asked for more study of the effects of depleted uranium. "But it is remarkable that there has been no major study by the World Health Organisation in Iraq," Keur says.
The Pentagon has admitted using about 300 tonnes of depleted uranium in the last Gulf War. Other independent estimates have suggested that about 1,000 tonnes may have been used.
"Depleted uranium is almost certainly an illegal weapon under a variety of international agreements including the Geneva Convention," says Ian Willmore from Friends of the Earth in London. "It sets off radiation, and the consequences will inevitably be worse when such weapons are used in large cities or in confined space."
Several of the battle tanks being used by the U.S. and British forces are themselves strengthened with depleted uranium to toughen them against anti-tank fire.
While there have been no definitive studies in Iraq, there are alarming signs. Just one hospital in Baghdad has reported eight cases of babies born without eyes, anophthalmos. "The normal incidence is about one case in 50 million," Willmore told IPS Tuesday.
"About half to 95 per cent of the particles released by the explosions where depleted uranium is used are of respirable size," Willmore says. "The body has no system of removing these radioactive particles that remain in the system."
Clearing up an area where depleted uranium has been used is also very difficult. "It can cost up to five billion dollars to fully clean up an area of just 200 hectares," says Duncan McLaren, head of policy and research at Friends of the Earth.
There is "scientific consensus" that high exposure causes damage to kidneys, neurological disorders, and cancers of the lungs and bones, Willmore says. Use of depleted uranium has been blamed for the 'Gulf War syndrome' that brings fatigue, memory loss and joint pains.
There is evidence also that depleted uranium can get into the soil and stay there a long time, Willmore says. "The longer this conflict goes on, the greater the damage it will cause to people and to the environment," Willmore says.
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Death By Slow Burn:How America Nukes Its Own Troops
What "Support Our Troops" really means
From the April 2003
Idaho Observer:
by Amy Worthington
http://proliberty.com/observer/20030401.htm
On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war activist holding a sign: "Nuke the evil scum, it worked in 1945!" That's exactly what George Bush has done. America's mega billion dollar war in Iraq is indeed a NUCLEAR WAR.
Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a "liberation" gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear.
Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute.1 Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped.2 The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU.3 These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them.4 The A-10 "tank buster" aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield.5
DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.
Support our troops
Ironically, support for our troops will extend well beyond the war in Iraq. Americans will be supporting Gulf War II veterans for years as they slowly and painfully succumb to radiation poisoning.
U.S and British troops deployed to the area are the walking dead. Humans and animals, friends and foes in the fallout zone are destined to a long downhill spiral of chronic illness and disability. Kidney dysfunction, lung damage, bloody stools, extreme fatigue, joint pain, unsteady gait, memory loss and rashes and, ultimately, cancer and premature death await those exposed to DU.
Award-winning journalist Will Thomas wrote: "As the last Gulf conflict so savagely demonstrated, GI immune systems reeling from multiple doses of experimental vaccines offer little defense against further exposure to chemical weapons, industrial toxins, stress, caffeine, insect repellent and radiation left over from the last war. This is a war even the victors will lose."6
DU
When a DU shell is fired, it ignites upon impact. Uranium, plus traces of plutonium and americium, vaporize into tiny, ceramic particles of radioactive dust. Once inhaled, uranium oxides lodge in the body and emit radiation indefinitely. A single particle of DU lodged in a lymph node can devastate the entire immune system according to British radiation expert Roger Coghill.7
The Royal Society of England published data showing that battlefield soldiers who inhale or swallow high levels of DU can suffer kidney failure within days.8 Any soldier now in Iraq who has not inhaled lethal radioactive dust is not breathing. In the first two weeks of combat, 700 Tomahawks, at a cost of $1.3 million each, blasted Iraqi real estate into radioactive mushroom clouds.9 Millions of DU tank rounds liter the terrain. Cleanup is impossible because there is no place on the planet to put so much contaminated debris.
Bush Sr.'s Gulf War I was also a nuclear war. 320 tons of depleted uranium were used against Iraq in 1991.10 A 1998 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome.11 The Gulf War Veterans Association reports that at least 300,000 Gulf War I vets have now developed incapacitating illnesses.12 To date, 209,000 vets have filed claims for disability benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses from combat in that war.13
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a professor of nuclear medicine at Georgetown University, is a former army medical expert. He told nuclear scientists in Paris last year that tens of thousands of sick British and American soldiers are now dying from radiation they encountered during Gulf War I. He found that 62 percent of sick vets tested have uranium isotopes in their organs, bones, brains and urine.14 Laboratories in Switzerland and Finland corroborated his findings. In other studies, some sick vets were found to be expressing uranium in even their semen. Their sexual partners often complained of a burning sensation during intercourse, followed by their own debilitating illnesses.15
Nothing compares to the astronomical cancer rates and birth defects suffered by the Iraqi people who have endured vicious nuclear chastisement for years.16 U.S. air attacks against Iraq since 1993 have undoubtedly employed nuclear munitions. Pictures of grotesquely deformed Iraqi infants born since 1991 are overwhelming.17 Like those born to Gulf War I vets, many babies born to troops now in Iraq will also be afflicted with hideous deformities, neurological damage and/or blood and respiratory disorders.18
Army health physicist Dr. Doug Rokke was dispatched to the Middle East to salvage DU-contaminated tanks after Gulf War I. His Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq and Kuwait were contaminated with up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation plus thousands to millions of counts per minute in alpha radiation. Rokke recently told the media: "The whole area is still trashed. It is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away."19
DU remains "hot" for 4.5 billion years. Radiation expert Dr. Helen Caldicott confirms that the dust-laden winds of DU-contaminated war zones "will remain effectively radioactive for the rest of time."20 The murderous dust storms which ensnared coalition troops during the first few days of the current invasion will have significant health consequences.
Rokke and his clean-up team were issued only flimsy dust masks for their dangerous work. Of the 100 people on Rokke's decontamination team, 30 have already "dropped dead." Rokke himself is ill with radiation damage to lungs and kidneys. He has brain lesions, skin pustules, chronic fatigue, continual wheezing and painful fibromyalgia. Rokke warns that anyone exposed to DU should have adequate respiratory protection and special coveralls to protect their clothing because, he says, you can't get uranium particles off your clothing.
DU doublespeak
The U.S. military insists that DU on the battlefield is not a problem. Colonel James Naughton of the U.S. Army Material Command recently told the BBC that complaints about DU "had no medical basis."21
The military's own documents belie this. A 1993 Pentagon document warned that "when soldiers inhale or ingest DU dust they incur a potential increase in cancer risk."22
A U.S. Army training manual requires anyone who comes within 25 meters of DU-contaminated equipment to wear respiratory and skin protection.23 The U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute admitted: "If DU enters the body, it has the potential to generate significant medical consequences."24 The Institute also stated that, if the troops were to realize what they had been exposed to, "the financial implications of long-term disability payments and healthcare costs would be excessive."25
For pragmatic reasons, DOD chooses to lie and deny.
Dr. Rokke confirms that the Pentagon lies about DU dangers and is criminally negligent for neglecting medical attention needed by DU-contaminated vets. He predicts that the numbers of American troops to be sickened by DU from Gulf War II will be staggering.26 As they gradually sicken and suffer a slow burn to their graves, the Pentagon will -- as it did after Gulf War I -- deny that their misery and death is a result of their tour in Iraq.
Dr. Rokke's candor has cost him his career. Likewise, Dr. Durakovic's radiation studies on Gulf War I vets were not popular with U.S. officials. Dr. Durakovic was reportedly told his life was in danger if he continued his research. He left the U.S. to continue his research abroad.27
Naive young coalition soldiers now in Iraq are likely unaware of how deadly their battlefield environment is. Gulf War I troops were kept in ignorance. Soldiers handled DU fragments and some wore these lethal nuggets around their necks. A DU projectile emits more radiation in five hours than allowed in an entire year under civilian radiation exposure standards. "We didn't know any better," Kris Kornkven told Nation magazine. "We didn't find out until long after we were home that there even was such a thing as DU."28
U.S. vision of a nuclear planet
George Bush's ongoing war in Afghanistan is also a nuclear war. Shortly after 9-11, the U.S. announced it would stockpile tactical nuclear weapons including small neutron bombs, nuclear mines and shells suited to commando warfare in Afghanistan.29 In late September, 2001, Bush and Russian president Vladimir Putin agreed that the U.S. would use tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan while Putin would employ nuclear weapons against the Chechnyans.30
Describing the Pentagon's B-61-11 burrowing nuke bomb, George Smith writes in the Village Voice: "Built ram tough with a heavy metal casing for smashing through the earth and concrete, the B-61 explodes with the force of an estimated 340,000 tons of TNT. It is lots of bang for the buck, literally two apocalypse bombs in one -- a boosted plutonium firecracker called the primary and a heavy hydrogen secondary for that good old-fashioned H-bomb fireball."31
Drought-stricken Afghanistan's underground water supply is now contaminated by these nuclear weapons.32 Experts with the Uranium Medical Research Center report that urine samples of Afghanis show the highest level of uranium ever recorded in a civilian population. Afghani soldiers and civilians are reported to have died after suffering intractable vomiting, severe respiratory problems, internal bleeding and other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning. Dead birds still perched in trees are found partially melted with blood oozing from their mouths.33
Afghanistan's new president, Hamid Karzai, is a puppet installed by Washington, D.C. Under the protection of American soldiers, Karzai's regime is setting a new record for opium production. Both UN and U.S. reports confirm that the huge Afghani opium harvest of 2002 makes Afghanistan the world's leading opium producer.34 Thanks to nuclear weapons, Afghanistan is now safe for the Bush-Cheney narcotics industry.35
ABC News asserts that keeping the "peace" in Afghanistan will require decades of allied occupation.36 For years to come, "peacekeepers" will be eating, drinking and breathing the "hot" carcinogenic pollution they have helped the Pentagon inflict upon that nation for organized crime.
As governor of Arkansas during the Iran-Contra era, Bill Clinton laundered $multi-millions in cocaine profits for then vice-president George Bush Sr.37 As a partner in the Bush family's notorious crime machine, President Clinton committed U.S. troops to NATO's campaign in the Balkans, a prime heroin production and transshipment area. DOD's campaign to control and reorganize the drug trade there for the Bush mafia was yet another nuclear project.
Between 1995-2000, the U.S. and NATO fired DU missiles, bullets and shells across the Balkans, nuking the peoples of Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo. As DU munitions were slammed into chemical plants, the environment became hideously toxic, also endangering the peoples of Albania, Macedonia, Greece, Italy, Austria and Hungary.
By 1999, UN investigators reported that an estimated 12 tons of DU had caused irreparable damage to the Yugoslavian environment, with agriculture, livestock and air water, and public health all profoundly damaged.38
Scientists confirm that citizens of the Balkans are excreting uranium in their urine.39 In 2001, a Yugoslavian pathologist reported that hundreds of Bosnians have died of cancer from NATO's DU bombardment.40 Many NATO peacekeepers in the Balkans now suffer ill health. Their leukemias, cancers and other maladies are dubbed the "Balkans Syndrome." Richard Coghill predicts that DU weapons used in Balkans campaign will result in at least 10,000 cases of fatal cancer.41
U.S. citizens at home are also paying a heavy price for criminal militarism gone mad. DOD is a pollution monster. The General Accounting Office (GAO) found 9,181 dangerous military sites in USA that will require $billions to rehabilitate. The GAO reports that DOD has been both slothful and deceitful in its clean-up obligations.42
The Pentagon is pressing Congress to exempt it from all environmental laws so that it may pollute and poison free from liability.43
The Navy used prime fishing grounds off the coast of Washington state to test fire DU ammunition. In January, Washington State Rep. Jim McDermott chastised the Navy: "On one hand you have required soldiers to have DU safety training and to wear protective gear when handling DU...and submarines must stay clear of DU-contaminated waters. These policies indicate there is cause for concern....On the other hand the Department of Defense has repeatedly denied that DU poses any danger whatsoever. There has been no remorse about leaving tons of DU equipment in the soil in foreign countries, and there appears to be no remorse about leaving it in the waters of your own country."44
DU has been used in military practice maneuvers in Indiana, Florida, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Maryland and Puerto Rico. After the Navy tested DU weaponry on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, one third of the island's population developed serious illness. Many people show high levels of uranium in their bodies. Hundreds have filed a class action suit against the Navy for $100 million, claiming DU contamination has caused widespread cancers.45
The Navy's Fallon Naval Air Station near Fallon, Nevada, is a quagmire of 26 toxic waste sites. It is also a target practice zone for DU bombs and missiles. Area residents report bizarre illnesses, including 17 children who have contracted leukemia within five years. A survey of groundwater in the Fallon area showed nearly half of area wells are contaminated with radioactive materials.46
The materials for DU weaponry have been processed mainly at three nuclear plants in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee, where workers handling uranium contaminated with plutonium have suffered for decades with cancers and debilitating maladies similar to Gulf War Syndrome.47
Prelude to a perpetual cycle of destruction, reconstruction
Emboldened by power-grabbing successes made possible by his administration's devious 9-11 project, President Bush asserts that the U.S. has the right to attack any nation it deems a potential threat. He told West Point in 2002, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."48
It is certain that Bush-Cheney future pre-emptive nuclear wars are lined up like idling jets on a runway. Both Cheney's Halliburton Corp. and the Bush family's Carlyle Group are profiteers in U.S. defense contracts, so endless war is just good business.49 The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon will create special nuclear weapons for use on North Korea's underground nuclear facilities.50 Next August, U.S. war makers will meet to consolidate plans for a new generation of "mini," "micro" and "tiny" nuclear bombs and bunker busters. These will be added to the U.S. arsenal perhaps for use against non-nuclear third-world nations such as Iran, Syria, Lebanon.51
The solution?
Americans must stop electing ruthless criminals to rule this nation. We must convince fellow citizens that villains like Saddam Hussein are made in the U.S. as rationale for endless corporate war profits. Saddam was placed in power by the CIA.52 For years U.S. government agencies, under auspices of George Bush Sr., supplied him with chemical and biological weapons.53 Our national nuclear laboratories, along with Unisys, Dupont and Hewlett-Packard, sold Saddam materials for his nuclear program.54 Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in the late 90s when its subsidiaries signed $73 million in new contracts to further supply Saddam.55 The wicked villain of Iraq was nurtured for decades as a cash-cow by U.S. military-industrial piranhas.
If America truly supports its troops, it must stop sending them into nuclear holocaust for the enrichment of thugs. Time is running out. If the DU-maniacs at the Pentagon and their coven of nuclear arms peddlers are not harnessed, America will have no able-bodied fighting forces left. All people of the earth will become grossly ill, hideously deformed and will die prematurely. We must succeed in the critical imperative to face reality and act decisively. Should we fail, there will be no place to hide from the slow burn of Bush-Cheney's merciless nuclear orgies yet to come -- or from the inevitable nuclear retaliation these orgies will surely breed.
Endnotes
1. "DOD Launches Depleted Uranium Training," Linda Kozaryn, American Forces Press Service, 8-13-99.
2. "Nukes of the Gulf War,"John Shirley, Zess@aol.com See this article in archives at www.gulfwarvets.com.
3. BBC News, "US To Use Depleted Uranium," March 18, 2003; U.S. General Accounting Office, Operation Desert Storm: "Early Performance Assessment of Bradley and Abrams," 1-2-92.
4. "Nukes of the Gulf War," op.cit.
5. Ibid.
6. "Invading Hiroshima," William Thomas, 2-4-2003, www.willthomas.net.
7. "US Shells Leave Lethal Legacy," Toronto Star, July 31, 1999; also "Radiation Tests for Peacekeepers in the Balkans Exposed to Depleted Uranium," www.telegraph.co.uk, 12-31-02.
8. "Depleted Uranium May Stop Kidneys In Days," Rob Edwards, New Scientist.com, 3-12-02; also "Uranium Weapons Too Hot to Handle," Rob Edwards, New Scientist.co.uk, 6-9-99.
9. "Navy Seeks Cash for More Tomahawks," David Rennie in Washington, Telegraph Group Limited, 1-4-03, news.telegraph.co.uk.
10. "Going Nuclear in Iraq -- DU Cancers Mount Daily," Ramzi Kysia, CounterPunch.org, 12-31-01.
11. "Depleted Uranium Symptoms Match US Report As Fears Spread," Peter Beaumont, The Observer (UK) 1-14-01, www.guardianlimited.co.uk.
12. "Gulf War Illnesses Affect 300,000 Vets," Ellen Tomson, Pioneer Press, www.pioneerplanet.com. See also American Gulf War Veterans Association at www.gulfwarvets.com.
13. "2 of Every 5 Gulf War Vets Are On Disability: 209,000 Make VA Claims," World Net Daily, 1-28-03, WorldNetDaily.com.
14. "Research on Sick Gulf Vets Revisited, "New York Times, 1-29-01; "Tests Show Gulf War Victims Have Uranium Poisoning," Jonathon Carr-Brown and Martin Meissonnier, The Sunday Times (UK) 9-3-02.
15. "Catastrophe -- Ill Gulf Vets Contaminated Partners With DU," The Halifax Herald Limited, Clare Mellor, 2-09-01. This article is available in archives at www.rense.com.
16. "Iraqi Cancer, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium," Seattle Post- Intelligencer, 11-12-02; "US Depleted Uranium Yields Chamber of Horrors in Southern Iraq, Andy Kershaw, The Independent (London) 12-4-01.
17. "The Environmental and Human Health Impacts of the Gulf War Region with Special References to Iraq," Ross Mirkarimi, The Arms Control Research Centre, May 1992. See also Gulf War Syndrome Birth Defects in Iraq at www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html.
18. "The Tiny Victims of Desert Storm, Has Our Country Abandoned Them?," Life Magazine, November 1995; "Birth Defects Killing Gulf War Babies," Los Angeles Times, 11-14-94; "Depleted Uranium -- The Lingering Poison," Alex Kirby, BBC News Online, 6-7-99.
19. "Depleted Uranium -- A Killer Disaster," Travis Dunn, Disaster News.net, 12-29-02.
20. San Francisco Chronicle, 10-10-02.
21. "US To Use Depleted Uranium," BBC News, 3-18-03.
22. "Depleted Uranium Symptoms Match US Report As Fears Spread," Peter Beaumont, The Observer (UK) 1-14-01.
23. "Iraqi Cancer, Birth Defects Blamed on US Depleted Uranium," Seattle Post- Intelligencer, 11-12-02.
24. "US To Use Depleted Uranium," BBC News, 3-18-03.
25. US Army Environmental Policy Institute: Health and Environmental Consequences of Depleted Uranium in the U.S. Army, Technical Report, June 1995.
26. "Pentagon -- Depleted Uranium No Health Risk," Dr. Doug Rokke, 3-15-03; also "The Terrible, Tragic Toll of Depleted Uranium," Address by Dr. Rokke before congressional leaders in Washington, D.C.,12-30-02; also "Gulf War Casualties," Dr. Doug Rokke, www.traprockpeace.org, 9-30-02.
27."Tests Show Gulf War Victims Have Uranium Poisoning," Sunday Times (UK), Jonathon Carr-Brown and Martin Meissonnier, 9-3-00.
28. "The Pentagon's Radioactive Bullet: An Investigative Report," Bill Mesler, The Nation, 5-28-99, see www.thenation.com/issue/961021/1021mesl.htm.
29. "Tactical Nukes Deployed In Afghanistan," World Net Daily, 10-7-01.
30. Ibid.
31. "The B-61 Bomb -- The Burrowing Nuke" George Smith,Village Voice.com 12-29-02.; also "Bunker-busting US Tactical Nuclear Bombs -- Nowhere to Hide," Kennedy Grey, Wired.com, 10-9-01.
32."Perpetual Death From America," Mohammed Daud Miraki, Afghan-American Interviews, 2-24-03; also "Dying of Thirst," Fred Pearce, New Scientist, 11-17-2001.
33. Ibid.
34. "Afghanistan Displaces Myanmar as Top Heroin Producer," Agence France-Presse, 3-01-03. This article is at www.copvcia.com.; also "Opium Trade Flourishing In the 'New Afghanistan,'" Reuters, 3-3-03.
35. "The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire," Michael C. Ruppert, Nexus Magazine, February-March 2000; The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Alfred W. McCoy, Lawrence Hill & Co., revised edition due May 2003; Drugging of America, Rodney Stich, Diablo Western Press, 1999; "Blood for Oil, Drugs for Arms," Bob Djurdjevic, Truth In Media, April 2000, www.truthinmedia.org
36. ABC News, February 27, 2003.
37. Compromised, Clinton Bush and the CIA, Terry Reed and John Cummings, S.P.I. Books, 1994; The Clinton Chronicles and The Mena Cover-up, Citizens for Honest Government, 1996; "The Crimes of Mena, Grey Money," Ozark Gazette, 1995, www.copvcia.com.)
38. "Damage to Yugoslav Environment is Immense, Says a UN Report," Bob Djurdjevic, 7-4-99, www.truthinmedia.org. This report was submitted to the UN Security Council on June 9, 1999; also, "New Depleted Uranium Study Shows Clear Damage," BBC News,8-28-99; also "NATO Issued Warning About Toxic Ammo," Associated Press, 01-08-01.
39. CounterPunch.org, 12-28-01.
40. "Hundreds Died of Cancer After DU Bombing -- Doctor," Reuters, 1-13-01.
41."Depleted Uranium Threatens Balkan Cancer Epidemic," BBC News, 7-30-99.
42. "Many Defense Sites Still Hazardous," Associated Press, 9-24-02; also Old US Weapons Called Hidden Danger, Los Angeles Times, 11-25-02.
43. "Pentagon Seeks Freedom to Pollute Land, Air and Sea," Andrew Gumbel in L.A., 3-13-03, Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.
44. "Radioactive DU Ammo Is Tested in Fish Areas," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1-11-03; Letter from Rep. McDermott to Department of the Navy: see "Navy Fired DU Rounds Into Waters Off Coast of Washington," 1-20-03, rense.com.
45."Cancer Rates Soar From US Military Use of DU On 'Enchanted Island,'" www.telegraph.co.uk, 2-5-01; also "Navy Shells With Depleted Uranium Fired in Puerto Rico," Fox News Online, 5-28-99.
46. "The Fallon, NV Cancer Cluster And a US Navy Bombing," Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch.org, 8-10-02.
47. "DU Shells Are Made of A Potentially Lethal Cocktail of Nuclear Waste," Jonathon Carr-Brown, www.sunday-times.co.uk, 1-22-01.
48. "Preventative War Sets Perilous Precedent," Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers, 3-20-03.
49. PIGS at the Trough, Arriana Huffington, Random House, 2003 (New York Times best seller.); also "The Best Enemies Money Can Buy, From Hitler to Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden -- Insider Connections and the Bush Family's Partnership With Killers of Americans;" Mike Ruppert, From the Wilderness, 10-10-01; also "Bush Sr.'s Carlyle Group Gets Fat on War and Conflict," Jamie Doward, The Observer (UK), 3-25-03; also "Halliburton Wins Contract for Iraq Oil Firefighting, Reuters, 3-7-03; also "Cashing In-Fortunes in Profits Await Bush Circle After Iraq War, Andrew Gumbel, The Independent (London) 9-15-02; also "War Could Be Big Business for Halliburton," Reuters, 3-23-03.
50. "Pentagon Seeks a Nuclear Digger," Washington Post, March 10, 2003.
51. "Remember: Bush Planed Iraq War Before Taking Office," Neil Mackay, The Sunday Herald (UK) 3-27-03; also "US Mini-Nukes Alarm Scientists," The Guardian (UK) 4-18-01; also "US Nuclear First-Strike Plan -- It Keeps Getting Scarier, Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, 2-24-03.
52. Wall Street Journal, 8-16-90: The CIA supported the Baath Party and installed Hussein as Iraqi dictator in 1968.
53. "United States Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and Their Impact on the Health of Persian Gulf War Veterans," Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, 1992, 1994; "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup," Washington Post, 12-30-02.
54. "US Government, 24 US Corps Illegally Helped Iraq Build Its WMD," Hugh Williamson in Berlin, Financial Times, 12-19-02; "Full List of US Weapons Suppliers To Iraq," Anu de Monterice, coachanu@earthlink.net, 12-19-02.
55. Huffington, op.cit.
The Idaho Observer P.O. Box 457 Spirit Lake, Idaho 83869 Phone: 208-255-2307 Email: observer@coldreams.com Web: http://idaho-observer.com http://proliberty.com/observer/
-------- europe
Finland's TVO says received nuclear reactor bids
REUTERS FINLAND:
April 1, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20329/newsDate/1-Apr-2003/story.htm
HELSINKI - Finnish nuclear power producer Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) said yesterday it had received a range of bids to build the country's fifth nuclear reactor, with a decision on who will win the contract expected before year-end.
"We have received sufficient offers that represent different plant technologies and delivery options," TVO Chief Executive Mauno Paavola said in statement, without specifying the exact number.
TVO said it intended to submit an application to build the the new 1,000-1,600-megawatt (MW) reactor to the government as soon as possible after the competition, with the unit to come online in 2009.
The location of the new plant - which will be built at existing nuclear plant sites in the west coast town of Olkiluoto or in the southeastern town of Loviisa - will also be announced before the end of the year.
Framatome ANP, which is owned by France's Areva (CEPFi.PA) and Germany's Siemens (SIEGn.DE), said in a statement yesterday it had submitted a bid to build the reactor. Other companies expected to take part in the competition include U.S. General Electric (GE.N) and Russia's Atomstroyexport.
Finland's parliament approved plans to build the reactor in 2002, the first such move in Western Europe in more than a decade.
-------- india / pakistan
U.S. Curbs Won't Hurt Nuclear Program - Pakistan
April 1, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-us-nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan says U.S. commercial sanctions on one of its nuclear-related firms will not affect its nuclear program.
The United States imposed commercial curbs on Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) last week for allegedly arranging the transfer of nuclear-capable missiles from North Korea to Pakistan.
KRL was once headed by nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, revered by many in Pakistan as the father of its nuclear bomb.
``Pakistan's nuclear program will not be affected in any way with the sanctions imposed by (the) United States,'' a report on Pakistan's official APP news agency quoted Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri as saying late on Monday.
He said Pakistan had developed its nuclear program without foreign help and to prevent Indian ``aggression.''
Under the sanctions, the United States will not enter into contracts or issue licenses to KRL and the company will not be authorized to export to the United States.
Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, has denied reports it helped Pyongyang with equipment to make materials needed for a nuclear arms project in return for missile parts.
A senior State Department official said KRL had imported missiles from North Korea's state-owned Changgwang Sinyong Corp, which has been under the same sanctions since August.
The Washington Times said on Monday that Pakistan had imported complete No Dong missiles from North Korea using U.S.-made C-130 transport planes.
Pakistanis see their nuclear capability as a key deterrent to arch-foe India. The nuclear neighbors have fought three wars and came close to a fourth in 2002. Pakistan carried out its first nuclear tests in 1998.
--------
ASIAN FRONT
U.S. Rebukes Pakistanis for Lab's Aid to Pyongyang
April 1, 2003
The New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/international/worldspecial/01KORE.html
WASHINGTON, March 31 - The Bush administration has imposed sanctions against a major Pakistani nuclear laboratory - the first such action since Pakistan became an ally in the battle against terrorism - for its role in helping North Korea obtain crucial equipment and designs to produce nuclear weapons, administration officials said today.
With its actions, the administration has publicly acknowledged for the first time that Pakistan was the critical supplier of the technology that enabled North Korea to develop a clandestine project to build weapons from highly enriched uranium. In return, Pakistan received North Korean missiles that can carry nuclear weapons, and picked them up last summer in an American-made C-130 cargo plane that belongs to the Pakistan Air Force.
When the transactions were first revealed last fall, senior administration officials declined to comment on the report. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told reporters in October that when he called Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to discuss the subject, "He said, `Four hundred percent assurance that there is no such interchange taking place now." He added: "We didn't talk about the past." Other administration officials said that they were reluctant to act against Pakistan for fear that the uneasy alliance with General Musharraf might be harmed. Most sanctions against Pakistan in relation to its own development of nuclear weapons were lifted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in return for Pakistan's cooperation in the pursuit of Qaeda members.
After months of debate, including a trip to Pakistan by President Bush's deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, administration officials decided this month to impose a relatively mild penalty: A two-year ban on any dealings with the A. Q. Khan Research Institute, a government-affiliated nuclear research laboratory where much of the work on Pakistan's own nuclear weapons program took place in the 1980's and 1990's.
The laboratory is named for the man considered the father of the Pakistani bomb, though he was removed from his post under American pressure two years ago, and is suspected by American intelligence agencies of bartering in Pakistani nuclear technology.
"We couldn't ignore this, given the enormous damage it did to our effort to keep North Korea from expanding its arsenal," said one senior administration official. "But there was a lot of pressure not to embarrass Musharraf," who may or may not have known of the exchanges, the official said. He noted that the action "comes at a moment when people aren't going to pay a lot of attention."
In fact, it was announced first by the Pakistanis themselves, who said the action would not impede their nuclear program. A statement from the United States Embassy in Islamabad said the laboratory was charged with "material contribution to the efforts of a foreign country, person or entity of proliferation concern, to use, acquire, design, develop and or secure weapons of mass destruction," but did not name the country that had received the goods.
The Khan laboratory is about 20 miles from Islamabad. It has long been the centerpiece of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, and North Korea has apparently tried to replicate part of it.
The Khan laboratory includes a uranium enrichment plant that uses centrifuge technology similar to what North Korea is believed to be developing. Dr. Khan is believed to have brought the design to Pakistan from the Netherlands nearly three decades ago.
"The question facing us," said one senior administration official, "comes down to this: Is the Khan lab proliferating with the knowledge of the Pakistani leadership? Or is it on its own?" In private conversations, Mr. Powell has urged Mr. Musharraf to regain control of the laboratory, American officials say.
To this day, American officials say, they do not know the location of the North Korean uranium project. But they have concluded that North Korea is moving forward quickly on an effort to build a cascade of centrifuges needed to enrich uranium.
The secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, told Congress recently that the North Korean program could begin producing weapons by the end of next year, sooner than initial American estimates.
At the same time, North Korea is openly preparing to restart its plutonium weapons program, its much better known effort to build a weapon. That program was frozen from 1994 until American officials confronted North Korea with evidence that it was cheating on an agreement with the United States and proceeding with the secret uranium project.
-------- inspections
IAEA Sees Postwar Role
Reuters
April 1, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63575-2003Mar31?language=printer
VIENNA -- The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said that his weapons inspectors' mandate to hunt for banned arms in Iraq is still valid and that he expected to return to Baghdad with full authority after the war.
Inspectors from the U.N. agency left Iraq just before the March 20 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
"The IAEA mandate in Iraq is still valid and has not changed, and the IAEA is the sole body with legal authority to verify Iraq's nuclear disarmament," IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in a statement.
"Our operation is interrupted because of hostilities. We expect to go back with full authority after the cessation of hostilities to resume our inspection activities in Iraq," he said, adding that only impartial international inspections would be credible.
The United States has said that U.N. inspectors might have a limited postwar role in Iraq.
--------
U.S. Says Yet to Find Banned Weaponry in Iraq
April 1, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-weapons.html
AS SAYLIYA CAMP, Qatar (Reuters) - A U.S. commander in the Gulf said on Tuesday that troops in Iraq had yet to find any banned weapons of mass destruction in captured Iraqi territory.
``At this point we have not found any weapons of mass destruction,'' Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a news conference.
The United States invaded on the grounds it needed to disarm Iraq of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Iraq denies having any such armaments.
-------- korea
N. Korean Jets Keep Their Distance During U.S. Missions
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63364-2003Mar31?language=printer
TOKYO, March 31 -- North Korean fighter jets have flown beyond the Korean coastline during U.S. reconnaissance flights but have apparently not tried to intercept another reconnaissance mission, as they did early this month, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific said today.
"We have seen some MiG activity over water" during U.S. surveillance missions, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo said. "But I couldn't characterize it as being directed at our surveillance flights. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure what it's precisely directed at right now. We're looking at it."
Four North Korean MiGs intercepted an Air Force reconnaissance plane 150 miles from their coastline on March 2, according to the Pentagon. One flew within 50 feet of the U.S. plane, a modified Boeing 707, in what U.S. officials called a "reckless and provocative" act.
After 10 days of deliberation, the Air Force decided to resume the flights, which are watching for a possible missile launch by North Korea during heightened tension between the countries over the North's nuclear program.
Fargo declined to say whether U.S. planes on recent missions turned away when North Korean fighter jets were detected off the coast. Other military sources had said that strategy would likely be used to avoid a confrontation. The admiral noted that the United States had not "seen anything that indicated that [the MiGs] acted in a manner to effect another intercept."
In a meeting with Japanese and American reporters, Fargo also argued that U.S. soldiers no longer need to be close to the Korean Peninsula's Demilitarized Zone to serve as a "tripwire" triggering a U.S. response in the event of an invasion by North Korea.
That term has long been shorthand justification for the presence of U.S. troops who have remained in South Korea since the DMZ was created as a truce line at the end of the Korean War in 1953. Of 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, about 14,000 are deployed near the zone.
"When you have missiles that go hundreds or thousands of miles and can threaten a port or an airfield a couple hundreds of miles away, forces 10 miles away may have no consequence as a tripwire," Fargo said. "That's a term that has outlived its usefulness."
The tripwire debate was revived in February when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that U.S. troops stationed near the DMZ might be moved south of Seoul, the South Korean capital, as part of an updating of strategy by a more modern, high-tech and mobile army. They would be replaced by units of the well-equipped South Korean army.
Earlier this month, the new South Korean prime minister, Goh Kun, responded by publicly urging that U.S. troops not be moved because "the tripwire should remain."
U.S. officials have quietly bristled over the notion that U.S. soldiers should be a tripwire, given the implication that they would be sacrificed to a larger invasion force until reinforcements arrived. That discomfort has risen as anti-American and anti-troop demonstrations have blossomed in South Korea.
The tripwire concept is "antiquated," Fargo said. "We have a vastly improved capability over what we might have had 10 or 15 years ago. We have a much greater ability to respond," he said.
----
North Korea Fires Short-Range Missile
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64774-2003Apr1?language=printer
TOKYO, April 1 (Tuesday) -- North Korea today fired a short-range, surface-to-ship missile in what was seen here as an attempt to keep world attention focused on Pyongyang's demand for negotiations with the United States, according to Japanese officials.
The missile, the third launched in five weeks, traveled about 37 miles from the northwestern coast of the North Korea, a Japanese Defense Agency spokesman said.
Officials said it was not a ballistic missile. Japan has been increasingly worried in recent days that North Korea is preparing to test a ballistic missile to demonstrate its capability to launch nuclear, biological or conventional weapons to Japan or farther.
But officials here consider even the shorter-range missile to be of concern.
"We don't consider this a direct threat to Japan," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hatsuhisa Takashima. "But it would heighten tensions in the region as a whole."
North Korea has demanded direct negotiations with Washington over the U.S. demand that it dismantle programs that may produce nuclear weapons.
As the deadlock had continued, North Korea has restarted a nuclear power plant, sent an MiG fighter to buzz an American reconnaissance plane and fired surface-to-ship missiles to press its demands.
Japan's transport minister, Chikage Ogi, announced that the missile today had been fired at 10:15 a.m..
The test firing comes despite hints that China, North Korea's chief ally, has begun pressuring Pyongyang to reduce its brinkmanship in the current crisis.
A recent three-day interruption of the oil flow in a pipeline from China to North Korea was interpreted by some as a signal from Beijing, urging Pyongyang to avoid future tensions. Chinese officials said the pipeline was shut down because of a technical problem.
----
Confusion Swirls Over N.Korea 'Missile Test'
April 1, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - Conflicting reports about a North Korean short-range missile test on Tuesday jangled North Asian nerves already on edge over suspicions Pyongyang might seek to grab attention now the U.S.-led war in Iraq is under way.
Initially, Japanese and U.S. officials said North Korea had fired a surface-to-ship missile without warning into the Yellow Sea between the Korean peninsula and China. A South Korean intelligence source also confirmed the test.
But officials in Seoul then contradicted the reports about South Korea's communist neighbor, which says it believes it will be the next target after the U.S. war in Iraq is over.
``Following our initial investigation, we could not find evidence that North Korea fired a missile,'' a South Korean Defense Ministry official told Reuters.
The director-general of Japan's Defense Agency, Shoei Yamanaka, later retracted an earlier Japanese announcement, saying Tokyo was still trying to confirm the information.
No one was letting on why the story changed. But a military source in Japan said in February after one of two confirmed launches there had been 10 unannounced tests since September.
It was not clear why the U.S., South Korean or Japanese authorities would want to avoid announcing such tests.
Tuesday's initial reports moved the financial markets in Japan and South Korea slightly. Traders are sensitive to North Korea, given its standoff with the United States over its suspected nuclear weapons ambitions and its rich rhetoric against Japan, the United States and the South Korean military.
Yamanaka did not deny or confirm the North had fired the missile on Tuesday -- less than a week after Japan sent two spy satellites into orbit to give Tokyo its first independent opportunity to scrutinize North Korea from space.
Pyongyang denounced that launch as a ``hostile act'' that could set off a regional arms race. It kept up its outspoken rhetoric against Japan on Tuesday, saying Tokyo would pay dearly if it kept helping the United States with spy flights near North Korea.
NORTH NEXT?
North Korea accused the U.S. military on Tuesday of flying more than 220 spy flights over the peninsula last month and of conducting military exercises to prepare for an attack.
``The aerial espionage and war exercises go to clearly prove that the U.S. is going to invade the DPRK at the end of the Iraqi war,'' the North's KCNA news agency said. DPRK is the acronym for the state's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Washington says it seeks a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis but has not ruled out a military option.
There have been media reports North Korea might be preparing for a ballistic missile test that would break deals it reached with Washington and Tokyo. Ballistic missiles could reach Japan.
The United States military, which has 37,000 troops in South Korea, said it would keep some F-117 ``Stealth'' fighters in South Korea for more training and to enhance deterrence.
The radar-eluding aircraft were deployed on the peninsula this year for annual military exercises for the first time in a decade, prompting Pyongyang to say it was all part of a prelude to a pre-emptive strike on its Yongbyon nuclear complex.
The North recently announced reactivation of the plant, saying this was to produce electricity for its stricken economy. Washington says the plant is too small for that and is more likely to be used to produce material for atomic weapons.
In Moscow, a senior Russian official, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, told Interfax news agency the Iraq war was likely to push North Korea toward building a nuclear weapon and urged the United States to open bilateral talks with Pyongyang. Washington favors multilateral talks.
North Korea's edginess over Iraq has fueled speculation in South Korean media and diplomatic circles about why North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has not been seen in public or reported about in detail since mid-February.
Some diplomatic sources in Pyongyang say he could be hunkered down watching satellite television coverage of the Iraq war while others say he could be touring military units. He could even be ill, they say. But no one knows for sure.
The closest to live action for some time came on Tuesday in a mention on the North's KCNA news agency that Kim had sent a wreath to the funeral of a senior communist party functionary.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
Gas Tanker to Pass Within Miles Of Calvert Nuclear Power Plant
First Such Trip in 20 Years to Test Bay Anti-Terror Measures
By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63546-2003Mar31.html
Map: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I1342-2003Apr1
For the first time in two decades, a foreign tanker carrying liquefied natural gas will enter the Chesapeake Bay sometime later this year, passing within three miles of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant and, in the process, triggering the most intensive maritime security operation ever in the region.
It will begin four days before the tanker reaches bay waters, when the Coast Guard is notified of its impending arrival and begins cross-checking crew members and passengers against terrorist watch lists. As the tanker approaches the bay from the Atlantic Ocean at Cape Henry, it will be stopped by an armed Coast Guard team that will inspect the mammoth vessel, the length of more than three football fields.
Once the ship is cleared for its eight- to 10-hour journey to the reactivated Cove Point liquefied natural gas facility in southern Calvert County, "a moving safety security zone" will form around it, ensuring that no other vessels get closer than a prescribed distance. The web of security -- which probably will include air surveillance -- will be drawn tighter as the tanker approaches the Calvert shoreline.
Lt. Cmdr. Brendon McPherson said the operation, which will continue until the tanker finishes unloading and returns to sea, will be typical of the Coast Guard's "unprecedented" security measures.
But -- unprecedented or not -- will the security be enough?
Neighbors of the facility say they are not so sure. Months before Sept. 11, 2001, residents told federal regulators that they feared that terrorists could commandeer a liquefied natural gas tanker. Should its massive storage tanks be breached, either by grounding or explosion, the gas would vaporize on contact with the air and could, if ignited, send a giant fireball hurtling toward the nuclear plant and their community.
"We were afraid of terrorists before 9/11 -- and 9/11 came," said Mary Robinson, a Lusby resident whose home is within several miles of the Cove Point LNG plant.
U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said she has concerns, despite expressing confidence in the Coast Guard when, in December, it judged the bay to be suitable and safe for LNG traffic.
"We're in a war against terrorism," Mikulski said in a recent interview. "I continue to be concerned and therefore I don't believe any nautical operation is risk-free."
Debate over the merits of resuming LNG tanker traffic has gone on for three years, ever since the Williams Co. proposed a $120 million plan to reactivate the Cove Point facility. It closed in December 1980 because of falling domestic natural gas prices and a dispute with exporters from Algeria, then the prime source of the product. But increased domestic demand and the economic advantages of shipping natural gas in liquefied form (it takes up 1/600th the space of gas in its vapor form) have made the terminal financially viable again.
Officials with Williams and Dominion Power, which bought the Cove Point plant last year, have said that reactivating the plant would pose no danger to the surrounding community. Dan Donovan, a Dominion spokesman, said LNG importation is "the safest way to transport natural gas."
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission concurred when, in October 2001, it approved the plan to reactivate and expand Cove Point. But the timing of that decision -- one month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- drew criticism from Mikulski, who called it "cavalier."
Days after Mikulski's comments, the commission hastily convened a conference to take another look at the possible security risks. The approval was affirmed, although the Coast Guard has final say on shipping safety measures.
Mikulski did not drop the matter, sending a letter to Adm. James M. Loy, then Coast Guard commandant, saying that Maryland residents "need to know that LNG shipping to the Cove Point terminal will not be permitted if this would create a new vulnerability to terrorism." Mikulski also wrote that she was "gravely concerned that the U.S. Coast Guard, already stretched to perform added homeland security missions, simply does not have the vessels necessary to take on the added burden LNG shipping would impose."
McPherson said the Coast Guard's ability to handle the load will depend on how heavy the ship traffic becomes. He said the agency can handle "several" ships a month.
But in an interview, Dominion spokesman Donovan said that the company expects "30 to 40 ships" to arrive this year -- meaning that, if shipping commences as anticipated in late August, seven to 10 LNG tankers could enter the bay each month at the outset. That pace would continue -- Dominion expects to receive about 100 ships a year at Cove Point, Donovan said.
Moreover, Donovan said it could take a "couple of days to unload" a tanker.
The Coast Guard anticipates that it will have more help when it formally joins the Department of Homeland Security next month. McPherson said that "undoubtedly that will have benefits," allowing the Coast Guard and other agencies "shared resources, shared communications, shared intelligence."
Officials have taken other preventive measures. Security has been upgraded at the LNG facility and the nuclear plant. The state has distributed potassium iodide pills to residents within 10 miles of the Calvert Cliffs plant to protect them from possible radiation poisoning.
That is little comfort to neighbors of the Cove Point plant, however. Robinson said that she is "feeling less secure, period." She, like many other Americans, no longer believes she is protected from "terrorism by the big Atlantic Ocean."
"I feel that whatever happens will happen quickly and unpredictably," she said.
-------- us politics
Kucinich Takes to The House Floor To Call For An End to The War
For Immediate Release
Contact: Doug Gordon (202) 225-5871 (w)
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/oh10_kucinich/030401floorwar.html
Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), who leads opposition to the War in Iraq within the House, today, issued the following statement on the House floor:
"Stop the war now. As Baghdad will be encircled, this is the time to get the UN back in to inspect Baghdad and the rest of Iraq for biological and chemical weapons. Our troops should not have to be the ones who will find out, in combat, whether Iraq has such weapons. Why put our troops at greater risk? We could get the United Nations inspectors back in.
"Stop the war now. Before we send our troops into house-to-house combat in Baghdad, a city of five million people. Before we ask our troops to take up the burden of shooting innocent civilians in the fog of war.
"Stop the war now. This war has been advanced on lie upon lie. Iraq was not responsible for 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for any role al-Qaeda may have had in 9/11. Iraq was not responsible for the anthrax attacks on this country. Iraq did not tried to acquire nuclear weapons technology from Niger. This war is built on falsehood.
"Stop the war now. We are not defending America in Iraq. Iraq did not attack this nation. Iraq has no ability to attack this nation. Each innocent civilian casualty represents a threat to America for years to come and will end up making our nation less safe. The seventy-five billion dollar supplemental needs to be challenged because each dime we spend on this war makes America less safe. Only international cooperation will help us meet the challenge of terrorism. After 9/11 all Americans remember we had the support and the sympathy of the world. Every nation was ready to be of assistance to the United States in meeting the challenge of terrorism. And yet, with this war, we have squandered the sympathy of the world. We have brought upon this nation the anger of the world. We need the cooperation of the world, to find the terrorists before they come to our shores.
"Stop this war now. Seventy-five billion dollars more for war. Three-quarters of a trillion dollars for tax cuts, but no money for veterans' benefits. Money for war. No money for health care in America, but money for war. No money for social security, but money for war. We have money to blow up bridges over the Tigris and the Euphrates, but no money to build bridges in our own cities. We have money to ruin the health of the Iraqi children, but no money to repair the health of our own children and our educational programs.
"Stop this war now. It is wrong. It is illegal. It is unjust and it will come to no good for this country.
"Stop this war now. Show our wisdom and our humanity, to be able to stop it, to bring back the United Nations into the process. Rescue this moment. Rescue this nation from a war that is wrong, that is unjust, that is immoral.
"Stop this war now."
----
US draws up secret plan to impose regime on Iraq
Brian Whitaker and Luke Harding in Sulaimaniya
Tuesday April 1, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,927055,00.html
A disagreement has broken out at a senior level within the Bush administration over a new government that the US is secretly planning in Kuwait to rule Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Under the plan, the government will consist of 23 ministries, each headed by an American. Every ministry will also have four Iraqi advisers appointed by the Americans, the Guardian has learned.
The government will take over Iraq city by city. Areas declared "liberated" by General Tommy Franks will be transferred to the temporary government under the overall control of Jay Garner, the former US general appointed to head a military occupation of Iraq.
In anticipation of the Baghdad regime's fall, members of this interim government have begun arriving in Kuwait.
Decisions on the government's composition appear to be entirely in US hands, particularly those of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence. This has annoyed Gen Garner, who is officially in charge but who, according to sources close to the planning of the government has had to accept a number of controversial Iraqis in advisory roles.
The most controversial of Mr Wolfowitz's proposed appointees is Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, together with his close associates, including his nephew. During his years in exile, Mr Chalabi has cultivated links with Congress to raise funds, and has become the Pentagon's darling among the Iraqi opposition. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is one of his strongest supporters. The state department and the CIA, on the other hand, regard him with deep suspicion.
He has not lived in Iraq since 1956, apart from a short period organising resistance in the Kurdish north in the 1990s, and is thought to have little support in the country.
Mr Chalabi had envisaged becoming prime minister in an interim government, and is disappointed that no such post is included in the US plan. Instead, the former banker will be offered an advisory job at the finance ministry.
A senior INC official said last night that Mr Chalabi would not countenance a purely advisory position. The official added: "It is certainly not the INC's intention to advise any US ministers in Iraq. Our position is that no Americans should run Iraqi ministries. The US is talking about an interim Iraqi authority taking over, but we are calling for a provisional government."
The revelation about direct rule is likely to cause intense political discomfort for Tony Blair, who has been pressing for UN and international involvement in Iraq's reconstruction to overcome opposition in Britain as well as heal divisions across Europe.
The Foreign Office said last night that a "relatively fluid" number of British officials had been seconded to the planning team.
Last week Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, told Congress that immediately after the fall of President Saddam's regime, the US military would take control of the Iraqi government.
His only concession was that this would be done with the "full understanding" of the international community and with "the UN presence in the form of a special coordinator".
----
The Secret War Machine
The missing link between the Contras and al Qaeda.
By Bruce Sterling
April 2003
Wired
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/view.html?pg=4
It may come as a shock that Vice Admiral John Poindexter has popped up as a visionary cyberguru for Darpa. Until recently, the former national security adviser was best known as a convicted conspirator in the late-'80s Iran-Contra scandal. Poindexter's career move makes sense, though, when you consider the astonishing prescience of his scheme to fund covert operations in Central America. The visionary spirit of Iran-Contra never died, and today it's alive and well and fueling the War on Terror.
People born during Iran-Contra are now nearly old enough to drink, so a quick review is in order. In the mid-'80s, the Republican Reagan administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress differed on how to deal with the menace of the leftist government in Nicaragua. Anticommunist Reaganites favored the classic communist tactic of secretly arming opposition movements ("contra-revolutionaries"), while Congress considered this strategy sneaky, illegal, and destabilizing to the international order. Congress prevailed, cutting off the CIA's funding for a proxy war in Central America.
But Congress was merely a local outfit. The anticommunist faction both privatized and globalized, replacing vanished public subsidies with private funds from right-wing charities like the National Defense Council, the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, and the Western Goals Foundation, as well as from supportive Muslims with oil money to burn. The conspirators secretly acquired weapons from Israel and sold them to Iran at a hefty profit, which they turned over to guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan regime.
Admiral Poindexter's PROF interoffice email system (powered by an IBM mainframe) seems pretty backward nowadays, but there was an unmistakable Enron-style genius in routing charity money and Saudi profits through Israeli arms contractors to buy munitions for Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries. John Poindexter, Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, Richard Secord, John Singlaub, Robert MacFarlane, Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar: These legendary innovators created something truly new and brilliant - an offshore, autonomous, self-financing, global, anticommunist venture-capital outfit big enough to fight a private war against a sovereign nation. Lieutenant Colonel North liked to call it Project Democracy. It ran loops around Congress the way offshore Internet porn rings dodge the US Customs Service.
Hezbollah, the Islamist terror network that still thrives in the ghastly politics of the Middle East, may have triggered the operation's demise. Iran, which had bought hundreds of small rockets through Oliver North, leaned on Hezbollah to release seven American hostages, a cause close to President Reagan's heart. Somebody, quite likely a Hezbollah terrorist, leaked the truth about arms-for-hostages to Al Shiraa, a Lebanese newsweekly. The leak set in motion a stumbling series of revelations and attempted stonewalls that ended the short, inventive life of Project Democracy.
Considering the audacity of the scheme's challenge to Constitutional authority, its principals have done surprisingly well in the years since. Oliver North gave up his uniform to become what he always had been at heart: a right-wing political agitator. Elliot Abrams now manages Venezuelan revolution, counterrevolution, and counter-counterrevolution for the State Department. And, of course, John Poindexter is in charge of the Department of Defense's Total Information Awareness program.
But the real success story is the Contras, or rather their modern successor: al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's crew is a band of government-funded anticommunist counterrevolutionaries who grew up and cut the apron strings. These new-model Contras don't need state support from Washington, Moscow, or any Accessory of Evil. Like Project Democracy, they've got independent financing: oil money, charity money, arms money, and a collection plate wherever a junkie shoots up in an alley. Instead of merely ignoring and subverting governments for a higher cause, as Poindexter did, al Qaeda tries to destroy them outright. Suicide bombers blew the Chechnyan provisional puppet government sky high. Cars packed with explosives nearly leveled the Indian Parliament. We all know what happened to the Pentagon.
The next Iran-Contra is waiting, because the contradictions that created the first have never been resolved. Iran-Contra wasn't about eager American intelligence networks spreading dirty money in distant lands; it was about the gap between old, legitimate, land-based governments ruled by voters and the new, stateless, globalized predation. The next scandal will erupt when someone as molten, self-righteous, and frustrated as John Poindexter uses stateless power for domestic advantage. That's the breaking point in American politics: not when you call in the plumbers, but when you turn them loose on the opposition party. Then the Empire roils in a lather of sudden, indignant fury and strikes back against its own.
Email Bruce Sterling at Bruces@well.com.
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Practice to Deceive
Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan.
By Joshua Micah Marshall
April 2003
Washington Monthly
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html
Imagine it's six months from now. The Iraq war is over. After an initial burst of joy and gratitude at being liberated from Saddam's rule, the people of Iraq are watching, and waiting, and beginning to chafe under American occupation. Across the border, in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, our conquering presence has brought street protests and escalating violence. The United Nations and NATO are in disarray, so America is pretty much on its own. Hemmed in by budget deficits at home and limited financial assistance from allies, the Bush administration is talking again about tapping Iraq's oil reserves to offset some of the costs of the American presence--talk that is further inflaming the region. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence has discovered fresh evidence that, prior to the war, Saddam moved quantities of biological and chemical weapons to Syria. When Syria denies having such weapons, the administration starts massing troops on the Syrian border. But as they begin to move, there is an explosion: Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon blow themselves up in a Baghdad restaurant, killing dozens of Western aid workers and journalists. Knowing that Hezbollah has cells in America, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge puts the nation back on Orange Alert. FBI agents start sweeping through mosques, with a new round of arrests of Saudis, Pakistanis, Palestinians, and Yemenis.
To most Americans, this would sound like a frightening state of affairs, the kind that would lead them to wonder how and why we had got ourselves into this mess in the first place. But to the Bush administration hawks who are guiding American foreign policy, this isn't the nightmare scenario. It's everything going as anticipated.
In their view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."
In short, the administration is trying to roll the table--to use U.S. military force, or the threat of it, to reform or topple virtually every regime in the region, from foes like Syria to friends like Egypt, on the theory that it is the undemocratic nature of these regimes that ultimately breeds terrorism. So events that may seem negative--Hezbollah for the first time targeting American civilians; U.S. soldiers preparing for war with Syria--while unfortunate in themselves, are actually part of the hawks' broader agenda. Each crisis will draw U.S. forces further into the region and each countermove in turn will create problems that can only be fixed by still further American involvement, until democratic governments--or, failing that, U.S. troops--rule the entire Middle East.
There is a startling amount of deception in all this--of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves. While it's conceivable that bold American action could democratize the Middle East, so broad and radical an initiative could also bring chaos and bloodshed on a massive scale. That all too real possibility leads most establishment foreign policy hands, including many in the State Department, to view the Bush plan with alarm. Indeed, the hawks' record so far does not inspire confidence. Prior to the invasion, for instance, they predicted that if the United States simply announced its intention to act against Saddam regardless of how the United Nations voted, most of our allies, eager to be on our good side, would support us. Almost none did. Yet despite such grave miscalculations, the hawks push on with their sweeping new agenda.
Like any group of permanent Washington revolutionaries fueled by visions of a righteous cause, the neocons long ago decided that criticism from the establishment isn't a reason for self-doubt but the surest sign that they're on the right track. But their confidence also comes from the curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that's what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution.
Moral Cloudiness
Ever since the neocons burst upon the public policy scene 30 years ago, their movement has been a marriage of moral idealism, military assertiveness, and deception. Back in the early 1970s, this group of then-young and still mostly Democratic political intellectuals grew alarmed by the post-Vietnam Democrats' seeming indifference to the Soviet threat. They were equally appalled, however, by the amoral worldview espoused by establishment Republicans like Henry Kissinger, who sought co-existence with the Soviet Union. As is often the case with ex-socialists, the neocons were too familiar with communist tactics to ignore or romanticize communism's evils. The fact that many neocons were Jewish, and outraged by Moscow's increasingly visible persecution of Jews, also caused them to reject both the McGovernite and Kissingerian tendencies to ignore such abuses.
In Ronald Reagan, the neocons found a politician they could embrace. Like them, Reagan spoke openly about the evils of communism and, at least on the peripheries of the Cold War, preferred rollback to coexistence. Neocons filled the Reagan administration, and men like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Frank Gaffney, and others provided the intellectual ballast and moral fervor for the sharp turn toward confrontation that the United States adopted in 1981.
But achieving moral clarity often requires hiding certain realities. From the beginning, the neocons took a much more alarmist view of Soviet capacities and intentions than most experts. As late as 1980, the ur-neocon Norman Podhoretz warned of the imminent "Finlandization of America, the political and economic subordination of the United States to superior Soviet power," even raising the possibility that America's only options might be "surrender or war." We now know, of course, that U.S. intelligence estimates, which many neocons thought underestimated the magnitude and durability of Soviet power, in fact wildly overestimated them.
This willingness to deceive--both themselves and others--expanded as neocons grew more comfortable with power. Many spent the Reagan years orchestrating bloody wars against Soviet proxies in the Third World, portraying thugs like the Nicaraguan Contras and plain murderers like Jonas Savimbi of Angola as "freedom fighters." The nadir of this deceit was the Iran-Contra scandal, for which Podhoretz's son-in-law, Elliot Abrams, pled guilty to perjury. Abrams was later pardoned by Bush's father, and today, he runs Middle East policy in the Bush White House.
But in the end, the Soviet Union did fall. And the hawks' policy of confrontation did contribute to its collapse. So too, of course, did the economic and military rot most of the hawks didn't believe in, and the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom neocons such as Richard Perle counseled Reagan not to trust. But the neocons did not dwell on what they got wrong. Rather, the experience of having played a hand in the downfall of so great an evil led them to the opposite belief: that it's okay to be spectacularly wrong, even brazenly deceptive about the details, so long as you have moral vision and a willingness to use force.
What happened in the 1990s further reinforced that mindset. Hawks like Perle and William Kristol pulled their hair out when Kissingerians like Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell left Saddam's regime in place after the first Gulf War. They watched with mounting fury as terrorist attacks by Muslim fundamentalists claimed more and more American and Israeli lives. They considered the Oslo accords an obvious mistake (how can you negotiate with a man like Yasir Arafat?), and as the decade progressed they became increasingly convinced that there was a nexus linking burgeoning terrorism and mounting anti-Semitism with repressive but nominally "pro-American" regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In 1996, several of the hawks--including Perle--even tried to sell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the idea that Israel should attack Saddam on its own--advice Netanyahu wisely declined. When the Oslo process crumbled and Saudi Arabian terrorists killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11, the hawks felt, not without some justification, that they had seen this danger coming all along, while others had ignored it. The timing was propitious, because in September 2001 many already held jobs with a new conservative president willing to hear their pitch.
Prime Minister bin Laden
The pitch was this: The Middle East today is like the Soviet Union 30 years ago. Politically warped fundamentalism is the contemporary equivalent of communism or fascism. Terrorists with potential access to weapons of mass destruction are like an arsenal pointed at the United States. The primary cause of all this danger is the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, poverty, and economic stagnation. Repressive regimes channel dissent into the mosques, where the hopeless and disenfranchised are taught a brand of Islam that combines anti-modernism, anti-Americanism, and a worship of violence that borders on nihilism. Unable to overthrow their own authoritarian rulers, the citizenry turns its fury against the foreign power that funds and supports these corrupt regimes to maintain stability and access to oil: the United States. As Johns Hopkins University professor Fouad Ajami recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, "The great indulgence granted to the ways and phobias of Arabs has reaped a terrible harvest"--terrorism. Trying to "manage" this dysfunctional Islamic world, as Clinton attempted and Colin Powell counsels us to do, is as foolish, unproductive, and dangerous as détente was with the Soviets, the hawks believe. Nor is it necessary, given the unparalleled power of the American military. Using that power to confront Soviet communism led to the demise of that totalitarianism and the establishment of democratic (or at least non-threatening) regimes from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea to the Bering Strait. Why not use that same power to upend the entire corrupt Middle East edifice and bring liberty, democracy, and the rule of law to the Arab world?
The hawks' grand plan differs depending on whom you speak to, but the basic outline runs like this: The United States establishes a reasonably democratic, pro-Western government in Iraq--assume it falls somewhere between Turkey and Jordan on the spectrum of democracy and the rule of law. Not perfect, representative democracy, certainly, but a system infinitely preferable to Saddam's. The example of a democratic Iraq will radically change the political dynamics of the Middle East. When Palestinians see average Iraqis beginning to enjoy real freedom and economic opportunity, they'll want the same themselves. With that happy prospect on one hand and implacable United States will on the other, they'll demand that the Palestinian Authority reform politically and negotiate with Israel. That in turn will lead to a real peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. A democratic Iraq will also hasten the fall of the fundamentalist Shi'a mullahs in Iran, whose citizens are gradually adopting anti-fanatic, pro-Western sympathies. A democratized Iran would create a string of democratic, pro-Western governments (Turkey, Iraq, and Iran) stretching across the historical heartland of Islam. Without a hostile Iraq towering over it, Jordan's pro-Western Hashemite monarchy would likely come into full bloom. Syria would be no more than a pale reminder of the bad old days. (If they made trouble, a U.S. invasion would take care of them, too.) And to the tiny Gulf emirates making hesitant steps toward democratization, the corrupt regimes of Saudi Arabia and Egypt would no longer look like examples of stability and strength in a benighted region, but holdouts against the democratic tide. Once the dust settles, we could decide whether to ignore them as harmless throwbacks to the bad old days or deal with them, too. We'd be in a much stronger position to do so since we'd no longer require their friendship to help us manage ugly regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
The audacious nature of the neocons' plan makes it easy to criticize but strangely difficult to dismiss outright. Like a character in a bad made-for-TV thriller from the 1970s, you can hear yourself saying, "That plan's just crazy enough to work."
But like a TV plot, the hawks' vision rests on a willing suspension of disbelief, in particular, on the premise that every close call will break in our favor: The guard will fall asleep next to the cell so our heroes can pluck the keys from his belt. The hail of enemy bullets will plink-plink-plink over our heroes' heads. And the getaway car in the driveway will have the keys waiting in the ignition. Sure, the hawks' vision could come to pass. But there are at least half a dozen equally plausible alternative scenarios that would be disastrous for us.
To begin with, this whole endeavor is supposed to be about reducing the long-term threat of terrorism, particularly terrorism that employs weapons of mass destruction. But, to date, every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits. Placing U.S. troops in Riyadh after the Gulf War (to protect Saudi Arabia and its oilfields from Saddam) gave Osama bin Laden a cause around which he built al Qaeda. Israel took the West Bank in a war of self-defense, but once there its occupation helped give rise to Hamas. Israel's incursion into southern Lebanon (justified at the time, but transformed into a permanent occupation) led to the rise of Hezbollah. Why do we imagine that our invasion and occupation of Iraq, or whatever countries come next, will turn out any differently?
The Bush administration also insists that our right to act preemptively and unilaterally, with or without the international community's formal approval, rests on the need to protect American lives. But with the exception of al Qaeda, most terrorist organizations in the world, and certainly in the Middle East, do not target Americans. Hamas certainly doesn't. Hezbollah, the most fearsome of terrorist organizations beside al Qaeda, has killed American troops in the Middle East, but not for some years, and it has never targeted American civilians on American soil. Yet like Hamas, Hezbollah has an extensive fundraising cell operation in the States (as do many terrorist organizations, including the Irish Republican Army). If we target them in the Middle East, can't we reasonably assume they will respond by activating these cells and taking the war worldwide?
Next, consider the hawks' plans for those Middle East states that are authoritarian yet "friendly" to the United States--specifically Egypt and Saudi Arabia. No question these are problem countries. Their governments buy our weapons and accept our foreign aid yet allow vicious anti-Semitism to spew from the state run airwaves and tolerate clerics who preach jihad against the West. But is it really in our interests to work for their overthrow? Many hawks clearly think so. I asked Richard Perle last year about the dangers that might flow from the fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "Mubarak is no great shakes," he quipped. "Surely we can do better than Mubarak." When I asked Perle's friend and fellow Reagan-era neocon Ken Adelman to calculate the costs of having the toppling of Saddam lead to the overthrow of the House of Saud, he shot back: "All the better if you ask me."
This cavalier call for regime change, however, runs into a rather obvious problem. When the communist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe fell after 1989, the people of those nations felt grateful to the United States because we helped liberate them from their Russian colonial masters. They went on to create pro-Western democracies. The same is unlikely to happen, however, if we help "liberate" Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The tyrannies in these countries are home grown, and the U.S. government has supported them, rightly or wrongly, for decades, even as we've ignored (in the eyes of Arabs) the plight of the Palestinians. Consequently, the citizens of these countries generally hate the United States, and show strong sympathy for Islamic radicals. If free elections were held in Saudi Arabia today, Osama bin Laden would probably win more votes than Crown Prince Abdullah. Topple the pro-Western autocracies in these countries, in other words, and you won't get pro-Western democracies but anti-Western tyrannies.
To this dilemma, the hawks offer two responses. One is that eventually the citizens of Egypt and Saudi Arabia will grow disenchanted with their anti-Western Islamic governments, just as the people of Iran have, and become our friends. To which the correct response is, well, sure, that's a nice theory, but do we really want to make the situation for ourselves hugely worse now on the strength of a theoretical future benefit?
The hawks' other response is that if the effort to push these countries toward democracy goes south, we can always use our military might to secure our interests. "We need to be more assertive," argues Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, "and stop letting all these two-bit dictators and rogue regimes push us around and stop being a patsy for our so-called allies, especially in Saudi Arabia." Hopefully, in Boot's view, laying down the law will be enough. But he envisions a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States "occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region."
What Boot is calling for, in other words, is the creation of a de facto American empire in the Middle East. In fact, there's a subset of neocons who believe that given our unparalleled power, empire is our destiny and we might as well embrace it. The problem with this line of thinking is, of course, that it ignores the lengthy and troubling history of imperial ambitions, particularly in the Middle East. The French and the English didn't leave voluntarily; they were driven out. And they left behind a legacy of ignorance, exploitation, and corruption that's largely responsible for the region's current dysfunctional politics.
Another potential snafu for the hawks is Iran, arguably the most dangerous state in the Middle East. The good news is that the fundamentalist Shi'a mullahs who have been running the government, exporting terrorism, and trying to enrich their uranium, are increasingly unpopular. Most experts believe that the mullahs' days are numbered, and that true democracy will come to Iran. That day will arrive sooner, the hawks argue, with a democratic Iraq on Iran's border. But the opposite could happen. If the mullahs are smart, they'll cooperate just enough with the Americans not to provoke an attack, but put themselves forth to their own people as defenders of Iranian independence and Iran's brother Shi'a in southern Iraq who are living under the American jackboot. Such a strategy might keep the fundamentalists in power for years longer than they otherwise might have been.
Then there is the mother of all problems, Iraq. The hawks' whole plan rests on the assumption that we can turn it into a self-governing democracy--that the very presence of that example will transform politics in the Middle East. But what if we can't really create a democratic, self-governing Iraq, at least not very quickly? What if the experience we had after World War II in Germany and Japan, two ethnically homogeneous nations, doesn't quite work in an ethnically divided Iraq where one group, the Sunni Arabs, has spent decades repressing and slaughtering the others? As one former Army officer with long experience with the Iraq file explains it, the "physical analogy to Saddam Hussein's regime is a steel beam in compression." Give it one good hit, and you'll get a violent explosion. One hundred thousand U.S. troops may be able to keep a lid on all the pent-up hatred. But we may soon find that it's unwise to hand off power to the fractious Iraqis. To invoke the ugly but apt metaphor which Jefferson used to describe the American dilemma of slavery, we will have the wolf by the ears. You want to let go. But you dare not.
And what if we do muster the courage to allow elections, but the Iraqis choose a government we can't live with--as the Japanese did in their first post-war election, when the United States purged the man slated to become prime minister? But if we do that in Iraq, how will it look on Al Jazeera? Ultimately, the longer we stay as occupiers, the more Iraq becomes not an example for other Arabs to emulate, but one that helps Islamic fundamentalists make their case that America is just an old-fashioned imperium bent on conquering Arab lands. And that will make worse all the problems set forth above.
None of these problems are inevitable, of course. Luck, fortitude, deft management, and help from allies could bring about very different results. But we can probably only rely on the first three because we are starting this enterprise over the expressed objections of almost every other country in the world. And that's yet another reason why overthrowing the Middle East won't be the same as overthrowing communism. We did the latter, after all, within a tight formal alliance, NATO. Reagan's most effective military move against Moscow, for instance, placing Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, could never have happened, given widespread public protests, except that NATO itself voted to let the weapons in. In the Middle East, however, we're largely alone. If things go badly, what allies we might have left are liable to say to us: You broke it, you fix it.
Whacking the Hornet's Nest
If the Bush administration has thought through these various negative scenarios--and we must presume, or at least pray, that it has--it certainly has not shared them with the American people. More to the point, the president has not even leveled with the public that such a clean-sweep approach to the Middle East is, in fact, their plan. This breaks new ground in the history of pre-war presidential deception. Franklin Roosevelt said he was trying to keep the United States out of World War II even as he--in some key ways--courted a confrontation with the Axis powers that he saw as both inevitable and necessary. History has judged him well for this. Far more brazenly, Lyndon Johnson's administration greatly exaggerated the Gulf of Tonkin incident to gin up support for full-throttle engagement in Vietnam. The war proved to be Johnson's undoing. When President Clinton used American troops to quell the fighting in Bosnia he said publicly that our troops would be there no longer than a year, even though it was widely understood that they would be there far longer. But in the case of these deceptions, the public was at least told what the goals of the wars were and whom and where we would be fighting.
Today, however, the great majority of the American people have no concept of what kind of conflict the president is leading them into. The White House has presented this as a war to depose Saddam Hussein in order to keep him from acquiring weapons of mass destruction--a goal that the majority of Americans support. But the White House really has in mind an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public. The White House knows that. So it hasn't even tried. Instead, it's focused on getting us into Iraq with the hope of setting off a sequence of events that will draw us inexorably towards the agenda they have in mind.
The brazenness of this approach would be hard to believe if it weren't entirely in line with how the administration has pursued so many of its other policy goals. Its preferred method has been to use deceit to create faits accomplis, facts on the ground that then make the administration's broader agenda almost impossible not to pursue. During and after the 2000 campaign, the president called for major education and prescription drug programs plus a huge tax cut, saying America could easily afford them all because of large budget surpluses. Critics said it wasn't true, and the growing budget deficits have proven them right. But the administration now uses the existence of big budget deficits as a way to put the squeeze on social programs--part of its plan all along. Strip away the presidential seal and the fancy titles, and it's just a straight-up con.
The same strategy seemed to guide the administration's passive-aggressive attitude towards our allies. It spent the months after September 11 signaling its distaste for international agreements and entangling alliances. The president then demanded last September that the same countries he had snubbed support his agenda in Iraq. And last month, when most of those countries refused, hawks spun that refusal as evidence that they were right all along. Recently, a key neoconservative commentator with close ties to the administration told me that the question since the end of the Cold War has been which global force would create the conditions for global peace and security: the United States, NATO, or the United Nations. With NATO now wrecked, he told me, the choice is between the Unites States and the United Nations. Whether NATO is actually wrecked remains to be seen. But the strategy is clear: push the alliance to the breaking point, and when it snaps, cite it as proof that the alliance was good for nothing anyway. It's the definition of chutzpah, like the kid who kills his parents and begs the judge for sympathy because he's an orphan.
Another president may be able to rebuild NATO or get the budget back in balance. But once America begins the process of remaking the Middle East in the way the hawks have in mind, it will be extremely difficult for any president to pull back. Vietnam analogies have long been overused, and used inappropriately, but this may be one case where the comparison is apt.
Ending Saddam Hussein's regime and replacing it with something stable and democratic was always going to be a difficult task, even with the most able leadership and the broadest coalition. But doing it as the Bush administration now intends is something like going outside and giving a few good whacks to a hornets' nest because you want to get them out in the open and have it out with them once and for all. Ridding the world of Islamic terrorism by rooting out its ultimate sources--Muslim fundamentalism and the Arab world's endemic despotism, corruption, and poverty--might work. But the costs will be immense. Whether the danger is sufficient and the costs worth incurring would make for an interesting public debate. The problem is that once it's just us and the hornets, we really won't have any choice.
Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer, is author of the Talking Points Memo.
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Bush Defends the Progress of the War
April 1, 2003
The New York Times
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/international/worldspecial/01CAPI.html
WASHINGTON, March 31 - President Bush mounted a vigorous defense today of the progress made in the war against Iraq, seeking to rebut concerns in the military and nervousness within his own party about how the conflict is going and how it was planned.
"In 11 days, coalition forces have taken control of most of western and southern Iraq," Mr. Bush said to cheers from Coast Guard employees at the port of Philadelphia. "Day by day, we are moving closer to Baghdad. Day by day, we are moving closer to victory."
Mr. Bush's speech came after a flurry of questions among political and military leaders about whether he had committed enough military forces to the campaign, whether the Pentagon had correctly anticipated the resolve of fighters in southern Iraq and on the outskirts of Baghdad and the degree to which the administration had miscalculated the support Saddam Hussein enjoys.
While no Republicans would put their name to their comments, fearing retribution from the White House, interviews revealed nervousness within the party.
Some Republicans in Washington were clearly jittery about the course and conduct of a war whose outcome they argued was pivotal to Mr. Bush's re-election next year. And their concern reflected a resurgence of the friction between conservatives who pressed for a military campaign to remove Mr. Hussein and moderates who advocated a more nuanced diplomatic effort and are more closely allied with Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state.
Many Republicans said they were confident that the United States would win the war, albeit after a longer battle than they had expected, and that President Bush would be in a powerful position as he heads into a re-election campaign.
But some Republican officials recalled how quickly Mr. Bush's father's standing fell after the last gulf war. They said there was a cautionary lesson for this President Bush, and that a long, violent, unresolved conflict - like one in which Mr. Hussein was not found or killed - could pose a serious problem to Mr. Bush next year.
"I don't understand what is floating his ship except patriotism and terrorism concerns," said one conservative Republican political strategist. "If the tide turns, there's nothing else that keeps his boat afloat. There's a sort of feeling out there of, `Where is this thing going?' We were all happy to follow President Bush into this, but we're now starting to look up at the hillside and wondering who's up there."
Much of the criticism was aimed at Mr. Bush and two of his top war advisers, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz.
"It's obvious that all the Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz battle plans are not panning out," said a veteran Republican strategist based in Washington. "Rumsfeld can only reform things so long before it gets pointed out that they underestimated what was necessary. Where are the flowers being thrown at our forces? Where are the peace signs?"
The concerns came in both political and military quarters. A retired general who served under President Bush's father in the first Persian Gulf war said he believed that the United States would still prevail, despite what he described as the failure of the Pentagon to deploy an adequate contingent of ground forces in the opening days of the war. But he predicted that these difficult first two weeks would harm the nation's standing as a military force.
"What's troublesome is the loss of deterrent value," the retired general said. "A month ago everybody in the world looked at the U.S. military as being 10 feet tall. We're not 10 feet tall."
George A. Joulwan, a former NATO commander, said Mr. Hussein had surprised coalition forces with his own combat plan. "Clearly we have not been greeted as liberators with flags waving, and we've got to go to Plan B," he said. "I wouldn't wring my hands over it. In war, you adjust to the unexpected. We've got forces arriving. It's just going to take longer than we thought."
For all the uncertainty, most leading Republicans seemed to stand by the president. The criticisms were less evidence of any mass defection, but rather of discomfort that several of Mr. Bush's supporters argued was exaggerated by the intense and sometimes critical coverage of the war on television.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans said they remained united behind the administration. "There is pretty much unity within the caucus," said one senior Republican aide. "I don't sense that the same type of Republican division that might be playing out with the old Bush guard is spreading to the hill."
Similarly, party leaders across the country expressed confidence in the ultimate outcome.
"There's a sense of uncertainty, but there's also a great amount of confidence," said Gov. John G. Rowland of Connecticut. "Like anything else in life, the real challenge for the military leadership is to manage expectations. I think to the viewing public they are doing fine. But to some of the harsher critics, and some of the people who want to formulate a judgment after 15 days, well . . ."
Mr. Bush never mentioned his critics in his comments in Philadelphia today, where he talked on a pier at a busy port, as a chill wind whipped through the crowd. Wearing a Coast Guard windbreaker, he ticked off the accomplishments of the war so far, saying, "In 11 days, we have seized key bridges, opened a northern front, nearly achieved complete air superiority, and have delivered tons of humanitarian aid. By quick and decisive action, our troops are keeping Saddam Hussein from destroying the Iraqi people's oil."
Mr. Bush also said nothing of tactical pauses, or the debate over whether to wait for additional forces before beginning the final assault on Baghdad. He said little about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
And despite evidence that most Iraqis have not welcomed American forces, Mr. Bush cast himself as the country's liberator, telling Iraqis, "We are coming with a mighty force to end the reign of your oppressors."
Mr. Bush's return today to the theme of liberation was telling because White House officials have concluded that it is the argument most likely to quell questions over military tactics. He described, in some detail, how Iraqi "death squads" had killed civilians who do not fight the coalition forces, saying the bodies of dead Iraqis show many were shot from behind.
His aides sought to answer the critics of the war plan by comparing the speed of the advance to the time it took - nearly a year - to bring about the collapse of Nazi Germany after the D-Day invasion. "The lesson isn't the scope of the operation," one senior administration official said. "The lesson is that wars require patience."
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, used a similar D-Day analogy in briefing reporters last week. The analogy may not be apt. One retired Air Force general, a veteran of the first gulf war, said over the weekend, "Someone ought to tell these guys that we're taking out a failing, rogue regime, not the conqueror of all of Europe."
Mr. Bush made no mention of the debate within his administration and among military commanders over whether to consolidate the coalition's gains in the south and west before taking on far more complex military tasks. The debate, administration officials said today, has to do with when Mr. Bush will be able to claim that enough of the country is in the control of United States and British forces that an "Iraqi Interim Authority" can be declared, as an alternative government to that of Mr. Hussein.
So Mr. Bush focused instead today on progress that he described as "brilliant."
"Our forces moved into Iraqi missile launch areas that threatened neighboring countries," he said, a comparison to the first gulf war, when missiles were fired at Israel. "We are coming and we will not stop," he said emphatically. "We will not relent, until your country is free."
Throughout the day, even if there was disagreement about the planning for the military campaign, there was a consensus that Mr. Bush has a lot riding on the outcome. That is particularly true given the continuing problems of the economy.
"I think the war is going to be a success and then immediately the country will pivot to focusing on the economy," said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist.
But even beyond that, there remain questions peculiar to this unusual war, ranging from whether Mr. Hussein needs to be be captured or killed in order for Mr. Bush to declare victory, to how Americans will react if allied forces fail to find evidence of the weapons of mass destruction Mr. Bush cited in rallying the nation to war.
"This is the big enchilada - not much doubt about that," said Bob Dole, the former Senate majority leader who ran for president in 1996. "If it goes well, he's in great shape. If it doesn't go well, he's got problems. He knew that going into this."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan clerics call for new holy war
By Phil Reeves, Asia Correspondent
01 April 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=392812
Posters apparently endorsed by one of America's most wanted fugitives, Mullah Mohammed Omar, have appeared in Afghanistan calling for renewed holy war, providing a further sign that the conflict is worsening.
Signed by 600 Islamic clerics, the posters appeared amid a flurry of attacks which saw guerrillas fire rockets at a United Nations base in Kabul and at US military installations.
The deteriorating situation has been underscored in the past few days by the killing of two American special forces soldiers in an ambush in southern Afghanistan and the death of a Red Cross worker, shot through the head while on a mission to install water wells.
The posters are circulating in eastern Afghanistan - a main area of opposition to the US and the Washington-backed government of Hamid Karzai - and call for a jihad against the Americans and Afghans who work with them.
They aim to undermine efforts by Karzai to build a national army and police force to establish control over the country. Six Afghan soldiers have been killed.
Suspicion is directed at the Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and elements of al-Qa'ida and Taliban with whom he appears to have forged links. Recent reports of interviews with Taliban loyalists in hiding in tribal regions of Pakistan say they have regrouped and built an alliance with Hekmatyar's Hezb-e-Islami faction. Preparations are said to be under way for the next phase - hit-and-run attacks.
The US military and international peacekeepers say that recent attacks against them are not linked to the invasion of Iraq.
But the text of the posters - reportedly a decree from the Taliban leader Mullah Omar himself - made a specific link: "Whenever the non-Muslims attack a Muslim land it is the duty of everyone to rise up against the aggressor.
"We were blamed for Osama bin Laden because they said he was a terrorist and was taking shelter with us. But what is the fault of Iraq? Iraq has no Osama bin Laden in his country."
The 5,000-strong peacekeeping force - the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) - includes nations opposed to the war on Iraq. ISAF staff were attacked late on Sunday, when a 122mm rocket was fired into their compound. Another rocket was fired near an ISAF base on Sunday night, also without causing injuries.
----
Rockets fired at UN bases
April 1 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/31/1048962700194.html
Two rockets were fired at bases of the United Nations-mandated security force in Kabul, just hours after United States military officials announced they would expand operations in response to a sharp increase in Taliban activity in southern Afghanistan.
No one was hurt in the attacks, apparently aimed at two compounds, kilometres apart, of the German- and Dutch- led International Security Assistance Force.
Rockets have sporadically been fired into Kabul over the past year, showing that opponents to the international military presence are still active.
US officials said one goal of their expanded operations was to find those responsible for the ambush on a special forces team on Saturday that left two men dead and one critically injured.
The ambush, which Afghan officials believe was carried out by local Afghans and Taliban supporters, came a day after an armed Taliban group in the same region pulled a foreign Red Cross worker from his car and shot him.
Hundreds of Afghan police and intelligence agents were deployed across the southern province of Helmand on Sunday to search for those responsible for the ambush as coalition aircraft patrolled overhead.
Fighting continued in the adjoining province of Oruzgan as hundreds more Afghan forces and US special operations forces battled Taliban fighters believed to have been responsible for killing the Red Cross worker.
Helmand police attributed the attacks on the Red Cross worker and on the US soldiers to a notoriously brutal Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, who boasted about killing Americans in an interview with the BBC's Pashto service on Friday.
Afghan authorities had arrested a former Taliban trade minister, Mullah Abdul Razzaq, in the south of the country, an Afghan official said yesterday.
The New York Times, The Boston Globe, agencies
-------- arms sales
Air war weapon stockpile runs critically low
US needs to keep up supplies to back threat of new wars
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday April 1, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,926996,00.html
With the war in Iraq threatening to last significantly longer than expected, US forces in the Gulf are in increasing danger of running out of some of their most important weapons in the air war.
In the first 11 days of the conflict, the US navy has fired 700 of its stock of 1,200 Tomahawk cruise missiles on ships and submarines in the region. Meanwhile, the air force and navy together have used 5,000 satellite-guided bombs, known as JDAMs, which account for more than 80% of the bombs dropped so far. The JDAM (joint direct attack munitions) arsenals on the five US aircraft carriers in the Gulf are already running low.
One solution is to switch to different types of weapons, which will happen anyway as the focus of the air campaign shifts from fixed to moving targets, from palaces and government buildings to tanks.
The other solution is to take more Tomahawks and JDAMs into the region. But even worldwide inventories would not last for many months, and US military planners, always thinking at least one war ahead, are concerned that the US might use all its firepower in Iraq and not leave enough to deal with another possible threat, such as a North Korean attack on Seoul.
There are about 13,000 JDAMs left in stockpiles around the world, according to air force estimates, and they can be shipped to the region relatively easily. They may need to be. US warplanes are maintaining a rate of 500 strike sorties a day (and 1,000 more support flights) as they continue to attack Baghdad and the Republican Guard divisions around the city.
There are also about 2,300 Tomahawk missiles left in American global arsenals, enough for about three more weeks of air strikes at the current rate. They are much harder to bring into action, as the missile arsenals of ships and submarines cannot be replenished at sea. More Tomahawks can only be brought to the battlefield by bringing new ships and submarines into the region.
JDAM have a strap-on guidance system added, mainly to 1,000lb or 2,000lb "dumb" gravity bombs, to make them "smart". They are therefore relatively cheap, about $20,000 each, a fraction of the cost of other guided bombs and missiles, such as the $600,000 Tomahawk.
Boeing, the manufacturer, has been turning JDAMs out around the clock since the Afghan war, when stocks ran seriously low. It has also increased its capacity over the past year, but monthly output is still only 1,500 a month, enough for only about two days at the current rate of sorties.
Military analysts say there is a limit to the extent the Pentagon can afford to move its arsenal of munitions around the world because it cannot leave itself unprepared to face a second, simultaneous threat elsewhere.
"The problem is that there has to be enough for this war and another one. We would have to be able to respond if the North Koreans move on Seoul," said Daniel Gouré, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute.
But the US armed forces will need fewer Tomahawks and JDAMs as the war progresses.
Bob Martinage, an expert at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments said: "The Tomahawk is meant to go after fixed targets and they've hit most of those. There are only so many targets in that target set. When you shift to hitting targets of opportunity, you don't need them so much."
The same is true for JDAMs, which use satellite signals and GPS (global positioning system) to adjust the tail fins on the bomb, landing it within a few metres of the target. They need to be programmed with the targets' coordinates and are less useful against moving targets like tanks in battle.
Mr Gouré said as pitched battles get under way between coalition and Iraqi forces, coalition warplanes would be used less to bomb buildings and more to serve as close air support. "For that, Mavericks [heat-guided air-to-surface missiles] and laser-guided weapons," he said. "Laser-guided weapons are better than JDAMs when you start getting moving targets."
There are already signs that the coalition planners are running out of fixed targets to bomb. Over the past few days the bombers have gone back to presidential palaces and government buildings they had already attacked.
When it comes to trying to destroy bunkers, JDAMs and Tomahawks are not the ideal weapons. For that the US air force has the GBU 57, a 5,000lb satellite-guided bomb in a hardened casing that can penetrate 12 metres (40ft) of concrete or 30 metres of earth.
The Pentagon has already placed orders to replenish its stocks. Admiral William Fallon, the vice-chief of naval operations, said last week that the navy was requesting at least $3.7bn to replenish its munitions stocks to "restore inventories to pre-conflict levels".
In the short term, JDAMs can be reallocated from the air force to the navy. In the longer term, Boeing is due to double its production to 3,000 a month by the end of this year. The company will supply the air force and navy with a 250,000 of the guided bombs by 2008.
-------- britain
Hoon rules out any major reinforcements
By George Jones, Political Editor
01/04/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/01/nhoon01.xml/
Substantial reinforcement of British forces in Iraq was ruled out for the time being by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, yesterday.
He told the Commons that, after 12 days of military action, allied forces had made a "remarkable advance" into Iraq and were making steady progress in achieving their objectives.
Mr Hoon said individual units, which had been in the Gulf for many months, would be replaced "as and when necessary".
But he ruled out at this stage any substantial increase in the total number of British forces in Iraq. About 45,000 servicemen and women had been judged to be sufficient. "Nothing has changed my assessment of that position," he told Bernard Jenkin, shadow defence spokesman.
Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, said yesterday he was ready to provide more money for the war and said the troops must have all the equipment and supplies needed to defeat Saddam Hussein, however long it took.
Mr Hoon and No 10 launched a concerted effort to counter suggestions of splits among military chiefs and political leaders over the running of the war.
He claimed that much of the problem had been caused by commentators suggesting that it would be a short conflict with little or no resistance.
"As I indicated at the start of military operations, this was always likely to be a difficult, demanding and indeed, dangerous, conflict. It's right we should see it in that way," he said.
He told MPs that there had been no defections yet of senior Iraqi politicians or military commanders but there had been "significant surrenders", with about 8,000 prisoners of war now held. This was challenged by a defence source, who put the figure at only 4,000.
Mr Jenkin said the overall advance had been described as the fastest armoured thrust in history and Britain's forces had carried out some spectacular actions.
Downing Street delivered a sharp rebuff to Robin Cook, who resigned from the Cabinet over the war, for calling for British troops to be brought home from Iraq and then retracting his suggestion.
"You don't start a military campaign and then call it off after 12 days simply because you have not achieved all your objectives in that time period," the Prime Minister's spokesman said.
"To do so would leave Saddam immeasurably strengthened and send a green light to dictators all over the world that the international community doesn't have the will to see things through and we are not prepared to do that."
At the weekend, Tony Blair briefed five fellow world leaders on his Camp David talks with President George W Bush. He spoke to John Howard, the Australian prime minister, President Jacques Chirac, President Vladimir Putin, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder and Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish prime minister.
Downing Street said Mr Blair was not concerned by media reports that the campaign had become bogged down. "The Prime Minister has not been carried away by the successes nor has he been overwhelmed by the difficulties and problems. He remains relentlessly focused on the big picture," his spokesman said.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Conservative leader, said stopping the war in Iraq now would mean that British servicemen who had already lost their lives in the conflict will have died in vain.
He cautioned against "analysing the war minute by minute", saying that no one could expect the conflict to be won in a day.
Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, said it was "not realistic at all" to expect a ceasefire or a withdrawal of British troops. "We owe it to our troops to give them every possible moral support under what are extremely dangerous and difficult circumstances," he said.
Mr Brown departed from a prepared speech to the British Chambers of Commerce national conference in London to praise the Armed Forces and send condolences to the families of the 25 British servicemen killed in action.
Last week, Mr Brown pre-empted his April 9 Budget to announce that he was setting aside a special £3 billion reserve for the costs of the war.
However, the cost could rise to £10 billion if the war lasts for weeks.
Mr Brown told the conference: "I am sure you agree that we will wish to ensure that the armed forces are properly equipped."
-------- business
Deal to sell water all wet, critics charge
April 1, 2003
By RICHARD SISK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
http://www.nydailynews.com/04-01-2003/news/story/71786p-66584c.html
UMM QASR, Iraq - The U.S. military came up with a solution yesterday for the penniless people of this port town begging for water: Sell it.
Despite general mayhem at distribution points - including knife fights - the Army has struck a hasty agreement with local Iraqis to expedite distribution of water to the roughly 40,000 living here.
Under the deal, the military will provide water free to locals with access to tanker trucks, who then will be allowed to sell the water for a "reasonable" fee.
"We're permitting them to charge a small fee for water," said Army Col. David Bassert.
"This provides them with an incentive to hustle and to work," said Bassert, an assistant commander with the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade.
He said he could not suggest what constitutes a reasonable fee and did not know what the truckers were charging. He said the tradition here of haggling at markets would help the system work.
"People know when they're being gouged - we'll deal with it," Bassert said.
But with the population badly in need of water, food and medical supplies, the arrangement drew its share of critics.
'This is crazy'
Several Iraqi-Americans originally from this region, who are working as interpreters and guides with the U.S. military, were incensed at what they consider an attempt to jump-start a free-market economy during a crisis.
"This is bull----," said an Iraqi-American who asked to be identified only as Ahmed. "They are selling water and this is crazy. Nobody has any money, nobody knows what is money [to use] - Iraqi money, American money, nobody knows."
A British military spokesman angrily objected to the water deal. The British control the city of Umm Qasr while the Americans are in charge of the port.
"We're not going to have any charging for water. What kind of an aid plan would that be? These people don't even have shoes," the spokesman said.
Ahmed and the others said they had seen fights with fists and knives among desperate locals trying to get water from the truckers.
Ill at ease
The reports could not be independently confirmed because a promised military escort for reporters into town never took place.
Officers said the trip was canceled because of widespread clashes between remnants of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's supporters and British troops, although no firing could be heard and the Iraqi-Americans who spent the afternoon in town said no clashes had taken place.
But the general situation was far from secure. A heavy mortar or artillery round launched toward the port shook buildings and rattled windows but exploded beyond the fence and caused no casualties.
Editor's Note: The military has confiscated the satellite phones of a certain make used by journalists traveling with U.S. troops in Iraq, including those used by reporter Richard Sisk and photographer Todd Maisel of the Daily News, for fear that Iraqi forces could intercept the signal and target U.S. positions. This dispatch has been sent by other means approved by the military, but military officials did not review or restrict its contents.
-------- chemical weapons
New System Tracks Military Herbicides Used in Vietnam
NEW YORK, New York,
April 1, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2003/2003-04-01-19.asp#anchor4
Between 1961 and 1971, U.S. military forces dispersed over 19 million gallons of herbicidal agents, including over 12 million gallons of Agent Orange, in the Republic of Vietnam.
Millions of Vietnamese and a large number of the 3.2 million American men and women who served in the armed forces in Vietnam in areas defoliated by herbicides such as Agent Orange were exposed, but the health effects still are not fully known.
Now researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health have developed a geographic information system (GIS) to estimate these exposures by analyzing the relationships between herbicide spraying, geography, population, and troop location.
Researchers now have a tool to pursue epidemiologic and environmental studies of exposed individuals, military units, and other entities whose health might be affected by spraying activities.
Co-lead investigators of the study Jeanne Stellman, professor of clinical health policy and management, and Steven Stellman, professor of clinical epidemiology, both at the Mailman School, developed the GIS tool that will allow researchers to generate a quantitative measure and estimate and assign herbicide exposure opportunity scores to troops, locations, and individuals - critical tools for epidemiologic investigations of health outcomes.
What this means for individuals is that now both Vietnam veterans and residents can determine their proximity to herbicide sprays by reducing otherwise complex exposure model calculations with rapid, straightforward arithmetic procedures.
Dr. Jeanne Stellman said, "While Vietnam was not uniformly sprayed, patterns we see are sufficient to justify these studies on military and civilian populations as well as studies of environmental and ecologic damage."
Dr. Steven Stellman said, "Lack of data and exposure models no longer need to be the major impediments they have been in the past to research the health of Vietnam veterans and the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian people." The complete findings of the study are published in the March issue of "Environmental Health Perspectives." The abstract is online at: http://ehponline.org/orange2003/
The National Academy of Sciences, as contractors of the research, will be issuing a report to the Veterans Administration with recommendations for next steps and continuing epidemiologic research on the effects of Agent Orange.
-------- europe
EU Drafts Human Rights Resolution for War
April 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Human-Rights.html
GENEVA (AP) -- The European Union proposed a United Nations human rights resolution Tuesday urging both sides to ``abide strictly'' by international law in the war on Iraq.
U.S. leaders have accused Iraqis of violations by questioning POWs on television and waving white flags before opening fire on coalition troops.
The draft resolution, which will be voted on later in the six-week session of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, puts the burden on Iraq ``to respect and ensure the rights of all individuals, irrespective of their origin, ethnicity, gender or religion.''
It was introduced in the 53-nation commission as the United States assured the body that the outcome of the war would ``most certainly'' improve the human rights situation in Iraq and ``restore to the long-suffering Iraqi people their personal freedoms and dignity.''
The Iraqi ambassador responded by calling the U.S.-led forces the real human rights violators, saying the American military had ``bloody hands.''
A U.N. expert advised the commission that the United Nations should send human rights monitors to Iraq as soon as the situation permits.
``I would go tomorrow if the circumstances allowed it,'' said Andreas Mavrommatis of Cyprus.
In a statement to the commission, the United States cited ``the appalling human rights situation in Iraq.''
``Saddam Hussein's absolute personal power has been characterized from the beginning by extreme brutality,'' it said.
The Iraqi government ``has for decades conducted a brutal campaign of murder, summary execution, and protracted arbitrary arrest against the religious leaders and followers of the majority Shia Muslim population,'' the statement said. ``The Kurdish community of northern Iraq has fared no better.''
It accused the paramilitary group known as Saddam's Fedayeen of beheading more than 200 women and dumping their severed heads at the doorsteps of their homes. Additionally, women were raped or sexually assaulted as a mean of intimidation or blackmail against family members, it said.
Mavrommatis said Iraq still should implement his recommendations from previous years, such as adopting a moratorium on executions, reducing the number of crimes which carry the death penalty, and improving prison conditions.
Mavrommatis was appointed in 1999, and visited the country for the first time in February 2002 at the invitation of Iraqi authorities. A second visit this year was canceled due to the upcoming war. Iraqi Ambassador Samir al-Nima said the Mavrommatis report was influenced by ``unwarranted and unjustified political considerations,'' and failed to address violations by coalition forces attacking Iraq. Mavrommatis relied too heavily on ``information from sources hostile to Iraq,'' he said.
Mavrommatis told reporters later that he was ``steering clear of politics,'' but deplored both civilian losses and suicide bombings aimed at coalition forces.
``We are all praying that an end will come soon to this war,'' he said.
-------- iran
Tehran rejects 'propaganda accusations'
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 1, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030401-12970286.htm
Iran yesterday rejected Bush administration charges that it was interfering in the war in neighboring Iraq, sharpening its criticism of a military campaign that many in the U.S. government had hoped Tehran would tacitly support.
Government spokesman Abdullah Ramezanzadeh said pointed criticisms in recent days by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell reflected what he said were American frustrations with the course of the war in Iraq.
"The U.S. forces' failures in Iraq have made them aim their propaganda accusations against Iran time and again," Mr. Ramezanzadeh told the Iranian state news agency.
Mr. Rumsfeld said last week that hundreds of Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters based in Iran have crossed back into Iraq, complicating the military mission for the U.S.-led coalition seeking to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Powell, in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday night, repeated long-standing U.S. complaints about Iran's support for Palestinian terrorist groups targeting Israel and about Tehran's nuclear programs, which U.S. intelligence officials are convinced are part of a drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Iran, whose government remains deeply divided between political reformists and fundamentalist Islamists, has adopted an equally contradictory approach to the war, a policy of "active neutrality" that appears to be rooting for an outcome in which Saddam loses, but the United States doesn't win.
"Active neutrality," according to American University Middle East scholar John A. Calabrese, "is an attempt to navigate between the unpalatable options of siding with Baghdad or with Washington."
The ambivalence in the ruling establishment reflects Iranian popular sentiment. A telephone poll of Tehran residents released last week found that 86 percent of the respondents condemned the war and 78 percent condemned Saddam.
Iran fought a bloody eight-year war with Saddam in the 1980s, enduring chemical attacks on its forces. It has since had frigid relations with Baghdad, its principal rival for dominance in the Persian Gulf region.
Iran, the world's largest Shi'ite Muslim state, also has strong religious and cultural ties to Iraq's majority-Shi'ite community, based primarily in the south and the target of discrimination and repression by Saddam's regime. Iran has long supported anti-Saddam groups inside Iraq, including Kurdish and Shi'ite factions.
But President Bush last year included Iran in his "axis of evil," and many in Tehran fear that a successful U.S. campaign in Iraq would simply be a warm-up act for a move against Iran.
A U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad would, in Tehran's eyes, leave it encircled by countries with strong military ties to Washington, including Turkey to the north and Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east.
Reformist forces in Iran close to President Mohammed Khatami have suggested that their fundamentalist opponents also are terrified of a stable, postwar democratic government in Iraq, for fear it would inspire a similar challenge to authoritarian rule at home.
Even a messy draw in the war poses problems for Iran, which could face a new flood of refugees from Iraq and an extended regional conflict.
Iranian officials at first took a low-key approach to the war, barely protesting errant U.S. missiles that landed inside their country in the first days of fighting. Until the government organized a major antiwar public demonstration during the weekend, there had been fewer such protests in Iran than in any of the region's Arab states.
But Iranian officials in both camps have stepped up criticism of the United States after coalition forces failed to deliver the quick knockout blow to Saddam that many in Iran expected or feared.
Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, a leading reformist cleric and a powerful figure among Shi'ite Muslims, said yesterday that Saddam's "bloody" crimes did not "justify the ceaseless bombardments on Iraqi cities, massacres of civilians, and the human and material losses suffered by the Muslim people of Iraq" in the war.
-------- iraq
U.S. Kills Scores of Iraqis Near Baghdad
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER
Associated Press Writer
Apr 1, 2003 1:29 PM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_BATTLEFIELD?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SOUTH-CENTRAL IRAQ (AP) -- U.S. Marines waged a firefight with Iraqi forces Tuesday in and around the town of Diwaniyah, killing up to 90 Iraqis and taking at least 20 prisoners, according to reports from the field.
Coalition forces entered Diwaniyah, going a couple of blocks inside the town, where local residents told translators where to find the Baath Party headquarters and the military headquarters from which rocket-propelled grenades had been fired, said Capt. Brian Lewis of the 1st Tank Battalion.
Marines fired on both buildings, and on a military compound in a date palm grove outside the town. Lewis, of Richmond, Wash., said 80 to 90 Iraqis were killed in fighting in Diwaniyah.
The coalition forces also found a large ammunition dump Monday that included 41 buildings and about 6,000 mines, stacked like checkers. Lewis said there was a whole building of rocket-propelled grenades stacked floor to ceiling. It was crammed full of ammunition. It was too big to blow up, forcing an engineering unit to mull over how to dispose of it.
Elsewhere, American warplanes also hammered defensive positions south of Baghdad overnight and dropped bombs on an Iraqi presidential yacht and another ship in the southern port of Basra, Navy officials said.
U.S. warplanes had bombed the yacht, Al Mansur, a week ago, but it didn't sink, said Lt. Cmdr. Mike Brown, a spokesman for the Kitty Hawk carrier battle group.
The ship was hit again with laser-guided bombs, but Brown said Kitty Hawk officials couldn't confirm if the boat was now sunk. However, Capt. Thomas A. Parker, the Kitty Hawk's commander, said the yacht and the other ship in Basra's port "were burning when they (the planes) left."
A Patriot missile battery destroyed a missile fired from south of Baghdad at U.S. forces in central Iraq, said Capt. Pat Costello of the 101st Airborne Division. A chemical alarm detector was set up to check whether any chemical weapons were used, but an official determination was not immediately made.
An Iraqi missile was also shot down by a Patriot missile battery before it reached Kuwait, the military said.
A Marine intelligence analyst said coalition forces had flown 18,000 sorties and cut back the Republican Guard by 50 percent. The analyst said there was heavy bombing Tuesday of Kut in southeastern Iraq to clear the way for ground forces.
Marine ground forces also have secured an airbase at Qalat Sukkar, southeast of Kut, that is expected to serve as a staging ground.
Around Diwaniyah, 75 miles southeast of Baghdad, Marines came under fire from artillery and mortars. Hundreds of Iraqi fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and rifles were said to be inside the town.
Marine 155mm howitzers miles away opened fire on Iraqi mortar positions, tanks and bunkers.
There were no reports of Marine casualties.
At least three Iraqis were wounded: two very thin Iraqi soldiers who had been shot in the legs and were being treated with their hands bound behind their backs with silver duct tape; and an older man who had been shot in the back and leg.
Diwaniyah is along one of three main south-north routes U.S. forces are using to get to Baghdad. The Marines have been coming under rocket fire so it was important to clear the area and force attackers back.
Overnight, warplanes struck at Iraqi positions around Karbala and Hindiyah, about 50 miles short of Baghdad, in a U.S. effort to open the way for the invasion of Baghdad by American forces massing outside the city.
U.S. troops in the desert watched B-52s circle and drop bombs near Karbala Tuesday afternoon, and as the sun set, dozens of cruise missiles left contrails as they flew overhead, heading toward Baghdad and Karbala.
"It's nice to look up and know that everything up there is friendly," said 1st Lt. Eric Hooper of Albany, Ga. "It makes you feel a little better about rolling up that way."
The bombing was in support of the Army's V Corps and hit surface-to-air missile sites and a bridge across the Euphrates River, said Lt. j.g. Nicole Kratzer, a spokeswoman for the air wing of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk.
On Monday, Army forces fought pitched battles at the Euphrates River town of Hindiyah against Republican Guards and other Iraqi loyalists.
After the battle, soldiers from A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment rested Tuesday, cleaning their weapons, listening to music and relaxing.
Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp, the battalion commander, said the troops should not assume that all battles would go as smoothly as Monday's fight in Hindiyah.
"We need to keep these guys from becoming complacent, thinking they can take anything the Iraqis throw at us," he said. DeCamp warned that the defenders south of Baghdad will have more powerful weapons, capable of penetrating the armor on U.S. vehicles.
----
Iraq: U.S. attacked American human shields
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/04/01/sprj.irq.sahaf/
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Iraq's information minister accused U.S. forces Tuesday of "indiscriminately" killing their own citizens in a bus attack and killing nine Iraqi children in a central neighborhood of Babylon.
"Yesterday, an American warplane attacked two buses on the highway between Baghdad and Ahman," Mohammed Saeed al Sahaf told reporters.
"Those people on those two buses are human shields coming to participate in defending civilian installations like water sanitation stations, electricity generation stations, and so on."
Sahaf said: "The 'brave' Americans start shooting the Americans [in the buses]. They are indiscriminately killing people."
He said Iraqis are awaiting more details on the incident., and the U.S. Central Command said it is investigating the claim.
Describing what Sahaf said was the attack in southern Babylon, 60 miles south of Baghdad, he said, "This morning, the villains bombarded a civilian quarter." He said the children who died lived in adjacent houses.
He described "fierce battles" in Basra and Nasiriya, and said coalition troops had targeted telephone exchanges and farms throughout the country, and hit TV and radio transmitters in more than three cities.
Coalition bombing of Baghdad on Tuesday morning killed five Iraqi civilians and wounded 25 others, he said. He said the five are among 24 civilians killed since late Monday.
Iraqi troops, however, are prevailing, the minister said.
"The Iraqi troops and the Iraqi fighters are in control of all the places, as we have witnessed," Sahaf said. "No big change in that. We are fighting against them."
Iraqi fighters destroyed seven tanks and the Fedayeen, forces loyal to Iraq President Saddam Hussein, destroyed seven coalition personnel carriers near Najaf, he said. Iraqis also shot down an Apache helicopter, he added.
"They are achieving nothing, they are suffering from casualties. Those casualties are increasing, not decreasing," said Sahaf, who referred to U.S. President George W. Bush and other Americans as "bastards."
Referring to Monday's fatal shootings by U.S. soldiers of at least seven women and children at a checkpoint in southern Iraq, Sahaf said "all those who do such acts are definitely racist."
The soldiers fired on the van carrying the Iraqis when it failed to stop after repeated warnings,the coalition's Central Command said Monday.
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U.S. Battles Closer to Baghdad; Skirmishes in South
April 1, 2003
The New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/international/worldspecial/01MILI.html
KUWAIT, March 31 - American forces leading the drive north to Baghdad battled their way today into a town 50 miles south of the capital, capturing Iraqi troops and regaining some momentum in a war that has proved more complex than expected. An armored unit of the Third Infantry Division rolled into Hindiya, population 80,000, at dawn, firing from tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles as they crossed a bridge on the Euphrates River and confronted stiff Iraqi resistance.
At least 20 Iraqi soldiers were killed, and some members of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard were captured.
At the same time, a Marine division, advancing more rapidly than in recent days, reached Hilla, 15 miles to the east. "We've made that clear: Where the regime is, we're coming," said Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the deputy director of operations for the United States Central Command.
But problems persisted in the rear. In a day of gun battles and tank assaults all along the Euphrates, an American soldier from the 101st Airborne Division was killed in fighting at Najaf, about 100 miles south of Baghdad. [Map, Page B16.]
Two brigades of the 101st Airborne skirmished through the day with fedayeen irregulars firing weapons mounted on pickup trucks, and dozens of Iraqis were killed in the exchanges, military officials said.
This afternoon, at a checkpoint in Najaf near where four soldiers were killed in a car bomb attack on Saturday, American troops manning a similar checkpoint opened fire on a civilian vehicle that refused their order to halt and ignored warning shots.
When the vehicle came to a halt, seven women and children were found dead inside from the gunfire. Two others were wounded, and four were unharmed, Army officials said. An investigation is under way.
The incident appeared to illustrate the difficulties of fighting Iraqi forces that have proved willing to mingle with civilians, a problem that seems likely to persist. But American commanders today insisted that their focus remained on Baghdad, which was heavily bombarded once again.
Tonight, a senior officer at the Central Command in Qatar said the United States was prepared to pay a "very high price" in casualties to capture Baghdad and topple President Hussein.
"We're prepared to pay a very high price because we are not going to do anything other than ensure that this regime goes away," the officer told reporters. "If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties."
In a speech to Coast Guard personnel at the port of Philadelphia, President Bush said: "Many dangers lie ahead, but day by day we are moving closer to Baghdad. Day by day, we are moving closer to victory."
As air and ground forces attacked the Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad, the United States' second-ranking officer said there were no signs that Mr. Hussein or his top aides were directing their troops.
The officer, Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, "We watch the actions of the units, the Iraqi units on the battlefield, as we pay attention to our intelligence systems, that there is no evidence that there is senior leadership giving guidance to the field, and there's no evidence of coordinated actions on the battlefield by the various units."
"So they are getting destroyed in place without much leadership from above," he said tonight on the PBS program "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."
A senior Pentagon official said the fighting ability of two Republican Guard divisions south of Baghdad - the Medina and the Baghdad - had been reduced by half. He also said two other Republican Guard divisions - the Hammurabi and the Nebuchadnezzar, which were trying to reinforce the battered units - were being pounded by coalition bombers.
It is somewhere on the landscape between the American forces spearheading the thrust northward and Baghdad that American commanders expect what is left of the Republican Guard to make a stand in front of the capital.
Army officers said tonight that the expected clash with the Medina Division south of Baghdad would be the most important engagement thus far in the war.
The Medina division has been subjected to intense bombardment from the air for the last week.
The Army officers believe that the battle could begin as soon as Tuesday if the Soviet-made T-72 tanks of the front-line Iraqi forces move south to challenge the advance of the M1A1 Abrams tanks leading the Third Infantry Division north.
"We're going to continue to work against the Republican Guard forces that are defending Baghdad," General Brooks said today.
American forces near the front line were on high alert today for a chemical weapons attack because intelligence officers say they believe that Iraqi commanders are under orders to thwart a breakthrough that could bring the American Army to the outskirts of Baghdad.
The inadvertent shooting of women and children today was the worst of several mistaken assaults on civilians in the last week, as American forces tried to cope with a battlefield on which Iraqi irregulars have attacked in civilian clothes from taxi cabs, pickup trucks and minivans.
Last weekend, Brig. Gen. John Kelly, deputy commander of the First Marine Division, said one of his machine gunners had sprayed fire along a line of jitney buses carrying fedayeen gunners attacking Marine positions.
"He did exactly what he should have done," General Kelly said. "He fired them up and killed them all. But when he got to the bus, there were some civilians on the bus that were dead."
The toll on civilians continued today.
General Brooks said Iraqi irregular forces near Karbala trying to get across a bridge that they had rigged for demolition had pushed "women and children in front of them" to shield their advance.
"One woman tried to break contact and escape, and as she ran, she was shot in the back and thrown into the river," he said.
On the contested bridge in Hindiya, the captured town south of Baghdad, an American company commander, Capt. Chris Carter of Watkinsville, Ga., dashed to a wounded Iraqi woman in a black chador lying exposed to fire in the center of the span. Captain Carter crouched with his M-16 rifle to cover her position until medics could evacuate her by stretcher, according to journalists traveling with the unit.
The Associated Press reported that American forces had entered the Baath Party office in Hindiya. Inside, they found tens of thousands of rounds of small-arms ammunition, as well as hundreds of mortars and many heavy machine guns. Loyalists of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party have appeared to lead resistance against the allied advance in several southern towns.
As the tanks of the Third Infantry's Second Brigade reached Hindiya, a senior American officer at headquarters in Qatar said a battalion commander of the Nebuchadnezzar Division was captured during today's fighting.
That appeared to indicate that the Iraqi military command was pulling reinforcements from a Republican Guard division deployed north of Baghdad to reinforce the southern approach to the capital.
"I think it is significant," the senior officer said of the capture of the northern battalion commander.
He told reporters that it meant either that the Iraqis were preparing a "thicker defense" south of Baghdad or that "things are so bad in the south that they had to bring this valuable division south to stiffen the defense."
In Baghdad, an allied bomber staged a daylight strike at low altitude on a palace used by Mr. Hussein's younger son, Qusay, who controls the presidential security force that protects the Iraqi leader. Qusay was appointed this month as the commander of forces protecting the capital.
At the same time, a Marine force raided the southern Iraqi town of Shatra, where the headquarters of Mr. Hussein's southern commander, Ali Hassan al-Majid, was said to be situated.
Mr. Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," has been accused of war crimes for his role in directing a campaign of chemical weapons attacks against Iraq's Kurdish minority in the final stages of the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88.
In southern Iraq, the battle to subdue the Basra region inched forward as a British force of 600 Royal Marines seized the town of Abul Khasib southeast of the city, cutting the road leading from the city to the Faw peninsula.
On Basra's western side, the British Black Watch Battalion took control of the center of Zubayr, a major suburb where a Baath Party headquarters was destroyed last week and one of its top officials was taken prisoner.
On the northern front, bombing raids were reported near Mosul, about 250 miles north of Baghdad.
Kurdish leaders produced two of five Iraqi soldiers who surrendered on Monday after three days of heavy American bombardment of their bunkers near the village of Kalak.
In interviews, the soldiers said that more Iraqis would surrender but that they feared execution squads made up of Baath Party members and intelligence officials.
"There were execution teams just behind the soldiers," one of the prisoners said, "to prevent them from fleeing their posts."
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In the line of fire: two holy cities that the US dares not desecrate
By Justin Huggler and Paul Vallely
01 April 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=392810
American forces advancing on Baghdad were yesterday fighting on the outskirts of one of the holiest places in Shia Islam. The 101st Airborne Division surrounded the holy city of Najaf, and there was talk of it preparing for possible house-to-house fighting, a move that would run the risk of inflaming the Shia world.
The US military said it had killed 100 Iraqi paramilitaries around Najaf, and said more were lying in wait among the tombs of saints and martyrs in the great Wadi al-Salaam graveyard which encircles the city on three sides, one of the world's largest cemeteries.
Further north, US soldiers were fighting what was reported to be the most intense ground battle of the war so far, in Hindiyah. But on the road ahead of Hindiyah, between them and Baghdad, lies a Shia shrine of perhaps even greater symbolic potency, the holy city of Karbala.
British and American soldiers and their commanders have been perplexed and dismayed that the Shias of Iran, persecuted and repressed by Saddam Hussein, have not - yet, at least - greeted them with flowers as liberators, or rebelled against President Saddam's forces, as they were expected to do. No one is entirely sure why they have not.
But what happens around Najaf and Karbala in the coming days may turn out to be the key to how the British and Americans are perceived by the Shia. The American troops surrounding Najaf, the resting place of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, appear to be aware of that. Many sites in the city have been declared "no targets", to be fired at only in self-defence.
American soldiers drove around the outskirts of the city yesterday, beseeching its inhabitants through loudspeakers mounted on their armoured cars to turn over President Saddam's forces to them, so wary are they of trying to face Iraqi fighters in the streets of Najaf. But US commanders said yesterday there were too many fighters in Najaf to ignore.
Karbala, the resting place of the Prophet's grandson, Hussein, is perhaps even more dangerous for the Americans and the British. So holy is the city to Shia Muslims that many carry soil from Karbala to prayers with them, even in faraway cities in Iran, cut off from Karbala since the Iran-Iraq war.
Others sleep with tablets made from the earth of Karbala under their pillows. Some Shias regard a pilgrimage to Karbala as more important than the haj to Mecca and Meidan, which is among the requirements of Islam.
The fall of the two holy cities would be a blow to President Saddam, but it would be a blow he would try to turn to his advantage. Any damage to the great gold-domed shrines of the two cities could turn the Iraqi Shias against the British and Americans, and cause fury across the Shia world.
More than that, the two cities are shrines to martyrs. The concept of martyrdom is at the heart of Shia Islam, and none is more laden with significance than the martyrdom of Hussein at Karbala. Any large-scale casualties in these holy cities would be charged with extraordinary symbolism.
There has been much speculation on why the Shia of Iraq have not welcomed the Allies as liberators, or risen up against President Saddam's forces. American and British leaders have suggested that it is because the Shia are still afraid; most, outside a few captured small towns such as Umm Qasr, are still under the barrels of his guns.
Many in the Arab world say the Shias are Iraqi nationalists first and will put resisting invasion and occupation by British and American forces above their hatred of the dictator.
There is also the shadow of the Shia uprising against President Saddam after 1991's Gulf War. Many Iraqi Shias felt betrayed after George Bush senior urged them to rebel, then failed to come to their aid. President Saddam, his hands unfettered by the Americans, took a terrible revenge on the Shias, killing and torturing by the thousands.
The US has had an uncomfortable relationship with Shia Muslims since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a Shia revolution, when revolutionaries blamed the US for supporting a coup by the Shah of Iran against the country's first democratic government and US diplomats were held hostage for a year.
One of the most important Shia Iraqi opposition leaders, Ayatollah Mohammed al-Hakim, has sent instructions to his supporters in Iraq neither to fight against the Americans and British nor to rise up.
Ayatollah Hakim, who controls a force up to 30,000 strong, is living in Iran, where the regime may be influencing him. He has warned the US not to try to stay on in Iraq after the dictator has been toppled.
Now US forces are at the gates of the two holy cities. Karbala and Najaf are at the heart of the identity of Shia Islam, and its differences from Sunni, or orthodox Islam. Their significance has not been lost on President Saddam.
Although he is a Sunni Muslim - and was, in his early years, overtly anti-religious - he has made great efforts to ingratiate himself with the Shia minority by praying at the mosque in Karbala and giving large amounts of cash to it over the years.
Since the Eighties, he has seen it as a vital element in keeping the Shias loyal. Then, as now, it was assumed they would be open to rising against him, because of his Sunni background and because the Baathist state he established was profoundly secular.
It was to avoid this that Saddam played the Islam card and developed public shows of piety, ensuring he was filmed praying in public, particularly at Shia shrines like Karbala.
During the Shia 1991 revolt, the rebels briefly took control of Najaf and Karbala. The vast Wadi al-Salaam cemetery is testament to how many Shias want to be buried close to it. The Shias believe the leadership of the Islamic world should have passed to the Prophet's descendants, through Ali's line, not to the Caliphs who took control. The fate of Ali's son, Hussein, who was martyred in a massacre by the soldiers of the Ummayad caliphate in the year 680, was an event of mythical proportions in the Sunni-Shia split, which defined Shia piety as one of protest and suffering. Hussein insisted on facing the Sunni Ummayad leader, Yazeed, in battle, despite knowing that he would be killed in the clash.
Mourning for Hussein, in which religious Shias whip and cut themselves, some until they are covered with blood, is one of the most important events in the Shia calendar.
The Shias have traditionally been a downtrodden minority within Islam and, generally speaking, distinguished by a more radical activism. The example of Hussein has made the concept of martyrdom more central to Shia than to Sunni traditions.
American soldiers now face a potentially brutal fight against President Saddam's forces, in which they must tiptoe around these most potent holy sites as if they were walking on eggshells, or face alienating the Shias they still hope will yet welcome them as liberators.
Ancient treasures: Sites in danger
By James Palmer
Many of Iraq's ancient treasures are in European museums; others have been damaged by bombing in recent conflicts. But much else survives - and there are fears that the current war will exact a disastrous toll.
In addition to the holy cities of KARBALA and NAJAF, where troops of the US 3rd Infantry Division are currently gathering, there are countless irreplaceable treasures in BAGHDAD, where the Mosul Museum, the Tikrit Museum and a museum in Al-Zohur Palace have all been hit in recent bombing raids, as has Mustansiriya University, founded in 1234. Perhaps the most vulnerable is the City museum, which contains 100,000 artefacts dating from 7000BC to AD1000, chronicling the achievements of the Uruk, Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian and early Islamic civilisations. Other sites at risk include:
NINEVAH: Ancient Assyrian capital, near Mosul - itself a site of valuable monasteries and churches.
ASHUR: Another important Assyrian capital, 10 miles south of Nimrud.
SAMARRA: Ancient town, built in AD836, extends on Tigris for 20 miles.
BABYLON:Site of the fabled city where King Hammurabi drafted the world's first code of laws, in circa 1800BC. Was also Alexander the Great's capital, and the place where Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens. Complex rebuilt by Saddam Hussein.
NIPPUR: Ancient city south of Afak which was the religious centre of Sumerian and Mesopotamian civilisation. Flourished for more than 5,000 years, until AD800, when the city was abandoned.
SELEUCIA: Ancient site 20 miles south of Baghdad. Founded in 307BC by the Greeks and replaced Babylon as the region's commercial centre.
UR: Ancient city 20 miles south-west of Nasiriyah. Possibly the country's most famous landmark, with ziggurat dating from 2100BC.
BASRA AL-QURNA: Reputed site of the Garden of Eden, complete with a gnarled old tree, known as Adam's tree.
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Iraqis not afraid to show enthusiasm for GIs
By Borzou Daragahi
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 1, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030401-56007896.htm
QARA HANJIR, Iraq - Iraqis in the north are welcoming the budding American military presence with undisguised enthusiasm in sharp contrast with those in the south, who often view U.S. and British troops with suspicion.
"If the USA comes here, we'll get our freedom," businessman Soleyman Qassab wrote in the local newspaper. "It's time to welcome the American military."
Mr. Qassab, who owns the MaDonal's burger joint modeled on the famous American chain, has promised any U.S. soldier who stops by his restaurant free meals for a week.
While coalition forces and the Iraqi military have clashed in southern cities in recent days, the United States and Kurdish fighters are coordinating military strikes against President Saddam Hussein's forces.
"The bombing is for a greater good," says Mohammad Nazim, a Kurdish "peshmerga" warrior guarding this recently captured outpost more than 12 miles into territory formerly held by the Iraqi government. "It's for the freedom of our country."
Standing on a ridge at an abandoned Iraqi garrison overlooking the oil-rich, Saddam-controlled city of Kirkuk, he and other Kurdish soldiers watched with joy as antiaircraft tracers, explosions and fire lit up the city and the rumble of explosions shook the ground.
Thousands of Kurdish militiamen and hundreds of U.S. Special Forces cooperated closely during the weekend to crush an Islamist militant group linked to al Qaeda.
Since then, hundreds of Kurdish militiamen have taken over positions surrounding Kirkuk, coming to within 12 miles of the city as it endures nightly coalition bombing raids.
While Baghdad officials speak defiantly about Iraqi resistance, Barham Salih, prime minister of the Sulaymaniyah-based Kurdish government, said air raids have dealt the Iraqi army a serious blow.
"The Iraqi military is caught in a difficult situation between the allied bombardment on the one hand and Saddam's death squads on the other."
On Saturday, witnesses near the Iraqi city of Halabja described heavy machine-gun fire and bombardment aimed at cave and canyon hide-outs of Ansar, a 650- to 700-member Islamist group with ties to Afghan "jihadi" warriors who trained with Osama bin Laden and with elements of the Iraqi regime.
In an interview, Mr. Salih called the attack a serious blow against terrorism, saying many of those killed were Afghan-Arabs who had fought and trained in Afghanistan, though he could not specify an exact number.
Seventeen peshmergas and between 120 and 150 Ansar militants were killed in the fighting, said Mr. Salih.
"It was a very tough battle," he said. "You're talking about a bunch of terrorists who are very well-trained and well-equipped."
U.S. planes carrying supplies and equipment have landed almost nightly in northern Iraq. Six landed Saturday night, said an eyewitness living near the Bakrajo airstrip, six miles west of Sulaymaniyah.
Kurds control a Switzerland-size slice of northern Iraq beyond the control of Saddam. Islamist militants control pockets of territory abutting the Iranian border.
Mr. Salih defended the American military strategy and said that much of the resistance to the U.S.-led invasion was coming from Saddam loyalists and Arab volunteers with ties to terrorist organizations.
"There is really not that much resistance by the Iraqi military," he said. "This regime has been in power for over 35 years. It has developed a constituency, a hard core of people who have everything to lose with Saddam's demise. These guys will resist."
While the southern front against Saddam's regime is focused on the cities of Basra, Nasiriyah and Baghdad, the northern front will concentrate on the key oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul as well as Tikrit, Saddam's hometown.
During the past few days, Iraqi forces surrounding Kirkuk have retreated up to 12 miles from the line separating them from Kurdish-held territory. Kurds eagerly have occupied the depopulated no man's land.
Mr. Salih suggested the forces had retreated because Iraqi soldiers, including two low-level commanders, had begun to desert.
Still, Kurdish control over the areas vacated by the Iraqis remains shaky, and Saddam has begun shelling civilian positions in the Kurdish-held city of Chamchamal.
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As military police, women can do it all
April 1, 2003
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030401-1376422.htm
SOUTHERN IRAQ - Platoon leader 2nd Lt. Sarah Skinner, finger on the trigger of her M-16, gives the order to move forward as troops under her command prepare to smash their way into 20 derelict buildings where die-hard Iraqi defenders may be hiding.
The three-member teams, including several military policewomen, slither through open doors and into the dusky interiors.
"I wanted to go into police work in the army, but I like this stuff better," said Pvt. Kristi Grant, a member of Lt. Skinner's platoon in the 709th Military Police Battalion.
In Iraq, "this stuff" includes escorting supply convoys through ambush-prone areas, sweeping villages for weapons, arresting Iraqis hostile to U.S. forces and handling prisoners of war.
"There's no job that I can't do in the military police. I like that. It puts me on an even keel with males," said Lt. Skinner, of Vassar, Mich.
Pvt. Grant and Lt. Skinner are among the women making up nearly 20 percent of the 709th, which saw duty in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. They fill a number of leadership positions. Two of four platoon leaders in Lt. Skinner's company are women, and Maj. Gillian Boice is the battalion's executive officer.
"For women, the MPs are the equivalent of the infantry. It's as close as women get to combat," said Lt. Skinner, a 25-year-old West Point graduate, as her Humvee barreled through hillocks of sand in the bleak Iraqi desert.
HINDIYAH, Iraq (AP) - "We've got to get her off that bridge."
Capt. Chris Carter winced at the risks his men would have to take. Engaged in a lightning-fast raid for this Euphrates River town, they were battling for a bridge when through the smoke they saw the elderly woman. She had tried to race across the bridge when the Americans arrived but was caught in the cross fire.
At first, peering through their rifle scopes, they thought she was dead, like the man sprawled in the dust nearby. But then, during breaks in the gunfire that whizzed over her head, she sat up and waved for help.
Capt. Carter, a 32-year-old Army Ranger, ordered his Bradley armored vehicle to pull forward while he and two men ran behind it. They took cover behind the bridge's iron beams.
Capt. Carter tossed a smoke grenade for more cover and approached the woman, who was crying and pointing toward a wound on her hip. She wore the black chador common among older women in the countryside. The blood soaked through the fabric, streaking the pavement around her.
Medics placed the woman on a stretcher and into an ambulance. Capt. Carter stood by, providing cover with his M-16A4 rifle. Then she was gone, and Monday's battle for this town of 80,000, 50 miles south of Baghdad, raged on.
SOUTH-CENTRAL IRAQ (AP) - The howitzers flash, recoil and roar, lobbing shells over the heads of sweating Navy surgeons.
In sweltering khaki tents, the eight-man operating team tends to the wounded: moaning Iraqi fighters, saying they were shot by their own when they tried to surrender; two Marines; two British allies, one dying.
If the chop chop chop of helicopters signaled the closeness of MASH units to the front in Korea and Vietnam, the howitzers do the same in Iraq, firing U.S. outgoing artillery over the heads of surgical teams operating between American and Iraqi lines. Front-line units such as these make it possible to get the critically wounded onto the operating table within an hour of when they fall in battle.
"The 'golden hour' of trauma. You have one hour to get them to surgery before bad things start to happen," says Cmdr. Robert Izenberg, a surgeon in T-shirt, operating scrubs and pushed-down white mask.
"We are the front line," adds Capt. Tony Serfustini, a surgeon, standing outside one of the tents, a discarded and bloody wooden splint by his feet. "Can't get any farther forward than that."
The teams, called forward resuscitative surgical systems, are operating for the first time in combat. The six eight-member teams, scattered throughout Iraq. This is one of the closest Navy teams have ever operated to the battlefield.
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U.S. lists human rights offenders
By George Gedda
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 1, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030401-15196391.htm
The State Department criticized Israeli and Palestinian authorities yesterday for widespread abuses in their conflict, and denounced China for what it said was a long list of rights violations.
In its annual human rights report, the State Department said many supporters of the U.S.-led war effort in Iraq had subpar rights records in 2002.
Uzbekistan earned a "very poor" rating, although the study acknowledged some notable improvements. In Eritrea, the report said, "the government's poor human rights record worsened, and it continued to commit serious abuses."
Qatar and Kuwait, two of the countries most identified with the war against Iraq, were said to be generally respectful of the rights of citizens.
Introducing the report during a brief meeting with reporters, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is liberating that country from a "ruthless tyranny that has shown utter contempt for human life." He vowed to help the Iraqi people create a "representative democracy that respects the rights of all of its citizens."
The report, covering almost 200 countries, said respect for human rights was generally good in Latin America, but it listed six countries where rights conditions were considered "poor" - Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador and Venezuela.
On Israel, the report said the country's overall human rights record in the occupied territories remained poor, and worsened in several areas as it continued to commit "numerous, serious human rights abuses."
"Security forces killed at least 990 Palestinians and two foreign nationals and injured 4,382 Palestinians and other persons during the year, including innocent bystanders," the report said.
It said Israeli security forces targeted and killed at least 37 Palestinian terror suspects. It noted that the Israeli government said that it made every effort to reduce civilian casualties during these operations.
The report also criticized the Palestinian Authority's rights record.
It said many members of Palestinian security services and the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization participated with civilians and terrorist groups in violent attacks against Israeli settlers, other civilians and soldiers.
"The PLO and PA have not complied with most of their commitments, notably those relating to the renunciation of violence and terrorism, taking responsibility for all PLO elements and disciplining violators," it said.
On China, the report said abuses included "instances of extrajudicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention and denial of due process."
In Pakistan, a key ally in the war on terrorism, the report said the government's rights record remained poor. "In general police continued to commit serious abuses with impunity," it said.
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For Israel Lobby Group, War Is Topic A, Quietly
At Meeting, Jerusalem's Contributions Are Highlighted
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63578-2003Mar31?language=printer
This week's meeting in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has put a spotlight on the Bush administration's delicate dance with Israel and the Jewish state's friends over the attack on Iraq.
Officially, Israel is not one of the 49 countries the administration has identified as members of the "Coalition of the Willing." Officially, AIPAC had no position on the merits of a war against Iraq before it started. Officially, Iraq is not the subject of the pro-Israel lobby's three-day meeting here.
Now, for the unofficial part:
As delegates to the AIPAC meeting were heading to town, the group put a headline on its Web site proclaiming: "Israeli Weapons Utilized By Coalition Forces Against Iraq." The item featured a photograph of a drone with the caption saying the "Israeli-made Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle" is being used "by U.S. soldiers in Iraq."
At an AIPAC session on Sunday night, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom proclaimed in a speech praising Secretary of State Colin L. Powell: "We have followed with great admiration your efforts to mobilize the international community to disarm Iraq and bring democracy and peace to the region, to the Middle East and to the rest of the world. Just imagine, Mr. Secretary, how much easier it would have been if Israel had been a member of the Security Council."
A parade of top Bush administration officials -- Powell, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, political director Kenneth Mehlman, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns -- appeared before the AIPAC audience. The officials won sustained cheers for their jabs at European opponents of war in Iraq, and their tough remarks aimed at two perennial foes of Israel, Syria and Iran.
The AIPAC meeting -- attended by about 5,000 people, including half the Senate and a third of the House -- was planned long before it became clear it would coincide with hostilities in Iraq. And organizers tried to play down the emphasis on Iraq, dedicating only one of its 12 "forums" during the conference to the war. "This is not about Iraq," said AIPAC spokesman Josh Block. "This is about going to Congress and lobbying for the Israeli aid package."
The reason for the sensitivity is clear. Internationally, anything that links Israel to the current war could alienate friendly Arab states by suggesting that the war is driven by Israel's interests. At home, the embrace of the war by an organization of influential Jews could fuel anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, though polls have indicated that American Jews are less likely to support the Iraq war than white Americans of other faiths.
Despite the meeting's script, AIPAC attendees found the subject of the war impossible to avoid. Powell talked about Iraq. Rice talked about Iraq. In the hallways, everyone talked about Iraq.
"If a widget maker were having a convention, the talk would be about Iraq," said Nathan Diament, a lobbyist for orthodox Jews and a participant in the conference. "It's not what this meeting is all about, but it's the context."
When Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Leon S. Fuerth, the former foreign policy adviser to Al Gore, sat down with Burns for a session yesterday titled "the Future of the Middle East," the subject was almost exclusively Iraq.
Kirk said the war would be "longer and more expensive than we think," and noted efforts the U.S. military had made to defend Israel. When Fuerth wondered whether there is too much "happy optimism" about Arab democracy, Kirk won cheers and an ovation for rejecting the charge. "God willing, we're going to have a great victory in Iraq," said AIPAC's Steve Rosen, the moderator.
AIPAC also promoted Israel's involvement in the Iraq war, though it has not been acknowledged by the administration. Citing the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, AIPAC reported on its Web site that the U.S. Army is using Israeli-made Hunter and Pioneer drones, computer systems and Popeye air-to-surface missiles. AIPAC and Israeli officials at the conference said that while such weapons are being used in the Iraq war, they were not provided by Israel specifically for it.
Eyal Arad, who has served as a campaign adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said in an interview at the conference yesterday that his country, which attacked an Iraqi nuclear facility two decades ago, was pleased to honor the Bush administration's request to keep a low profile in this conflict.
"We don't need to shout, 'We're pro-American,' " Arad said. "We are."
The Bush administration was somewhat ambivalent about tying itself to AIPAC and Israel. Though it sent several officials to the meeting with strong pro-Israel messages, there were efforts to keep things low-key. The White House insisted that yesterday's speech by Rice, though delivered to a room with 2,000 people, be "off the record."
"I'm not making this up!" AIPAC's Rosen said to his guests while serving as host at a later session. "All these people were part of an off-the-record discussion."
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Commentary: Which war am I watching?
By Claude Salhani
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
April 1, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030401-083433-8071r.htm
LONDON, April 1 (UPI) -- Not being "embedded" I am forced to satisfy my journalistic curiosity by indulging in an overdose of television coverage, a simple feat really, given the multitude of satellite and cable news channels covering every angle of the war in Iraq. But as I flip from one channel to the next, I often catch myself wondering which war I am looking at.
As British and American forces engage in house-to-house fighting in Iraq's dusty towns and villages, the television images slowly start to become hazy and blurred. Not the actual images mind you, which thanks to modern technology remain sharp, but the picture unfolding in my mind. And questions start to pop up in my subconscious almost as rapidly as some of the machine guns fired by Royal Marines on the tortuous road to Basra.
Military experts are practically unanimous when they say that no two wars are identical. That is correct, they are not. Each one comes with its own complexities and horrors. As a reporter who has covered 12 conflicts, I concur. Yet somewhere in the back of my mind I could not help but think I had seen these images before. They were all too familiar.
Are these images jumping at me from the blue-hued television screen those of coalition troops fighting to "liberate" Iraq of its tyrant, or, are they of Israelis fighting the Palestinian intifada on the West Bank and Gaza? Are the blindfolded, handcuffed prisoners being led away Iraqis or Palestinians? In my mind, they all become indistinguishable at times.
Is this live broadcast of the mother of all battles -- the one to bring democracy to Mesopotamia -- or yet, another frightening comparison -- specters of Israel's 1982 incursion into Lebanon, another attempt to "liberate" an Arab nation from oppression and impose security.
Indeed the similarities between the current conflict being fought along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Israel's Lebanese misadventure are numerous -- and one that the allies would be wise to take lessons from.
As in Iraq, the initial stages of the Lebanon battle also took place in the south of the country, an area heavily populated by Shiite Muslims.
As the Israelis entered Lebanon in June 1982, pushing Palestinian fedayeen north, they were initially greeted as liberators, welcomed with rice and rosewater by the Shiite Lebanese. (Though we have yet to see this occur in Iraq).
The Israeli drive north towards the capital, Beirut, bore striking similarities to the coalition's rapid advance on Baghdad. The aerial bombardment of Baghdad reminded me of Beirut in the summer of '82.
The Israelis reached Beirut's suburbs within days. Likewise, only days into the Iraq war, the coalition announced they had arrived within 60 miles of Baghdad.
Then came the siege of Beirut and start of the quagmire. Eventually, the Israelis entered Beirut. And it was not pretty. Regime change did come about, though. But then came soured relations between the Shiites and the Israelis. Then came attacks on the Israelis, who in very little time went from being liberators to occupiers. Then came militant Shiite groups who started forcefully opposing Israel's "liberation." The petals disappeared to be replaced by bullets and bombs.
Then came suicide attacks and even donkeys laden with explosives that were detonated as they neared Israeli military checkpoints. Then came the mounting casualty toll. And then the Israelis decided it was time to leave.
Another comparison can be drawn with the U.S. Marine involvement in Beirut in 1982 after the departure of Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization from the Lebanese capital. Here again, the Marines were greeted with flowers, rice and joy when they first arrived. But the honeymoon was short-lived. Within months, Shiite groups started targeting the Marines, and the Marines replied with barrages of 16-inch guns from the battleship New Jersey.
Those of us who were based in Beirut at the time and saw the worse coming were ignored. At best, we were rebuffed as prophets of gloom and doom. Visiting American officials refused to face the facts that the Marines -- much as the Israelis -- had long overstayed their welcome. The outcome in both cases, as they say, is history.
For history not to repeat itself, let us hope that those calling the shots today remember their history books and not repeat mistakes of the past.
Given the formidable military might of the Anglo-American coalition, there is very little doubt that they will prevail. Saddam will be removed from power and the people of Iraq will be given a chance at living a better life without his awful tyranny.
The importance here, as was the case in previous wars that now all seem to blur into one, is to avoid a repetition of past mistakes. As in Lebanon, America should not overstay its welcome in Iraq.
(Claude Salhani is a senior editor with United Press International).
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Iraq Checkpoint Deaths Stoke Arab Anger at War
April 1, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraqrefiled.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The checkpoint killings of eight civilians by U.S. troops edgy about suicide attacks stoked Arab anger on Tuesday and damaged American efforts to win Iraqi hearts and minds.
U.S. Marines shot dead an unarmed driver and badly wounded his passenger at a roadblock south of Baghdad, a day after seven women and children were killed in a similar checkpoint shooting near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf.
As the ground war became more tangled, new explosions hit Baghdad in the 13th day of a conflict that President Bush told Iraqis he would pursue ``until your country is free.''
Heavy air raids pummeled the capital's southern and western outskirts where Republican Guard units man defensive lines.
Huge blasts in central Baghdad overnight sent smoke billowing from a compound used by President Saddam Hussein and his powerful son Qusay. Another explosion set off a fire at the headquarters of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, headed by Saddam's eldest son Uday.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf said the raids on Baghdad had killed 24 people and wounded more than 125 since Monday. He said 32 civilians had been killed and more than 144 wounded in other parts of Iraq.
The checkpoint deaths are a blow to U.S. and British hopes of convincing Iraqis to welcome an invasion whose stated goal is to oust Saddam, not combat the people.
They also fueled anger across the Arab world.
``It was a deliberate act in cold blood to avenge September 11. I hope Bush, Blair and their families are pleased,'' Hamza Abdulrahman, a civil servant in Oman, said of Monday's incident.
In the north, two U.S. planes struck at targets near the oil city of Kirkuk. Reuters correspondent Mike Collett-White, watching from Kurdish-held territory nearby, saw nine plumes of black smoke rise into the sky after the bombing runs.
``MIGHTY FORCE''
``We are coming with a mighty force to end the rule of your oppressors,'' Bush declared in a speech aimed at Iraqis.
At ground level in the war zone, things were less clear-cut.
U.S. Marines said they fired on a pickup truck that sped toward them at a checkpoint near the southern town of Shatra.
Neither the driver nor his passenger was armed, Marines told Reuters correspondent Sean Maguire. ``I thought it was a suicide bomb,'' said one of the Marines.
Troops have been nervous since a checkpoint suicide car bomb attack killed four U.S. soldiers near Najaf on Saturday.
In allied Kuwait, U.S. soldiers shot and wounded the driver of a car which burst past a checkpoint into a base near the Iraqi border after midnight. Kuwait said the man was a Kuwaiti army captain hurrying to work who had no hostile intent.
An Egyptian electrician drove his truck into a group of U.S. soldiers at another base in Kuwait on Sunday, injuring 15. Troops shot and wounded him but his motive was not clear.
On Monday, U.S. troops fired on a van which failed to stop at a desert checkpoint near Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, only to find it was full of women and children.
U.S. Central Command said seven of the 13 women and children in the van were killed and two wounded. But a Washington Post correspondent near the scene said 10 people were killed and suggested troops had fired without giving enough warning.
Marine Corps General Peter Pace said the soldiers had felt threatened and ``absolutely did the right thing.''
The troops at Najaf are among U.S. forces fighting their way toward Baghdad against stronger than expected Iraqi resistance.
PUSHING TOWARD BAGHDAD
On Monday Reuters correspondents with U.S. military units said troops fought Iraqi soldiers around a Euphrates river bridge at Hindiya, just 50 miles from Baghdad -- the closest to the capital that ground fighting has been reported.
U.S. troops have also advanced to the outskirts of Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
Iraq reported fierce fighting in and around the southern city of Nassiriya, saying the invaders had taken heavy losses.
``The blood of the enemy is flowing profusely,'' a military spokesman said on Iraqi television.
The United States has paid scant attention to the diplomatic fall-out from the Iraq war so far, but Secretary of State Colin Powell starts a hastily arranged trip to Europe this week.
He visits Turkey on Wednesday to try to patch up ties damaged by Washington's failed effort to persuade Ankara to let U.S. troops cross its territory to invade Iraq.
Powell will fly to Brussels on Thursday for talks with leaders of the European Union and NATO -- two groups that have been deeply divided over the war in Iraq.
America's top diplomat said he planned to discuss ``how we can all work together to provide a better life'' for the Iraqi people after ``decades of devastation'' under Saddam's rule.
But Greece, current EU president, signaled the talks might go beyond Powell's post-war reconstruction agenda. ``If this is a move where the European voice is heard, then it should be a message of peace,'' the Greek foreign minister said.
On world financial markets anxiously eyeing Iraq, European stocks rose, Wall Street looked set to open higher and the dollar arrested its fall as investors began a new quarter seemingly resigned to a protracted conflict.
CIVILIAN TOLL
The women and children killed at the checkpoint near Najaf were the first civilian deaths from U.S. shooting acknowledged by Central Command since the war began. But correspondents with U.S. units have reported other civilian deaths in ground fire.
Iraq says U.S. and British air and ground attacks have killed 645 civilians and wounded well over 4,000.
Harrowing coverage of civilian casualties has increased anti-war sentiment in the Muslim world and beyond.
``Every day, the newspapers are publishing pictures of little Iraqi children wounded or dead. That makes me furious,'' said Sameh Nabil, a 25-year-old book vendor in central Cairo.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal urged Saddam to make a ``sacrifice for his country'' and step down.
The United States says the invasion is to oust Saddam, liberate his people and rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq denies having such weapons and none has yet been found by the 100,000 or more U.S. and British troops now in Iraq.
A Central Command official said the military was ready to pay a very high price to oust Saddam. ``If that means there will be a lot of casualties, then there will be a lot of casualties.''
U.S. forces have lost 51 killed and 14 missing. The death of a bomb disposal expert brought Britain's toll to 26.
A British spokesman said normal life was resuming in the southern town of Zubayr after troops took control there, but nearby Basra remained in the grip of Saddam's forces.
Civilians fleeing the city of 1.5 million said they faced intimidation from Saddam's Baath Party not to show opposition.
Central Command said a missile had been launched from south of Baghdad at the Najaf region. A U.S. Patriot anti-missile battery brought it down. A missile was also fired at Kuwait and was shot down by a Patriot over Iraq, Kuwaiti officials said.
-------- nato
Terror Fight Transforms NATO, Chief Says
April 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-EU-NATO-Military.html
CASTEAU, Belgium (AP) -- The new U.S. commander of NATO in Europe outlined his vision Tuesday of an alliance transformed to tackle terrorism, saying a new rapid reaction force was taking shape.
U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones told reporters first elements of the force should be operational this year. It would eventually be able to deploy thousands of troops to trouble spots around the world.
``We are seeing a military metamorphosis of the alliance,'' said Jones, who took up his NATO post Jan. 17. ``If the nations wish to have a force that has an out-of-area capability, beyond a regional capability, we could build that.''
Jones' comments came as NATO diplomats in Brussels embark on tentative discussions on a possible alliance role in peacekeeping in Afghanistan, or even postwar Iraq.
Although divisions over Iraq have plunged NATO into a deep crisis, diplomats at alliance headquarters in the Belgian capital are sounding out support for a role in peacekeeping or nation-building after the fighting.
The United States last year proposed NATO take on such a role, but the plan was shelved in the face of opposition from France, Germany and Belgium. Diplomats say informal talks have resumed on the plan that would build on NATO's experience peacekeeping in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Jones said he had received no orders to prepare for NATO operations in either Afghanistan or Iraq, but he highlighted the debate within the alliance over a possible role, well beyond its traditional Euro-Atlantic theater.
Speaking at alliance military headquarters in southern Belgium, he said plans for the proposed NATO reaction force of 20,000-strong rapidly deployable, air, land and sea units could be realized without major new spending by the allies.
``So much of the money that we need can be done through some in-depth reforms,'' he said. ``My goal is to build or the NATO reaction force from existing capacities without asking for more money.''
-------- us
Military Puts Its Story Online
By Cynthia L. Webb
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; 11:23 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1741-2003Apr1?language=printer
The Internet offers users worldwide an unprecedented amount of news and commentary about the war in Iraq. But unlike the last war in the Persian Gulf region, Web surfers can obtain a wealth of information about the military units currently fighting to topple Saddam Hussein's regime.
Today's War on the Web installment surveys the online homes of U.S. and British military units deployed to the Iraq theater. Far from a comprehensive listing, the focus is on some of the larger units that have been featured in news reports over the past weeks.
The first stopping point for anyone searching for the military's take on the Iraq conflict is the Web site of the U.S. Central Command - http://www.centcom.mil/ , the headquarters for the military campaign against Iraq. Central Command's site offers links to press briefings by Gen. Tommy Franks and other news releases, deep galleries of photos from the front, video clips and even digital images of leaflets the military is dropping to encourage Iraqi forces to surrender.
Another jumping-off point for exploring the military online is DefenseLink.mil, a Pentagon public affairs site that has links to all the military branches, photos, news and a special section on the war on terrorism.
U.S. Army
The Army has a special Web site (www.army.mil/operations/iraq/) on operations in Iraq, with links to press briefings and a "frequently asked questions" section for the families of G.I.'s deployed to the Persian Gulf region. The site links to the Army's main site, which has a handy list of all Army units.
The Army's 3rd Infantry Division, based in Fort Stewart, Ga., is leading the allied charge on Baghdad, closing to within 50 miles of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday. The Fort Stewart home page links to messages from the home front to division soldiers deployed to the Iraq front. "We are standing behind you and the other soldiers there," one supporter wrote. "Being a veteran myself, I understand better than most what is going on with you. ... All of us miss you." The post home page also links to a Microsoft Word document offering instructions for how to send letters and packages to the troops. A link on the site also details the history of the 3rd Infantry Division and its component units.
The 1st Calvary Division out of Fort Hood, Tex. has a history dating back to the 19th century. The division Web site does not provide links to information about the current conflict in Iraq, but it was clearly a 1st Calvary emblem on the side of an Apache helicopter that was shot down by Iraqis on Monday and later broadcast over official Iraqi television. The Army's 4th Infantry Division, also based at Fort Hood, is currently scrapping its original plans to invade Iraq from bases in Turkey. Ships carrying the division's heavy equipment are now steaming toward Kuwait.
A Web site for the 7th Infantry Division's home post of Fort Carson, Colo., links to deployment information, but again, few specifics are provided. "As information can be released, it will be. If you are a family member or friend of deploying soldiers, please remember that if you can read this, so can a potential enemy," the site warns.
The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), based at Fort Campbell, Ky., arrived in Kuwait just weeks before the fighting began and is the unit that suffered the fatal grenade attack by one of its own soldiers last weekend. The division's Web site has information on the types of helicopters its troops fly. The site also links to general information and the division's history dating back to its creation in World War II and to historical photos. A message that appeared two weeks ago on the home page was no longer visible on the site as of Monday. It read: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and other units assigned to Fort Campbell -- wherever they may be deployed for contingency operations or training."
The 82nd Airborne Division, based in Fort Bragg, N.C., is active both in the Iraqi conflict and in the U.S. military deployment to Afghanistan.
The Army's V Corps, the 42,000-strong contingency force for European and Central Command missions, has links to news articles written by military journalists and public affairs officers in Kuwait. The Web site for the U.S. Army, Europe and 7th Army, features a photo and news brief on the first soldiers wounded in Iraq arriving in Germany for medical treatment.
U.S. Marine Corps Camp Pendleton, Calif., is home to several Marine Corps units deployed to fight in Iraq. The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was one of the first U.S. military units to lose a service member in combat in the war in Iraq. The unit, has a basic Web site that lists its leadership, affiliated squadrons and battalions and history.
Another deployed Marine unit from Camp Pendleton, the 15th Expeditionary Unit, lists deployment addresses for families and friends to send mail for units and deployed personnel. The unit's Web site also links to photographs submitted by journalists embedded with the unit.
The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade (Task Force Tarawa) out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., deployed to the Middle East earlier this year. The unit's Web site features pictures from its arrival in the Persian Gulf and a link to a letter from the brigade's commanding general to advise loved ones that mail has arrived since the deployment. The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit Web site features photos and news items posted before the fighting began, plus links to news items filed by reporters embedded with the unit.
U.S. Navy
The United States has deployed a massive naval armada to the waters near Iraq, including five aircraft carrier battle groups. The Web site for the USS Constellation (the oldest active carrier in the fleet) says proudly, "Others have gone before us ... Now it's our turn; Let's roll." The Constellation has a storied history -- its first version namesake launched in 1797 to become the first ship commissioned in the U.S. Navy, according to the ship's official history. Lots of photos of the ship and its aircraft are available too.
The Constellation is currently conducting operations in the Persian Gulf alongside two other U.S. carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Kitty Hawk. The Abraham Lincoln's Web site features photos from past missions to patrol the southern no-fly zone in Iraq. The ship's Web site has a "pen pal" e-mail address for people to write to sailors. The Kitty Hawk's site features links to current news, information on which Navy ships are launching in the current conflict and a photo gallery.
In the eastern Mediterranean, the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the USS Harry Truman are launching planes to support troops in Iraq.
The U.S. Navy's overall Web presence is impressive. There's a site for general information on aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, submarines and other ships in the fleet. The Navy's main site -- www.navy.mil -- has sections dedicated to Operation Enduring Freedom, current photos from various operations in the Persian Gulf, and an A-Z guide of Navy Web sites.
U.S. Air Force
The U.S. Air Force -- www.af.mil -- is heavily engaged in the Iraq war. Many of various squadrons and units that are deployed for the conflict have their own Web sites that detail some history and general information, though most appear to avoid mentioning details of the current conflict, beyond linking to main Department of Defense Web sites. The Air Force's main site has photographs from Operation Enduring Freedom and news about the Iraq conflict from various public affairs officers. Specific air combat command news is also linked from the site, including an item about F-117 stealth fighters being used to bomb a munitions dump near Baghdad last week.
The Air Force's Operation Iraqi Freedom Web site also has various news and photos relating to the current conflict, including information on the leaflets that many Air Force aircraft have been dropping during the campaign. There are also fact sheets on various military aircraft, such as the F-15 fighter, and the B-1B, B-2 and B-52 bombers.
The Air Force site links to various units, bases and squadrons. Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, for example, is home to a B-52 squadron active in the current conflict. The site, however, does not detail information on Operation Iraqi Freedom. Holloman Air Force Base, home to one group of F-117A stealth fighters, links to general information about its squadrons, including the 8th Fighter Squadron. Langley Air Force Base, hub for the U.S. Air Force's air combat leadership, has deployed F-15C squadrons to the Iraq theater. The Langley Web site does not detail the current deployments, nor does Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, which also has a number of personnel and pilots deployed for the current conflict.
Dover Air Force Base in Delaware plays a somber role in U.S. military campaigns. It is where the remains of U.S. troops killed in action are taken before being returned to their families.
Some long-range Air Force bombers are making their runs to Iraq from a little-known island in the middle of the Indian Ocean -- Diego Garcia. A British territory, the island is one big military installation. The U.S. Navy has a site about its base there, but the Air Force's Diego Garcia site appears to be down. GlobalSecurity.org features a page on the secretive base, and there are several other sites on the Internet that feature photos and other information about the island, such as mydiegogarcia.com and Steve Smith Photograpy.
British Military Forces
The United States's strongest ally in the Iraq war is Great Britain. Its military has a rich presence on the Web, with the Ministry of Defence featuring a special page on the Iraq conflict ("Operation Telic" to the British), including a list of British casualties, current photos and a list of British units deployed in the operation.
The Royal Marines have been in the news for playing a lead role in the heavy fighting in southern Iraq. Their Web site profiles the branch and its various units. The marines are part of the Royal Navy, whose Web site includes updated news and lists ships in the fleet. The British have deployed one aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, the H.M.S. Ark Royal. The carrier's Web site carries an update on its Iraq war operations.
The British Army Web site lists the various divisions and regiments serving Queen Elizabeth II, many of which date back centuries. Meanwhile, the Royal Air Force Web site has links to current photos from the Iraq conflict. The site has a fact sheet on the Tornado F-3, one of which was shot down accidentally by a U.S. Patriot missile battery last week.
Australia's Military on the Web
Australia's Department of Defence Web site offers users an e-mail address to send messages to troops. The department has also set up a special Web site for information about its support of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, which it has dubbed "Operation Falconer." The site links to both streaming video images of the war effort and photographs. A separate Web page provides links to fact sheets and links to the Royal Australian Navy, Royal Australian Air Force and Australian Army
Poland Joins the Coalition
Poland is one of few NATO members other than Britain that is supporting the Iraq war. The Polish Defense Ministry has an English page with a prominent link to information about the Polish military's participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Special Forces U.S. and British special forces reportedly are at the forefront of the allied campaign in Iraq, carrying out operations deep in Iraq and linking up with Kurdish groups in the northern part of the country.. These secretive units don't offer a lot on their Web sites, but most do have some sort of Web presence, including the U.S. Navy Seals, the U.S. Special Operations Command, the Air Force Special Operations Command
The U.S. Air Force site features a short item noting that British Gurkha troops are guarding an air base in the Iraq theater. The legendary unit it comprised of Nepalese volunteers and dates back to the 18th century.
Cynthia L. Webb is a staff writer for washingtonpost.com. Her e-mail address is cindy.webb@washingtonpost.com.
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Pentagon, State Spar On Team to Run Iraq
Rumsfeld Rejects State Dept. Choices
By Karen DeYoung and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A25
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63223-2003Mar31?language=printer
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has rejected a team of officials proposed by the State Department to help run postwar Iraq in what sources described as an effort to ensure the Pentagon controls every aspect of reconstructing the country and forming a new government.
While vetoing the group of eight current and former State Department officials, including several ambassadors to Arab states, the Pentagon's top civilian leadership has planned prominent roles in the postwar administration for former CIA director R. James Woolsey and others who have long supported the idea of replacing Iraq's government, according to sources close to the issue.
The dispute is over who will occupy what are designed as de facto cabinet ministries under retired Gen. Jay M. Garner, the Pentagon-named head of a new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, until the country can be fully handed over to Iraqis. By interagency agreement, portfolios such as education and trade were to be filled by the State Department, with the Pentagon choosing the "civilian advisers" for other departments. Sources said that Walter Slocum, who served as undersecretary of defense during the Clinton administration, has been penciled in for the Iraqi defense ministry. Slocum declined to comment last night.
The Pentagon had listed Woolsey for the Iraqi information ministry, sources said, until the White House suggested he might be inappropriate because of his CIA background and close association with one faction of the incohesive Iraqi opposition. Sources said that he is still in consideration for a variety of jobs. Asked yesterday whether he is joining Garner's team, Woolsey said he felt such information should come from the government rather than from him.
Garner had asked the State Department for a list of names, and the eight selected officials went through security and other training in preparation for departure for Kuwait last week. At the last minute, however, they were told to "stand down" until further notice.
"We've been told there is a big disagreement between State and Defense over who controls the personnel in Garner's group," said one of the officials. One source said that Rumsfeld had labeled the group of officials "too low-profile and bureaucratic" for the work envisioned in Iraq. In the chain of command, Garner's office falls under Gen. Tommy R. Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, which is running military operations in Iraq. Franks answers to Rumsfeld.
Divisions between the State and Defense departments have marked virtually every phase of Iraq policy, beginning with President Bush's decision last summer to follow Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's advice to take the issue of disarming the Iraqi government to the United Nations. When the U.N. effort fell apart early last month, the two sides came together on the decision to launch a war to unseat Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. But disagreements have reemerged over differing visions of Iraq's postwar future, with the State Department looking for a less visible U.S. military role and perhaps ultimately a U.N. administration.
Powell and senior State Department officials, along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have maintained that a quick turnover from U.S. military control to the United Nations would give postwar Iraq more international legitimacy. They believe it also would encourage participation in the reconstruction effort by countries that opposed Bush's decision to go to war without U.N. authorization.
But Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, supported by Vice President Cheney, have been leery of any substantial U.N. role on grounds that it would inhibit U.S. ability to shape Iraq's future. Under a postwar plan supervised by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith, the military would maintain control of Iraq for an indefinite period, until new institutions could be constructed and a representative Iraqi government installed. The plan allows a U.N. role in humanitarian assistance, under U.S. supervision.
Acutely sensitive to reports of divisions within its ranks, the Bush White House carefully controls the administration's public face. Senior officials at both the State Department and the Pentagon declined to comment yesterday on the dispute over Garner's team. A spokesman for Feith referred all questions to the National Security Council staff at the White House, which also declined to comment.
With the war in Iraq expected to continue for weeks, if not months, the delayed arrival of any U.S. personnel in Baghdad has allowed disagreements to fester. As Garner waits in Kuwait for his personnel roster to be filled, another conflict has developed over who controls the distribution of humanitarian assistance. In a March 26 letter to Rumsfeld, sources said, Powell explained his understanding that civilian authorities, and not the Pentagon, would be in charge.
The quick distribution of food and medical aid as a means of winning over the Iraqi citizenry has been an integral part of U.S. plans for the war and its aftermath. U.S.-controlled parts of the country were to be flooded with assistance, supervised by State Department relief officials in coordination with nongovernmental organizations and the United Nations. Aid workers have insisted for months to Defense Department planners that they must not be seen as an arm, or even a close partner, of the U.S. military. Although U.S.-led troops would be expected to provide essential security, the non-governmental organizations said, they needed to make their own decisions about which needy communities to help.
In written guidance for its own personnel, the United Nations warned that their "operational independence" must be guaranteed. While coordination should occur between the highest U.N. and U.S. levels on the ground, it says, U.N. workers must maintain independent ability to negotiate access to those in need with "all parties to the conflict," and should not use "military assets" to facilitate their work except in cases of "extreme and exceptional circumstances."
Relief workers have been particularly concerned that the U.S. military will use political criteria to decide who receives relief. In the town of Zubair on Saturday, U.S. forces delivered two truckloads of food and supplies to a Shiite Muslim religious leader deemed friendly by U.S. Special Forces units. "It's causing all kinds of problems in the field," said a representive of one nongovernmental relief organization. "If the military takes control of humanitarian assistance, you'll have no NGOs being able to work with the Defense Department and you'll have issues with the U.N. You will make it into a unilateral U.S. response."
Powell's letter to Rumsfeld, sources said, "clarified" that U.S. Disaster Response Teams, known as DARTs, which are coordinating the effort among the various relief agencies, would report to the State Department's U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), rather than to Garner. "Garner can be the best guy in the world," said one administration official who opposed Garner's control of the relief effort, "but he is painted with Pentagon colors and that will turn away a number of partners" from the U.N. and nongovernmental communities. "I don't think this administration needs the turmoil that would ensue."
In a letter last week to Bush, a group of prominent U.S.-based aid organizations, including CARE, Mercy Corps, Save the Children and Refugees International, asked that the job of coordinating humanitarian aid be turned over to the United Nations.
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Strange Insistence that No Miscalculations Were Made
April 1, 2003
Alan Bock
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/b040103.html
Perhaps the oddest phenomenon of the current moment is the insistence by top military brass - and their doppelgangers disguised as retired-military consultants on TV networks - that the original plan for the invasion of Iraq was just hunky-dory and everything is right on schedule and anybody who suggests otherwise must be some kind of anti-American trying to prop up Saddam - or at least somebody who doesn't understand war.
It is perhaps more curious that they say this even as they are obviously scrambling behind the scenes to change the plan and bring in more troops and supplies. Do they think that any serious person takes them seriously?
I'm not saying there isn't a small shred of truth in the assertion that what's going on amounts to minor adjustments rather than major rethinking. I have little doubt that before the war planners considered all kinds of possible scenarios, including something rather similar to what is happening now and probably a number of far worse situations than what the U.S. military is staring in the face.
So somewhere in the depths of the Pentagon there no doubt exists a draft of a war plan that includes contingencies similar to what's happening now, along with contingency plans to handle them. So in some sense the current situation could be viewed, if you stretch far enough, as just part of the original plan.
STUFF HAPPENS
But (while I might be prepared to change my mind when the secret stuff is released 25 or 30 years from now) there can be little doubt that the war has not gone the way the planners had in mind. It was hardly wise for Peter Arnett to go on Iraqi television and say anything, and to assert, as he did, that "the first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance" is probably an overstatement. But it contains a good bit of truth, and that, rather than his saying it on Iraqi TV, is almost certainly the reason so many people have their panties in a twist.
Truth can be dangerous to any political regime, but especially during wartime.
For all the chest-beating boasts of advancing 300 miles in four days, there's virtually no evidence that the U.S. military expected anything like the level of guerrilla and unconventional resistance it has faced in southern and central Iraq. Perhaps nobody but Ken Adelman actually used the term "cakewalk," and most of the top brass, including even President Bush, were cunning enough to warn that it might not be easy.
But the administration, the war whoopers and most of the military clearly expected it to be pretty easy and straightforward, and they conveyed that impression strongly during the buildup. It wasn't only the Sean Hannitys and Rush Limbaughs who were babbling about how the Iraqi people would be dancing in the streets and handing out flowers the moment the first U.S. - er, coalition - soldier showed up on Iraqi soil.
This is pretty clear from interviews in Germany from some of the first American soldiers wounded and taken out of Iraq for hospitalization and treatment. U.S. military leaders led the grunts on the ground to believe it would be a pretty simple and swiftly victorious operation - not perfect and not without some pockets of resistance, of course, but not a whole lot more dangerous than a live-fire exercise.
Our leaders discounted to the point of ignoring entirely the possibility that the Iraqi Shia in the south would not trust the Americans much. Did they forget that the Shia had recent experience with American promises?
Having risen up against Saddam back in 1991 when Poppa Bush told them to and then did nothing to help - as I recollect because his deep thinkers expected and wanted a military coup rather then a genuinely popular uprising - tens of thousands of Shia were slaughtered by Saddam's regime and their waterways, the center of their ancient culture, were drained. It would take more than a couple of tanks and a steely-eyed speech from Dubya to convince these people that the Americans really meant it this time.
The small-scale harassment of American and British supply lines seems to have taken almost everybody by surprise. The troops were not nearly as well prepared to handle such attacks as they might have been. So the advance was slowed, cities the planners clearly thought should have been centers of assistance have instead become centers of resistance. It looks as if there will be serious resistance to an invasion of Baghdad, and it is increasingly possible that resistance will continue, at some level at least, whether Saddam Hussein is alive or dead.
ADMITTING MISTAKES
Good heavens, we're all human beings and we all make mistakes. What would be so terrible about our military leaders admitting that they made one this time? I can understand (without condoning) the pervasive desire on the part of political leaders to appear to be infallible and pretend that a mistake wasn't really a mistake. But I had some hope that military leaders, who not only have to deal regularly with life-and-death situations where honesty with yourself is essential but have at various times had something resembling a code of honor and integrity, might be less political this time around. Or is the military now thoroughly politicized and bureaucratized?
In fact, admitting a miscalculation or several might increase both credibility and the ability to carry this war to a successful conclusion. The losses in personnel have actually been rather modest to date, but it would be well to keep them that way. It would certainly be important to the hope of avoiding future mistakes that could result in cataclysmic losses to develop a sense of honesty and realism about how the war has gone so far and what kind of effort might be needed in light of what the leaders have learned from past mistakes.
But so far our leaders - not to mention the conservative media have kept the rose-colored glasses on. So far as I know, only Andrew Sullivan, among the more prominent hawks, has admitted on his blog that he miscalculated the extent of Iraqi resistance during the run-up to the war. Most of the others are insisting that the plan is still in place and they never promised an easy victory and those who seem to remember rosy no-resistance scenarios emanating from war-whooping quarters are simply deluded. And articles suggesting that the war could grind on for months, as Billy Kristol recently put it, comes close to being disgraceful.
I don't know enough from my vantage point - perched in front of the TV, reading wire stories daily as part of my job, interviewing both military and civilian officials and former officials - to know just how much longer this war will grind on. I know more than most people, but I know enough to know that I don't know anything close to enough. I still hope, as a pragmatic assessment, that it will be over more quickly than I suspect it will be. I still think that will be the least damaging scenario.
PLANTING QUESTIONS
If there is any hope to be garnered from the war so far, one may hope that it discredits the war whoopers of the future. The American public has, perhaps, come to understand that war is not just a video game or a move on a geostrategic chessboard. War is about death and destruction, about snuffing out the lives of young people who should have promising futures in front of them, who have wives, husbands and children.
We should have learned enough just from the first few weeks of the outright combat part of this war that future wars are not to be entered into lightly. We should be in a better position to question than we were after the apparently antiseptic wars of the recent past, whether it is worth it to spill American and foreign blood for the deluded, juvenile - and ultimately tragically unserious - dreams of neoconservative intellectuals with a vision of planting democracies and straddling the earth with benevolent hegemonic power.
This war will give us a platform from which it is possible to question with more credibility whether it is still a wise policy to have U.S. troops in substantial military installations overseas. Is it time to pull troops out of Germany, out of Okinawa, even out of Korea? Having deposed a dictator our leaders told us was a uniquely dangerous madman and tyrant (whether they really believed it or not), will we be in a better position to question the next proposal to depose some run-of-the-mill tyrant? I suspect that memories of this war that went off the tracks (however the hawks would deny it) before ultimate victory will remain in the American psyche for some time to come - not as long as the memories of quagmire in Vietnam, perhaps, but a while - and deter the next round of open empire-building through military force.
So, are the dreams of remaking the Middle East and establishing a real, honest, open empire instead of the de facto, makeshift empire we have now dying in the sands of Iraq? We can only hope so. Of course, we can be sure that those whose perverse love of war, and especially preemptive war, as the centerpiece of American foreign policy, will not give up their hopes to have our young people fight the next war and the next one and the next one. So we must be more persistent, more intelligent, more sober, and eventually more persuasive than they are.
I have it from somebody fairly well connected in Washington that President Bush himself does not harbor dreams of empire, that he wants to win this war, get rid of Saddam, keep the occupation brief, then turn to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a roadmap for a Palestinian state that he won't allow the Israelis to veto, and let that be his legacy rather than a series of endless wars. I don't know if it's true, and I don't know if the president can adhere to that course of action, given the complications and temptations that are bound to ensue as the destabilizing consequences of the wake of war manifest themselves. But I permit myself to hope.
But those of us who love peace and freedom and America can't count on hope. We must redouble our efforts to prevent the next war, even as we try to keep the consequences of this one from becoming too disastrous.
Antiwar.com
520 South Murphy Avenue #202
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
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MILITARY ANALYSIS
The Test for Rumsfeld
April 1, 2003
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/international/worldspecial/01STRA.html
KUWAIT, March 31 - From the day that he took office as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld has sought to change the nature of American defense. The military Mr. Rumsfeld wants to build is more mobile, can deliver precision weapons at vast distances and takes full advantage of sophisticated reconnaissance systems.
But after nearly two weeks of war with Iraq, a chorus of critics have charged that Mr. Rumsfeld's principles have been applied and found wanting in Iraq.
The skeptics, who include some of the leading former Army commanders from the last war with Iraq, say the force the United States has deployed is not large enough to begin a decisive battle in Baghdad while simultaneously guarding ever-lengthening supply lines and establishing control throughout Iraq.
"Their assumptions were wrong," said retired Gen. Barry M. McCaffrey, who led the 24th Mechanized Division into the Euphrates valley to fight the Republican Guard during the 1991 Persian Gulf war. "There is a view that the nature of warfare has fundamentally changed, that numbers don't count, that armor and artillery don't count. They went into battle with a plan that put a huge air and sea force into action with an unbalanced ground combat force."
The conflict with Iraq is not only intended to topple the government of Saddam Hussein. It is also intended to establish a new military lesson. The paradigm being pushed by Mr. Rumsfeld is one that touts the striking force of American air power and the agility of special forces, but tends to question the utility of the Army's heavy armored divisions.
A final assessment of the strategy will have to await the battle for Baghdad. Mr. Rumsfeld also has defenders who say he is determined to stimulate change and challenge long-entrenched patterns of military thinking, even at the risk of offending retired and active duty generals.
What nobody disputes, however, is that the American force that is fighting in Iraq is fundamentally different from the one used during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The doctrine the United States applied in 1991 was one of overwhelming force. Then, the Pentagon sent General H. Norman Schwarzkopf forces he did not even request. A premium was placed on holding risks to an absolute minimum.
When the war came, it began with a 39-day bombing campaign. Then a ground force of more than 500,000 swung into action. The idea was to build up combat power, vanquish the enemy and then quickly withdraw, a concept that came to be known as the "Powell" doctrine, after Gen. Colin L. Powell, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and current secretary of state.
This time, however, the force is much smaller, some 180,000, more than half of which is currently operating inside Iraq. This time the land attack preceded the main air attack, a strategy reversal that commanders say was needed to maintain surprise and seize the Rumaila oil fields but which increased the risk to allied ground troops.
When the war began, the American ground force consisted of the 3rd Infantry Division; the 101st Air Assault Division, which was still arriving in Kuwait and doing its combat checks; a brigade of the 82nd Airborne; the 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment, and a Marine expeditionary force.
All in all, it was a modest force given the ambitious nature of the American mission: fighting their way to Baghdad, which is defended by some six Republican Guard divisions, toppling the Saddam Hussein regime, taking on paramilitaries and other regime forces in other towns and cities and establishing order.
(A hybrid British division is also fighting in southern Iraq but is not assigned to fight in or near the Iraqi capital)
The force is also being deployed in a very different way. Instead of first deploying a large force and only then beginning the fight, this time the invasion began as forces were still arriving in Kuwait, a concept known as a "rolling start."
The thinking was that if the fighting turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, forces would continue to flow to Kuwait where they could be used to reinforce the attack. But if the Iraqi regime was quickly toppled the reinforcements could be called off. .
General Franks described the plan this way: "Begin to flow this amount of force, and we'll stop it when it's no longer necessary."
The Pentagon has said this approach offers maximum flexibility. But the theme of gradual escalation marked a sharp break with U.S. military doctrine and strategy following the Vietnam War.
This worried the army. The deployment has come in the wake of difficulties between Mr. Rumsfeld and the Army's leaders. Mr. Rumsfeld seems to regard the Army as the least receptive to change, and has a strained relationship with the Army chief of staff, Gen. Erik K. Shinseki.
Pentagon officials say that Mr. Rumsfeld was an important influence on the current war plan. As debate over the plan has intensified, Mr. Rumsfeld has insisted that the plan was devised by General Tommy R. Franks, the chief of the United States Central Command, but has indicated that he supports it.
Mr. Rumsfeld's approach, supporters say, has advantages. First, it is conceived to take full advantage of American air superiority.
Second, by avoiding a massive deployment, the Pentagon has shortened considerably the time needed to send a vast force to the Persian Gulf.
"I think he accepts the idea that precision and information can combine to produce an increasingly effective military force," said Richard N. Perle, a former Pentagon official, referring to Mr. Rumsfeld. "The plan is well conceived and the forces are appropriate for that plan. I don't believe it is too light. The force is vastly more productive and the systems are more productive. Under those circumstances you can lighten up. I am not aware of any engagement in which heavier forces would have been more effective."
Loren Thompson, a defense analyst, agreed: "I think this is the future. I think this is the way warfare is headed. You can't deploy ground forces quickly. So if you want to get in first you have to it largely with air power."
The land war commanders in the field have been careful to stay out of the brewing debate. Asked last month whether he had a sufficient number of troops and weapons, Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace, the V Corps commander who is leading the Army forces to Baghdad, said his forces were "adequate."
But some former Army commanders are speaking publicly. They never put much stock in "shock and awe," the air strikes the Bush Administration orchestrated to try to stun the Iraqi government. They say the force dispatched to Kuwait needs more artillery for its fight with the Republican Guard. They say that more forces would also make it easier for the force to protect its long supply lines and cope better with the paramilitary units in the south.
Maj. Gen. Ronald Griffith, the commander of the 1st Armored Division during the 1991 war, was careful not to criticize the Pentagon. But he said that if were up to him, he would have deployed two or three armored Army divisions and more artillery. General McCaffrey, who is the most outspoken of the critics, agreed.
In addition to fighting the Republican Guard, the Army is venturing into cities in southern Iraq to look for paramilitary units. It is charged with guarding supply lines. It is moving up massive logistics for its eventual strikes against Baghdad. All of these task require many soldiers.
The irony, the critics assert, is that Mr. Rumsfeld's force is not nearly as agile as he suggests.
The force can be deployed quickly, they say, but is so limited in number that it has to carry out its tasks in phases, dragging out the war. A bigger force, they say, would be able to better able to keep up the pace of the attack and would have a combat reserve.
In the final analysis, the war is not just a battle to unseat a dictator. It is a giant experiment to determine what forces might be most useful in the future.
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U.S. Precision Weapons Not Foolproof
April 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Bomb-Accuracy.html
The U.S. military is fighting perhaps the most accurate air war in history, with most of the 8,000 precision-guided bombs and missiles loosed on Iraq blasting their intended targets.
But ``precision'' weapons also miss. Human and mechanical errors send 10 percent or more astray, Pentagon and civilian experts say -- a disastrous percentage for civilians living near the intended targets.
``No weapons system is foolproof,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Qatar. ``We'll always have one or two that go off target.''
Some of the dozens of Iraqi civilians killed and wounded may have fallen victim to American precision weapons that, for reasons of mechanical failure or human error, struck homes, markets or city streets rather than military targets.
``Statistically, several hundred of those have missed to some degree,'' said Rob Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons.
An explosion that killed 14 civilians in Baghdad's Shaab neighborhood last Wednesday may have been caused by a U.S. missile, perhaps an anti-radar missile aimed at air defenses or a wayward cruise missile. Coalition briefers have suggested one of Iraq's own air defense missiles tumbled to earth and exploded.
Also under dispute is the cause of a deadly explosion Friday in a Baghdad market that Iraq blames for 60 deaths.
``These two marketplace attacks are looking increasingly sure to have been caused by coalition weapons than went off target,'' Hewson said.
Terrain-hugging U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles fired by ships in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Persian Gulf have also missed targets. A handful of the 700 fired in the war have slammed mistakenly into Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, leading the Saudis and Turks to ask the Pentagon to stop firing them across their territory. Iran has protested at least three hits by U.S. missiles.
``If you're going to use cruise missiles, you're going to have ones coming down where they're not supposed to,'' said David Isby, a private missiles and munitions consultant in Washington, D.C. ``This isn't a scandal for long-range operations. It's to be expected.''
Bombs and missiles that can be programmed to follow a laser trail or hit a specific geographic coordinate based on satellite guidance comprise about 90 percent of those used in the 12-day-old war, Owens said. The bombs go wrong when they're aimed at mistaken targets or given incorrect coordinates, Isby said.
Laser and satellite-guided bombs can also be pushed off-course by winds, by out-of-date geographic data, a misreading of the attacking aircraft's position or an inherent flaw known as target location error -- meaning a location triangulated by satellites doesn't match a spot on earth, Hewson said.
Motors that move the bombs' guiding fins sometimes also fail, Isby said.
Since the Pentagon isn't sharing data on hits and misses, Hewson and other analysts base their predictions of accuracy on anecdotal evidence and data from previous wars.
A Canadian military assessment of laser-guided bomb accuracy during the Kosovo campaign in 1999 showed that 60 to 70 percent hit their targets, Hewson said. Since NATO faced tougher air defenses and weather in that campaign, he said he figures the current combination of laser- and satellite-guided bombs are hitting targets 75 to 80 percent of the time.
``There's a significant gap between 100 percent and reality,'' he said. ``And the more you drop, the greater your chances of a catastrophic failure.''
Laser-guided weapons suffer from other problems, including losing their ``lock'' on the laser target beam, which can be obscured by clouds or smoke. Hewson cited British military video from the 1991 Gulf War that showed a pair of laser-guided bombs gliding far beyond their bridge target and slamming into an Iraqi town.
Hewson said Tomahawks, which use radar to follow reference points on the ground, sometimes get lost over featureless deserts.
At the Pentagon, Air Force Lt. Col. Christy Nolta said that despite painstaking planning, ``there's no way to eliminate the risk'' of civilian deaths.
``These are mechanical devices, and mechanical devices will have mechanical failures,'' Nolta said. ``Human error also plays into it.''
Besides the tragedy of dead civilians, Hewson said errant bombing stokes anti-U.S. and anti-British hostility.
``In a war that's being fought for the benefit of the Iraqi people, you can't afford to kill any of them,'' Hewson said. ``But you can't drop bombs and not kill people. There's a real dichotomy in all of this.''
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Secrets and Lies Become Weapons in Basra Standoff
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63167-2003Mar31?language=printer
SOUTH OF BASRA, Iraq, March 31 -- Two U.S. Humvees pulled up to a British position outside Basra shortly before dusk today. It was time to play some mind games with the Iraqis.
Scattered across a wide arc about 2,000 yards away, Iraqi soldiers with mortar and machine guns had been moving around between this post on a desolate spot of sand and marsh and the rising lights of Basra more than two miles away. Occasionally they would fire on the British, who would have trouble identifying their positions for return fire.
One of the Humvees, with loudspeakers on its roof and a U.S. psychological operations team inside, parked beside a British Warrior armored personnel carrier. A Special Forces team drove the second Humvee 100 yards further down a dirt track before pulling to the side. That group's equipment included a small surveillance drone and laser devices for identifying targets to strike pilots.
Soon the soft hum of the drone's tiny engine was heard. The model-sized craft passed over the Humvee with the psychological operations team in it, then headed off into the darkness. Then came a thunderous noise from the speaker: the recorded sound of British Challenger tanks, laid down on eight tracks to create the auditory illusion of multiple armored vehicles on the move.
Playing into a slight headwind, the fabricated screech and whirr of tanks would carry to the Iraqi positions. The plan was to startle the Iraqis into bolting and then call in air, tank or artillery fire when their location was exposed. "We want to keep them off-balance and get them moving," said one Special Operations soldier. "Or keep them up all night wondering."
In the standoff at Basra, secrets and lies have been injected into the battle plan to spook a stubborn Iraqi force that in the face of superior firepower has abandoned conventional tactics in favor of guerrilla attacks on British lines.
The Iraqis are lobbing in mortar shells and running before retaliatory artillery pounds their position. They are sending out small teams of men from the besieged city to harass their enemy with potshots. Recently, up to 30 Iraqi soldiers were reported to have floated down a canal on a pontoon boat outside Basra to gather for an advance on British lines, but under a barrage of fire, the Iraqis quickly retreated.
Tanks and artillery fire rend the air at intervals, including a major British barrage of rocket-assisted projectiles this evening. Sporadic machine-gun fire is periodically audible in the distance. At night, flares and tracer fire illuminate sky and sand.
The British are bottling up Basra, slowly squeezing the Iraqis from every position on their perimeter and killing and capturing soldiers in isolated engagements. They are, however, leaving the city itself largely alone. The Iraqis, the bulk of their armor gutted in ditches outside the city, appear unable to launch a major counter-offensive. "This place will go when Baghdad falls," said a British soldier in a Challenger at the front line, before adding the refrain of most of the troops here: "When are you going to do it?"
In this foggy environment, U.S. Special Operations forces have launched a variety of missions. Teams of Green Berets have moved to safe houses, operating within communities in the area where Iraqi militiamen still rule the streets, military sources say. Others roam the night shining red laser dots onto targets so that pilots above them can attack.
Civil Affairs units, specializing in peaceful dealings with the local population, are directing food and water to neighborhoods where local leaders have allied themselves with U.S. and British forces. And psychological operations teams are mingling fact and fiction in an attempt to bamboozle their foe.
British soldiers at the position where the loudspeakers blared tonight, members of the Irish Guards, listened with amusement. "It sounds like a little choo-choo going round and around," said Jonathan Eccles, a Belfast native and a gunner on one of the Warriors here.
On Sunday night, the noise deception worked, members of the psych teams said. The Iraqis moved in significant numbers, and British guns quickly struck.
But on this night, the Iraqis laid low, perhaps wise to the ploy. And the frustration of the soldiers on the ground mounted.
The drone spotted nothing interesting, and when it returned, it landed in a patch of wet marsh, frying the night vision unit on it and damaging a wing. Expected air support did not materialize until after the two American teams were on their way back to base, and by then it was too late for them to laser any targets.
"A bummer," was how one Special Forces officer described the night's work.
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Pentagon Seeks to Oust Rivera From Iraq
By DAVID BAUDER
Associated Press Writer
Apr 1, 2003 3:16 PM EST
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_US_MEDIA?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Pentagon said Tuesday it is asking Fox News Channel to remove Geraldo Rivera from a posting with U.S. troops in Iraq where he was accused of disclosing unauthorized information.
"We have asked that he be removed and we are working with them to make that happen," Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said. He said the network had agreed.
Fox News Channel executives did not immediately return calls seeking comment Tuesday.
Earlier, Rivera had dismissed reports that he had been ejected from Iraq for revealing tactical information about the 101st Airborne Division.
Also Tuesday, a British tabloid said it has hired Peter Arnett, who was dismissed by NBC on Monday for giving an unauthorized interview to Iraqi state television in which he said the American-led war effort initially failed because of Iraq's resistance.
"Fired by America for telling the truth," the Daily Mirror said in a Page 1 headline.
Lapan said Rivera reported details of troop operations by drawing a line in the sand showing where his unit was and where it was going next. Reporters who are "embedded" with U.S. troops are not supposed to disclose details that could help Iraqis figure out their location and plans.
Rivera, Lapan said, was put with his unit as a "short-term embed," meaning the military agreed he could go for a couple of days.
Fox's rivals, CNN and MSNBC, both reported Monday that Rivera had been kicked out of the country.
Shortly thereafter, Rivera delivered a report via satellite phone saying he was 60 miles from Baghdad. Rivera labeled reports of his ouster "a pack of lies" spread by his former colleagues at NBC, or as he put it, "some rats at my former network."
"The war among the press is about as intense as the war in Iraq," Fox prime-time host Bill O'Reilly said in a telephone interview.
Arnett apologized Monday for his "misjudgment" in talking to Iraqi TV. But he added: "I said over the weekend what we all know about this war." And he wrote in the newspaper, "I report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not apologize for it."
Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, gained much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War for CNN. One of the few American television reporters left in Baghdad, his reports were frequently aired on NBC and its cable sisters, MSNBC and CNBC.
NBC was angered because Arnett gave the interview Sunday without permission and presented opinion as fact. The network initially backed him, but reversed field after watching a tape of his appearance. The network said it got "thousands" of e-mails and phone calls protesting Arnett's remarks.
In the interview, shown by Iraq's satellite television, Arnett said the United States was reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for a week, "and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan."
Arnett said it was clear that, within the United States, opposition to the war was growing, along with a challenge to President Bush about the war's conduct.
The London newspaper that hired him, the Mirror, is vehemently opposed to the war. "I am still in shock and awe at being fired," Arnett wrote for the newspaper.
Before the announcement of his new job, Arnett had said he planned to leave Baghdad, and joked that he'd try to swim to "a small island in the South Pacific."
Arnett also departed CNN under a cloud. He was the on-air reporter of a retracted 1998 CNN report that accused American forces of using sarin nerve gas in Laos in 1970. He was reprimanded and later left the network.
Earlier, the first Bush administration was unhappy with Arnett's reporting on the Gulf War in 1991 for CNN, suggesting he had become a conveyor of propaganda.
Arnett went to Iraq this year not as an NBC News reporter but as an employee of the MSNBC show "National Geographic Explorer." When other NBC reporters left Baghdad for safety reasons, the network began airing Arnett's reports. Arnett was also relieved of his duties Monday at "National Geographic Explorer."
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THIS WAR IS NOT WORKING
Apr 1 2003
By Peter Arnett,
UK Mirror
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12795678&method=full&siteid=50143
I am still in shock and awe at being fired. There is enormous sensitivity within the US government to reports coming out from Baghdad.
They don't want credible news organisations reporting from here because it presents them with enormous problems.
I reported on the original bombing for NBC and we were half a mile away from those massive explosions. Now I am really shocked that I am no longer reporting this story for the US and awed by the fact that it actually happened.
That overnight my successful NBC reporting career was turned to ashes. And why?
Tariq Aziz told me the US will have to brainwash 25M Iraqis, because these people think exactly the same as Saddam
Because I stated the obvious to Iraqi television; that the US war timetable has fallen by the wayside.
I have made those comments to television stations around the world and now I'm making them again in the Daily Mirror.
I'm not angry. I'm not crying. But I'm also awed by this media phenomenon.
The right-wing media and politicians are looking for any opportunity to be critical of the reporters who are here, whatever their nationality. I made the misjudgment which gave them the opportunity to do so.
I gave an impromptu interview to Iraqi television feeling that after four months of interviewing hundreds of them it was only professional courtesy to give them a few comments.
That was my Waterloo - bang!
I have not yet decided what to do, whether to pack my bags and leave Baghdad or stay on.
I'll decide what to do today, right now I'm chewing on what has happened to me.
American Marines at our checkpoints are suspicious of every man, woman and child because of the suicide bomb
But whatever happens I will never stop reporting on the truth of this war whether I am in Baghdad or somewhere else in the Middle East - or even back in Washington.
I was here in 1991 and the bombing is very similar to that conflict but the reality is very different.
The US and British want to come here, take over the city, upturn the government and take us through to a new era. The troops are in the country and fighting there way up here. It creates a very different atmosphere.
The Ba'ath party, currently led by Saddam Hussein, has been in power for 34 years. Tariq Aziz told me the US will have to brainwash 25 million Iraqis because these people think exactly the same as Saddam does.
Maybe he is wrong, maybe not.
For months, Iraqis have said officially and privately: "We will fight the Americans, we will use guerrilla tactics, we will surprise them."
But the Iraqi opposition has said: "This will be a pushover, everyone wants to rebel against Saddam."
Now the reality is being played out on the battlefield.
We have to watch the reality now and some Iraqis are fighting and the government does seem very determined. For me to see that and to be criticised for saying the obvious is unfair.
As the battle for Baghdad grows, so the potential for civilian casualties grows. This is the spectre rising for the coalition as this war continues
But it has made me a target for my critics in the States who accuse me of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
I don't want to give aid and comfort to the enemy - I just want to be able to tell the truth.
I came to Baghdad with my crew because the Iraqi side needs to be heard too.
It is clear the original timetable that America would be in Baghdad by the end of March has fallen by the wayside.
There is clearly debate in the US about this, reinforcements are being sent in and there are delays.
This doesn't mean it is going badly. Every casualty is a loss but they have been in limited numbers so far.
Every night and every day I hear the B-52s and the missiles hammering the defences Baghdad.
Just like in Afghanistan and Vietnam, the US is bringing enormous firepower to bear which it believes will grind the Iraqis down. I have seen it before and it has been enormously effective. The US optimism is justified.
On the other hand, at what cost to civilians ?
During the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, I entered a US-held town which had been totally destroyed.
The Viet Cong had taken over and were threatening the commander's building so he called down an artillery strike which killed many of his own men.
The Major with us asked: "How could this happen?" A soldier replied: "Sir, we had to destroy the town to save it."
The Bush and Blair administration does not want that label stuck on this war, it is a liberation for them. But the problem is US Marines at checkpoints are suspicious of every man, woman and child because of the suicide bomb.
Already there is suspicion growing.
And in the south, there have not been popular rebellions and uprisings. As the battle for Baghdad grows, the potential for civilian casualties grows.
Optimists in the Pentagon talk about an internal coup. BNut who would have had believed Umm Qasr would hold out for six days?
This is the spectre rising as this war continues. The US and Britain have to figure this out.
I don't think you can tell how it will end, there are many scenarios. A siege of Baghdad... a special operations strike on Saddam. Optimists in the Pentagon talk about an internal coup.
Who would have had believed Umm Qasr would hold out for six days or US Marines directing traffic would be killed by a suicide bomber? This is more like the West Bank and Gaza and it could become like that in some areas.
The US and Britain must avoid that scenario.
Forces come in, communities resist, then suicide bombing and resistance from guerrillas.
Except the Iraqis will be putting up a stiffer fight than the Palestinians because they are better armed.
We know the world, including many Americans, is ambivalent about this war and I think it is essential to be here.
I'm not here to be a superstar. I have been there in 1991 and could never be bigger than that.
Some reporters make judgements but that is not my style. I present both sides and report what I see with my own eyes.
I don't blame NBC for their decision because they came under great commercial pressure from the outside.
And I certainly don't believe the White House was responsible for my sacking.
But I want to tell the story as best as I can, which makes it so disappointing to be fired.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
[Perhaps the FBI should call itself the GDI - Global Bureau of Investigation.]
FBI Planning to Add Offices Overseas
Associated Press
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63425-2003Mar31?language=printer
The FBI plans to open offices in Kabul, Afghanistan; Jakarta, Indonesia; and eight other foreign capitals as part of a decade-long overseas expansion that officials say is crucial to meet the global threat of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
The blueprint also calls for adding 30 new FBI personnel, including 17 agents, to the nearly 200 stationed at 46 locations around the world, according to FBI documents and interviews.
Their importance was demonstrated during the afternoon of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the FBI says, when agents in dozens of cities already were tracking down leads with the cooperation of local authorities in Germany, Canada, Britain and elsewhere.
"Had we not had those relationships, it would have been a question not of days in covering leads but probably weeks and months," said Roderick Beverly, special agent in charge of the FBI's Office of International Operations.
Since the fall of 2001, about 500 agents and 200 support staff have been working overseas on the terrorism investigation, along with the FBI agents known as permanent legal attach?s, or "legats," who were already there. The agents are often involved with interrogation of terrorist suspects or criminals and sometimes submit questions to the interviewers, including CIA officers.
Legats feed information gleaned from the interviews back to the United States for further investigation, sometimes resulting in more suspects being put under surveillance or homes being searched.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller told Congress recently that the bureau's agents abroad have proved invaluable in several recent investigations, including the fatal shooting of Laurence Foley, a U.S. diplomat, in Amman, Jordan.
Legat offices numbered only about two dozen as recently as the early 1990s. Louis J. Freeh, FBI director then, pushed the expansion, traveling to Moscow and other cities to open new offices to tackle organized crime, drug trafficking and other international crimes.
A problem with the rapid overseas expansion is a lack of foreign-language skills. Mueller told Congress last week that he is working to upgrade the program so agents have better language abilities before they arrive at their posts.
Typical of the FBI's overseas work is the investigation of the Washington-area sniper killings, which led to the Caribbean island of Antigua, where suspect John Allen Muhammad had once lived. The FBI went in with Antigua's permission, doing about 30 interviews and helping handle the evidence.
But flying into a country and being there full time are different things. The FBI says there is no substitute for daily, face-to-face contact with local officials to obtain cooperation to track down fugitives, interview witnesses, and gather and preserve evidence.
If the $47 million expansion is approved by Congress, Beverly said, new offices would be set up in Sarajevo, Bosnia; Jakarta; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Kabul; and Belgrade. Earlier this year, Congress agreed to give the FBI money to open new legat offices in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Tunis, Tunisia; Sanaa, Yemen, and Tbilisi, Georgia. They will be in operation in coming months.
-------- homeland security
Bush Lauds Homeland Security Efforts
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62673-2003Mar31?language=printer
PHILADELPHIA, March 31 -- President Bush took a four-hour detour from war planning today to salute the Coast Guard for its new counterterrorism duties and burnish his own credentials on homeland security, which Democrats accuse him of shortchanging.
The Coast Guard has often felt like the forgotten service, but today Bush called attention to the cutters guarding ports and oil platforms in the Persian Gulf and the officers boarding suspicious vessels approaching U.S. ports.
"After our nation was attacked on September the 11th, 2001, America made a decision: We will not wait for our enemies to strike before we act against them," Bush said at the Port of Philadelphia. "We're not going to permit terrorists and terror states to plot and plan and grow in strength while we do nothing."
Bush's remarks sought to connect the war in Iraq with a broader campaign against terrorism and also were aimed at Democrats who are treating homeland security as the one defense-related issue on which he might be vulnerable. Bush made a huge issue last fall of Democrats' delay in creating the Department of Homeland Security, and they now accuse him of failing to allocate enough money to back up his rhetoric.
Senate Democrats plan to announce Tuesday that they will try to add about $9 billion for homeland security to Bush's $74.7 billion war spending request. That is roughly the amount of foreign aid in the supplemental request. "This is a two-front war, and we must do more to secure our front lines here at home," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) called the $4.25 billion Bush had requested for homeland security as part of the war budget "only a start." Republican leaders have indicated they may agree to increase the amount for states and localities.
Democrats contend that Bush has been grudging in his embrace of homeland security, going back to his original opposition to creating a separate department. Bush eventually adopted the idea, and the new department -- combining all or part of 22 agencies, including the Coast Guard -- opened Jan. 24.
Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee issued a chart labeled "Credibility Gap: Bush and Port Security" that accused him of budgeting far less than some of his appointees have recommended.
"He's trying to get right on the subject with a few photo ops," Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said. "They feel compelled to save every blessed dime they can for their tax cuts."
The Customs Service, Energy Department and Coast Guard have asked the White House for substantially more money than Bush has budgeted.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) expressed frustration in particular about the administration's delay in spending $28 million that Congress appropriated last year for a pilot program to monitor cargo containers from overseas. A Transportation Security Administration official said the administration was still accepting applications and that the money "should be awarded sometime in the May/June timeframe."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who introduced Bush today, said the administration's actions "have made this port and other American ports hostile territory for would-be terrorists, but a safe harbor for trade and travel."
Bush's budget director, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., said that instead of spending against every eventuality, the government needs to be smarter about reducing the greatest vulnerabilities. "There is not enough money in the galaxy to protect every square inch of America," Daniels said.
----
Homeland Security And the Bottom Line
Anti-Terror Moves Help, Hurt Colo. Firms
By T. R. Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62613-2003Mar31?language=printer
CASTLE ROCK, Colo. -- Homeland Security giveth, and Homeland Security taketh away.
When the new Department of Homeland Security suggested on its Web site (www.ready.gov) in February that home first-aid kits should include potassium iodide tablets, it sparked a sales rush of historic proportions for the folks here at Natural Balance, a maker of health and diet products.
"Potassium iodide had been a moderately successful product for us," says a smiling Scott W. Smith, a Natural Balance vice president. "Then it skyrocketed. We sold a million tablets in one week! It's become the best-selling product in our 20-year history."
But a half-hour's drive south, in Colorado Springs, nobody is smiling at the headquarters of Apogee Components, a maker of model rocketry supplies for schools and Scout troops.
"We've been tearing our hair out since the Homeland Security Act passed," Apogee President Tim Van Milligan said. "This law treats model rocket fuel as an explosive. You need a criminal background check now to use our product. It's an absolute disaster for this industry."
The threat of terrorism, and the government's response to it, have had broad repercussions for big business -- from a flood of red ink for the beleaguered airline industry to significant profits for major electronics firms that make screening and surveillance equipment.
The battle against domestic terrorism has also touched tens of thousands of small business concerns, for good or ill -- and prompted furious lobbying battles over the new rules and definitions emanating from federal agencies dealing with various aspects of homeland security.
The contrasting experiences of Natural Balance and of Apogee Components, two small firms located in nondescript industrial parks on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, reflect the diverse impact the new federal effort has had.
Natural Balance, founded in 1983 by a Castle Rock couple who blended herbs and vitamins into an "energizer" tablet called "Pep," has become a familiar name in health food stores from coast to coast. The firm makes diet pills, colon cleansers, herbal tranquilizers and such.
Last October, said Smith, vice president for corporate development, the firm noticed that the federal government was supplying potassium iodide tablets to postal workers and certain other federal employees as a precautionary measure in case of a nuclear alert. Doctors say the chemical tends to reduce the thyroid's absorption of radioactive iodine, a dangerous byproduct of nuclear release.
So Natural Balance started selling the product under the name "No-Rad," packaged in a bright red-and-white box with a prominent notice on both ends: "Warning: Use only in the event of a nuclear emergency!"
"We had a problem initially," Smith recalled, "because we had to educate our retailers and their customers about what this product is. It went slowly at first. But [Homeland Security Secretary] Tom Ridge took care of that."
In February, when Ridge first raised the national security alert to Level Orange, www.ready.gov issued a series of advisories to help Americans prepare for the worst. Most attention focused on the recommendation for sealing a "safe room" in the home with duct tape and plastic sheeting.
But the Web site also mentioned potassium iodide. Although the official endorsement was somewhat lukewarm -- "Potassium iodide may or may not protect your thyroid gland from radioactive iodine exposure" -- it was more than enough for Natural Balance and several other firms marketing the tablets.
"Sales have just exploded," Smith said.
In the model rocket business, in contrast, there is broad concern that sales will drop sharply because of new security rules restricting the use of ammonium perchlorate composite propellant. APCP is the solid fuel that drives rockets skyward, and it has helped countless Boy Scouts earn the Model Rocketry merit badge.
Under last November's Homeland Security Act, the shipment and sale of any rocket motor with more than 62.5 grams of APCP will be strictly controlled. That's a fairly large motor in the model rocket game, so the rule will not impair sales of smaller rockets.
But as students and hobbyists move up to bigger models, such as the five-foot-long replica of the Saturn V moon rocket that Apogee sells for $225, they need bigger motors -- motors now officially considered "explosive devices."
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives points out that 90 percent of rocket motors on the market would fall below the control limit. The agency says the new rules will help "to better monitor explosives commerce in an effort to enhance homeland security."
"What this has to do with terrorism or security is a mystery to me," complained Van Milligan, surrounded by balsa nose cones and control fins at the Apogee factory. "It ought to be obvious that we don't want anything explosive. We put, maybe, a hundred dollars, and dozens of hours, into making our rockets. We definitely don't want them to explode. The fuel we use will not explode."
The model rocket community has gained the support of Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), a former rocket hobbyist. Enzi last week launched legislation that would exempt students and hobbyists from the federal regulations, which are scheduled to take effect May 25.
The problem, he said, was that the drive against terrorists has been expanded so far it will block the legal activities of innocent Americans.
"We should be encouraging youth to take up this mind-expanding activity, not squelching initiative," Enzi said. "People who build and launch model rockets for fun aren't the bad guys."
--------
Avoiding Chemical Catastrophe
April 1, 2003
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/01/opinion/01TUE3.html
Among the biggest challenges facing Tom Ridge, the homeland security czar, is protecting America's privately owned infrastructure from terrorist attack - its power plants, pipelines, shipyards. Of particular concern are some 15,000 chemical plants, refineries and sites that use or store big quantities of hazardous materials. The Environmental Protection Agency has identified 123 places where toxic gases released by a terrorist attack could kill or injure more than one million people, and 700 other places where an attack could kill or injure 100,000 people. Mr. Ridge has said, and a new report by the General Accounting Office confirms, that most of these spots are vulnerable.
One would expect President Bush to put the safety of these plants at the top of his list. But so far the administration has offered no legislation to address the issue. In a speech yesterday in Philadelphia, the president noted that chemical plants were among the potential targets now receiving increased protection under Operation Liberty Shield, the surveillance program begun after the invasion of Iraq. But this protection is spotty at best, and no substitute for an industrywide strategy comparable, say, to the strict, federally enforced safety regimen required of nuclear plants.
Mr. Ridge may be able to rouse the White House from its torpor. Failing that, Congress will have to move on its own. Last year, Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey, a warrior on this issue, introduced a bill requiring companies to devise plans for reducing the likelihood of a terrorist attack and the damage from such an attack should one occur. The Department of Homeland Security and the E.P.A. would oversee and enforce the program. The bill sailed through committee, but an industry counterattack killed the bill on the Senate floor.
In recent weeks, however, industry has begun to change its tune. Until the G.A.O. report, it had called for a voluntary program. It now accepts the broad objectives of the Corzine bill: a national risk assessment, federal oversight and enforcement. Whether it will accept a truly tough program is another matter. Mr. Corzine's bill envisions not only beefed-up security but also "new technologies" - using safer manufacturing processes, for example, and substituting less volatile chemicals for those now in use. That represents a level of invasiveness industry usually does not like.
There is talk of reviving the Corzine bill later this week. There are also rumors that the administration is preparing its own bill. We have been hearing that for a year. This is a matter that cannot wait. Neither should Congress.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Oil Eases as Nigeria Calls Off Strike
Reuters
Tuesday, April 1, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3343-2003Apr1?language=printer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell 4 percent on Tuesday as Nigerian workers called off a planned general strike, raising hopes that oil production halted there by ethnic clashes might soon restart.
The move eased fears of further oil supply disruption with Iraq's crude exports halted since near the start of a 13-day U.S.-led invasion.
U.S. light crude dipped $1.24 a barrel to $29.80 while London benchmark Brent futures fell 82 cents to $26.36 a barrel. Oil prices are more that $10 a barrel below 12-year highs hit in late February.
Prices fell as Nigeria's biggest union called off a planned three-day strike. "News of the agreement on the Nigerian strike has given the market some breathing room," one London oil trader said.
Tribal clashes have shut nearly 40 percent of Nigeria's 2.2 million barrels per day of crude production for more than a week. The West African country is one of the top six oil suppliers to the United States.
Oil companies Shell and ChevronTexaco have said they will not resume operations from Forcados and Escravos in the western Niger swamps until they can be sure of their staff's safety.
SADDAM SPECULATION
Nigerian and Iraqi jitters have helped support oil prices in recent days after the market fell 25 percent just before the war when dealers took the view that Baghdad would not resist for long.
Tuesday's falls gained pace after Iraq's Information Minister delivered a television message from President Saddam Hussein, fueling speculation that the Iraqi leader may be dead.
"People interpreted the fact that Saddam Hussein did not deliver his own message as 'he is no longer with us,"' said a New York trader.
Prices have come under further pressure from signs that world oil supplies are sufficient to meet lower seasonal demand in the second quarter.
"What's driving prices right now is the offset between supply security fears, balanced against expectations of softer demand, which you normally get at this time of the year," said Kevin Norrish, energy analyst at Barclays Capital.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has compensated for lost Iraqi and Nigerian crude with increased supplies. Top world exporter Saudi Arabia in March hit its highest production level for 21 years
"As far as the war is concerned, we have lost Iraqi supplies but clearly OPEC is still managing so far to make up for that," Barclay's Norrish said.
GASOLINE
Global energy demand on the 77 million bpd world market normally drops about 2 million bpd in the second quarter with warmer weather sets in the United States and Europe.
Demand then picks up again when gasoline consumption for motorists rises in the summer holidays.
Nigeria's high-quality crude, ideal for gasoline production, is missed because it is a popular feedstock among U.S. refiners.
Gasoline stocks in the United States are running well below year-ago levels as the world's biggest consumer of motor fuel gears up for peak demand.
"Looking at where U.S. gasoline inventories are and where prices are, lots will depend now on how soon Venezuela will get its gasoline production back to normal," Norrish said.
Venezuela, struggling to get output back on stream after a crippling opposition strike, has said it will restart gasoline exports this week to the United States and expects all refining and exports to return to normal in four to six weeks.
The strike had contributed to extremely tight oil inventories in the West even before the war in Iraq.
Analysts polled by Reuters predict that U.S. data due on Wednesday will show a large crude stock rise after a week of heavy imports. (Additional reporting by Sujata Rao)
-------- imf / world bank /wto
World Bank: U.N. Poverty Goals Off Track, Need Cash
April 1, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-economy-worldbank-poverty.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many poor countries will miss the United Nations goals of cutting poverty by 2015 unless rich countries dig into their wallets to help them, a World Bank report obtained by Reuters found.
The paper was prepared for discussion by the world's finance ministers at the spring meetings of the bank and International Monetary Fund on April 12 and 13.
``Bluntly speaking, many of the poorest countries will not reach the millennium development goals unless all partners take decisive action without delay,'' the report said.
The targets were put together by the United Nations in 2000 and world leaders reaffirmed their commitment to ensuring they are achieved at a conference in Mexico last year.
The idea is to wipe out extreme poverty and hunger, ensure all primary school age children have access to education, empower women, reduce child mortality, beat HIV/AIDS and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability by 2015.
The bank estimates around 1 billion people in the developing world live without access to safe drinking water while each minute a woman dies in pregnancy or child birth, with 99 percent of maternal deaths occurring developing countries.
The education target is the closest to being met but is still in desperate need of more funding. The bank estimates a program to fast-track the education programs of seven countries to meet the goal has a funding gap of about $430 million.
Officials from rich countries met in Paris last week to try and come up with the cash but they did not announce they reached agreement as to where the money would come from.
Funding for HIV/AIDS has seen new pledges but there is still a financing gap, the report said. The Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria has committed over $1 billion for at least 62 countries to be used over the next two years.
``But to date there is a lag in payments by donors to the Fund as well as delays in disbursements to the countries,'' the report said.
The bank also urges the poor countries to manage their budgets better to cope with inflows of development aid.
-------- ACTIVISTS
U.S. nuns go on trial for military break-in
01 Apr 2003
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N31382259.htm
DENVER, March 31 - With anti-war protesters cheering them on, three Catholic nuns went on trial on Monday for alleged sabotage and malicious destruction of property related to a break-in at an unmanned missile silo in northern Colorado.
Dominican Sisters Carolyn Gilbert, Jackie Hudson and Ardeth Platte have said they broke into the Minuteman III silo on Oct. 6 to "unmask the false religion and worship of national security."
The trio cut cables and made the sign of the cross with their own blood on the lid of the silo near Greeley, Colorado. They were in the silo for about an hour before military police arrived and took them into custody.
Supporters, who packed the courtroom yelled "We love You" as the women entered the room, handcuffed and wearing orange jail jumpsuits.
The nuns waved and smiled back just before U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered the courtroom cleared to make room for prospective jurors.
A jury was selected and opening statements were scheduled for Tuesday.
If convicted, the women face a jail sentence of up to 30 years and fines of up to $250,000.
The judge recently ruled that the nuns, one of whom is representing herself, could not use the Nuremberg defense, which allows a citizen to break the law in order to prevent a crime against humanity.
The women have previously been involved in anti-military demonstrations.
----
Jury selection for trial of peace activist nuns begins
By COLLEEN SLEVIN
Associated Press Writer,
April 1, 2003
http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=41031
DENVER (AP) - Potential jurors in the case of three Roman Catholic nuns accused of vandalizing a nuclear missile silo were asked in federal court Monday whether they believe people have a right to protest war during the U.S-led invasion in Iraq.
All 31 men and women agreed that people were entitled to protest.
U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn also called on several jurors by name to ask them what they felt about ''women who talk about peace'' and whether they had an enmity toward ''women who seek the world of weapons of mass destruction.'' None raised any objection to people with such views.
Jury selection continued through the afternoon and opening statements were expected Wednesday.
The Dominican sisters, Ardeth Platte, 66, Carol Gilbert, 55, and Jackie Hudson, 68, cut through the fence at a Minuteman III missile site on Colorado's northeastern plains on Oct. 6, drew crosses with their blood and pounded the silo's tracks with hammers. They said they wanted bring attention to the United States' refusal to rule out the use of nuclear weapons.
They are accused of interfering with the national defense and causing more than $1,000. If convicted, they face 30 years in prison.
Blackburn excused three potential jurors, including a man who works for defense contractor Lockheed Martin and has worked on missile silos.
One man said his religious beliefs did not permit him to pass judgment on another and another man said he didn't think he could convict the women regardless of what evidence was presented.
About 40 supporters packed into the courtroom, sharing bench space with potential jurors.
During a break, U.S. Marshals allowed the nuns to talk to their supporters but they had to keep several feet away from the bar separating them from spectators. They were excited to see Sister Anne Montgomery, who was arrested with them at Peterson Air Force Base in 2000 and who had just returned from a stay in the West Bank.
They talked about the war in Iraq. A few minutes later, a woman who had just walked into the courtroom approached the bar to give Hudson a hug.
''We can't touch, that's why my hands are back here,'' said Hudson, her arms wrapped behind her back.
One supporter inside the courtroom decided to cover the ''Take No Prisoners'' message on his t-shirt with duct tape rather than have to leave the courtroom.
Outside the courthouse, a handful of peace protestors held banners with messages such as ''Practice Peace,'' drawing an occassional honk from passing drivers.
The nuns represented themselves in previous legal proceedings. At this hearing, all but Platte have retained lawyers because they are accused of sabotage, not simply property damage, Montgomery said.
''It's risky for what this would mean for any kind of nonviolent actions in the future,'' she said.
Gilbert and Platte both lived at Jonah House, a communal residence for pacifists founded by Philip Berrigan in Baltimore. Hudson belongs to a similar group in Poulsbo, Wash.
----
Nun says protest is worth 30 years in prison
By COLLEEN SLEVIN
Associated Press Writer,
April 1, 2003
http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=42943
DENVER (AP) - Three Roman Catholic nuns may be guilty of trespassing but never jeopardized national security when they allegedly defaced a Minuteman III missile silo, a defense attorney said Tuesday.
Domican sisters Jackie Hudson, 68, Ardeth Platte, 66, and Carol Gilbert, 55, are accused of breaking into a missile silo site on Colorado's northeastern plains Oct. 6, swinging hammers at it and painting a cross in their own blood on the structure.
All three have been charged with interfering with the national defense - a crime, that if a jury finds the women guilty, could put them behind bars for 30 years.
''There was nothing that stopped this missile from being able to hit its target and doing its demonic damage,'' Hudson's attorney, Walker Gerash, told a 13-member jury on Tuesday.
The sisters entered the N-8 site holding a Minuteman III missile as part of a symbolic disarmament, reading Bible verses about pounding swords into plowshares and singing hymns, Gerash said.
The sisters, who also pounded on the 110-ton concrete lid with hammers, said they were compelled to act as war with Iraq moved closer and because the United States has never promised not to use nuclear weapons.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Brown said the sisters refused to leave the missile site when officers ordered them to do so through a bullhorn.
He said the Minuteman and other nuclear missiles have been vital to the nation's defense and have deterred other nations from using their nuclear weapons.
''It would have been nice if they never were invented. But they were,'' Brown said.
Platte, representing herself, said the military's 90-minute response time to an alarm set by the break-in showed the sisters were never seriously considered a threat to national security.
She said the protest was worthwhile, even if the sisters are jailed, if people think more about these weapons.
''If we have to spend the rest of our lives in prison we will,'' she said, fighting tears. ''We have friends who are in the war zone. We must do more for peace.''
She left the lectern and embraced her legal adviser Anabel Dwyer, a law professor from Lansing, Mich.
Before the day's proceedings began the sisters held hands with their lawyers and prayed silently around the defense table, as their supporters who packed the courtroom followed suit. Then some of the supporters stood in advance of the judge's entrance so they wouldn't have to be instructed to stand for him. The were protesting his decision to block the sisters from using international law as part of their defense.
Gilbert and Platte both lived at Jonah House, a communal residence for pacifists founded by Philip Berrigan in Baltimore. Hudson belongs to a similar group in Poulsbo, Wash. All joined the Dominican order in Grand Rapids, Mich.
----
US anti-war movement breaks ranks with the '60s
Story by Greg Frost
REUTERS USA:
April 1, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20331/newsDate/1-Apr-2003/story.htm
BOSTON - Peace vigils and rallies against war in Iraq have broken out in U.S. towns and cities, drawing hundreds of thousands of participants.
Student strikes are disrupting college campuses, where old protest anthems like "We Shall Overcome" mix with the tinny sound of speeches belted out over bullhorns.
The scene may resemble the Vietnam-era U.S. student movement. But scratch the surface and it soon becomes clear that this peace push is strikingly different from that of the 1960s when it was a movement of the young, of university students and of those on the political left.
Now participants in U.S. anti-war protests cut across the spectrum of ages, races and backgrounds and include many who would consider themselves mainstream Americans. They are joining a more predictable crowds of college students, environmentalists, socialists, anarchists and other activists.
John Llewellyn, a 45-year-old computer industry worker from Knoxville, Tenn., is among the tens of thousands of people who turned up at a recent anti-war protest in Boston - the city's biggest demonstration in at least 30 years.
A former "longtime Republican," Llewellyn said he has never protested against anything in his life and admitted he does not fit the mold of an anti-war activist, but said President George W. Bush's policies have gone too far.
"It's gotten to the point that it's scary," said Llewellyn, who was visiting Boston with his family.
NOT THE 'USUAL SUSPECTS'
Although turnout at anti-war rallies has been strong, polls show that most Americans support the war in Iraq.
Still, many of Llewellyn's fellow protesters said the war has stirred something within them that has lain dormant for decades and, in some cases, their entire lives.
"This is the first time I have ever done something like this," said 66-year-old Jung Ming Wu of Acton, Massachusetts, as he gathered with thousands of other protesters gathered in a park in Boston. "It's very emotional."
Victoria Carter a 46-year-old actuary, said her appearance at the Boston rally was her first since taking part in an anti-apartheid protest decades ago.
"I usually trust the government, but this time it's different," said Carter, who lives in the Boston area.
Eli Pariser, the international campaigns director of MoveOn.org (http://moveon.org), an online political network that claims more than 1.3 million U.S. members and another 700,000 around the world, said many of those involved are not "the usual suspects."
"They're ordinary folks who often have never been politically involved before and consider themselves patriots," said Pariser, who is based in New York. "But they feel so alarmed by the direction the country is going and possible consequences of war that they feel like they have to get involved."
The participation of many middle-of-the-road Americans is no accident. Some anti-war groups have consciously reached out to the mainstream by avoiding some of the more strident rhetoric and confrontational tactics of recent left-wing campaigns such as the anti-globalization protests at the Seattle World Trade Organization talks four years ago.
Some anti-war strategists have strived to cast their cause as a patriotic one that loyal Americans can embrace as part of the nation's moral conscience.
TECHNOLOGICAL BOOST
Technology also aids their cause.
Armed with e-mails and the power of the Internet, anti-war activists organize protests in hours, not the days or weeks it took their predecessors. One of their tactics before the war began involved bombarding the White House and Congress with electronic mail and faxes in a bid to block telephone lines.
Joseph Gerson, a 56-year-old Boston-based pacifist, marvels at the speed at which rallies are put together, and he envies the breadth of information available to protesters online.
"I spent a big part of the Vietnam War era organizing anti-war protests in Arizona. We were pretty isolated. There was a right-wing monopoly newspaper, and we were dependent on what outside speakers would bring in or what we got in the mail. That was slow," says Gerson, a former classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University in the 1960s.
Gerson said he is stunned by how quickly the anti-war movement has grown, noting that it took years to reach a critical mass of people opposed to the conflict in Vietnam.
New York has already seen two demonstrations within five weeks numbering in the hundreds of thousands - a broad coalition of 200 groups under the umbrella of United for Peace and Justice.
RE-ENERGIZED STUDENTS
Part of the movement's strength, Gerson said, comes from a newly energized student base - a big shift from the economically booming '90s that generally kept a lid on campus activism.
"The students who are coming out to demonstrations ... are rediscovering their political power," he said. "They are learning lessons about American society and about democracy that have been submerged for the last decade."
Further distinguishing the present peace drive is the absence of a draft that sucked a generation of American men into military service and served as a major catalyst for the peace movement of the late '60s.
In place of the draft, Gerson said, is a sense of "straight altruism" shared by people who are simply concerned about their country's future.
Stephen Nathanson, a philosophy professor at Northeastern University and a former Vietnam-era peace activist, said many current demonstrators also are more comfortable with their sense of patriotism.
"In the '60s, people just accepted that if they were against the war, they were going to be anti-patriotic," Nathanson said. "Now, people seem to understand that you can oppose the war because you're patriotic. People who oppose the war actually think it's bad for the country, that it will make the country unsafe."
Joshua Jackson, an anti-war organizer at Hampshire College in western Massachusetts, said activism is not confined to "lefty" college towns like Madison, Wis., or Berkeley, Calif., - and it goes beyond the free-love, drug-happy flower power of the late '60s.
"Sure there are punk rockers and hippies taking part," he said. "But this is not a counter-cultural movement: You're seeing a lot of 'normal' people involved with this."
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Indiana peace activist among 5 injured in Iraqi car crash, found hospital destroyed by bombs
By Charles J. Hanley
Associated Press
Mon, Mar. 31, 2003
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/news/local/5523981.htm
AMMAN, Jordan - Bruised and bleeding, in need of medical care, the Americans stranded in Iraq's western desert approached the mud-brick town and found the hospital destroyed by bombs.
"Why? Why?" a doctor demanded of them. "Why did you Americans bomb our children's hospital?" Scores of Iraqi townspeople crowded around.
The account of a group of American peace activists, which includes Cliff Kindy of North Manchester, Ind., was the first confirmation of a report last week that a hospital in Rutbah was bombed Wednesday, with dead and injured.
The travelers said they saw no significant Iraqi military presence near the hospital or elsewhere in Rutbah. The doctor did not discuss casualties, the Americans said.
U.S. Central Command said Sunday it had no knowledge of a hospital bombing in Rutbah. The U.S. military has said it is doing its best to avoid civilian casualties in its campaign to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Kindy is a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams, founded by Mennonite and Brethren churches to dispatch volunteer activists to trouble spots around the world to work for peace in the face of violence.
For the battered band of peace activists, recounting their nerve-jarring exit from Iraq on Sunday, it was one of the worst moments in 10 days of war.
That exit had begun at 9:15 a.m. Saturday, when a dozen foreigners - eight American and one Irish member of the Iraq Peace Team, and three unaffiliated Japanese and South Korean activists - set out from Baghdad on the 300-mile trek to the western border with Jordan, through a nation at war.
Members of the anti-war group have shuttled in and out of the Iraqi capital for months to take part in vigils, small demonstrations and other activities to protest U.S. war plans. Since March 20, they have borne witness and compiled reports on the U.S. bombing of Baghdad.
Some who left Saturday had been ordered out by jittery Iraqi bureaucrats for a minor infraction - taking snapshots in Baghdad without an official escort. Others said they left to get out the story of the Baghdad bombing.
The journey was a straight shot through the gritty western desert, the Badiyat ash-Sham, over a divided superhighway eerily empty of traffic. American special forces and warplanes have been staging raids and air attacks on isolated targets across the west.
"I'd say we passed up to 20 bombed-out, burned-out vehicles along the way," said Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, 22, a student from Devon, Pa. Four were Iraqi tanks and other military vehicles, he said, but the others appeared to be civilian, including a bus and an ambulance.
"We had to detour around a bombed-out bridge, dodge light poles down across the road," said Shane Claiborne, 27, a community organizer from Philadelphia.
Three times the group - in a big white GMC Suburban and two yellow taxis - spotted bomb explosions nearby. The last, in early afternoon, occurred near the far-western town of Rutbah. Their Iraqi drivers' nerves were fraying as they sped toward Jordan at 80 mph.
"He kept going faster, faster," Betty Scholten, 69, of Mount Rainier, Md., said of her driver.
Suddenly the lagging taxi, pushing to catch up, blew a tire. It careened, spun out of control and plunged down a ditch, landing on its side. "It was a heavy hit," Claiborne said. All five men inside were hurt. "We pulled each other up through the side doors."
A passing car eventually braked to a halt. The Iraqis inside got out, helped the injured into their vehicle and drove back toward Rutbah and a hospital. Along the way, Claiborne said, he spotted the contrails of a jet streaking toward the car. The Iraqis frantically waved a white sheet out a window, and the plane veered off, he said.
In poor, remote Rutbah, a burned-out oil tanker truck sat in the road, and the customs building and communications center had been wrecked by bombing. When they reached the hospital, they saw it, too, had been bombed, its roof caved in.
Claiborne said an English-speaking Iraqi doctor took them to a small nearby clinic, and 100 or so townspeople then gathered around the building. The men were worried, but the doctor told them, "We'll take care of you. Muslim, Christian, whatever, we are all brothers and sisters,"' Claiborne recalled.
The staff tended to them, stitching up a scalp laceration for Kindy, 53, and doing their best for the worst hurt, Weldon Nisly, 57, of Seattle, who suffered cracked ribs and similar injuries.
The two other carloads, missing the third, eventually doubled back and found the men in Rutbah. All then ventured onward the final 80 miles to the Jordan border, and then Amman, where Nisly was admitted to a hospital early Sunday.
As they left Rutbah, said Wilson-Hartgrove's wife, Leah, 22, the villagers "said to us, 'Please tell them about the hospital.' "
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Iraq: U.S. jets hit human shields, buses
By GHASSAN al-KADI
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
April 1, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030401-081037-5411r.htm
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 1 (UPI) -- A top Iraqi official said Tuesday that U.S. warplanes hit two buses carrying people acting as human shields and called U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a "cheap liar."
Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said 56 Iraqi civilians had been killed 268 others injured by coalition bombing Monday and Tuesday. He said Iraqi forces downed an Apache helicopter, repulsed coalition forces in southern Iraq and foiled a British landing in the north.
None of the reports could be verified, although coalition officials have not reported the recent loss and any helicopters.
Al-Sahhaf called on the International Committee of the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations to check on Iraqi prisoners, whom he said were all civilians captured by the coalition. Coalition spokesman have said that thousands of Iraqi soldiers have been captured and visits by Red Cross personnel have begun and complained that Iraq had not allowed similar visits for their POWs.
Al-Sahhaf said the correspondent of the Iraqi News Agency in the Rutba town in the province of Anbar close to the Iraqi-Jordanian border sent preliminary reports that a U.S. warplane on Monday attacked two buses on the Baghdad-Amman highway. He said the buses were carrying volunteers, including U.S. and European citizens, to Baghdad to protect Iraqi power, water and other vital installations.
Al-Sahhaf gave detailed figures of what he said were civilian deaths and injures because of coalition bombings. Most of those killed were in Baghdad, he said, but added that civilian deaths occurred in at least five other towns. Coalition leaders have said they are careful to target only military and government facilities and say civilian causalities are often because Iraqi forces are using civilians as shields.
Al-Sahhaf, however, reiterated accusations that coalition forces have been targeting civilian quarters in different Iraqi cities, including farms, telephone centers as well as TV and radio transmitters.
"They started to kill Iraqis indiscriminately. They are racist," he said. "They are bombarding civilian quarters day after day. They are becoming more tense and hysterical as they are achieving nothing and suffering increased casualties."
Al-Sahhaf reported fierce battles with British troops in Abul al Khasib and with U.S. forces in Az Zubair and Talha near Basra as well as in An Nasiriyah and southern Najaf. He said the Saddam Fedayeen, Baath Party combatants, army units, tribesmen and militias "confronted the attackers and forced them to retreat."
He added that an Apache helicopter was shot down while seven tanks and two armored personnel carriers were destroyed. Those figures could not be confirmed.
Al-Sahhaf said Iraqi fighters foiled an attempt by British troops to land in the area of Baaj near the northern region of Mosul on Monday and backed his claim by saying al-Jazeera television has shown footage of the battle.
He said the British soldiers "have been mostly eliminated and few of them managed to flee by helicopters while Saddam Fedayeen seized most of their equipment, including tanks."
"It's a complete defeat. The results were very tragic to the British," he said.
Coalition forces have not commented on the allegation.
Al-Sahhaf lashed out at Rumsfeld, whom he described as a "cheap liar," for maintaining that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction.
"He (Rumsfeld) is telling lies," he said, asking why Rumsfeld did not supply U.N. weapons inspectors with information on Iraq's alleged weaponry while they were in Baghdad.
Asked how would this war end, he said: "The result of this aggression against Iraq will be the defeat of the invasion and we don't consider it as a defeat of the U.S. people."
He said "those miserable in the White House" do not represent the U.S. people and "we are fighting those miserable war criminals and aggressive invaders and not the U.S. and British people."
"We have nothing against the U.S. and British people. We are fighting against the invaders. I have full confidence we will defeat them," he said.
(Dalal Saoud in Beirut contributed to this report.)
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In New Delhi, Hindus Take A Dim View of America
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63533-2003Mar31?language=printer
First in a series on how people around the world are perceiving the war in Iraq through their local media.
NEW DELHI, March 31 -- On the flickering television set in the corner, a BBC announcer was describing how British troops in southern Iraq had seized a cache of Iraqi chemical-weapons gear. Images of protective suits, gas masks and antidote injectors filled the screen. A British officer then described the equipment as clear evidence that Iraq possesses chemical weapons, even if none has yet been found.
But Jagat Jha, 37, offered another interpretation. "Maybe before bringing in the press they planted all these things," he said.
Ajay Bharti, 40, suggested that the gear had indeed been stockpiled for use in a chemical attack -- by the United States and Britain. "Had there been a chemical attack on Iraq, then [Iraqis] would have used these things" to protect themselves, he said knowingly.
Bharti and Jha were among a half-dozen Indians interviewed today at the media center of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) -- Hindi for National Volunteer Corps -- the right-wing Hindu nationalist group whose several offspring include India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
Several work full time for the group. Others are supporters -- a government bureaucrat (Bharti), a newspaper ad salesman (Jha) and a paper-products salesman -- who stopped by to chew over the latest news with Ram Madhav, a garrulous, Palm Pilot-toting former engineering student who serves as the RSS chief spokesman.
Sitting around on plastic deck chairs in the cramped second-floor office, dressed for the most part in Western-style slacks and button-down shirts, they were unanimous in their condemnation of the war and especially of President Bush, whom they accused of fabricating evidence against Baghdad in pursuit of Middle East oil.
Such views, while hardly unusual in the current climate, might seem surprising coming from the RSS. Founded in 1925, the group drew partial inspiration from the Fascist movements of prewar Europe and promotes the primacy of Hindu culture and religion in India. The organization's core ideology, called Hindutva, has often been blamed -- its members say unfairly -- for promoting discrimination and sometimes violence against India's minority Muslim population.
At least one prominent figure associated with the movement has expressed support for the American-led invasion. In February, Pravin Togadia, general secretary of the World Hindu Council -- another offshoot of the RSS -- told an audience that it was in India's interest to support an attack on Iraq that, he said, could weaken the forces of radical Islam.
But the RSS leadership quickly disavowed Togadia's remarks. And the government -- while fairly mild in its criticism of the Bush administration -- has said the matter should have been left to the U.N. Security Council.
In that regard, the Hindutva movement is reflecting Indian public opinion, which is overwhelmingly hostile to the U.S. and British invasion. In a survey published this week, Outlook magazine found that 86 percent of Indians opposed the war and 69 percent regard President Bush as a "warmonger." On Sunday, more than 150,000 people marched against the invasion in Calcutta. Some burned effigies of Bush to shouts of "Down with America!"
The people at the RSS media center today, with access to cable television and the Internet, were perhaps better informed about the conflict than the typical citizen in the street. But most began their day in the manner of countless Indians, with a newspaper, filtering its content through the prism of already well-formed views.
Arun Arora, 35, scanned the war news in Punjab Kesari, a widely circulated Hindi paper whose front page was dominated by the banner headline "Hope of Reaching Baghdad Has Vanished and [coalition forces] Are Besieged by the Fear of Death." A second story was headlined "American Forces May Stop the Ground War for 30 to 40 Days." Both stories were compiled from wire service reports.
"What I conclude is that this aggression will be a second Vietnam for America," said Arora, who sells paper products. "It's unacceptable for the world, this effort by America to be the world's policeman."
Jha, the newspaper ad salesman, was struck by an opinion column in another Hindi paper, Dainik Jagaran, that appeared under the headline "The Naked Display of American Bullying." The column compared Bush to "an uncontrolled and ruthless elephant" and suggested that he will soon turn his attention to "bringing down other governments and other heads of state around the world, too."
"It's a good story," said Jha, a compact man with glasses and a mustache. "This is ominous for the future."
Madhav, the spokesman, and Indira Sharma, an RSS political worker, said they were struck by a photograph in the Hindu, a major English-language daily, purporting to show a British soldier searching a small child for weapons in southern Iraq. "The PR battle is what America is losing badly," Madhav said.
"This shows their frustration," Sharma said of the photograph. "They don't know what to do. They don't know which direction to go. That's why they are searching children."
Several in the group saw evidence of American hypocrisy. They wondered why, if Saddam Hussein is so bad, the United States doesn't mete out the same punishment to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whom they accuse of sponsoring Islamic militants in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Still, Jha, the ad salesman, said he could find no fault with the war coverage on Pakistan's government-run television news channel, which comes to him via cable. He was watching it this morning, he said, during a discussion of the suicide bombing that killed four U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint on Saturday. He said he agreed with the commentators, who described the attack as reasonable under the circumstances.
"This is a war," he said. "This was not a terrorist attack."
Someone switched on the television and tuned it to the BBC, which was showing footage of wounded children in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Arora had no doubt about who was responsible. "Isn't this a human rights violation?" he asked, anger tinging his voice. "America has no right to kill civilians."
A summary of news coverage of the war in Iraq and a roundup of international commentary is updated weekday mornings at www.washingtonpost.com
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Hackers Plan Attacks To Protest Iraq War
Chinese Group Targets U.S., U.K. Sites
By Brian Krebs
washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63550-2003Mar31?language=printer
Chinese hacker groups are planning attacks on U.S.- and U.K.-based Web sites to protest the war in Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security warned in an alert that it unintentionally posted on a government Web site yesterday.
The hackers are planning "distributed denial-of-service" attacks, which render Web sites and networks unusable by flooding them with massive amounts of traffic. They also are planning to deface selected Web sites, according to the alert, though the government said it did not know when the attacks would occur.
The Homeland Security Department said it got the information by monitoring an online meeting that the hackers held last weekend to coordinate the attacks. The department sent the alert to government and industry officials over the weekend but accidentally posted the link on the home page of the National Infrastructure Protection Center. The alert was pulled hours later.
Homeland Security Department spokesman David Wray said the information was not supposed to be released to the public. "This was an inadvertent release and the information, while not classified, is sensitive," he said.
The messages cited in the alert were posted on several hacker Web sites thought to be affiliated with the "Honker Union of China," a cadre of Chinese hackers that launched an assault against dozens of U.S. government Web sites in May 2001 after the collision of a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. surveillance plane on April 1, 2001. "Honker" is Chinese slang for "hacker."
The group claimed responsibility then for defacements on the Web sites of the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Navy, the Labor Department, and other government agencies and businesses.
The Homeland Security Department's warning comes amid a flurry of antiwar hacking activity. About 10,000 Web sites have been marred with digital graffiti by protesters and supporters of U.S.-led war in Iraq, according to F-Secure Corp., a Finnish Internet security firm.
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N.M. Teachers on Leave Over War Protests
April 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-War-Teachers-Suspended.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Two high school teachers said Tuesday they have been placed on leave for refusing to remove war-related student artwork posted in their classrooms.
Highland High School teachers Allen Cooper and Geoffrey Barrett said they were told Monday night that they would be suspended if they did not remove the posters.
Barrett, who teaches history and current events, said the student art carried both anti-war and pro-war messages, and was created as part of a class assignment.
``I think this is mostly a violation of the students' rights to have a voice and express their opinions,'' Barrett said. ``Asking me to take down the posters was taking away the voice of the students and I was not going to do that.''
Cooper said one of the signs in question in his classroom read ``No War Mr. Cooper.'' It was written by an Afghani student who has had family members killed in U.S.-led bombings in Afghanistan, he said.
``I really agonized over this,'' said Cooper, an English teacher. ``I don't want to be suspended. I just want to teach my classes.''
Both teachers said the posters in question were taken down by school officials before classes began Tuesday.
Rigo Chavez, a spokesman for the school district, said the teachers had been placed on paid administrative leave ``in connection with the district's policy on the presentation of controversial issues.''
Cooper met with officials Tuesday afternoon and was cleared to return to work Wednesday, he and Chavez said. Chavez said he did not know what, if any, conditions might have been imposed.
Barrett said he walked out of a meeting with school officials because they could not point to a district policy that prohibited the artwork.
``Our district policies are that I can't display my own personal opinion, but that is not what this is about. This is about the students' rights and they are too thick-headed to see the difference,'' Barrett said.
Kathryn Herr, president of the school's parent association, said the suspensions were alarming.
``I'm concerned that we are going to lose good teachers and good teaching over this, that teachers are going to be afraid to give varying perspectives,'' Herr said.
On Monday, two teachers and a counselor from neighboring Rio Grande High School were cleared to return to work after similar suspensions for refusing to take down anti-war signs.
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French 'Spiderman' Makes Anti - War Climb
April 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Spiderman.html
PARIS (AP) -- A French climber who calls himself ``Spiderman'' scaled the 47-story headquarters of oil giant TotalFina Elf outside Paris on Tuesday to protest the war in Iraq.
Wearing a shirt with the message ``No war,'' Alain Robert reached the top of the office tower in less than an hour. At the top, he unfurled a flag with the same slogan.
Police greeted Robert at the top of the building, located in the La Defense financial district west of Paris, and escorted him to the ground floor.
``I wanted to protest against the war because I find the war completely illegal,'' Robert told reporters, as police led him away. It wasn't clear whether he would be charged criminally.
Robert, 40, who is renowned for climbing without ropes or other equipment, has also climbed the Eiffel Tower and more than 30 skyscrapers, including New York's Empire State Building in 1994, and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1997.
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Affirmative Action Backers Gather in D.C.
April 1, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Affirmative-Action-Scene.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Like many of the thousands who rallied Tuesday in front of the Supreme Court, Bryan R. King was just a toddler when the court last considered affirmative action.
Sensing he might not get this chance again, King took an all-night bus ride from Michigan to make his voice heard.
``We're all beneficiaries of affirmative action. We need to ensure that future generations can benefit from it,'' said King, 28, a black medical student at the University of Michigan who also earned his doctorate at the university.
King was among the 5,000 to 7,000 people who converged outside the court, according to police estimates.
Some were not even born when the court issued its last major affirmative action ruling 25 years ago. They came from far away as California, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia.
``Forget about the rivalries. This is real,'' said Lon'Cherie Billingsley of Cleveland, a student at Michigan's perennial sports rival, Ohio State University.
Almost all were affirmative action supporters; two opponents with handmade signs were ushered away by police after a crowd formed around them. Two other opponents from a group called the Independent Women's Forum talked quietly to reporters.
``We're very much supportive of equal opportunities, but decisions should be colorblind and gender-neutral,'' said Patricia Reed.
The court was considering whether race can be a factor when public colleges and universities choose their students. The court's ruling could effectively end any state-sponsored affirmative action, or it could rewrite the rules for when race may be a factor in government decisions.
``If we're not careful, we could find ourselves in a situation where there is a resegregation of schools,'' said Kweisi Mfume, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. ``I remember what it was like before affirmative action.''
Some supporters were wrapped in blankets after sleeping on the sidewalk all night in hopes of getting a seat at the arguments. Although their shouts and chants couldn't be heard inside the courtroom, supporters were not deterred.
``Without question, to me this is the equivalent of the 1960s,'' said Anthony Watson, a Howard University student who waited in line for more than 12 hours. Visitors were being escorted into the courtroom in small groups.
Sarah Duggin, a law professor at Catholic University, wore her academic robes to the rally.
``Until the top of our society looks more like the whole of our society, we must keep our schools open to all through affirmative action,'' Duggin said.
Hundreds of homemade signs bobbed through the crowd. One said, ``400 years of slavery is worth 20 points'' -- arguing that Michigan's policy of granting 20 extra admission points to blacks and some other minorities makes up for past injustices.
``Affirmative action is not a free education. It's education based on what we as African-Americans did for this country,'' said Chris Williams, a 1975 Michigan graduate who is now a musician in Maryland.
But plaintiff Barbara Grutter, one of three white students who sued Michigan after she was denied admission, said after the court hearing that diversity is about more than race.
``Every time they talk about diversity, they only mean racial diversity,'' Grutter said. ``I, as a 43-year-old applicant to the law school, would have brought great diversity.''
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