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NUCLEAR
Oncologist warns depleted uranium will increase cancer risk in Iraq
U.S. Planes In S. Korea Will Remain As Deterrent
Kasuri asks US for proof of N-tech transfer
Energy Bill May Ease Uranium Restrictions
FBI steps up hunt for Pakistani
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gets a New Chief
8 State - Owned Computers in N.M. Stolen
Lawsuit Filed to Block Radioactive Trash
Panels approve funding for war
A 'terrible, bloody' miscalculation
U.S. demands unconditional surrender
Strain of Iraq war showing on Bush
MILITARY
U.S. Aircraft Pound Taliban Holdouts
U.N. Fears U.S. Bomblets Resemble Food Packets
B-52 Crews Use 'Smart-Guided' Cluster Bomb
Abrams Tank Hits Nasty Surprise for U.S. Forces
South Korea Votes to Send Non - Combat Troops to Iraq
The Pentagon's A-Team
Defense contractors benefit from war spending
Candidate for Production Job Is a Retired Shell Executive
U.S. commandos destroy Iraqi pipeline to Syria
Two massive bombs explode near Iraq's Kut -witness
Battle for Baghdad Begins in Area Surrounding Iraqi Capital
'I saw the heads of my two little girls come off'
Battle for Baghdad begins
Analysis: Brits worry about Iraqi surprise
General evaluates reconstruction task
U.S. Troops Hunt Fedayeen Block by Block in Najaf
Allied forces see more Iraqi cooperation
Outgunned Iraqis show real ingenuity
BBC Cameraman Killed by Land mine in Iraq
Turkey's opposition to war solidifies
Arabs Warn U.S. Not to Use Iraq to Pick New Fights
NATO Press Release
Radical Islamic groups making resurgence
U.S. Navy Begins Vieques Cleanup
Russia Protests U.S. Bombing of Baghdad
Spies in the Skies: Both a Savior and a Disaster
U.N. Security Council Sets First Talks on N. Korea
U.N. Fears U.S. Bomblets Resemble Food Packets
Military rivalry 'causes friendly fire deaths'
US special forces disclose heavy losses in hunt for terrorists
US reinforcements will be slow to arrive
U.S. POW rescued, is 'alive and well'
National Guard deployment highest since Korea
U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopter Shot Down
Iraq Shoots Down U.S. Navy F / A - 18 Hornet
Al Jazeera riles coalition brass
Africans tune into Iraq war
Iraqis, U.S. Forces Restrict Sat Phones
IFJ Demands Inquiry Over Claim of Reporters "Beaten Up" by US Troops
Bin Laden seen gaining in Iraq war
The flowering of fascism
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
U.S. Tries to Block Access to Witness for Terror Trial
Traditional Coast Guard Duties Suffer, Study Says
Senate Rejects Boost for Port Spending
Panel probes government security lapses in 9/11
U.S., Britain to train jointly for terror attacks
Attacks on U.S. targets thwarted
ENERGY AND OTHER
Finns seek to kickstart lagging wind power sector
Energy Agency Gets Serious about Biomass Generation
World's Largest Solar Irrigation Pump Unveiled
House panel weighs global AIDS effort
China Allows WHO to Probe Mystery Illness
ACTIVISTS
Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists
Nuns Who Defaced Missile Silo Defended
Foundation cash funds antiwar movement
Man Arrested in Death of Indian Activist
Military Town Protests Can Be Lonely
D.C. Marchers Protest War, Rising Joblessness
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Oncologist warns depleted uranium will increase cancer risk in Iraq
Pakistan Daily Times Staff Report,
April 2, 2003
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_2-4-2003_pg7_22
KARACHI: If the mistake of using weapons containing depleted uranium was repeated by the US and British forces in Iraq, the incidents of blood cancer and other deadly diseases would increase manifold, said Dr Tahir S Shamsi, a cancer specialist, on Tuesday.
"After the 1991 Gulf War, the incidence of blood cancer increased ten times in Iraq," he recalled. The allies had used bullets and other arms having depleted uranium on their tips and surfaces as doing so increases the piercing power of arms.
Dr Shamsi said the depleted uranium contaminated land and led to cancer among the soldiers handling the weapons, the targeted armies and civilians. It also led to birth deformities, he added.
According to a report by a UN subcommittee released in August 2002, laws which are breached by the use of depleted uranium shells include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter of the United Nations, the Genocide Convention, the Convention against Torture, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980 and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.
Dr Shamsi said its use was also considered contributing to the Gulf War Syndrome - typified by pain in muscles and joints, fatigue and loss of memory -among 2,00,000 US soldiers after the 1991 conflict.
Dr Shamsi runs a cancer hospital in Karachi. He said the incidence of blood cancer among Pashtoons living in the NWFP had increased after the Afghan war. "Half of the children treated by us are Pathans, including Afghans," he added. "The incidence of cancer among Pashto-speaking population has increased ten times after the war."
About the situation in Pakistan, he said 10 million people in Pakistan had thalassaemia genes, adding that 6,000 thalassaemic children were born every year. Ten thousand patients in Pakistan need bone marrow transplant each year, he added.
He said Rs 1.4 million was needed for bone marrow transplant in Pakistan whereas the expense was ten times more in the United Kingdom and 20 times in the United States. He said bone marrow transplant was also required for thalassaemics and two persons who carry thalassaemia genes must not marry each other since the offspring would be thalassaemic.
Dr Shamsi said Iran had passed legislation under which couples had to undergo thalassaemia tests before marriage, and there should be a similar legislation in Pakistan.
He said a few years ago bone marrow transplantation was a dream in Pakistan, but now it was being performed at the Bismillah Taqee Blood Diseases Centre, run by him. He said his centre had done 50 bone marrow transplants so far and its patients included Afghans and Bangladeshis. "We are monitored by the International Bone Marrow Transplantation Centre, Wisconsin, USA," he added.
-------- korea
U.S. Planes In S. Korea Will Remain As Deterrent
By Daniel Cooney
Associated Press
Wednesday, April 2, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6253-2003Apr1?language=printer
SEOUL, April 1 -- U.S. stealth fighter jets and other warplanes brought to South Korea for joint war games will remain to act as a deterrent against North Korea, the U.S. military said today. The planes are the newest part of an increase of U.S. military force in the region during heightened tensions with the communist North over its nuclear program.
A statement from the U.S. military said that an unspecified number of radar-evading F-117s, some F-15E Strike Eagle fighters and a small Army task force that were brought to South Korea for exercises with the South Korean military will stay in the country.
More than 85 percent of the forces deployed to South Korea for the exercise will leave, the statement said. They include the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and thousands of soldiers, Marines, sailors and Air Force personnel.
A spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry said retaining the stealth aircraft would send a message to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, that it must not threaten its neighbors while U.S. forces are focused on Iraq.
But some analysts said that North Korea might see the planes as a significant threat. The F-117s would be capable of attacking a broad variety of targets in North Korea, including the Yongbyon nuclear plant. North Korea has accused Washington of plotting an attack on the facility.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force moved B-52 and B-1 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam to be closer to Korea. Other specialized aircraft have also been deployed to bases nearer the Korean Peninsula.
The last time the United States based stealth fighters in South Korea indefinitely was in 1994 when Washington was embroiled in a similar dispute with North Korea about its nuclear program. President Bill Clinton considered a surgical strike on Yongbyon, but the crisis ended peacefully.
-------- pakistan
Kasuri asks US for proof of N-tech transfer
Pakistan Daily Times Staff Report,
April 2, 2003
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_2-4-2003_pg7_3
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday asked the United States to provide evidence in support of Washington's allegations that Islamabad had exported nuclear technology to any country.
"We reject the charges leveled by the American administration. We have told them that if they have any evidence, they should come up with that," Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said while talking to newsmen at the Parliament House. The foreign minister reiterated that Pakistan would perform its commitments with the international community on non-proliferation. "Pakistan would observe non-proliferation," Mr Kasuri said. -Staff Report
-------- terrorism
Energy Bill May Ease Uranium Restrictions
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Energy-Bill-Uranium.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A provision in draft energy legislation would ease restrictions on the export of highly enriched uranium, raising concerns among nuclear nonproliferation groups that it might make it easier for terrorists to get the material.
The language in the House bill would rescind strict conditions that were imposed by Congress in 1992 on the export of weapons-grade uranium for use as ``targets'' in the making of radioisotopes for medical purposes.
The export restrictions were enacted to try to get manufacturers to shift away from using weapons-grade uranium for research reactors or for making medical isotopes -- a goal, they say, that is even more critical today than it was a decade ago.
An easing of the restrictions ``needlessly undermines an important nonproliferation law and increases the risk of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons,'' said Edwin Lyman, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a private nonproliferation advocacy group.
The language to change the uranium export requirements was put into a draft energy bill, being considered this week by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, by Rep. Richard Burr, R-N.C., according to Lyman.
The committee on Wednesday cleared the nuclear section of the bill without making any changes to Burr's provision and committee members did not discuss the issue.
Burr said the rule changes are needed to assure continued reliable supplies of medical isotopes, saying the 1992 restrictions jeopardize such supplies. He disputed claims that it would reduce safeguards for weapons-grade uranium. The changes applies to shipments that go to countries and manufacturers ``who already are subject to stringent nonproliferation requirements,'' said Burr in a statement.
The nuclear medical industry has been lobbying members of Congress to ease the 1992 requirements, put into the law by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. The lobbyists have argued that the restrictions jeopardize the future supply of important nuclear isotopes for use in U.S. hospitals and research facilities.
Under the Schumer provision, medical isotope manufacturers must agree to move away from using highly enriched uranium -- which can be used in a nuclear bomb -- and commit to using low-enriched uranium, if they are to continue getting uranium shipments from the United States.
In one letter sent to lawmakers, an official of the American College of Nuclear Physicians complained about the ``unintended effect'' the decade-old Schumer provision was having on ``the reliable supply of medical radionuclides'' and the need to revise it.
The 1992 provision ``does not recognize the substantial technical, regulatory and economic obstacles'' in requiring isotope manufactures to shift from highly enriched to low-enriched uranium, Carol Marcus, president of the group's California chapter, recently wrote in a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Like the House, the Senate also is expected to consider the uranium export issue when it begins consideration of energy legislation in the coming weeks.
Lyman disputed the claim that the availability of medical isotopes would be at risk. Despite the Schumer provisions, ``no foreign isotope producer has been denied a request for U.S. exports of highly enriched uranium'' as long as the company agrees to cooperate in the eventual conversion to low-enriched uranium, said Lyman.
Allan Kuperman, an analyst at the Nuclear Control Institute, added that without the leverage provided by the Schumer provision, foreign isotope producers -- in Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium -- likely would abandon efforts to convert to the safer low-enriched ``targets.''
A uranium target is a device in the reactor that is irradiated during the fission process to, in turn, produce the medical isotopes.
There has been growing concern in recent years over the safeguarding of highly enriched uranium, not only at facilities producing medical isotopes, but also at research reactors in more than 50 countries.
Matthew Bunn, a researcher at Harvard University, said that many of these research reactors have only minimum security. He and other nonproliferation advocates have argued that it is even more imperative today in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington to try to reduce the amount of highly enriched uranium being used around the world.
``Congress should be working to facilitate conversion of all isotope producers that remain dependent on bomb-grade uranium, not enacting measures to discourage them'' to convert, said Lyman.
--------
FBI steps up hunt for Pakistani
April 2, 2003
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-96788556.htm
The FBI has intensified its search for a Pakistani woman suspected of working with al Qaeda terrorists, focusing concerns that the science graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could be tied to a scheme involving "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.
Law-enforcement authorities said Aafia Siddiqui, 31, who lived in Boston for years, is being sought for questioning in her suspected role as a facilitator or "fixer" for al Qaeda - someone used by the network to move cash or provide other logistical support.
Siddiqui, who has a doctoral degree in neurological science from MIT, is the first woman the FBI has formally linked to the terrorist group. But law-enforcement authorities believe several women may soon surface in leading roles for al Qaeda, whose ranks have been decimated by arrests and deaths.
Terrorist groups including Muslim ones have used women, but it would represent a major shift by al Qaeda, which traditionally has called women unworthy of participating in Islamic jihad.
Last month, the Asharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, published an interview with a woman identifying herself only as Umm Usama, the "mother of Osama," saying women were training in camps to "carry out operations that will make the U.S. forget its own name."
The unidentified woman described her job as overseeing the training "of the female mujahideen affiliated with al Qaeda and the Taliban."
Records show Siddiqui left the United States for Pakistan on Jan. 2. Authorities believe she remained in that country. Her estranged husband, Dr. Mohammed Khan, 33, a Harvard-trained anesthesiologist, worked at a Boston hospital but also dropped out of sight and is being sought for questioning by the FBI.
Siddiqui is a 1994 graduate of MIT, where she majored in biology, anthropology and archaeology. She spent part of her college years in Pakistan writing a paper titled "Islamization in Pakistan and Its Effects on Women."
Her purported ties to Padilla, through al Qaeda field commander Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, are unclear. El Shukrijumah has been trained by Ramzi Binalshibh, the terrorist network's financier. His role in the organization has been compared to that of Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the September 11 hijackers who crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Information on El Shukrijumah, 27, a Saudi national also known as "Jaffar the pilot," reportedly was given to U.S. officials by captured al Qaeda attack planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Binalshibh and Mohammed are both in U.S. custody at undisclosed locations.
Although El Shukrijumah does not have a pilot's license listed with the Federal Aviation Administration, authorities are concerned that he may be a trained pilot. Documents retrieved overseas linked one of his aliases to a flight school in Norman, Okla., where terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui also received flight training.
Authorities also believe El Shukrijumah was an associate of Padilla's, the former New York native and Chicago gang member arrested on suspicion of plotting a "dirty bomb" attack. Padilla, now known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, was detained in May after his arrival from Pakistan at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago.
At the time of the arrest, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Padilla was "a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or 'dirty bomb,' in the United States." Mr. Ashcroft called Padilla "an enemy combatant who poses a serious and continuing threat to the American people and our national security."
None of the intended targets was identified, but authorities said Padilla, 31, had "knowledge of the Washington, D.C., area" and the nation's capital was considered a logical target.
The FBI, working with other law-enforcement agencies, has taken into custody more than 3,000 suspected al Qaeda leaders and operatives worldwide since September 11. More than 200 suspected terrorist associates have been charged with crimes in the United States.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Gets a New Chief
April 2, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2003/2003-04-02-09.asp#anchor4
WASHINGTON, DC, President George W. Bush has appointed Dr. Nils Diaz as chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Diaz, who is in his second five year term as a NRC commissioner, succeeds Richard Meserve who left office Monday. Meserve had announced in December that he would be leaving the NRC at the end of March to become president of the Carnegie Institution. He had more than year left on his term.
Diaz began his first term in 1996 and his current term runs until June 30, 2006. The appointment does not require Senate confirmation.
The NRC has primary oversight over the nation's nuclear power plants, as well as the disposal and storage of nuclear materials and radioactive waste.
The 103 U.S. licensed nuclear power plants provide about 20 percent of the nation's electricity. Diaz will now take the helm of the commission, which spearheads the exercise and direction of the NRC's licensing and regulatory functions.
His duties include policy formulation and rule making, as well as issuing regulations, related orders, and guidance for protection of the public health and safety, the common defense and security, and the environment.
Diaz is professor emeritus of Nuclear Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida. Prior to joining the NRC, in addition to his academic duties, he was director of the Innovative Nuclear Space Power Institute, which is a national consortium of industries, universities and national laboratories.
-------- new mexico
8 State - Owned Computers in N.M. Stolen
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radiation-Files.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Eight state-owned computers containing details on all of the New Mexico companies that use radioactive material have been stolen, officials said Tuesday.
The names, addresses and phone numbers of more than 210 businesses are contained in the stolen computers, along with what radioactive materials each is licensed to have, said Bill Floyd, manager of the state Environment Department's Radiation Control Bureau.
Thieves took the eight computer towers from the bureau's office in Santa Fe either Thursday night or early Friday. Police were investigating.
While the files are legally accessible to the public, anyone seeking them would need to do so under the Freedom of Information Act, Floyd said.
He said he believed the culprits were seeking the machines themselves -- not the data in them. A room where hard copies of licensee files are kept was accessible to the thieves but nothing there was taken, he said.
Still, he added, ``we don't like the fact that this information might fall into the hands of people who have something sinister up their sleeves.''
The bureau has sent letters to all the companies, notifying them of the theft and advising them to watch for any suspicious activity.
-------- us nuc waste
Lawsuit Filed to Block Radioactive Trash
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radioactive-Trash.html
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- Activists sued the Energy Department on Wednesday to keep it from shipping radioactive trash through Oregon to Washington state.
The federal lawsuit alleges that plutonium-contaminated shipments headed to the Hanford nuclear site could be terrorist targets and put Oregon residents at risk.
``These shipments are like deadly `dirty bombs' of plutonium waste being trucked through our communities,'' said Gerald Pollet of Heart of America Northwest, a Seattle-based Hanford watchdog group that filed the suit with Columbia Riverkeeper, the Sierra Club and the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Energy Department spokeswoman Colleen Clark had no comment on the suit, which agency officials had not seen Wednesday. But she said the shipments are subject not only to federal inspection but also to monitoring by the states through which the waste is transported.
``The material is transported in casks certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, specific to the material that we are transporting,'' Clark said. ``They're all very, very robust.''
The suit follows one filed last month by the state of Washington after the department refused to guarantee that the 78,000 barrels of radioactive trash already at Hanford would be shipped to a dump in New Mexico.
The department has suspended shipments from California and Ohio to Hanford at least until an April 18 federal court hearing on the state's lawsuit.
On the Net:
www.hanford.gov
www.heartofamericanorthwest.org
-------- us politics
Panels approve funding for war
April 2, 2003
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-39873.htm
President Bush's emergency spending bill to pay for the war in Iraq cleared its first hurdles yesterday when the House and Senate appropriations committees passed versions giving the president the amount he wanted, though both restrained his ability to shift money around.
In unanimous votes, the House passed a $77.9 billion bill, while the Senate passed a $78.9 billion bill. The president requested $74.7 billion.
The difference is mostly accounted for in aid packages both chambers proposed for the airline industry. The administration did not call for a package, but has sent signals it may accept that increased spending to get the rest of the bill completed soon.
Both chambers are expected to vote on the bills later this week, meet in conference to work out differences and have the final bill on the president's desk by April 11. Defense officials have said they will run out of money in some accounts in May without the bill.
Of the president's $74.7 billion request, $62.4 billion is for military operations. The president wanted about $60 billion of that to go into a reserve fund so the administration could move money from one account to another to respond to war needs, but House and Senate appropriators balked at turning over so much authority.
The House bill pared down the reserve fund to $25.4 billion, while the Senate fund is $11 billion. Some lawmakers wanted to go further, but the committee chairmen said some flexibility is appropriate. Similar funds were established after the September 11 attacks and during the first Persian Gulf war.
On a party-line vote, House Republicans defeated an attempt by Democrats to add $2.5 billion in homeland-security spending to the bill, arguing that the administration is in the best position to know how much to spend.
Senate Democrats did not offer similar amendments in committee, but they and House Democrats plan to try again when the bills reach the chamber floors.
The House bill calls for $3.2 billion in aid to airlines, while the Senate bill would spend $3.65 billion. Some Democrats had pushed for a larger package but were willing to accept the compromise.
Included in both packages is a six-month suspension of the $2.50 per flight security fee that was tacked on after the September 11 attacks. Both packages also cover the costs for some security enhancements required by the new Transportation Security Administration and bolster unemployment compensation to airline employees who have lost their jobs.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, told reporters the package isn't a bailout, but rather an attempt to cover the costs attributable to new security mandates from the government.
Both bills include provisions that force airlines to cap compensation for top executives for two years, and would penalize airlines that don't follow through.
House Republicans failed on two attempts to punish nations that have not fully cooperated with war efforts.
The first would have eliminated the $1 billion in loan guarantee payments the administration wants to offer Turkey. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, California Republican, said Turkey's decision not to allow coalition troops to open a northern front on Iraq "cost blood of Americans and allies."
The second would have prohibited companies in Syria, France, Germany and China from bidding on contracts under the $2.4 billion the bill calls for to begin rebuilding Iraq after the war.
The Cunningham amendment failed by voice vote, while the second measure failed 35-27. Backers said they may offer the amendment to restrict companies again when the bill comes to the chamber floor.
The House and Senate bills restrict the $1 billion the administration requested for aid to Turkey by requiring that the administration certify that Turkey is cooperating with the war effort as much as possible before it can receive the money
----
A 'terrible, bloody' miscalculation
Former envoy to Iraq expects U.S. to win war, lose on many other fronts
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
By ALAN W. BOCK
Senior editorial writer Orange County Register
http://www.antiwar.com/ocregister/bloody.html
Having talked to him on the phone a day or two before, I knew that former Ambassador to Iraq (well, actually, chief-of-mission, for obscure legislative and civil service reasons that he explained to me at some length, though they don't make a functional difference) Edward Peck would be provocative at the World Affairs Council last Thursday. He was.
Peck, a UCLA grad who spent 32 years as a diplomat, was careful to preface his remarks with the information that he had served two hitches in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper and had faced war, disease and riots as a diplomat, so he takes a back seat to none in facing danger for his country. He was in Iraq from 1977 to 1980, served in other Middle East posts, was coordinator of covert intelligence in the State Department and deputy director of the Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism in the Reagan White House.
Not exactly a wimp or a pacifist.
He also peppered his talk with humor - a good diplomat is "somebody who can convince his wife she looks terrible in diamonds" - to leaven what for many had to be an unpleasant message.
Noting that George W. Bush's approval rating was 52 percent on Sept. 10, 2001, and 90 percent on Sept. 12 when he was a president under foreign attack, Peck suggested a similar phenomenon might be at work for Saddam Hussein, as despicable as he is. He said that when you invade a foreign country, the people there just might view you as invaders rather than liberators.
Peck thinks the United States will probably win this war eventually, but it will be harder than our leaders anticipated and will cost us dearly in national morale, solidarity and international prestige. And we'll be paying a high price for a long time to come in increased Middle Eastern instability and acts of terrorism.
The notion that Islamists hate us because of our freedom or "because Britney Spears has a bellybutton" is "terribly stupid," Peck believes.
Most Americans don't want to face the fact that we've been killing Iraqis for 12 years, through sanctions and bombing, and that we're constantly in the world's face.
But if we don't stop to consider honestly what really drives the terrorists of the world we'll have to deal with them for a long time to come.
The idea that attacking Iraq will end terrorism is a little hard to square with the fact that we've called up 25,000 reservists to protect the homeland, and Colin Powell has asked for $6 billion to turn every American embassy into a fortress, all to coincide with the beginning of the war.
"I hope to the depths of my being I am wrong," Peck said. "But I'm afraid we will pay a terrible, bloody price for this miscalculation in Iraq."
How did the World Affairs Council audience in conservative Orange County respond to this message? By my count, he got four hostile questions, three friendly ones and a couple simply seeking more information, all quite thoughtfully put. A few people, obviously upset, walked out toward the end of the talk, but most people stayed.
Former World Affairs Council president Sir Eldon Griffiths made it clear that he agreed with much of what Ambassador Peck had said but disagreed with parts of the talk. He believes the evidence on dangerous weapons and intention to use them is strong enough to justify this war.
Whatever you think about the war, there's little doubt that it's stirring provocative and thoughtful discussion here in Orange County.
----
U.S. demands unconditional surrender
April 2, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-66711854.htm
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday demanded the "unconditional surrender" of Saddam Hussein as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called criticism of the U.S. war plan in Iraq "bogus."
"The only thing that the coalition will discuss with this regime is their unconditional surrender," Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.
The defense secretary said Iraqi officials are spreading rumors that cease-fire negotiations are under way and that an outside party is working on a peace plan.
"There are no negotiations taking place with anyone in Saddam Hussein's regime," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "There will be no outcome to this war that leaves Saddam Hussein and his regime in power. Let there be no doubt. His time will end and soon."
At the same briefing, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, criticized armchair generals and others who say U.S. forces were sent into battle without enough troops or weapons.
"It's not good for our troops, and it's not accurate," he said. "You've got to be careful with the sources you use and try to figure out what they're really trying to say. I will stick by my statement that this is a great plan, and it's one I've signed up to. It's one all the Joint Chiefs signed up to, and it's one we're going to see through to completion."
Gen. Myers, a four-star general, said the criticism is harmful to the war effort because it undermines the morale of coalition troops fighting in southern Iraq and approaching the outskirts of the Iraqi capital.
"My view of those reports ... is that they're bogus," Gen. Myers said in response to a question from a reporter.
"I don't know how they get started, and I don't know how they've been perpetuated, but it's not been by responsible members of the team that put this all together."
The critics "either weren't there" for the process of drawing up the war plan, "or they don't know, or they're working another agenda and I don't know what that agenda might be," Gen. Myers said.
In Beirut, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said in a television interview that Baghdad would not accept a negotiated compromise or cease-fire.
"The war will only come to an end with the total and unconditional withdrawal [of the U.S. and British forces] and the lifting of the embargo imposed on Iraq since 1991," Mr. Aziz told LBCI television, Agence France-Presse reported.
Mr. Rumsfeld said that 12 days into the military campaign, U.S. and allied forces have made good progress.
He noted that this conflict is different from the 1991 Persian Gulf war, which began with a 38-day bombing campaign followed by a short ground offensive.
The current campaign began with thousands of Special Operation Forces assaulting Iraq, while large numbers of coalition ground troops invaded from Kuwait.
"Instead of taking several weeks to work their way through the south up to Baghdad with pitched battles taking place for each city along the way, coalition forces pressed through southern Iraq in less than a week," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
After the ground invasion, constant bombing raids have left the Iraqi military "in the process of losing its ability to effectively communicate with its forces," he said.
Mr. Rumsfeld also said Iraq's leaders have been killed or are in hiding since the war began with a major bombing strike March 19 on a bunker where Saddam and senior Iraqi officials were believed to be housed. "The fact that Saddam Hussein did not show up for his televised speech today is interesting," he said.
"This war is well begun, but it is only begun," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And while more tough fighting very likely will lie ahead, the outcome is assured: Saddam Hussein will be removed from power, the Iraqi people will be liberated, coalition forces will go home as soon as the military mission is complete and return Iraq to the long-repressed Iraqi people."
Gen. Myers said any delays in deploying U.S. forces were due to mechanical, not administrative, reasons.
"Every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed up to this plan and the way it was executed from the first day, and they'll be signed up to the last day, because we still think it's a good plan," he said.
Statements in recent days by some current and former military officials reported in newspapers and on television have expressed criticism of the U.S. war plan.
Some critics have said commanders did not send enough armored forces or troops for the opening phase of the campaign. Others have said commanders did not order enough aerial bombing strikes of Baghdad and other targets before ground troops were sent in.
Gen. Myers said one reason limited numbers of coalition troops were deployed in the weeks leading to the start of the war was because of diplomatic efforts at the United Nations.
"We wanted to deploy a sufficient force but not the kind of force that would make it look like diplomacy didn't have a chance to work," Gen. Myers said.
Also, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the war in Iraq, wanted to maintain "tactical surprise" and not tip off the Iraqi forces as to the beginning of operations, Gen. Myers said.
"How do you protect tactical surprise when you have 250,000 troops surrounding Iraq on D-Day? How do you do that? Well, you do it by the method he did it, by having the types of forces. You do it by starting the ground war first, air war second. Do you think there was tactical surprise? I think there was," Gen. Myers said.
He said the success of the plan is seen in the seizure of Iraq's southern oil fields, the prevention of Iraqi missiles being fired against Israel and Jordan, and the flow of humanitarian aid in southern Iraq.
"Why? Because we put ground forces in there early," he said. "Were we 200 miles inside Iraq in 36 hours? Yes."
Gen. Myers said the war plan has been adjusted since the conflict began because the military is "light on our feet."
Mr. Rumsfeld also said reports that he interfered in military plans developed by Gen. Franks are not accurate. The defense secretary said the original war plan for Iraq was outdated and was reshaped by Gen. Franks over several months.
President Bush personally questioned each commander about the war plan before military operations began, and all agreed with it, Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Mr. Bush then asked the four-star commanders whether they had everything they needed.
"Simple question. These are adults. They're all four stars. And they sat there, and they looked at the president in the eye and said, 'Absolutely, we've got everything we need,' " Mr. Rumsfeld said.
--------
Strain of Iraq war showing on Bush, those who know him say
By Judy Keen,
USA TODAY
4/2/2003
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-04-01-bush-cover_x.htm
WASHINGTON - The public face of President Bush at war is composed and controlled. On TV and in newspaper photos, he is sturdy and assured, usually surrounded by military personnel. But those choreographed glimpses of Bush's commander-in-chief persona don't tell the whole story. Behind the scenes, aides and friends say, the president's role is more complicated and his style more emotional. People who know Bush well say the strain of war is palpable. He rarely jokes with staffers these days and occasionally startles them with sarcastic putdowns. He's being hard on himself; he gave up sweets just before the war began. He's frustrated when armchair generals or members of his own team express doubts about U.S. military strategy. At the same time, some of his usual supporters are concerned by his insistence on sticking with the original war plan.
Interviews with a dozen friends, advisers and top aides describe a man who feels he is being tested. As might be expected from loyal aides, they portray the president as steady, tough and up to the task, someone whose usual cheer has shifted to a more serious demeanor. Their observations yield a rare inside look at how the president functions in a crisis.
Friends say the conflict is consuming Bush's days and weighing heavily on him. "He's got that steely-eyed look, but he is burdened," says a friend who has spent time with the president since the war began. "You can see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. I worry about him."
Bush is juggling a lot more than projecting the image of a confident commander in chief. He's a prosecutor who quizzes military officials about their backup plans when things go awry on the battlefield. He's a critic who sees himself as the aggrieved victim of the news media and second-guessers. He's a cheerleader who encourages others not to lose faith in the war plan. He's a supervisor who manages the competing views and egos of top advisers.
The president reads newspapers first thing in the morning, flipping through some of them while he's still in the White House residence instead of waiting for clippings assembled by aides. Through the day, he regularly watches war coverage on the nearest TV, which is in the private dining room next to the Oval Office. He knows when heavy bombardments of Baghdad are scheduled and sometimes tunes in to see them.
As he consumes media accounts of the war, Bush has noted criticism coming even from some people he believes should be his allies. He was stung last year when Brent Scowcroft, his father's national security adviser, wrote a newspaper column questioning the necessity and wisdom of going to war. Similar complaints continue, and some people outside the administration are pressing current Bush advisers to urge him to retool his war plan. The president's aides say he's aware of those efforts but "discounts" them.
News coverage of the war often irritates him. He's infuriated by reporters and retired generals who publicly question the tactics of the war plan. Bush let senior Pentagon officials know that he was peeved when Lt. Gen. William Wallace, the Army's senior ground commander in Iraq, said last week that guerrilla fighting, Iraqi resistance and sandstorms have made a longer war more likely. But Bush has told aides that he wants to hear all the news from the front - good and bad.
He has a special epithet for members of his own staff who worry aloud. He calls them "hand-wringers." Two days after combat began, he has said acidly, some people were already asking "how the unconditional surrender talks were going."
'Do you need to see him?'
Bush makes a point of managing the balance of power in his inner circle. Secretary of State Colin Powell receded from the headlines once the war began, but Bush keeps him near. The president seeks second opinions about military strategy in regular private meetings with Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the 1991 Gulf War. There's another reason Bush keeps Powell close: to signal to the hawks on his team that he values the secretary of State's more cautious approach to diplomacy and war.
Bush's schedule still includes meetings on matters unrelated to the war, many of them on the economy, but the meetings are shorter now. Fewer aides receive permission from chief of staff Andy Card to see the president. "Do you need to see him or do you want to see him?" Card asks them.
Bush believes he was called by God to lead the nation at this time, says Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a close friend who talks with Bush every day. His history degree from Yale makes him mindful of the importance of the moment. He knows he's making "history-changing decisions," Evans says. But Bush doesn't keep a diary or other personal record of the events that will form his legacy. Aides take notes, but there's no stenographer in most meetings, nor are they videotaped or recorded.
It's widely assumed that one reason Bush wants to rid the world of Saddam Hussein is to complete the mission his father, former president George Bush, began in 1991. The senior Bush led a coalition to eject Iraqi troops that had invaded Kuwait, but knowing that the U.N.-backed alliance was formed solely to liberate the country, he decided against going on to Baghdad to remove Saddam from power. People who know both men say this war isn't about vengeance. "It's not personal," one Bush aide says.
Rather, the president's passion is motivated by his loathing for Saddam's brutality, aides say. He talks often about his revulsion for Saddam's use of torture, rape and executions. He is convinced that the Iraqi leader is literally insane and would gladly give terrorists weapons to use to launch another attack on the United States.
The thought of another assault on the United States horrifies Bush. Aides say he believes history and heaven will judge him by his ability to prevent one.
Officials don't want Saddam's fate to become the only measure of the war's success. They realize now that it was a mistake in the early days after the Sept. 11 attacks to make al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden the embodiment of the war on terrorism.
But Bush was elated when he was told there was a chance to kill Saddam on the eve of the scheduled start of the war. On March 19, he made a last-minute decision to launch airstrikes on a Baghdad bunker where U.S. intelligence agents had just learned Saddam was spending the night. For days, he grilled aides for information about the Iraqi leader's fate and was dismayed when intelligence officials concluded that Saddam had survived.
Studies battle maps
Sept. 11, 2001, and the assault on al-Qaeda that followed, created a wartime rhythm in the White House that continues today. Bush, who was drilled in corporate style while earning his MBA at Harvard, prefers his days to be structured.
They are now built around war updates. Bush receives a report on overnight developments by phone at 6 a.m. from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. After an 8 a.m. intelligence briefing, he conducts a National Security Council meeting for 30 minutes to an hour. Afterward, he meets privately with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a half-hour or so. Bush and Rumsfeld usually talk by phone at least twice later in the day.
In the first days of the conflict, the president's aides said he was leaving the details of war planning to his generals. Then, fearing that he might seem too uninvolved, they began describing him as interested in all the specifics.
That's how the White House message has shifted, but the bottom line is that Bush is an active manager and defender of the war plan. He and Rumsfeld spread out maps of the war zone in their meetings. Bush wants to know where U.S. troops are, where they're headed, what weapons are being used and how the enemy is faring. He rebukes and then bucks up aides who question the tactics, pace or human costs of the war.
Rumsfeld was Richard Nixon's ambassador to NATO and a White House chief of staff and Defense secretary for Gerald Ford. He won't compare Bush with those presidents, but he likes the way his current boss operates. "He thinks things through, but when he makes a decision, he makes it, and he doesn't go back and worry about it," Rumsfeld says.
Bush advisers say he will revise the war plan if he becomes convinced that it's not working. He doesn't think that's necessary now, they say. Still, even some of Bush's allies say privately that they wish the president would be a little less certain and more willing to reassess decisions. He encourages everybody in a meeting to speak up, he says. But when aides or advisers voice misgivings about the direction of the war - and some have - Bush generally admonishes them not to be impatient.
"He sees the ebb and flow, expects it," Rumsfeld says. When things go badly, the Defense secretary says, Bush will say something "if he sees it may be adversely affecting someone's attitude." The president will remind them that they had all agreed on the plan knowing that setbacks were inevitable. Rumsfeld says Bush has reminded aides that "this is something that we weighed and considered."
Bush is not an expert on military tactics, but he's getting an education from Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was an Air Force combat pilot in Vietnam.
In briefings, Rumsfeld says, Bush "will frequently say 'Excuse me' and then bore in on something: 'What about this? What about that? If this occurs, what would be the approach you take?' ... In probing, he also pushes, pushes people to think about things that he does not know whether or not they have thought through."
Rumsfeld says Bush was equally involved in the planning before the first missiles fell on Baghdad. Because he knew what was coming, Rumsfeld says, the president was prepared for complications, mistakes and losses. "There is nothing that has surprised him that I know of," Rumsfeld says.
Rx for anxiety: Prayer, exercise
When an aide asked Bush recently how the war with Iraq has changed him, the reply was curt: "We've been at war since Sept. 11."
People who know Bush well say the burdens of war take a toll on him. His wry humor, which generally punctuates his relationships with his aides, largely evaporates in times of great stress. He can be impatient and imperious.
On March 17, before he delivered a 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam, Bush summoned congressional leaders to the White House. They expected a detailed briefing, but the president told them he was notifying them only because he was legally required to do so and then left the room. They were taken aback, and some were annoyed. They were just as surprised by his buoyant mood two days later at another White House meeting.
At a news conference Thursday at Camp David with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush couldn't contain his annoyance at a reporter who asked if the war might last for months. "However long it takes," Bush said sharply. "That's the answer to your question, and that's what you've got to know."
Bush isn't usually a worrier, but aides say he spends a lot of time stewing about the families of the slain, the safety of POWs and the flow of humanitarian aid into Iraq.
Bush copes with anxiety as he always has. He prays and exercises. Evans says his friend has a placid acceptance of challenges that comes from his Christian faith.
"He knows that we're all here to serve a calling greater than self," Evans says. "That's what he's committed his life to do. He understands that he is the one person in the country, in this case really the one person in the world, who has a responsibility to protect and defend freedom."
Bush has imposed an almost military discipline on himself. Even though he's as lean as he was in college, he decided just before the war that he was unhappy with his running times, which were slowing from his preferred pace of 7.5 minutes or less per mile.
So Bush gave up his one indulgence: sweets. It worked; he's losing weight and improving his time.
When Bush doesn't find time to run three or four miles a day, he still works out. He uses an elliptical trainer, lifts weights and stretches. Exercising regularly, he says, gives him time to think, improves his energy and helps him sleep.
He also carves out time for family and friends. He still goes to bed by 10 p.m. and has asked his wife, Laura, to stay close to home. His daughter Barbara and his college friend Roland Betts, a New York business executive, also were with him at Camp David the first weekend of the war. He talks several times a week with his father and mother. He still tells a joke or teases an aide occasionally.
The president's friends and family fret about him, but advisers say the pressure doesn't seem to be getting to him. "He's not one of those people who blows with the wind," Rumsfeld says. "He has a very good inner gyroscope, a stabilizer that keeps him centered."
Contributing: Kathy Kiely
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Aircraft Pound Taliban Holdouts
April 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Battle.html
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Heavy pounding by U.S. fighter aircraft drove Taliban holdouts from their mountain hideout, where cleanup crews Thursday found a transit camp and a staging ground for hit and run assaults by the religious militia and their allies.
``We discovered a base with tents, food, weapons. It was here that Taliban coming from Pakistan would stay before moving out to other parts of the country,'' Fazluddin Agha, district police chief of Spinboldak, told The Associated Press.
U.S. air support launched from Bagram Air Base pounded the Tor Ghar mountain range, where about 60 Taliban fighters were dug in after fleeing a border village during fighting a day earlier.
About 45 special forces soldiers and 250 Afghan soldiers drove the Taliban into the mountains from the village of Sikai Lashki, 25 miles north of Spinboldak, the gateway to southeastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan.
In the first assault, two A-10 fighter jets fired seven white phosphorous rockets and 520 30 mm rounds. Two Apache helicopters followed, firing 130 30 mm rounds and 67 2.75 mm rockets, it said.
Several Afghan fighters were injured, as where their Taliban enemies, according to Agha. He said the Taliban were being led by local commander Hafiz Abdul Rahman. Cleanup forces were looking for Rahman.
``We have found two bodies of Taliban fighters and are looking for Rahman,'' Agha said. The soldiers also discovered tents, food, assault rifles and heavy weapons abandoned by the fleeing Taliban. Agha said authorities suspect some of the Taliban were trying to flee into Pakistan.
Evidence is mounting in the southern regions of Afghanistan that the Taliban is reorganizing and has found an ally in rebel commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, labeled a terrorist and hunted by U.S. troops.
``Six months ago their attacks were sporadic. But today there is a new organization to the Taliban,'' Kandahar's 2nd Corps commander, Khan Mohammed, said at the sprawling compound where Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar once lived.
``They have found places and opened fronts. They are better organized and are slowly, slowly getting larger and better organized.''
In the last two weeks in southern Afghanistan, a Red Cross worker was waylaid and murdered, and two U.S. servicemen were killed in an ambush on their convoy.
Khalid Pashtoon, a spokesman for the Kandahar governor, told The Associated Press that the Red Cross worker, Ricardo Munguia of El Salvador, was shot 20 times and the vehicles in his convoy were torched. The International Committee of the Red Cross ordered its workers not to travel until further notice.
``This is their aim, to frighten international aid workers away from southern Afghanistan so that the reconstruction cannot go ahead and the government is destabilized,'' Mohammed said.
He accused Pakistan of aiding the Taliban's reorganization and of harboring its key leaders. He was not alone.
In Spinboldak, Khalid Khan, the town's director of foreign affairs, said the Taliban leaders and their commanders have found safe havens ``in hundreds of homes in Quetta,'' the capital of Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province.
Khan said the support for fleeing Taliban is coming from Pakistan's militant Muslim groups. But Mohammed said it also is coming from the Pakistan government -- a key ally of the U.S.-led coalition's war on terror in Afghanistan.
``Without state support these groups couldn't operate,'' Mohammed said.
Pakistan denies helping militant groups, yet leaders have been freed from house arrest and are urging the faithful in Pakistan mosques to fight the United States.
A former Taliban commander hiding in Ghazni province earlier told the AP he stayed with Harakat-ul Mujahedeen fighters in Quetta last year while in Pakistan.
The latest battle in the Tor Ghar Mountains is not far from the border with Pakistan and its semiautonomous tribal belt. It is in that region that U.S. and European intelligence sources say Taliban fleeing the U.S. coalition in Afghanistan have found refuge.
The Taliban's reorganization has provincial commanders overseeing operations. In the south and southeast, the reorganization and military operations are being managed by former Interior Minister Abdul Razzak, former Kandahar corps commander Mohammed Usmani and key commanders Mohammed Dadullah and Mullah Brather.
``We know these people, we know their tribes. We know they are in charge here,'' Mohammed said.
-------- arms
U.N. Fears U.S. Bomblets Resemble Food Packets
Wed Apr 2, 2003
Reuters
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20030402/wl_nm/iraq_un_bomblets_dc_1 also
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16080-2003Apr2?language=printer
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. children's fund UNICEF expressed concern on Wednesday that Iraqi children might mistake yellow food packets being handed out by U.S.-led forces with small bombs with identical coloring.
"Confusing unexploded ordinance with food places children at huge risk of injury or death," UNICEF said, calling on the military to urgently change the color of the food packets.
A UNICEF statement said food packets known as "humanitarian daily rations" that were being handed out by the U.S. and British forces in Iraq were covered in a bright yellow plastic wrap.
The color of the wrapping was identical to that of an air-dropped bomblet that UNICEF identified as a BLU 97.
A similar problem had arisen during the war in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military eventually changed the wrapping on food packets to blue, the U.N. agency said.
In Afghanistan, both the food packets and the bomblets were dropped from U.S. aircraft while in Iraq only the bomblets were being air-dropped. But children can still confuse the ration and unexploded ordinance, because of their identical coloring, UNICEF warned.
---
B-52 Crews Use 'Smart-Guided' Cluster Bomb
Source: US Air Force;
issued Apr. 2, 2003
http://www.defense-aerospace.com/data/communiques/data/2003Apr15182/index.htm
WASHINGTON --- Air Force B-52 Stratofortress crews made history April 2 when they dropped six sensor-fused cluster bombs on a column of Iraqi tanks headed south out of Baghdad.
The bombing runs resulted in the destruction of the tanks and marked the first time in history that CBU-105 Wind Corrected Munitions Dispensers have been used in combat, officials from the Combined Forces Air Component Command said.
The CBU-105 is a "smart-guided" cluster bomb. It disperses smaller bombs that sense the engine heat from armored vehicles and then fire downward to destroy them. In addition, it is equipped with wind-compensating technology that steers the munitions to precise targets by compensating for launch conditions, wind and adverse weather.
The historic bombing runs were part of a highly successful period of Operation Iraqi Freedom for coalition aircraft, one that Department of Defense officials lauded during an April 2 press briefing at the Pentagon. Army Maj. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, vice director of operations for the Joint Staff, said bombing of the Iraqi capital in recent days has been astounding, both in its precision and in its overall effect.
"The pounding that Baghdad has taken has been extraordinarily precise in its nature," he said. "It has been nothing like what some people visualize as the destruction of a city. It is focused on regime-oriented targets and very carefully done. So certain things have been pounded, but only those are things that represent regime-oriented targets."
To illustrate that point, the general showed reporters a video of a recent F-117A Nighthawk bombing run that used a precision-guided weapon to pummel a surface-to-air missile facility on the southwestern outskirts of Baghdad.
Coalition aircraft flew more than 1,000 sorties over Iraq on April 1, McChrystal said. The focus of air operations was on regime leadership targets, Republican Guard divisions and on countering missile threats, he added. Coalition forces have fired more than 700 cruise missiles and have dropped more than 10,000 precision-guided munitions since Operation Iraqi Freedom began.
Many of the recent missions have concentrated on Iraq's Republican Guard, he said, adding that those missions have made an everlasting impact on the "elite" forces of Saddam Hussein.
"It is somewhat unclear on the battlefield, because there has been reinforcement of the Medina and Baghdad sectors by some additional Republican Guard organizations," he said. "But I would say that the Medina and Baghdad divisions are no longer credible forces."
----
Abrams Tank Hits Nasty Surprise for U.S. Forces
Wed April 2, 2003
By John Chalmers
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=WPULOFPWVZAHICRBAE0CFEY?type=focusIraqNews&storyID=2495400
DOHA - Among the many surprises that awaited the invading forces in Iraq was their enemy's ability to knock out the U.S. Army's most advanced battle tank.
Defense analysts believe the three -- perhaps five -- M1-A2 Abrams tanks which have been disabled so far appear to have been hit by a weapon far more potent than the decades-old RPG-7 rocket propelled grenade.
Instead, it seems the Iraqis -- who say they have knocked out dozens of U.S. tanks -- may be using the Kornet-E, an export version of a Russian laser-guided missile which can destroy tanks fitted with explosive reactive armor.
"We're pretty sure they do have them," said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "It is a nasty surprise (for U.S. forces) and they will have to adapt their tactics. But it won't be a showstopper and it is no cause for huge alarm."
Where Iraq might have procured the Kornet-E in the face of a U.N. ban on weapons sales to the country is not clear.
The Interfax news agency said on Tuesday the Ukrainian foreign ministry had denied reports that Ukrainian firms had supplied several hundred such anti-tank missiles to Iraq.
According to the Web Site www.army-technology.com, the tripod-launched Kornet-E system has been sold to the Syrian army.
Last week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, serving a blunt warning to Damascus, said Washington had information that night vision goggles and other military equipment was crossing from Syria into Iraq.
DOUBLE WARHEAD
The U.S. Army fielded around 1,900 M1 Abrams in the 1991 Gulf War. Eighteen allied tanks were knocked out during that campaign, half by mines and half by "friendly fire."
The Abrams, developed 20 years ago, is not impenetrable. It weighs 70 tonnes thanks to heavy armor on its frontal arc but would be an impossible 100 tonnes if it was as well protected on its sides and rear.
But Hewson said RPG-7 grenades, with an effective range of 300 meters (yards), would bounce off "the queen of the battlefield."
The RPG-7 is one of the commonest anti-tank weapons in the world: it was widely used by the Soviet army and by both sides during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
The Kornet-E has a range of around five km (three miles).
The operator uses either optical or thermal sights to track a target, and the missile -- whose warhead first burrows a small hole in a tank and then goes whipping around inside the vehicle -- is guided by a laser beam.
Jane's Defense Weekly Land Forces Editor Christopher Foss said two people can carry this anti-tank missile and it can be mounted on the back of a jeep.
But unless the operating crews are well trained and know how to use the Kornet-E tactically it is of little use, he said.
The Kornet-E also comes with alternative warheads that produce a huge ball of fire and suck up oxygen, which can be used against bunkers, fortifications and exposed infantry.
-------- asia
South Korea Votes to Send Non - Combat Troops to Iraq
April 2, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-korea.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's parliament voted on Wednesday to send non-combat troops to Iraq, handing a political victory to new President Roh Moo-hyun in the face of widespread opposition to the U.S.-led war to oust President Saddam Hussein.
The National Assembly voted to send about 700 medical and engineering personnel to Iraq after Roh told lawmakers that cementing close ties with Washington was key to securing peace on the divided Korean peninsula.
The vote in the opposition-led assembly was 179 in favor and 68 against, with nine abstentions.
Lawmakers had already delayed the vote three times because of public hostility to the proposal.
As they debated, about 2,000 anti-war protesters shouting slogans and brandishing placards scuffled with riot police outside parliament. One demonstrator was led away, blood streaming from a head wound.
An opinion poll released by the presidential Blue House on Wednesday showed 54.9 percent of South Korean respondents favor sending non-combat troops to Iraq, but 86.3 percent oppose the war.
South Korea is one of the United States' closest allies, but many of Roh's supporters, particularly young voters, chafe at the presence of 37,000 U.S. troops in the country.
The president himself, who took office on February 25, won election pledging a more mature and equal partnership with Washington.
In a speech to parliament, Roh acknowledged the case made by his opponents that the war against Iraq lacked moral justification. Global politics, he said, were being driven by the ``forces of reality.''
But Roh said South Korea could not ignore that its national interest lay in maintaining close ties with the United States because of the role it played in deterring communist North Korea.
North Korea has 1.1 million men in its armed forces, many of them deployed near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which has divided the two Koreas since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
``It would be imprudent to make a decision that threatens the survival of our people in the name of an equal relationship with the United States,'' Roh said.
GOING BALLISTIC?
Conservatives backed Roh's initiative, citing the need for U.S. help in defusing tensions generated by North Korea's suspected nuclear arms program, which the president said still posed a danger for the South.
South Korea is on high alert in case the North seeks to grab attention during the Iraq war by conducting a ballistic missile test that would break deals it reached with Washington and Tokyo.
Pyongyang set alarm bells ringing when it tested a ballistic missile in 1998 that flew across Japan and into the sea beyond, and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said a new test was quite possible.
``I would not be surprised to see a test, particularly after the launch of the satellite,'' Armitage said in an interview with Japan's Yomiuiri Shimbun newspaper published on Wednesday.
Armitage was referring to the launch last week by Japan of two spy satellites giving Tokyo its first independent opportunity to scrutinize North Korea from space.
Pyongyang, which denounced the launch as a ``hostile act'' that could trigger a regional arms race, is demanding two-way security talks with the United States and has sought to sideline Seoul.
North Korea has taken a series of steps to ratchet up pressure on the United States since Washington's announcement in October that Pyongyang had admitted to pursuing a covert program to enrich uranium for weapons.
The United States wants multilateral talks, but Armitage said Washington would be flexible on the framework.
``We don't have a condition on the size of the table, or the shape of the table -- we just need to make it very clear that this is not a bilateral issue between the U.S. and North Korea, it affects many of the neighbors,'' he told the Yomiuri Shimbun.
-------- business
The Pentagon's A-Team
By Cynthia L. Webb
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10306-2003Apr2?language=printer
Lockheed Martin. Boeing. Northrop Grumman. Raytheon. As the Iraq war enters a third week, the Pentagon is calling on this list of premier government contractors to replenish declining stocks of precision weapons.
With the war in Iraq nearing the two-week mark, the military's stockpile of precision-guided bombs and other high-tech weaponry is in need of some replenishing. The White House is seeking additional funding for the war, but the jury is out on just how quickly new defense spending will benefit big government contractors.
President Bush has requested nearly $63 billion from Congress in emergency war funding. "Raytheon Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., Alliant Techsystems Inc. and other defense contractors will benefit from $3.7 billion in U.S. military spending to replace missiles, bombs and bullets consumed in the war against Iraq," Bloomberg reported. "Cruise missiles and bombs equipped with satellite or laser guidance systems made by companies such as The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin are playing a bigger role in war against Iraq than in any previous U.S. campaign, Pentagon officials have said. In addition, troops are firing artillery and tank rounds and small-arms cartridges daily in the fight to oust Saddam Hussein's regime."
• Bloomberg: Defense Contractors Benefit From War Spending
---
Defense contractors benefit from war spending
$3.7 billion in contracts to replenish weapons used against Iraq
By TONY CAPACCIO
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/115323_raytheon02.shtml
WASHINGTON -- Raytheon Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., Alliant Techsystems Inc. and other defense contractors will benefit from $3.7 billion in U.S. military spending to replace missiles, bombs and bullets consumed in the war against Iraq.
President Bush's request for $62.6 billion in emergency war funding includes money to replace the 700 Raytheon Tomahawk cruise missiles, half the supply in the region, and 8,000 precision-guided bombs used in 13 days of conflict. Congress is scheduled to vote on the measure this week.
Cruise missiles and bombs equipped with satellite or laser guidance systems made by companies such as The Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin are playing a bigger role in war against Iraq than in any previous U.S. campaign, Pentagon officials have said. In addition, troops are firing artillery and tank rounds and small-arms cartridges daily in the fight to oust Saddam Hussein's regime.
The cruise missiles are among the most costly munitions, at $600,000 to $1 million each, depending on the configuration, according to Navy and Raytheon figures. Boeing satellite guidance kits for bombs, by comparison, cost about $20,000 each.
The $62.6 billion supplemental appropriation, which will be added to this year's $379 billion defense budget, allows the Pentagon to avoid taking money from other weapons programs to pay for war operations and replacement munitions, Sam Pearlstein, a defense analyst for Wachovia Securities, said.
Boeing, though, won't get new spending for its satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions because the defense budget already is paying for maximum production of the weapon, Pentagon Comptroller Dov Zakheim said.
Northrop Grumman Corp., third-biggest defense contractor, will likely share contracts with Lockheed Martin to replace Hellfire laser-guided missiles they produced jointly. The Hellfire is fired by AH-64 Apache helicopters.
----
Candidate for Production Job Is a Retired Shell Executive
By NEELA BANERJEE
April 2, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/02/international/worldspecial/02OIL.html
A former chief executive of the Shell Oil Company appears to be the leading contender to oversee Iraqi oil production after the fall of Saddam Hussein, industry experts who spoke to the Bush administration said yesterday.
Those experts said the administration was still developing a plan for American involvement in the Iraqi oil sector, whose fields and facilities are dilapidated but whose employees are widely respected for their professionalism within international oil circles. They said it appears that the executive, Philip J. Carroll, 65, would probably be responsible for Iraqi oil production, and that someone else would probably be named to run the refining and marketing of Iraqi oil.
After leaving Shell, Mr. Carroll became chairman and chief executive of the Fluor Corporation, a construction company based in Aliso Viejo, Calif. He retired from Fluor in February, 2002, and now lives in Houston.
Fluor confirmed recently that it was invited by the administration to bid on reconstruction work in Iraq, though it is unclear whether the company has been awarded any contracts.
The Bush administration has long insisted that the sale of Iraqi oil should benefit the Iraqis. But reviving the Iraqi oil industry, under the scrutiny of a skeptical world and the Iraqis themselves, will be a formidable task, industry experts said.
The administration and Mr. Carroll declined to comment on the possibility of his appointment to the oil post.
If the administration does tap Mr. Carroll, it will be relying on a career oil man who thrives on challenges, industry analysts said. Many analysts credit Mr. Carroll with reshaping Shell Oil, the American arm of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, when he ran it in the 1990's, mainly by pushing the company to develop large reservoirs of oil and natural gas in the risky but potentially rich deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
At Fluor, Mr. Carroll quickly got rid of unprofitable old businesses and found promising new ones, said Michael S. Dudas, an engineering analyst for Bear, Stearns & Company.
Mr. Dudas said Mr. Carroll was known for pulling together competent people to carry out major restructuring plans without micro-managing them, a trait that would serve him well if the administration decides to let the Iraqis control their oil.
"He would get very good people, and check in with them frequently," Mr. Dudas said. "He would put the plan in place but he would let them run with it."
-------- iraq
U.S. commandos destroy Iraqi pipeline to Syria
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
http://216.26.163.62/2003/ss_syria_04_02.html
ABU DHABI - U.S. special operations forces are said to have blown up an Iraqi pipeline that delivered more than 200,000 barrels of oil a day to Syria.
The Kuwaiti Al Rai Al Aam daily reported on Wednesday that U.S. forces sabotaged the Iraqi oil pipeline to Syria last week in an operation in northwestern Iraq. The newspaper quoted U.S. sources as saying the forces also blew up a railroad link between Iraq and Syria.
Until the start of the U.S.-led war against Iraq, Syria obtained 250,000 barrels of oil per day through two pipelines that stemmed from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, Middle East Newsline reported. One pipeline reached the Syrian port of Banyas for export. The other provided oil directly to the Syrian national energy grid.
The U.S. sources said the destruction of the main pipeline came amid a warning by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for a halt to Syrian military supplies to the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The newspaper reported that on Monday the pumping station on the Iraqi side of the pipeline had broken down.
The Kuwaiti report was not immediately confirmed by other sources. A Western intelligence source said on Wednesday that the Iraqi-Syrian pipeline was not blown up. The source would not elaborate.
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Two massive bombs explode near Iraq's Kut -witness
02 Apr 2003
(Reuters)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2909971.stm
NEAR KUT, Iraq, April 2 - Two huge bombs exploded close to the eastern Iraqi city of Kut on Wednesday, sending giant mushroom-shaped clouds billowing high into the sky, a Reuters correspondent said.
Reporter Sean Maguire said U.S. Marines thought the blasts were caused by two so-called "daisy cutter" bombs -- a 6,750 kg (14,850 lb) device that dates back to the Vietnam war.
"Two huge mushroom clouds rose hundreds of feet (metres) into the air," said Maguire, who is travelling with a U.S. Marine unit some 25 km (15 miles) from the city.
U.S. forces bombarded Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of the capital Baghdad, overnight.
Earlier on Wednesday, Marines seized a key bridge over the Tigris river close to Kut and took control of the main Highway 6 from Kut to Baghdad, a senior Marine officer said.
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Battle for Baghdad Begins in Area Surrounding Iraqi Capital
April 2, 2003
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/02/international/worldspecial/02STRA.html
CAMP DOHA, Kuwait, Wednesday, April 2 - The battle for Baghdad got under way today as American ground forces entered the "red zone."
United States Army and Marine ground forces advanced on separate axes into the swath of territory around Baghdad that is defended by the Republican Guard and has been characterized by American commanders as the most strategically vital and treacherous of the war.
Although still 50 miles or more from the capital, the attack brought the American military one step closer to its ultimate objective: capturing Baghdad and toppling the government of President Saddam Hussein.
It also ushered in a period of heightened risk for American forces. If the Iraqis plan to unleash chemical weapons, the entry of United States forces into the red zone - the area within artillery and missile range of Republican Guard forces defending Baghdad - is expected to be the trigger, according to American commanders.
The Iraqis are defending the area with extended-range Frog rockets, artillery and surface-to-surface missiles that can carry chemical weapons.
The first indication that today might be the day for the red zone attack came at a meeting on Tuesday of land war commanders, a session that links far-flung units through a classified video television conference. Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the land war commander, signaled the plan.
"We are starting a big maneuver fight in the red zone," he said. "It is a significant close fight."
The attack into the area south of Baghdad involved the Army's Third Infantry Division and the First Marine Division. During the attack, some American units crossed the Tigris River. American military commanders planned to knock out some bridges to isolate some of the Iraqi forces.
American officials say that the attack comes at a time when the Iraqis' command and control seems ragged. Many of the Iraqi moves outside Baghdad, they say, seem to reflect the calculations of isolated commanders or individual groups of Iraqis and may not reflect a coherent national strategy.
The attacks took place during the darkest period of the month, allowing American forces to exploit their night vision devices against the ill-equipped Iraqis. American commanders said that when allied forces first invaded Iraq it was foreseen that that would probably allow them to advance close to the Iraqi capital during a time when it was especially dark.
One main foe tonight was the Medina Division, a Republican Guard unit that escaped destruction in the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and has, American military officials believe, been battered by American warplanes to the point of being "combat ineffective."
The division is defending the southern approaches to the capital. The Iraqis have been rushing other Republican Guard and regular army units to fill the gaps in the Medina Division's defense, but allied warplanes have been pounding them, too.
Another opponent in the sychronized attack tonight was the Baghdad Division, a Republican Guard infantry unit that is stationed along the southeast approach to the capital at Kut, about 100 miles from Baghdad. It, too, has been assessed to be on the verge of collapse, but it has been reinforced by regular army units.
This phase of the war is what American commanders call a deliberate attack, which means that unless the government suddenly collapses - an unlikely situation - the Army and Marine assault will not be a blitz to the outskirts of Baghdad but a methodical effort to destroy, piece by piece, the Republican Guard units defending the capital.
The current attack followed almost two weeks of bombing, the capture of more than 4,600 prisoners and the deployment of more than 100,000 allied troops in Iraq, many of whom have traversed hundreds of miles and defended against persistent efforts by fedayeen and other Iraqi paramilitary units to attack allied supply lines.
The ambushes delayed the American advance and initially threw the United States forces off stride. Difficulties remain in the rear, but American forces also seem to be making headway in the struggle to control the cities in southern Iraq and are now striving to put sharp pressure on Baghdad.
To mount the attack, the American military has been moving fuel and vast stores of food, ammunition and spare parts north. Airstrips have been built in the desert for C-130 supply planes.
To facilitate their attacks against Iraqi armor, the American military has taken over the Iraqi air base at Tallil. The base is being used to refuel the Air Force's A-10 attack planes, enabling them to undertake more missions.
The Iraqis have sought to disrupt the logistical push. Today, they fired an Al Samoud surface-to-surface missile at the Americans. An antimissile battery fired a Patriot PAC-3 interceptor at the Iraqi missile and knocked it down over Bushmaster, an assembly area in Iraq for Army forces. Debris rained down on a commander from the 82nd Airborne Division.
Chemical weapons remain a big worry for the Americans. Last week, Iraqi officials in Baghdad charged that American and British forces intended to use poison gas. The assertion was seen as an Iraqi effort to put out a possible cover story so that the government would have the option to use poison gas and blame it on the United States and Britain.
To try to persuade the Iraqis not to use poison gas, the American military has begun radio broadcasts telling soldiers who follow any order to use weapons of mass destruction that they will be held accountable.
The broadcasts also offer an assurance that American and British forces have no intention to use chemical or biological weapons.
"Saddam Hussein and his family cannot execute a weapons of mass destruction attack by themselves," an American broadcast said. "It is the duty of every Iraqi who has the means to stop a nuclear, biological of chemical attack to do so."
Fighting around, and eventually in, Baghdad also requires that American forces reduce the threats to American supply columns.
American troops have moved into some of the southern cities, including Najaf, where they received a warm welcome today, Nasiriya and Samawa.
But, early this morning, the focus was on Baghdad and Iraq's response. The Americans are gradually moving closer to the capital. The dangers are increasing, and the denouement of the war also appears closer at hand.
----
'I saw the heads of my two little girls come off'
KRT
April 2 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/02/1048962796085.html
An Iraqi mother in a van fired on by US soldiers says she saw her two young daughters decapitated in the incident that also killed her son and eight other members of her family.
The children's father, who was also in the van, said US soldiers fired on them as they fled towards a checkpoint because they thought a leaflet dropped by US helicopters told them to "be safe", and they believed that meant getting out of their village to Karbala.
Bakhat Hassan - who lost his daughters, aged two and five, his three-year-old son, his parents, two older brothers, their wives and two nieces aged 12 and 15, in the incident - said US soldiers at an earlier checkpoint had waved them through.
As they approached another checkpoint 40km south of Karbala, they waved again at the American soldiers.
"We were thinking these Americans want us to be safe," Hassan said through an Army translator at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital set up at a vast Army support camp near Najaf.
The soldiers didn't wave back. They fired.
"I saw the heads of my two little girls come off," Hassan's heavily pregnant wife, Lamea, 36, said numbly.
She repeated herself in a flat, even voice: "My girls - I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead."
US officials originally gave the death toll from the incident as seven, but reporters at the scene placed it at 10. And Bakhat Hassan terrible toll was 11 members of his family.
Hassan's father died at the Army hospital later.
US officials said the soldiers at an Army checkpoint who opened fire were following orders not to let vehicles approach checkpoints.
On Saturday, a suicide bomber had killed four US soldiers outside Najaf.
Details emerging from interviews with survivors of yesterday's incident tell a distressing tale of a family fleeing towards what they thought would be safety, tragically misunderstanding instructions.
Hassan's father, in his 60s, wore his best clothes for the trip through the American lines: a pinstriped suit.
"To look American," Hassan said.
An Army report written last night cited "a miscommunication with civilians" as the cause of the incident.
Hassan, his wife and another of his brothers are in intensive care at the MASH unit.
Another brother, sister-in-law and a seven-year-old child were released to bury the dead.
The Shi'ite family of 17 was packed into a 1974 Land Rover, so crowded that Bakhat, 35, was outside on the rear bumper hanging on to the back door.
Everyone else was piled on one another's laps in three sets of seats.
They were fleeing their farm town southeast of Karbala, where US attack helicopters had fired missiles and rockets the day before.
Helicopters also had dropped leaflets on the town: a drawing of a family sitting at a table eating and smiling with a message written in Arabic.
Sergeant 1st Class Stephen Furbush, an Army intelligence analyst, said the message read: "To be safe, stay put."
But Hassan said he and his father thought it just said: "Be safe".
To them, that meant getting away from the helicopters firing rockets and missiles.
His father drove. They planned to go to Karbala. They stopped at an Army checkpoint on the northbound road near Sahara, about 40km south of Karbala, and were told to go on, Hassan said.
But "the Iraqi family misunderstood" what the soldiers were saying, Furbush said.
A few kilometres later, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle came into view. The family waved as it came closer. The soldiers opened fire.
Hassan remembers an Army medic at the scene of the killings speaking Arabic.
"He told us it was a mistake and the soldiers were sorry," Hassan said.
"They believed it was a van of suicide bombers," Furbush said.
Hassan, his wife, his father and a brother were airlifted to the MASH unit.
Three doctors and three nurses worked on the father for four hours but he died despite their efforts.
Today, Hassan and his wife remain at the unit. He has staples in his head. She has a mangled hand and shrapnel in her face and shoulder.
Major Scott McDannold, an anaesthesiologist, said Hassan's brother, lying nearby, wouldn't make it. He is on a respirator with a broken neck.
On March 16, Hassan and his family began to harvest tomatoes, cucumbers, scallions and eggplant. It was a healthy crop, and they expected a good year.
"We had hope," he said. "But then you Americans came to bring us democracy and our hope ended."
Lamea is nine months pregnant.
"It would be better not to have the baby," she said.
"Our lives are over."
----
Battle for Baghdad begins
April 2, 2003
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-32482484.htm
The ground offensive to capture Baghdad began last night, as tanks and helicopters from the Army's 5th Corps started a major attack against the Republican Guard Medina division defending the city's southern approach.
In the battle for Baghdad, heavy fighting was reported north of Karbala, a holy Shi'ite Muslim site about 50 miles from the capital.
The 5th Corps had performed some armed reconnaissance in recent nights with limited contact, while the 1st Marine Division got into skirmishes with Republican Guard units to the west. But a U.S. Central Command spokesman said last night a full-scale armor battle was under way.
According to a Reuters reporter embedded with the Corps' 3rd Infantry Division, U.S. forces had encircled Karbala and secured all major exit routes by early today.
As the battle raged, U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, announced it had rescued Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who had been listed as missing in action after her unit, the Army's 507th Maintenance, was ambushed March 23 in Nasiriyah.
Allied jets have been pounding Republican Guard tanks and armored personnel carriers for a week. Gen. Richard B. Myers, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said earlier in the day that air strikes had reduced the two divisions' combat effectiveness by 50 percent.
As the anticipated big ground battle started, Baghdad again shook with the force of 2,000-pound bombs exploding along the Tigris River. Last night's target was an old one: one of the presidential palaces, this one belonging to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's son Qusai, who runs the Republican Guard. Bombs also hit Republican Guard headquarters.
The attacks in recent nights against old targets seem designed to unnerve the regime. Saddam, Qusai and the dictator's oldest son, Uday, have not been seen in public since a safe-house bunker was bombed by the Air Force and Navy on March 19.
The allies suffered their first loss of a fixed-wing combat plane yesterday, when a Navy F-14 Tomcat from the USS Kitty Hawk crashed in southern Iraq. The pilot and a back-seat weapons officer ejected from the plane and were rescued.
A Navy spokesman aboard the Kitty Hawk said the crash was the result of a mechanical failure, not Iraqi fire. Baghdad has not shot down a fixed-wing aircraft since the war began.
Meanwhile yesterday, allied forces claimed a firmer hold on strategically important towns in central Iraq.
The towns of Najaf and Nasiriyah, whose Fedayeen Saddam militias stubbornly fought for a week to hold off the U.S. Army, fell to almost complete allied control yesterday. Only a few Iraqi pockets remained.
Some of the fiercest fighting in central Iraq erupted when Marines killed about 80 Iraqis and took about 40 as prisoners in the town of Diwaniyah on the Euphrates River.
Some prisoners were Republican Guards, whom Saddam sent to central and southern Iraq to maintain order among the less-potent regular Iraqi army.
The three Republican Guard divisions that defend the capital are taking such a beating from the air and ground that Saddam's regime has sent reinforcements from his other three divisions.
U.S. officials say all the movement works into their hands, as tanks and armored vehicles on the move make easier targets for pilots working their "kill boxes."
Central Command reported that more local Shi'ites are believing that the allies are in the south to stay, rather than abandoning them to Saddam, as happened in 1991. As a result, they are joining raids and helping U.S. and British commanders root out pockets of the Fedayeen, a ragtag militia that is terrorizing citizens and mounting sneak attacks on coalition forces.
In attacks in Diwaniyah and Shatra, north of Nasiriyah, 100 local Shi'ite tribesman joined allied ground forces in attacking Iraqi headquarters and bunkers, said Brig. Gen. Vince Brooks, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command.
Allied commanders say they believe Nasiriyah is in firm allied control after days of fierce door-to-door fighting. The city of 100,000 is on a key supply route that is replenishing the 5th Corps around Karbala and points west.
The mission was reminiscent of the war in Afghanistan, where Army Green Berets organized tribal warriors to battle the ruling Taliban.
As U.S. soldiers made their presence felt, Iraqis began speaking out against the harsh rule of Saddam's ruling Sunni-dominated Ba'ath Party.
"These Fedayeen are the lowest people from the slums, from the bottom of society," said a Nasiriyah resident who identified himself as Ahmed. "They come and fight, but the people from Nasiriyah are very happy to see that regime go, and the sooner the better."
Another resident, Hussein Irani, said 30 Ba'ath Party functionaries remain inside the city. "It's almost calm," he told Reuters news agency.
The battle for Nasiriyah was also helped by allied special-operations troops. They penetrated the city, located Ba'ath Party targets and radioed in air strikes.
Farther north, commanders said the allies were "very close" to subduing the town of Najaf.
Commands are also patrolling western and northern Iraq. Gen. Brooks said two persons suspected of being Iraqi intelligence agents were captured at a special-operations checkpoint.
The war began with the 5th Corps, led by the 3rd Infantry, racing north from Kuwait, bypassing towns such as Nasiriyah and Najaf, and settling in 60 miles from Baghdad. It was left to the follow-on forces, including the Marines, to subdue the towns, where allies found stiffer resistance than expected.
The 5th Corps is constantly maneuvering north of Karbala, as its 7th Cavalry and other lead elements conduct armed reconnaissance missions to attack selected units of the Medina division guarding Baghdad's southwest approach.
Gen. Brooks said the 5th Corps, which also includes the 101st Airborne Division, mounted attacks around the towns of Hilla, Karbala and Samawa.
"These attacks were intended to create vulnerabilities in the Republican Guard defenses, and also to isolate the remaining pockets of resistance for destruction at a time of our choosing," the general said. "The attacks were very effective and resulted in the capture of an Iraqi general with very valuable information, an airfield and a training camp for regime death squads."
As the 5th Corps probes and attacks, overhead Republican Guard commanders are seeing unending air strikes from a variety of allied tactical jets. The pilots are putting 500-pound, laser-guided bombs on tanks, artillery and personnel carriers.
In the past 24 hours, the coalition flew nearly 1,900 missions, or sorties, with about 800 devoted to bombings. Of those, more than 500 were devoted to the Republican Guard, especially the three divisions that defend Baghdad: Medina, Baghdad and Hammurabi.
In recent days, elements of the Nebuchadnezzar, Nida and Adnan divisions have left their stations north of Baghdad and moved south.
"What's happening is that you reinforce the unit you expect to be in contact, and you fill a unit that is attrited," said Maj. John Altman, an intelligence officer for the 3rd Infantry. "Elements of five Republican Guard divisions are oriented along the southeast and southwest of Baghdad."
At the Pentagon, officials said the Medina division, which was attacked last night, and the Baghdad division have been reduced to less than 50 percent effectiveness.
He hinted at a large ground action.
"There have been serious ground operations, and there have been for some time," he said. "They've been conducting, as we mentioned before, some armed reconnaissance. I think there are bigger pushes that will be under way as soon as we're ready. ... We have degraded them to some degree."
Maj. Altman added, "These things are perhaps under way, will be under way in the near future, and I just don't want to talk about them."
Asked to describe Republican Guard movements, Gen. Myers said: "We haven't seen a retreat. We've seen dispersals. ... We've seen reinforcements, and we continue to work away at them both from the ground and from the air."
Earlier in the day, reporters traveling with the 5th Corps told of limited combat action around Karbala, as well as Hilla and Samawa.
----
Analysis: Brits worry about Iraqi surprise
By Peter Almond
From the International Desk
4/2/2003
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030402-022425-9695r
LONDON, April 2 (UPI) -- The British are waiting almost with baited breath for the other shoe to drop in what some are already billing the final battle for Baghdad.
With the most forward U.S. troops reported to be just 19 miles from central Baghdad the impression being generated by news reports and military experts is that something major is likely to happen in the next 24 to 48 hours. The problem is no one appears to know if it will be good or bad.
The big, sprawling city appears to be wide open. British reporters who have managed to get out of their carefully watched hotel say there are no signs of major military preparations, no tanks or artillery guns on the streets, no checkpoints. Six-lane highways apparently present no obstructions to U.S. tanks to race into the city center.
Ominously, however, small groups of men, both in uniform and in civilian clothes, reportedly stand at almost every street corner and empty shop, at slit trenches by the side of the road, most of the men carrying AK-47 rifles or rocket-propelled grenade launchers. It is suggested that tanks may lie in wait inside shop fronts.
With reports all day that the advancing U.S. forces have found surprisingly light resistance from the two big Republic Guard divisions opposing them at Karbala and Hindiya, there are suggestions that somehow many of the tanks, rocket launchers and troops of the Medina and Nebuchadnezzar Divisions have already escaped back into Baghdad.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told a news conference at Central Command headquarters in Qatar that at Al Kut -- which history-minded Britons remember as the site of a major British defeat of Turkish forces in 1915 -- the Baghdad Republican Guard Division was "destroyed" as U.S. Marines slammed into it. He declined to be more specific, except to say it was no longer functioning.
British military sources say it was already the weakest of the six Republic Guard divisions around Baghdad and was the most likely to have collapsed first.
Two 15,000-pound "Daisy Cutter" bombs designed to flatten a huge area may well have accounted for many troops of that division on Wednesday, and reports of B-52s dropping scores of cluster bombs on an Iraqi troop convoy may well have taken care of many others.
But there is concern that much of the 'heavy fighting' across the front stated by U.S. military spokesman may be against decoy Iraqi gun sites and dug-in tanks. "There is some mystery," said British Broadcast Corp reporter Gavin Hewitt in Iraq, "of whether the Medina Division is actually there, or in Baghdad or Karbala."
In an article for The Times, former U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, who led NATO forces during the Kosovo campaign in 1999, said the experience of Kosovo should be cautionary.
"Day after day in the late spring of 1999, we continued to roll up impressive totals of tanks, armored vehicles and artillery and mortars destroyed," he wrote. "Still, much of the (Serb) force simply road-marched out of Kosovo, relatively intact, at the end of the campaign ... Post-conflict investigation on the ground in Kosovo found much less evidence of the destruction than we expected."
Clark said the Iraq situation should be clearer, since the allies in Kosovo depended heavily on air observation, and this time there are land forces and Special Forces to back that up.
There are fears, however, that as Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has often declared, the final battle will be fought and won in the cities.
U.S. Central Command head Gen. Tommy Franks and his staff are certain to be aware of the dangers, and indicate they are refusing to be drawn to them. Even British Prime Minster Tony Blair, when asked about reports of Saddam's forces shooting from inside the Ali Mosque at Karbala, said: "we are doing everything we can to protect these holy sites which are so important to the Iraqi people."
There are some British suspicions that Saddam's leadership is in bigger trouble than has so far been publicly indicated -- Saddam's failure Tuesday to read his own statement urging jihad against the British and Americans, for instance, or more recently reports of 'considerable' small arms fire near the center of Baghdad.
According to the London Evening Standard a "senior U.S. source" said only, "Keep watching the television," when asked if U.S. troops would enter Baghdad on Wednesday night.
British military sources have told United Press International that Franks' staff have been closely watching the British plan for Basra, which involves careful probing and patrolling, seeking out the Baathist holdouts and foci of Saddam's power, and taking their time while steadily building up civilian confidence on the outskirts.
The sources said they would not be surprised if U.S. special operations forces conduct lightning raids into Baghdad over the next few days and weeks, using helicopters and armored equipment in much better ways than the Rangers did in Mogadishu in 1993.
Meanwhile, the rescue of U.S. Pfc. Jessica Lynch was greeted with delight by the British media, but BBC-TV said the press announcements were "intricately choreographed," involving an unusual middle of the night briefing at Central Command "in order to make the evening news on the East Coast," with the video of her rescue arranged to arrive in time for the breakfast TV shows.
The Pentagon, it is noted in London, needed a good story to tell after a week of bad ones.
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General evaluates reconstruction task
April 2, 2003
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030402-28655776.htm
UMM QASR, Iraq - Jay Garner, the retired Army lieutenant general who would head a transitional administration in Baghdad, praised coalition efforts yesterday during his first visit to Iraq since taking on the assignment.
Gen. Garner dropped in on short notice on an Army unit responsible for reconstructing vital infrastructure in Umm Qasr, southern Iraq's deep-water port, through which more than half of Iraq's international assistance must arrive.
"The Brits are doing great. We're doing great together," he said after a half-hour briefing by U.S. and British military officials responsible for the initial reconstruction. "We're getting a handle on this."
Gen. Garner's visit to Umm Qasr was very short and was not publicly announced in advance. Members of his staff suggested that security concerns were partly behind the brevity and stealthiness of the trip.
"He was here to see things personally and get a feel for the operation," said Col. Dave Blackledge, who commands the Army's 354th Civil Affairs Brigade, which is based for the moment in Umm Qasr. "This is the first place for stability and reconstruction."
Umm Qasr, a grim port town of 40,000, was the first Iraqi population center to fall to coalition forces. The rehabilitation of the port is considered a high-profile priority to show the Iraqi people that the war is not against them, but against an oppressive and corrupt regime. Skilled laborers here may earn $5 a day - if they can find work.
Mr. Garner was last in Iraq in 1991, when he was the commander of Operation Provide Comfort, a humanitarian effort based in the country's Kurdish north.
President Bush named Gen. Garner in January to head the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, an interagency planning team with offices in the Pentagon. He would serve as civil administrator once Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government is overthrown and would report to coalition commander Gen. Tommy Franks.
Umm Qasr is not only the first Iraqi city slated for reconstruction, but also the second-most-complex puzzle after Baghdad.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has dispatched a specialized team to the town to assess the status of the humanitarian relief efforts, as well as the condition of local infrastructure. The team's reports will help Gen. Garner and various reconstruction agencies to determine priorities and funding needs.
The Umm Qasr port, for example, suffered little damage in the war, but silt has backed up the waterway so badly that only shallow-draft military cargo ships can make it all the way into the harbor.
Now that most of the mines and ordnance have been cleared, the biggest challenge is finding a working dredger to dig as much as 15 feet of fine sand out of the shipping lane.
John Logan, a security coordinator for the United Nations, arrived in Umm Qasr yesterday to evaluate the safety of the port. He was accompanied by officials of the World Food Program. Their assessment is important because most nongovernmental and private relief agencies will not ship through the port until they deem it safe.
Wheat remains a major staple of the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program, but the aging, looted granary is in severe need of repair. Coalition experts have spent nearly a week securing the grain complex and starting to get it back in order.
On the humanitarian side, the picture is brighter.
Electricity has been restored to almost the entire town center, and last night there was more life in the streets than at any time in the previous two weeks.
But water remains a problem despite a novel effort to pipe it from Kuwait and distribute it in tanker trucks.
The Iraqi drivers have been gouging residents, who in turn are blaming coalition forces. They also say they still do not have enough water and that it tastes like bad well water.
Asked how long it would take to get the port and relief distribution functioning again, Gen. Garner said it would be an incremental process.
"I don't know that it's one big hurdle," he said. "This is a lot of hurdles. Just like a race, a lot of little hurdles."
----
U.S. Troops Hunt Fedayeen Block by Block in Najaf
April 2, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-najaf.html
NEAR NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. troops attacked Fedayeen fighters loyal to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the central city of Najaf on Wednesday, drawing fire from defenders hiding in one of the world's holiest Muslim shrines, U.S. officials said.
U.S. commanders said they did not fire back on the gold-domed Ali Mosque, which is revered by Shi'ite Muslims and contains the tomb of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib -- a cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammad.
But they did mount a fierce attack on suspected Fedayeen positions around the city, strafing buildings from A-10 Warthog ground attack planes and calling in British fighter jets to bomb the city's Baath Party headquarters.
U.S. troops then entered the city from the south, north and west, fanning out in sprawling neighborhoods in house-by-house searches for militia fighters. Sporadic gunfire could be heard as firefights broke out in the north and west of the city.
Lt. Col. Chris Holden of 101st Airborne said the attack on Najaf was aimed at clearing out the Fedayeen, paramilitary fighters who have spearheaded resistance to the U.S. and British invasion.
``The target is to destroy Fedayeen units and anyone else trying to disrupt our lines of communication,'' he said. ``We are going to destroy them.''
A Reuters correspondent traveling with the U.S. forces said: ``They are going in block by block, hoping their presence will draw out the Fedayeen so they can fight them.
``It's a slow business and takes ages just to go through one city block.''
SACRED SITE IN JEOPARDY?
At U.S. war headquarters in Qatar, a U.S. spokesman said Iraqi defenders had fired on American troops from inside the Ali Mosque, which stands in the center of the city.
``The Iraqi regime's use of the Ali Mosque for military purposes is just the latest example of the regime's continued strategy of placing sacred sites in Iraq in jeopardy,'' the U.S. official told a news briefing.
Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, the chief U.S. spokesman, later told reporters a decision was taken not to shoot back at the mosque because of its religious and historical significance.
``While we always have the choice of returning fire to respond to any threat that's out there on the battlefield, we approach all of our decisions on the battlefield with discrimination, with consideration to the outcome of that action,'' Brooks said.
``At the same time, we're gonna protect our force.''
The U.S. report of shooting at the mosque could not immediately be confirmed by a Reuters correspondent with the U.S. forces.
Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf denied that U.S. forces were inside Najaf, and accused them of using low flying planes to shake and destabilize sacred sites.
``After we repelled them to the desert, they hit the mosques. It is obvious they are doing this to destroy these shrines,'' Sahaf told a news conference in Baghdad.
In Tehran, a spokesman for Iraq's largest dissident party and main Shi'ite group, said that if the report of shooting from inside the mosque proved true, it should be condemned.
``Saddam's regime is taking advantage of the holy sites to achieve its evil goals, and this is always to be condemned,'' said the spokesman for the Iranian-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).
AIR ATTACK
As the 101st Airborne Division troops moved into Najaf from the south, U.S. and British fighter jets attacked from the air.
Thick columns of smoke rose above the city after British Tornado fighter pilots dropped six 1,000 pound bombs on the local headquarters of Saddam's ruling Baath Party, which they said was completely destroyed.
``Those last two hit the target smack down the middle,'' one of the pilots said in radio communications with U.S. forces.
Officials said the assault on Najaf would also involve Apache attack helicopters, and that suspected Fedayeen positions were being hit with 30mm depleted uranium rounds -- ``tank killer'' weapons that are capable of blasting through walls.
The attack on Najaf came as U.S. forces surged forward on a number of fronts, encircling Kerbala, another Shi'ite holy city, and seizing a key bridge over the Tigris river near Kut, putting them in control of a major highway leading to Baghdad.
Sahaf denied that U.S. forces had crossed the Tigris and he branded as ``illusions'' Washington's reported advances at Najaf and Kerbala.
----
Allied forces see more Iraqi cooperation
April 2, 2003
By Nicole Winfield
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030402-83173400.htm
CAMP AS SAYLIYAH, Qatar - British and U.S. officials reported signs yesterday that the tide of war in southern Iraq may be turning in their favor: Iraqis are increasingly warming to their presence, and some troops feel safe enough to wear berets rather than combat helmets in towns firmly under their control.
Those signals, however, were tempered by continued resistance from forces loyal to Saddam Hussein, a major battle looming for Baghdad, and fallout from the killing of seven Iraqi women and children by U.S. soldiers at a checkpoint.
In the southeastern corner of Iraq, though, British forces pointed to developments that they said signaled a shift in their favor.
Lights flickered on for the first time in months in the port city of Umm Qasr, and schools and shops were reopening, said Group Capt. Al Lockwood, a spokesman for British forces in the Gulf.
More civilians were informing foreign troops about the whereabouts of paramilitary forces and members of Saddam's Ba'ath Party, British officials said.
In four towns - Umm Qasr, Zubayr, Rumeila and Safwan - British troops felt so secure that they swapped their combat helmets for berets and adopted a less-aggressive posture in wielding their weapons, British officials said.
Capt. Lockwood said the berets and relaxed postures make the soldiers appear more friendly and approachable, and serve as a confidence-building measure on both sides.
"It shows that we have confidence in them, and they can have confidence in us," he said.
In Nasiriyah, where the coalition has met with stiff resistance, civilians were helping U.S. Special Forces stage raids and find troops loyal to Saddam, Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks told reporters yesterday at a news conference in Qatar.
Gen. Brooks said local Iraqis are increasingly willing to aid the U.S. and British forces throughout the main areas of fighting.
Marines were aided by 100 tribal fighters who helped battle Iraqi forces and remove explosives from a bridge north of Nasiriyah. Their help also resulted in the capture of prisoners of war, he said.
In the western desert, after Army Rangers destroyed a commando headquarters a few days ago, civilians helped U.S. troops locate buildings where regime ammunition was held and helped troops remove it for destruction, he said.
One senior U.S. Central Command official said late Monday that he sensed the "tipping point" - when Iraqis would turn against the regime entirely - was near in Basra and Nasiriyah.
Capt. Lockwood stressed that tensions were still high in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, where British forces have skirmished almost daily with forces loyal to Saddam while trying to provide humanitarian aid to the city's 1.3 million people.
Military operations continued in the region, including a raid on Ba'ath Party members in the town of Safwan, said another British spokesman, Col. Chris Vernon.
But Capt. Lockwood said residents were increasingly willing to approach British troops who had ringed Basra to provide information about paramilitaries and other loyalists.
"They realize that we are there to liberate them, not to occupy," he said.
In addition, more humanitarian aid was flowing into the region, including from the United Nations and other aid organizations, he said.
"Within the southern area of Iraq, we see a large degree of normality starting to appear amongst the Iraqi population," Capt. Lockwood said.
U.S. and British officials say the expected support for coalition troops by anti-Saddam Shi'ite residents of Basra and other southern towns hasn't materialized to any large degree.
They attribute the residents' wariness to the fact that when Shi'ites did rise up in 1991, allied forces largely abandoned them and left them to be punished or killed by the Iraqi leadership.
"They have suffered tragically, enormously under the Saddam Hussein regime," Capt. Lockwood said. "And although it's taken some time because of the events of 1991, they're beginning to gain the confidence now. They know we're not going away."
----
Outgunned Iraqis show real ingenuity
More than U.S., Baghdad learned lessons of 1991
ANALYSIS By Rick Francona
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR,
April 2, 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/893971.asp?pne=msntv
NEW YORK, April 2 - They are outgunned, outclassed and have almost no air defenses, yet the Iraqi armed forces continue to fight the world's most powerful military force. Although the tide of battle has always been on the side of the coalition, the Iraqis have not been defeated in an often-cited "cakewalk." Indeed, they have had some battlefield successes.
THE IRAQI armed forces, severely battered during the first Gulf War, were able to reform themselves fairly quickly into an effective fighting force. This was due to the fact that most of the destruction of the Iraqi military at the hands of the 1991 coalition was focused on regular army units rather than Saddam Hussein's better equipped and trained Republican Guard. At the time of the invasion of Kuwait, the Iraqi army consisted of approximately 900,000 men organized into seven corps, and the Republican Guard, which had eight divisions. The Republican Guard was used to seize the entire country of Kuwait in less than five days.
After regular Army forces were used to occupy the country, Republican Guard divisions were pulled back to take up positions behind the regular units to act as tactical and operational reserves as American forces deployed to defend Saudi Arabia.
American operations in the first Gulf War were focused on the liberation of Kuwait. As part of those operations, the U.S. 7th Corps was the only unit with the specific mission of engaging and destroying the Republican Guard. Because the first Bush administration ordered a halt to combat operations after just four days of ground combat, most of the Guard escaped with approximately half of their tanks - mostly capable T-72's - and artillery intact.
After the war, the Iraqis took a hard look at what went wrong and what went right, the same "lessons learned" process used by military forces worldwide. Virtually all of their combat experiences with the coalition were negative. Force-on-force engagements and open desert fighting resulted in destruction of entire units due to the overwhelming superiority of the U.S.-led coalition's equipment, technology, tactics, training and logistics support.
The Iraqi air force and navy were effectively destroyed in the opening days of the conflict, and the air defenses - despite French command-and-control integration technology - were systematically defeated. The Iraqis did learn, however, that ballistic missiles are an effective weapon - if not militarily, at least politically. They also determined, correctly, that American military prowess on the battlefield depends on a robust logistics capability.
MEANER, LEANER
In the years after the 1991 war, despite sanctions restricting imports of military hardware, the Iraqi armed forces reorganized themselves into a leaner force, reducing the numbers to about 400,000. Equipment that survived the Gulf War was refitted and cannibalized to support a five-corps regular army and a six-division Republican Guard.
A new unit was created, the Special Republican Guard, charged with the defense of the capital - in reality, protection of Saddam's inner circle. Of note is the distinct chains of command that were put in place. While the regular army is subordinate to the minister of defense, the Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard were under the direct control of Saddam's second son, Qusay. An Iraqi soldier holds up a machine gun in the town of Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad, after a U.S. bombing run last week.
This split chain of command is a common anti-coup mechanism seen in many Middle East countries - each serves as a counterbalance to the other. Not to be outdone, Saddam's oldest son, Uday, created his own militia to protect the regime, the paramilitary Fedayeen Saddam, or "those willing to sacrifice for Saddam."
Based on their successes in the use of ballistic missiles, specifically the modified Scud, or Al-Hussein, against Saudi Arabia and Israel, the Iraqis embarked on a missile development program that technically kept them in compliance with U.N. restrictions.
Lessons from 1991
Since 1991, Iraq has maintained an offensive missile capability that continues to pose a threat to U.S. forces and allies in the region. The main defenses against Iraqi missiles are advanced versions of the Patriot system and the joint Israeli-U.S. Arrow system.
Arrow Patriot (Pac-III)
Country Israel (with U.S. assistance) United States
Length
Max. range
Anti-missile defense: Few or possibly no Scuds were destroyed by Patriot anti-missile defenses. Systems developed since then are designed to destroy the warhead, not just the missile, or to intercept Scuds in their launch mode, far away from targeted cities.
Those restrictions limited Iraq's ballistic missiles to a range of 150 kilometers, or 93 miles. Prior to the 1991 war, Iraqi engineers had proven their skills on a variety of weapons. They:
- Modified the Soviet Scud to fly twice its designed range.
- Developed sarin and VX nerve agents.
- Weaponized the biological agents anthrax and botulinum.
- Developed a three-stage intermediate-range ballistic missile prototype.
- Developed an AWACS capability by mounting air surveillance radars in cargo aircraft.
- Installed refueling capability in Soviet-made fighter aircraft.
After the 1991 war, they applied their expertise to indigenous missile programs. The engineers modified the Soviet-supplied SA-2 surface-to-air missile to be a surface-to-surface missile. These missiles, named the Ababil and Al-Samoud, have been used, albeit ineffectively, against Kuwait and American forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq in the current war.
SMARTLY ADAPTING
More important than the reorganization of the Iraqi armed forces and the development of new missile systems following the 1991 war was the adoption of new tactics aimed at American ground forces, including their supply lines, judged to be the most vulnerable piece of the American war machine.
With the buildup to the current war and Saddam's successful delaying tactics at the United Nations, the Iraqis had ample time to pre-position their paramilitary forces in cities along the obvious supply route from Kuwait to Baghdad - cities that have become part of the new war lexicon: Umm Qasr, Basra, Nasiriyah and Najaf.
Once ensconced in these cities, the paramilitary units prepared for hit-and-run harassment attacks on American supply lines. They also terrorized the local populations into either resisting - or at least remaining neutral - when the Americans entered the cities.
The Iraqis reportedly used the book "Blackhawk Down" by Mark Bowden, describing Somali tactics against Army Rangers in the mid-1990s, as a planning guide. The use of women and children as human shields, and soldiers dressing in civilian clothes and driving civilian pickups equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers are among the tactics the Iraqis borrowed from the Somalis.
As American forces poured across the border from Kuwait, Iraqi forces did not try to take on American armored units in the field. Instead, they melted back into the cities, having learned the lessons of 1991 perhaps better than the Americans did.
Rick Francona, an NBC News military analyst, is a former defense attaché to Baghdad and author of "From Ally to Adversary: An Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall From Grace."
-------- landmines
BBC Cameraman Killed by Land mine in Iraq
April 2, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-britain-cameraman.html
LONDON (Reuters) - A cameraman working for the British Broadcasting Corporation was killed in Iraq on Wednesday when he stood on a land mine as he climbed out of his car, the BBC said.
Kaveh Golestan, 52, an Iranian freelance cameraman, was part of a four-man team filming at Kifri.
Producer Stuart Hughes, 31, was caught in the blast and injured his foot, while correspondent Jim Muir and their local translator were unhurt.
BBC Director of News Richard Sambrook, said: ``Kaveh Golestan was an outstanding photojournalist who had worked in support of freedom of expression in his native Iran and elsewhere and was well known to many Western news organizations.
``He had worked with the BBC for many years. Our deepest sympathy goes to his family and friends.
``This once again underlines the dangers faced by news teams covering the war in Iraq.''
He is the fourth journalist known to have died during the conflict.
On March 22, Australian cameraman Paul Moran was killed by a car bomb in northern Iraq blamed by Kurdish officials on militant Islamic group Ansar al-Islam.
On the same day, Terry Lloyd, a journalist from Britain's Independent Television News, was killed after coming under fire on the way to Basra.
Lloyd was traveling with cameramen Fred Nerac and Daniel Demoustier and translator Hussein Osman when their vehicles were shot at. Demoustier managed to escape but Nerac and Osman are still missing.
British television reporter Gaby Rado was found dead at a hotel in northern Iraq although his death appeared to have no direct connection to military action, Britain's ITN network said.
Rado, an award-winning foreign affairs correspondent, was reporting for Channel 4 news in Sulaimaniya, a town in the Kurdish-controlled area of northern Iraq.
-------- mideast
Turkey's opposition to war solidifies
By Zamira Eshanova,
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Apr 2, 2003
Asia Times Online
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED02Ak01.html
ANKARA - Pro-Iraqi chants such as the following are heard quite often these days on Ankara's main Ataturk Boulevard: "Allah Almighty! Allah Almighty! Muslims of Iraq, your blood will not be wasted," and "Iraq is our soul and our blood will not be wasted."
Ataturk Boulevard is the preferred location for antiwar protests in the Turkish capital. Most of the city's prominent government buildings, including the prime minister's office and the Turkish parliament, are located there, as are the offices of the country's largest television stations and newspapers.
Early this month, lawmakers in the Turkish parliament failed to endorse a motion that would have allowed the deployment of some 62,000 US troops on Turkish soil in exchange for an estimated US$30 billion in compensation by Washington.
On March 20, the Turkish parliament did approve a government motion allowing Washington to use Turkish airspace for military attacks against neighboring Iraq. The motion also included support for the deployment of Turkish troops into Iraq's mainly Kurdish northern areas. Ankara maintains any such movements would be purely for humanitarian or defensive reasons.
Both Washington and Britain, however, strongly object to such a deployment for fear of renewing tensions with local fighters. Many Turks now view Washington's opposition to such troops deployments as punishment for the Turkish parliament's refusal to allow the deployment of US troops on Turkish soil. That decision has complicated the US-led invasion of Iraq by denying the coalition a northern front.
Cemil Cicek, Turkey's justice minister and the government's main spokesman, said the Turkish parliament's vote reflected what the majority of the electorate wanted from their representatives. Cicek said that if the US sincerely stands for democracy and human rights, Turkey's decision should be respected and not used as an excuse for revenge. "The mejlis [parliament] is very important to us. Our mejlis is as important to us as the [US] Congress is to you." Cicek said.
Havva Kok is a former political adviser to the government and a professor of international relations at Mersin University in southern Turkey. She said the current crisis in US-Turkish relations illustrates the hypocrisy behind American claims that it wants to bring democracy and human rights to Iraq through the current war.
"America wants democracy that serves only its interests, and it wants dictatorships which do the same. So far, the US has not been complaining about the Saudi dictatorship because it serves American interests. Up until now, it was happy with Turkish democracy, since it was serving American interests. But at this very moment, the US is not happy with Turkish democracy because it is not serving American interests. This is nothing but duplicity," Kok told RFE/RL.
Turkish politicians and commentators are in the midst of a debate about who is most to blame for the poor state of relations between the US and Turkey. The majority of analysts in Turkey point to Washington, as did Cicek in his latest statement. "Naturally, it is impossible to say that our relations with America are better than a month ago. But if the relations went wrong, what is [Turkey's] fault? Turkey sincerely didn't want to come to the current point. But others shouldn't blame Turkey for their own miscalculations. It is unfair," Cicek said.
Cicek said that the US miscalculated the degree of antiwar sentiment among the Turkish public and the role of public opinion in Turkish democracy, just as US military planners underestimated the level of resistance by Iraqis in the war. He said Ankara is doing its best to end the current cold war with Washington but that it takes effort by both sides.
Professor Kok also believes that if anyone is responsible for the current crisis in US-Turkish relations, it is Washington. But she notes that Turkey has a new government inexperienced in the ways of foreign affairs, and that it didn't send the right messages to Washington.
"Turkey's government was a very new one, and that's why it couldn't make it clear what it might give and what it might not. Had the government said from the beginning [to the US] that 'We can't give you this and that, but we can give you this and that', then the Americans would not have been under much illusion. But the final [outcome] is a very right and very optimal one," Kok said.
Kok said US-Turkish relations are not quite as bad as they appear. She believes there are positive lessons for Turkey to learn from the current crisis. "In terms of the economy, the main thing is that Turkey should look at its own resources and learn how to make the best use of them. It's the same with security. Now, Turkey will have to improve relations with its neighbors and seek to establish - together with its neighbors - a peaceful regional policy. It cannot achieve its security solely by looking at the US and the West," Kok said.
However, Kok acknowledged that Turkey's neighbors - such as Syria and Iran - will not easily regain their trust in Turkey. But she believes that Turkey's stand on Iraq may serve as a fruitful beginning for a new era in regional politics in the Middle East.
----
Arabs Warn U.S. Not to Use Iraq to Pick New Fights
Wed April 2, 2003
By Sami Aboudi
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=WPULOFPWVZAHICRBAE0CFEY?type=worldNews&storyID=2494108
CAIRO - Arab commentators and officials warned the United States on Wednesday that its war on Iraq was widening its circle of enemies in the Middle East and urged Washington to refrain from picking new fights.
The comments came in the wake of recent threats by senior members of President Bush's administration against Syria and Iran, and later Israeli warnings to Damascus, that they would be held to account if they gave support to Iraq.
Samir Ragab, editor of mainstream Egyptian daily al-Gomhuria, said threats issued by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell were hurting Washington's standing in the area at a time when it was making few gains on the ground in Iraq.
"It will not be in U.S. interests to hurl threats at certain countries and create the impression that they are next on the list of U.S. targets," Ragab wrote in a comment column.
"It is expected that the U.S. would keep silent, otherwise it will widen the circle of its enemies," Ragab said.
Powell and Rumsfeld have signaled in separate comments that Syria must abandon what they say is its support for Iraq and "terrorism" or face the consequences.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz appeared to add fuel to the fire when he said both Israel and the United States viewed as "very grave" the aid Syria has allegedly given to Iraq.
Ghassan Charbel, deputy editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab al-Hayat, said Israel was trying to push the U.S.-Syrian dispute over Iraq "to the point of conflict."
WHO WILL BE NEXT?
In Algiers, Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem told parliament in an extraordinary session on Iraq that U.S. threats to Syria would worsen the crisis in the Middle East.
"Algeria expresses its solidarity with brotherly Syria in the face of threats and menaces. The question now is who will be the next to be threatened?" he asked.
Ghassan al-Khatib, Palestinian minister of labor, said the U.S. approach would destabilize the region and harm Western interests. "Democracy cannot be introduced by tanks and warplanes," he said.
Anti-U.S. sentiments in the Arab world have been stoked by images on television screens and in local media of Iraqi children and women killed by American attacks.
Demonstrations have been taking place across the Arab world. On Wednesday, some 20,000 people protested in Lebanon's southern city of Sidon, carrying pictures of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and graphic photos of Iraqi children killed in the war.
"They're just threatening Syria and Iran to cover up for their failure on the battlefield," Beirut taxi driver Mahmoud said. "I wish to God that Syria and Iran would open fronts against the Americans. Then they'd learn what it really means to invade an Arab country."
In the West Bank city of Ramallah, Bassam Zakarneh, a 35-year-old engineer, said if the United States carried out threats to extend the war to Syria and Iran, "everything that has to do with America in the Arab world will be threatened in return."
A THOUSAND BIN LADENS
"They will be creating a thousand (Osama) Bin Ladens because of their double standards," he said, referring to the leader of al Qaeda, Washington's prime suspect in the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Bahraini banker Nabeel Saeed said Bush's policies would rebound on him. "Bush is (like) a child with a toy which he does not know how to play with. It could harm himself or others.
"Bush is so stupid, and at every news conference he makes America lose a friend and win an enemy," said Moussa Ali, a 40-year-old Palestinian in Gaza.
"I really hope that America will engage in war with Syria and Iran; it will be the end of the so-called United States."
Syria's official Tishreen newspaper warned that the dangers of the Iraq war would affect the entire Arab world.
"Will Arabs realize the magnitude of the hazard sweeping through their homeland and take action? Or are they going to stay divided, some supporting the aggressors and some watching and rejoicing at the misfortune (of Iraq)? What a disgrace," it said in a commentary.
-------- nato
NATO Press Releases
Press Release (2003)035
2 April 2003
Press statement
by the NATO Secretary General on the Resignation of Mirko Sarovic
I welcome today's decision by Mr Mirko Sarovic, to step down from the Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH) Presidency. As the representative for Republika Srpska (RS), it was the only possible course of action he could take given his political responsibility for the export of illegal arms to Iraq by the RS-based company VZ Orao. The international investigations into the affair leave no doubt whatsoever of President Sarovic's responsibility for these actions.
The evasive and obstructive behaviour of the RS authorities have also required the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lord Ashdown, to take a number of other decisive measures to strengthen civilian and state level control in the Federation and the RS, which I fully support.
Added to all this is the evidence SFOR has uncovered of an active policy of aggressive intelligence operations by the RS against the international community. This is blatant and unacceptable defiance of the RS authorities' obligations under the Dayton Agreement, as well as contravention of SFOR's instructions, and fully justifies the far-reaching reforms being announced by Lord Ashdown.
The behaviour of President Sarovic and others was not only wrong but represents the mindset of people who are still living in the past. Illegal exports to Iraq, in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions, diminish the standing of the RS and BiH in the international community, and intelligence operations against international organisations are a waste of scarce resources needed for economic recovery and defence reform.
The people of Republika Srpska in particular deserve much better from their elected representatives, and President Sarovic's successor must look to the future and learn the lesson of recent events.
News and information will routinely be posted on the NATO website.
An inspection by troops from the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR) has found evidence that a local company has breached United Nations resolutions on trade in weapons with Iraq.
SFOR troops carried out an unannounced inspection of ORAO, a state-owned weapons factory in Bijeljina, Republika Srpska, on 11 October.
The peacekeeping force is mandated by the Dayton Peace Accords to monitor the movement, storage, manufacture and repair of weapons in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This includes unannounced inspections of weapons manufacturers such as ORAO.
Although the investigation continues, there is clear evidence of a contract linking the ORAO factory in Bijeljina to the illegal export of weapons systems components through the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to Iraq.
In a statement released on 27 October, the Commander of SFOR, General William Ward, called on the government authorities to take swift action against the responsible individuals.
"I will not hesitate to use the powers granted to me under the GFAP [Dayton Accords] to impose other necessary changes and punishments in the event that those applied by the Republika Srpska Government are inadequate," he said.
General Ward also said that SFOR stands ready to assist Bosnian authorities and the international community in improving state control over the production and export of military weapons and equipment, in order to prevent future non-compliance.
Web site:
SFOR online http://www.nato.int/sfor/
SFOR Informer: The ORAO case, a short reminder of the events http://www.nato.int/sfor/indexinf/159/p02a/t02p02a.htm
-------- pakistan
Radical Islamic groups making resurgence
April 2, 2003
By Kathy Gannon
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030402-14483836.htm
KARACHI, Pakistan - Outlawed Islamic extremist organizations that were routed by the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan in 2001 are making a comeback, riding a wave of anti-American sentiment.
Recruitment in Pakistan of potential terrorists appears to be on the rise. Militant leaders freed from house arrest have returned to the mosques to rally the faithful against the United States.
Muslim radicals are feeding on anger about the war in Iraq to regroup and revitalize, raising the threat of more anti-U.S. terrorism around the world.
"They are defiant. They are angry. More and more people are angry," said a militant who asked to be identified as Abu Mujahed.
He said recruits are being found by way of Internet chat rooms that deal with the war on Iraq and "American aggression."
Analysts say the Iraq war is emboldening militants, who believe the United States is distracted by the fighting.
"Militants know that the United States is fully engaged in Iraq and that has diluted their focus on the war on terror," said Riffat Hussein, a political analyst.
The war also is squeezing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the former Taliban regime.
Gen. Musharraf's support for Washington must be balanced against two powerful forces at home. One is the army, dominated by religious conservatives who were reluctant about the U.S. war in Afghanistan and staunchly oppose the war in Iraq. The second are elements within the Pakistani intelligence agency still closely allied to militants.
Old militant groups, outlawed as terrorist groups, have re-emerged under new guises and operate openly as "political" groups. Jaish-e-Mohammed is now Khudam-ul Islam, Harakat-ul Mujahideen's new name is Jamiat-ul Ansar, and Lashkar-e-Taiba is now called Jamaat-e-Dawa.
In Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are still pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda holdouts, the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, is circulating posters of his decree calling for a holy war against the United States. Signatures of 600 Muslim clerics are attached.
Mullah Omar's old regime has shored up its alliances with remnants of al Qaeda and fighters loyal to rebel commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Already, an increase is noticeable in attacks on U.S. forces, international peacekeepers and nongovernment organizations.
There are only two camps left in the world today, says the decree from the one-eyed mullah who dominated Afghanistan for seven years: "One is Islam, which is a religion of peace, and the other symbol is Bush, who is a symbol of terror and hatred."
Other Islamic countries face a similar surge of support for violent movements: Egypt, Jordan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, to name those most friendly toward the United States.
In Egypt, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to transform the country into an Islamic state, is gaining exposure at anti-U.S. protests on a scale rarely seen in Cairo.
Dia'a Rashwan, an expert on radical Islamic groups at Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said he has noticed a growing anti-U.S. trend as he navigated Web sites and chat rooms in recent days.
-------- puerto rico
U.S. Navy Begins Vieques Cleanup
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques.html
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- The U.S. Navy has torn down wooden barracks and observation towers at its Vieques bombing range as it prepares to withdraw after years of local protests, officials said Wednesday.
For decades, the U.S. Navy has conducted training on the outlying island off Puerto Rico's east coast in preparation for international conflicts from Korea to Afghanistan and Iraq. The last training ended in February.
The Navy says it will withdraw from Vieques by May 1, turning over the island's eastern third to the U.S. Department of the Interior and moving training to spots in Florida and elsewhere in the U.S. mainland.
The 17 buildings demolished Wednesday were temporary structures, Navy spokesman Oscar Seara said.
The Navy has said it will clean up munitions that remain on its bombing range.
Activists say the bombing exercises, which began in 1947, have harmed the environment and the health of the island's 9,100 residents. The Navy denies the claims.
The training has been criticized by the U.S. territory's leaders since off-target bombs killed a civilian guard on the firing range in 1999.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia Protests U.S. Bombing of Baghdad
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Russia-Iraq.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia alleged Wednesday that American airstrikes had targeted a residential Baghdad neighborhood where the Russian Embassy is located.
U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow was called to the Foreign Ministry to hear a Russian protest over the bombing, the ministry said.
The ministry demanded that ``American authorities take urgent and exhaustive measures so that such dangerous and unacceptable incidents are not repeated in the future.''
The ministry did not report any casualties in Wednesday's airstrikes, but said ``the security of the Russian diplomatic representation's staff came under direct threat.''
Russia's ambassador to Washington, Yuri Ushakov, delivered a similar protest to U.S. officials, it said.
Asked about Vershbow's meeting at the Foreign Ministry, a U.S. Embassy official said that U.S. forces are designating only military targets and using only precision-guided weapons in Iraq.
On a visit to the city of Tambov, about 250 miles southeast of Moscow, President Vladimir Putin reiterated Russia's opposition to the war, telling military veterans that Russia would ``strive to return the (Iraqi) problem to the United Nations,'' Russian news agencies reported.
Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov lashed out at the United States over allegations that Russian companies had provided Iraq with military equipment in violation of U.N. sanctions.
Echoing previous denials, Ivanov dismissed Washington's allegations as ``propaganda'' intended to distract attention from criticism of its military campaign in Iraq.
``Now that it's hot for them, they are raising an outcry. It's not excluded that there will be other groundless accusations,'' Ivanov was quoted as saying by the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.
Amid the strain in U.S.-Russian relations, the lower house of parliament last month put off ratification of a nuclear arms reduction treaty signed last May, citing negative feelings over Iraq.
Moderate lawmaker Vladimir Ryzhkov, who is in charge of parliamentary contacts with the U.S. Congress, pointed out Wednesday that Russia needs the arms reduction treaty more than the United States, because it can't afford large nuclear arsenals.
``It's wrong and simply stupid to use the treaty to blackmail the Americans,'' Ryzhkov told a news conference.
Also Wednesday, Russia's lower house refused to consider a motion to provide massive humanitarian aid to Iraq. Only 105 lawmakers of the 226 necessary to put the draft resolution on the agenda voted to open debate on the statement.
The Russian government has said the ``occupying forces'' in Iraq should have primary responsibility for the country's civilian population. At the same time, it has sought to ensure that Russian contracts under the U.N.-sponsored oil-for-food humanitarian program are honored.
-------- spies
BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'SECRET EMPIRE'
Spies in the Skies: Both a Savior and a Disaster
April 2, 2003
The New York Times
By JEFF STEIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/02/books/02STEI.html
In the months after World War II, American military and political leaders grew increasingly alarmed at the disposition of Soviet forces. They had few clues as to how many submarines, bombers and rockets it had, where they were and whether the Russians were planning to launch them. In Washington, where fresh memories of Pearl Harbor were still rattling through the power corridors - much like today, 18 months after Al Qaeda's attacks on New York and the Pentagon - the lack of good intelligence on Soviet forces was unnerving.
In late 1946, spy flights were sent over Russia's Pacific and Baltic coasts. The lumbering, modified World War II bombers, replaced by low-flying jets a few years later, were quickly spotted and often shot down, accompanied by emphatic protests from Moscow. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, who assumed the presidency in 1953, rightly imagined the domestic outcry here if Soviet bombers were regularly caught flying over the United States. He feared Russian leaders might have to take stronger measures.
So girded by the ideas of a handful of visionary scientists and engineers, men like Richard S. Leghorn of Eastman Kodak, Edwin H. Land of Polaroid, and the legendary aviation designer Kelly Johnson of Lockheed, Eisenhower embarked on a crash program to build an untouchable eye in the sky. Luckily the program was put in the hands of an intense, rumpled Connecticut Yankee at the Central Intelligence Agency, Richard M. Bissell Jr.
This is their story, or at least it could have been - a kind of "Right Stuff" for the colorful crowd that put the U-2 spy plane and the Corona reconnaissance satellite in the sky, much like Tom Wolfe's immortalizing of the Mercury astronauts. With their quirks, idealism, genius and cowboylike enthusiasms, they are in fact an engaging cast. Eisenhower himself does a nice turn in the tale as a kind of Father Knows Best.
But Philip Taubman, a former correspondent for The New York Times and now the paper's deputy editorial page editor, has evidently set out to accomplish something else. Instead of paring his story down to a tightly focused, dramatic narrative on the drive to put spies in the sky, he has attempted the complete history, with seemingly every nut and bolt and bureaucratic dead end laid down on the page. As such, "Secret Empire" may not be for everybody, but it should find a prominent place on the shelf of important cold war reference works.
In July 1956, the first glider-like U-2 flights soared 70,000 feet over the Soviet Union, bringing back clear pictures of airstrips and missile sites. The Russians couldn't touch it. But four years and 24 flights later, when the C.I.A. pilot Francis Gary Powers was punched out of the sky by a Soviet missile, the program was brought to an ignominious end, with Eisenhower caught by the Soviet Prime Minister, Nikita S. Khrushchev in a series of excruciatingly bald-faced lies. "It set a shocking new standard for deceit at the time," Mr. Taubman observes, "and left many Americans wondering whether they could trust their leaders."
The overflights didn't deserve such a tawdry ending, considering what they had accomplished. The myth of an American "missile gap" with the Soviet Union was embraced by warmongering extremists in the Air Force, but the U-2, an astonishing technical accomplishment, can fairly be said to have prevented World War III by undercutting that idea where it counted, in the Oval Office.
The U-2 (the "U" was a standard designation for a military utility aircraft, and thus a handy cover name) was a marvel of engineering. Of course, few among the Pentagon brass thought a plane could be designed to fly above 70,000 feet, where fuel evaporated, jet engines flamed out, wings had little purchase and a pilot's body could explode. By handing management of the program to the C.I.A. and the freewheeling Bissell, however, it benefited from a collection of Air Force renegades, visionary scientists and geniuses like Johnson at Lockheed, who made temporary fixes to engineering problems with insecticides, diapers and sanitary napkins. "This thing is made out of toilet paper," a pilot exclaimed after his first experience with the remarkably delicate, long-winged craft.
From 1950 to 1970, at least 252 crew members crashed on spy flights of all kinds, most directed against the Soviet Union, Mr. Taubman reports. Only 90 of them survived, while 138 were reported missing, with at least some of them surviving for years in captivity. Although Mr. Taubman doesn't say so, the men's families must have been told they died in some other way.
All of which gave impetus to building a bird that couldn't be shot down. When Eisenhower stopped overflights of the Soviet Union in May 1960 after several humiliating misfires, the program to put a spy satellite in orbit and bring back usable photographs was still months from success.
To tell that story, Mr. Taubman makes deep forays into troubled American rocket programs, part of which were put in the hands of Nazi scientists smuggled from the ruins of the Third Reich and plunked down at the Army missile center at Huntsville, Ala. Throughout his tale, moreover, Mr. Taubman strives to revisit the astounding efforts of Land at Polaroid and many others to create cameras and film that would not only survive violent vibrations and extreme cold but also deliver photos of Russian license plates from 50 miles in space.
It's a noble effort. "Secret Empire" is a collection of extraordinary stories, but maybe too many for one book.
Jeff Stein is the editor of Homeland Security, a subscription Web site of Congressional Quarterly, and the co-author, with Khidhir Hamza, of "Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda."
-------- un
U.N. Security Council Sets First Talks on N. Korea
April 2, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-un.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council agreed on Wednesday to meet next week for an initial round of closed-door discussions on the North Korea nuclear crisis, diplomats said.
The April 9 meeting would fall more than three months after North Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and more than six weeks after the governing board of the International Atomic Energy, the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, referred the matter to the council.
Scheduling of the meeting followed weeks of lobbying by the United States, which has been pressing the 15-nation council to get together to adopt a statement condemning North Korea.
Washington, hoping to bring international pressure to bear on North Korea, wants the council to criticize Pyongyang for failing to meet its international obligations to prevent the spread of nuclear arms and to urge it to return to compliance.
But China, North Korea's closest ally, has until now resisted a council meeting, pushing instead for a direct dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang to resolve the crisis.
OUTCOME UNCLEAR
``We have agreed on holding consultations on the 9th. You'll just have to wait to see the outcome,'' U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said after a nearly four-hour closed-door meeting at which the council adopted its work program for April.
``We have decided we would have consultations, but I don't know what will be accomplished,'' Chinese Ambassador Wang Yingfan said.
``We hope that we could have good coordination so hopefully we could accomplish something,'' Wang told reporters.
The Security Council has the power to punish nations for violating international anti-proliferation treaties. For example, it could impose economic sanctions on Pyongyang.
But North Korea has warned that it would view sanctions as a ``declaration of war.''
It says the crisis can be resolved only through bilateral talks with Washington that would lead to a new nonaggression pact between the two nations.
The United States has 37,000 troops in South Korea and President Bush has lumped North Korea with Iraq and Iran as part of an ``axis of evil.''
Pyongyang has vowed to resist all international demands on it to allow nuclear inspections or to disarm, saying Iraq had made this mistake and was now paying the price.
The crisis in North Korea was triggered by a series of steps taken by its government in recent months in an apparent effort to revive its mothballed nuclear weapons program.
It became the first country to pull out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It kicked out U.N. inspectors and shut down U.N. surveillance cameras at its Yongbyon nuclear facilities, capable of producing plutonium for nuclear bombs.
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U.N. Fears U.S. Bomblets Resemble Food Packets
April 2, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-un-bomblets.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. children's fund UNICEF expressed concern on Wednesday that Iraqi children might mistake yellow food packets being handed out by U.S.-led forces with small bombs with identical coloring.
``Confusing unexploded ordinance with food places children at huge risk of injury or death,'' UNICEF said, calling on the military to urgently change the color of the food packets.
A UNICEF statement said food packets known as ``humanitarian daily rations'' that were being handed out by the U.S. and British forces in Iraq were wrapped in bright yellow plastic.
The color of the wrapping was identical to that of an air-dropped bomblet that UNICEF identified as a BLU 97.
A similar problem had arisen during the war in Afghanistan, where the U.S. military eventually changed the wrapping on food packets to blue, the U.N. agency said.
In Afghanistan, both the food packets and the bomblets were dropped from U.S. aircraft, while in Iraq only the bomblets were being air-dropped. But children can still confuse the ration and unexploded ordinance, because of their identical coloring, UNICEF said.
The BLU 97 -- a canister containing 202 bomblets, each the size of a soda can -- has been used by U.S. forces in Iraq against heavily populated civilian areas, according to human rights group Amnesty International.
The bomblets scatter over a large area about the size of two football fields, and at least 5 percent of them fail to explode on impact, Amnesty International said.
The U.S. military had no immediate comment.
-------- us
Military rivalry 'causes friendly fire deaths'
Paul Marks and Ian Sample
02 April 03
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993575
In modern warfare, one of the biggest dangers to troops is not knowing who is friend and who is foe. In the first days of the US and British invasion of Iraq, an American Patriot missile shot down a British Tornado fighter-bomber, while near Basra one British Challenger tank destroyed another. Then in a disturbing echo of events in the 1991 Gulf War, an American A-10 plane destroyed a British armoured vehicle.
At first sight these look like inevitable accidents, triggered by technological failures of 21st-century military technology. But the truth may lie deeper. Blame for such accidents usually lies with the culture of rivalry that pervades the armed services, say safety experts. And the way such "friendly fire" incidents are investigated - with the emphasis on finding individual culprits rather than any organisational failings - means military planners may never get to the root cause.
There is no dispute that high-tech equipment can foster friendly fire accidents. The American and British forces in Iraq use thermal or radar images to engage the enemy at maximum range in limited visibility, says Scott Snook, former head of the Center for Leadership & Organizations at the West Point military academy in New York.
When troops cannot see and check the target with their own eyes, they are more likely to make a mistake. Similarly, electronic identification systems can fail in action: the US Army says a software error led the Patriot system to identify the Tornado as an incoming missile.
NATO is planning an all-embracing digital "combat ID" system for its members' forces, but this will not be fitted until at least 2006, according to Britain's Ministry of Defence (MoD). Until then, the MoD expects "fratricide" to account for 10 to 15 per cent of British deaths in combat.
'Unavoidable feature of warfare'
Even when the system is fully operational, few expect it to eliminate casualties completely. "History shows that fratricide is an unavoidable feature of warfare," admits the National Audit Office, Britain's public spending watchdog, in a 2002 report on the MoD's attempts to improve combat identification.
Yet the number of accidents could still be reduced - and not just by finding technological solutions. "The deeper issues of inter-service rivalry and the difference in cultures between army and air force, and even within those, are very rarely addressed," says Snook, now at Harvard Business School. "They are often the biggest contributor to friendly fire."
As an example, he cites the shooting down of two US Army Black Hawk helicopters by two US Air Force F-15s in the No Fly Zone over northern Iraq in 1994. The incident, which killed 26 servicemen, occurred in part because the jet pilots had no record that the helicopters would be in the area.
When asked why the Black Hawks had not been entered on the mission sheet detailing the aircraft in the air that day, the USAF serviceperson responsible said: "We don't consider helicopters to be aircraft."
The omission is a startling indication of how communications can break down, says Snook. "Here's an important word like 'aircraft' and that word meant something completely different in these different cultures."
Systems theory
"We may not have learned all the lessons of friendly fire events," agrees Nancy Leveson, an aerospace safety expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She believes current investigative techniques tend to be aimed at assigning blame to a person or group. Instead, an inquiry should look at the broader picture.
Leveson has devised a system that can help do this, a full description of which has just been accepted for publication in Safety Science. Called STAMP, for "systems theory accident modelling and processes", the technique is based on systems theory, the idea of developing mathematical descriptions of complex systems. It can be applied to a range of accidents, from friendly fire incidents to nuclear spills and train crashes.
Friendly fire investigations usually search for one key event that triggered a fateful sequence. But which event in the chain gets blamed can be quite arbitrary. The STAMP technique paints a picture of the whole system and the interdependencies within it, says Leveson. That allows investigators to spot generic safety failures.
Some are sceptical. "Where will the process of data collection and interpretation stop?" asks Jim Armstrong, a systems expert at the University of Newcastle. But Peter Ladkin, a specialist in safety-critical systems at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, says: "Friendly fire accidents seem suited to a STAMP analysis as most are predominantly due to organisational and human factors rather than technology."
String of errors
The official US Department of Defense inquiry into the 1994 Black Hawks incident found a string of errors on top of the failure to list the helicopters as aircraft. The helicopters used the wrong ID codes and radio frequencies for the No Fly Zone. And the radios in the air force F-15s used anti-jamming technology that made them incompatible with radios in army helicopters.
But far more pervasive failures emerged when Leveson, along with Peggy Storey and Polly Allen of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, applied a STAMP analysis. Overall military control structure in the No Fly Zone was badly coordinated, and this led to confusion and a failure to enforce safety constraints, they found. Inadequate training compounded the problems.
The Pentagon is not totally dismissive of Leveson's results. "We are confident in our assessment of the incident," a spokesman told New Scientist, "but also recognise safety issues are complex and typically involve more than one factor. While we appreciate the re-evaluation, and have examined it, we cannot comment on its validity nor discuss its conclusions."
The Royal Air Force inquiry into the Tornado accident seems unlikely to embrace Leveson's approach. "It will be the same as any other accident inquiry," says an RAF spokeswoman, adding that it may be concluded more quickly than usual because the US Army has accepted liability. But that is part of the problem, says Snook. "The overriding emphasis is to find someone to hold accountable. And often that trumps any learning from the incident."
Another problem is that new rules introduced in the wake of an accident can do more harm than good. "You end up with so many rules to prevent that particular incident happening again, people can't do their jobs. So they just start breaking the rules," says Snook. And when everyone is breaking the rules, accidents are more likely to occur.
Snook speaks from experience. In 1983, he was serving with the US 82nd airborne division in Grenada when a US Navy jet opened fire on him and his men. "I couldn't believe that some of the best-trained and best-equipped people in the world could make these mistakes. Now, 20 years later, I find myself thinking the same thing."
----
US special forces disclose heavy losses in hunt for terrorists
AFP
Wednesday April 2, 2:33 PM
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030402/1/39p73.html
US special forces, whose superman image has created an aura of invulnerability around them, have unexpectedly disclosed heavy casualties in their worldwide hunt for Osama bin Laden and his terror associates.
Addressing a congressional panel Tuesday, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Marshall Billingslea said a total of 175 special operations forces (SOF) had been lost, killed or wounded since the beginning of a concerted post-September 11 counterterrorism drive aimed at bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
"To date, there have been 137 SOF wounded, 91 of whom sustained injuries during combat," Billingslea told the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities. "Thirty eight SOF have been killed in the course of Operation Enduring Freedom and related counter-terror operations."
The latest losses came in Afghanistan, where two US special forces troops were killed and one was wounded on Saturday, when their four-vehicle reconnaissance patrol was ambushed in the vicinity of the southwestern city of Geresk, according to the US Central Command.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a slightly different version of the event, saying late Sunday that the two soldiers "were lost by being ambushed while they were inspecting a school and a hospital, both being built with American funding."
A total of 64 members of a broad international coalition taking part in Operation Enduring Freedom launched in October 2001 to rid Afghanistan of al-Qaeda operatives and their Taliban protectors have been officially reported dead.
However, a defense official ruled out the possibility that some of the casualties, even among the secretive special forces, have remained undisclosed.
"There is no hiding of casualties at the Department of Defense," said the official, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that no combat deaths incurred during Operations Enduring Freedom or Iraqi Freedom had remained undisclosed.
----
US reinforcements will be slow to arrive
By Seth Stern
The Christian Science Monitor
April 03, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0403/p04s01-woiq.html
A central question of the war remains how long it might take to get more ground forces on the ground in Iraq to attack Baghdad and secure the rest of the country.
The Pentagon maintains more than 100,000 additional ground troops will be in the region within a month. And, even without reinforcements, Defense Department officials say the US already has sufficient forces on the ground.
But analysts say the US needs reinforcements to build up what's now a razor-thin margin of error. Military sealift schedules indicate that most of those reinforcements won't be available until the end of the month at the earliest. To many former military commanders, that argues for delaying a final assault on Baghdad.
"It would take many more losses, much more time and it would be exhausting for the soldiers," says retired Army Gen. Edward Atkeson, referring to a push toward Baghdad by the units currently in place.
Those ground forces will soon get a boost from approximately 16,000 troops of the 4th Infantry Division, now landing at Gulf air bases and matching up with equipment offloading from ships.
The tank-heavy division could be used to secure vast areas behind a lead assault. But other alerted units will not arrive until the Pentagon's outer window. "Most of the new movement is heavy Army units, and that will be quite a test," says former Marine Gen. Thomas Wilkerson.
• Five cargo ships with equipment for the 3rd Armored Cavalry regiment will not reach the Gulf until mid-April. Two other ships are still loading in Texas, says the Military Sealift Command. It will take many more days to offload that gear and get the forces in place to help secure the rear or block bypassed cities.
• Ships to carry heavy equipment for the 2nd Armored Cavalry Division, based at Ft. Polk La, haven't begun loading yet.
• The First Armored Division, based in Germany, has not begun transporting its thousands of vehicles for deployment via the ports of Antwerp and Charleston, S.C. It will take those ships about three weeks to reach the Gulf via the Suez Canal. Two other heavy divisions - the First Infantry and First Cavalry - have not even been assigned ships yet.
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U.S. POW rescued, is 'alive and well'
April 2, 2003
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-17104976.htm
CAMP AS SALIYAH, Qatar - Five U.S. helicopters raced up the Euphrates River valley yesterday in a daring mission to rescue Pfc. Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old West Virginia soldier captured in an Iraqi ambush.
"Coalition forces have conducted a successful rescue mission of a U.S. Army prisoner of war held captive in Iraq," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks announced at the U.S. Central Command regional headquarters in Doha, Qatar. "The soldier has been returned to a coalition-controlled area."
Pfc. Lynch, of Palestine, W.Va., with the Army's 507th Maintenance Company, was part of a supply convoy ambushed March 23. Military sources said the mission was ordered by allied commander Gen. Tommy Franks.
"She's alive and well," a family member told Reuters news agency. Pfc. Lynch was taken to a hospital in U.S.-held territory to be treated for gunshot wounds, an official in Qatar said.
Officials said she was rescued from a hospital in Nasiriyah, a town that U.S. forces have dubbed "Ambush Alley" because of repeated attacks by Iraqi paramilitary fighters. Fox News reported that the rescue was carried out by Navy SEALs and Army Rangers. U.S. Marines supported the mission with attacks on nearby Iraqi positions.
"America doesn't leave its heroes behind," said Central Command spokesman Jim Wilkinson. "Never has. Never will."
The hospital where Pfc. Lynch was held was reported to be a stronghold of the Fedayeen Saddam, a guerrilla force sworn to martyrdom for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The rescuers arrived by helicopter, secured the building by gunfire and forced their way inside, CNN reported.
In a strike intended to lure the Iraqi paramilitary forces away from their captive, Marine planes, tanks and infantry attacked targets nearby. The Marines seized a bridge in Nasiriyah, Reuters reported, while artillery and aircraft struck the local headquarters of the Fedayeen and Saddam's Ba'ath Party. A military source said the attack was timed 15 minutes before the rescue raid.
Pfc. Lynch had been listed as missing in action and had not officially been declared a prisoner of war prior to her rescue.
Known to friends and family as "Jesse," Pfc. Lynch is "just a West Virginia country girl," a relative said. She studied at Wirt County High School, where she played softball and basketball, and enlisted in the Army immediately after graduation. Family members said she joined as a way to pay for her college education to become a schoolteacher. Her older brother, Greg, is in the Army National Guard.
Pfc. Lynch's family never lost hope, even after Iraqi TV showed other captured Americans who apparently had been executed.
"Her training and emotional strength and determination will get her through," her brother told reporters last week. "She's got the background to keep her head on straight and do what she needs to survive."
Her hometown erupted in celebration at the news of her rescue. "You would not believe the joys, cries, bawling, hugging, screaming, carrying on," a cousin told reporters.
"God watched over Jessica and her family," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia Democrat, said in a statement last night. "All of West Virginia is rejoicing."
The 507th was ambushed in Nasiriyah, a key crossing point on the Euphrates in southern Iraq, on the fourth day of the war. The unit, racing north to supply allied combat forces, took a wrong turn in the town, parts of which were still controlled by Iraqi forces.
Pfc. Lynch, a supply clerk, had been among 12 from her unit listed as missing in action. Five others are listed as prisoners of war. They were shown being interviewed on Iraqi TV. They are:
•Spc. Edgar Adan Hernandez, 21, of Mission, Texas.
•Spc. Joseph Neal Hudson, 23, of Alamogordo, N.M.
•Spc. Shoshana Nyree Johnson, 30, of El Paso, Texas.
•Pfc. Patrick Wayne Miller, 23, of Walter, Kan.
•Sgt. James Joseph Riley, 31, of Pennsauken, N.J.
Two Apache helicopter pilots also have been POWs since March 23. They are Chief Warrant Officer David S. Williams, 30, of Orlando, Fla., and Chief Warrant Officer Ronald D. Young Jr., 26, of Lithia Springs, Ga.
•This article was based in part on wire service reports.
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National Guard deployment highest since Korea
April 2, 2003
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-50912743.htm
The National Guard was once thought of as weekend warriors, but is now seeing its largest deployment since the Korean War with nearly one-quarter of its troops serving overseas.
In addition to new deployments to Iraq, nearly 100,000 Guard members are serving in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, the Sinai Peninsula and Panama.
"They're scattered all over the place," said John Goheen, spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States. "They are not sleeping at home any more. They have left their jobs and their families to go around the world on active duty."
That leaves more than 300,000 to guard the home front, and 40,000 have already been alerted that they may soon mobilize, but most states have plenty of forces available for homeland security, Mr. Goheen said.
Though the war against terrorism has caused relatively few casualties in total, the two Guardsmen who have died in it were killed under high-profile circumstances.
Maj. Gregory Stone, 40, of Boise, Idaho, was the first casualty of the National Guard and died on March 22. He was killed, reportedly by an American Muslim soldier who is said to have thrown a grenade into his tent at Camp Pennsylvania, Kuwait. Maj. Stone was assigned to the 124th Air Support Operations Squadron and was serving as an air-liaison officer with ground commanders.
On Saturday, 24-year-old Staff Sgt. Jacob L. Frazier of St. Charles, Ill., who was assigned to the 169th Air Support Operations Squadron, was killed in an ambush in Afghanistan.
As many as 1 million Guard members and reservists can now be called to serve two years under an order President Bush signed just days after the September 11 terrorist attacks. However, Mr. Goheen said the Defense Department wants to avoid long periods of service overseas.
As of March 26, according to the Pentagon, nearly 217,000 Guard members and reservists have been activated to serve at home and abroad: more than 150,000 Army National Guard and Army Reserve members, 33,000 Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve members, nearly 10,000 naval reservists, 20,000 Marine Corps reservists and 4,000 Coast Guard reservists.
A Defense Department spokesman said deployment is in a "fluid process" and could not give the total number of Guard members and reservists deployed overseas.
In addition to overseas duties, 4,000 of New York's 17,000 Guard members and 7,000 militia are helping to guard bridges, tunnels, train stations, subways, international airports, nuclear-power facilities and the Canadian border, spokesman Scott Sandman said.
In California, the National Guard is on its second rotation since the terrorist attacks guarding such high-profile landmarks as the Golden Gate Bridge and international airports, Capt. Denise Varner said.
"Their attitudes are still so wonderful, they are so patriotic and believe [in] what they are doing and not blinking an eye," Capt. Varner said.
When Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge raised the terrorist alert from elevated (yellow) to high (orange) on March 17, he urged governors to call in the Guard for extra protection.
Ordinarily, governors call up the Guard for their states to handle disasters or emergencies, and Mr. Ridge said he wishes to respect that custom.
At least 13 governors have declined to call up their state's Guard units.
Democratic Washington Gov. Gary Locke has been critical of the administration for not giving his state nearly a billion dollars he says is needed to fund homeland-security measures, but said funding is not the reason he declined to deploy troops for added protection.
"I made it very clear we will spend the money and whatever is needed to take care of security needs here at home," Mr. Locke said yesterday.
"I'm not reluctant to deploy and cover the costs of everything on a case by case basis, but given the classified information from the Homeland Security Department and other federal agencies ... there were no specific targets of people, places or installations in Washington."
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U.S. Army Black Hawk Helicopter Shot Down
April 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Helicopter-Down.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter was shot down south of Baghdad Wednesday, killing seven soldiers and wounding four, Pentagon officials said.
Initial reports indicate that helicopter was downed by small-arms fire near Karbala, Pentagon officials said. The Euphrates River city was the site of fierce fighting between the Army's 3rd Infantry Division and Iraqi troops, including Republican Guard forces.
The Black Hawk was the second U.S. helicopter to go down in combat. An Army Apache assault helicopter went down March 24 during an assault on Republican Guard forces; its two pilots were captured by Iraqis.
There was some initial confusion about the downing Wednesday night. U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar issued an initial statement saying six were believed to have been aboard and ``casualties have not been confirmed at this point.''
But Pentagon officials said their initial reports showed seven soldiers aboard the helicopter were killed and four were wounded and rescued.
The UH-60 Black Hawk is one of the Army's main utility and troop transport helicopters. Each is flown by a crew of four and can carry up to 11 soldiers.
The helicopters are equipped with advanced avionics and electronics, such as global positioning systems and night-vision equipment.
A Black Hawk crashed in a remote, wooded area of Fort Drum, N.Y., during a training exercise last month, killing 11 of the 13 soldiers aboard.
In February, a Black Hawk crashed during night training in the Kuwaiti desert, killing all four crew members. The Kuwaiti military said sandstorms were reported in the area at the time the chopper went down.
In January, an MH-60, an adapted version of the Black Hawk, crashed during training near Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, killing four members of an elite aviation regiment.
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Iraq Shoots Down U.S. Navy F / A - 18 Hornet
April 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Plane-Down.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iraq shot down a U.S. Navy F/A-18C Hornet with a surface-to-air missile Wednesday, military officials said.
There was no immediate word on the fate of the pilot. Statements released from U.S. Central Command said the twin-engine jet, flying from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, went down at about 3:45 p.m. EST.
The plane went down near Karbala, a city about 50 miles south of Baghdad where fighting raged between U.S. Army forces and the Iraqi Republican Guard. Iraqi forces shot down an Army Black Hawk helicopter in the same area Wednesday.
Lt. Brook DeWalt, a spokesman for the Kitty Hawk, said the Hornet had flown a bombing mission over northern Iraq Wednesday. Other planes flying over Iraq at the same time reported seeing surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery fire in the same area in which the plane disappeared.
Central Command said the downing is being investigated. Officials would not comment on search and rescue operations, but both Central Command statements said the military is committed to accounting for all coalition personnel.
It was the first American fighter jet shot down during the war on Iraq. The Iraqis have downed several pilotless surveillance drones.
Navy and Marine pilots fly the F/A-18 Hornet from aircraft carriers. The supersonic jets are armed with a 20mm cannon and can carry a wide range of bombs and missiles.
The easily maneuverable Hornet can operate as a fighter jet, shooting down enemy planes, or as an attack plane, bombing enemy targets.
-------- propaganda wars
Al Jazeera riles coalition brass
April 2, 2003
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030402-24404200.htm
DOHA, Qatar - An unrepentant Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most widely watched television channel, has enraged coalition commanders with its mix of aggressive reportage, dramatic and shocking images, and sharp commentary.
Combined with emotive and often-repeated pictures of supposed allied brutality and Iraqi heroism, its reporters paint a witheringly contemptuous picture of coalition military performance and its effect on Iraqi civilians.
Yet its reporter is a regular fixture at coalition briefings in Doha and it has been permitted to embed another with U.S. troops in the field, reflecting the alliance's struggle to project a positive image to the network's Arab audience.
Officials at Al Jazeera's headquarters here bristle at any suggestion of bias - and insist they are simply delivering the kind of information and analysis their Arab viewers demand.
What's more, they match and at times exceed the technical standards and breadth of coverage of the Western networks, making the network a source of pride for millions of Arab viewers.
The channel's popularity has soared: Al Jazeera says it doubled its subscriber base of 4 million Arabic-speaking viewers in Europe within a week of the war's start.
At Central Command headquarters in Doha, deputy commander Lt. Gen. John Abizaid last week turned his wrath on the Al Jazeera reporter after the network showed pictures of U.S. prisoners being questioned by Iraqi television.
He and British commanders were also outraged by graphic pictures of U.S. and British soldiers who appeared to have been executed by shots to the head.
"Quite apart from the obvious distress that such pictures cause friends and families of the personnel concerned, such disgraceful behavior is a flagrant breach of the Geneva Convention," Britain's military commander in the Gulf, Air Marshal Brian Burridge, said at a briefing here last week.
But the pique has not led to sanctions, and coalition spokesmen remain eager to accommodate Al Jazeera's requests for information and access.
Even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell gave an interview to the network last Wednesday, the same day he told an American television network that Al Jazeera tends "to portray our efforts in a negative light."
Jim Wilkinson, media strategist for Gen. Tommy Franks, said the coalition was making a conscious effort to get its message out via Al Jazeera. "When you start excluding journalists, you start losing," he said. "It's important to give them more access, rather than less."
The network is represented at the Doha briefings by 36-year-old Omar el-Issawi, who went to school in Britain and Washington.
Like many American journalists, he takes pride in the fact that his network is criticized with equal vehemence by all sides in the conflict.
"I think it's a misconception to think that just because we are the so-called bin Laden station, the image of Al Jazeera, that we are anti-American by nature," Mr. el-Issawi said in an interview. "That's not true. We are trying to do a job as best we can."
He conceded that the network's coverage contains more pro-Iraqi material and comment than the opposite, but argued that that was more a result of access than of bias.
Although pleased with the cooperation from Central Command, he said the coalition would have more positive coverage if it had let more than one Al Jazeera reporter embed with the troops. At least two other projected embeds were unable to join their assigned U.S. units owing to visa complications in other Gulf states.
By contrast, the station has journalists in eight Iraqi cities, including the only television reporter in Basra. Permission for that was granted only after the network's managing director, Mohammed Jasem Al Ali, agreed late last year to pose for a picture with Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein - a moment that discomfited Al Jazeera's management.
Mr. el-Issawi also defended a decision to show a close-up of an 8-year-old's head, which had been split in half, arguing that Arab television is far less squeamish than its Western counterparts about showing gruesome pictures of the injured and dead.
A Saudi-controlled network using the initials NBC and Abu Dhabi television also displayed the corpses of dead coalition prisoners of war and civilian casualties.
"They try to answer to the sentiment of the masses of the Arab world. It's a business," said Yigal Carmon, president of the Middle East Media Research Institute in Washington.
Other Arab television outlets have sought to copy Al Jazeera's success. Some are much harsher in their coverage of the war.
Many regional analysts say Al Jazeera has been as much an irritant to Arab governments as to the U.S.-led coalition.
"This is a channel that screens the kind of topics that others don't - everything from women's rights under Islam to the lack of democracy in the Arab world, and the pros and cons of peace with Israel," wrote Israeli television correspondent Ehud Yaari, Israel's most traveled and most respected expert on Arab affairs.
• Sharon Behn in Washington contributed to this article.
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Africans tune into Iraq war
02 April 2003
Sapa-AFP
http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=12773
The voracious appetite of Africans for news of the Iraq war has sent sales of satellite dishes and transistor radios soaring, even in the remotest corners of the world's largest continent.
In the northern Nigerian city of Kano, where the mainly Muslim population is vehemently against the US- and British-led "aggression" against Iraq, sales of satellite dishes have trebled since the war broke out on March 20, said shopkeeper Qassim Nasiru.
Most people in Kano who acquire satellite receivers want to be able to watch reports from the war in Iraq by Qatar-based Arabic-language al-Jazeera television.
Never mind that few Nigerians speak or understand Arabic, "they think (al-Jazeera) gives more exact information than CNN or the BBC," Nasiru said.
Al-Jazeera has also seen its viewer base grow in the north African country of Morocco, where televisions have been installed in shops and government offices to allow people to follow the war in Iraq.
A shopkeeper in Rabat said orders for satellite receivers had sky-rocketed since the start of the war. And he was out of stock of decoders.
In the tiny east African country of Djibouti, the homes of people who have satellite television have become gathering places for the TV-less, hungry for news on the war. Again, the station of preference is al-Jazeera.
In Mogadishu, capital of Somalia, which has been without a central government and prey to clan warfare since 1991, people tend to remain indoors after sunset because of the high level of lawlessness.
Those with televisions follow events in Iraq -- usually on al-Jazeera --and then relay the news to friends by telephone.
In Tunisia, satellite dishes adorn the facades of houses and huts from Tunis to the most remote of hamlets.
Even the most out-of-pocket Tunisian usually finds a way to procure a satellite television receiver, usually by purchasing the equipment from back-of-a-lorry salesmen.
In the west African country of Gabon, even children are not spared reports from the Iraq front, as private station Tele African abruptly cuts into the day's cartoons to give the latest update of the war.
But all this constant coverage from the Gulf region has taken its toll on local news.
"It's become difficult to get Ugandans to take an interest in their own society," said a journalist from Uganda's East African weekly newspaper.
"The power of television ... is such that international topics easily take priority over local issues."
By the magic of satellite, "all the channels are available in the tiniest of video-clubs -- places where you pay a few shillings to get in, take a seat on an overturned carton and then stay all day if you feel like it," he lamented.
In similar makeshift clubs for war coverage addicts in Guinea-Bissau, news bulletins from international television networks have taken pride of place, supplanting US-made B-movies or the latest offering from Bollywood.
For the equivalent of around 25 cents a day, conflict-hungry viewers in the former Portuguese colony in west Africa can spend all day glued to the news from Iraq as reported by Portugal's RTP channel or France's TV5 and Canal France International.
An open-air cinema in the Senegalese capital Dakar offers nightly sessions dubbed "News of the World - TV zapping", where for one hour, viewers can watch a pastiche of reports from TV5, CNN, Euronews and other networks.
And in the Malian capital Bamako, the traditional dusk-to-dawn card games have fallen by the wayside, as erstwhile players' eyes are fixed on screens and therefore unable to concentrate on getting a pair of aces or full house.
Residents of the suburbs of the Guinean capital Conakry would dearly love to be able to follow the latest events in Iraq on television, but the sporadic supply of electricity -- the suburbs only have power from midnight to 7:00am -- has put paid to such hopes.
Instead, suburban dwellers and villagers keep their ears glued to transistor radios, and avidly soak up reports on Radio France Internationale and the BBC World Service.
Indeed, be it shortwave, FM or satellite radio, the humble transistor remains the preferred means for most Africans to keep in touch with the world beyond their continent.
Even in the relative affluence, by African standards, of the Nigerian city of Kano, the sale of transistor radios has easily kept pace with satellite receivers.
After all, unlike all the paraphernalia required to pick up satellite television, you can take a transistor radio anywhere and keep in constant touch with happenings in Iraq.
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Iraqis, U.S. Forces Restrict Sat Phones
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Satellite-Phones.html
Both sides in the Iraq war are now restricting the use of satellite phones.
The U.S. military sees units from an Arab-owned provider with built-in satellite positioning as potentially betraying the location of its units while Iraq's government apparently wants to be able to ferret out American agents and commando units.
Iraqi television on Wednesday carried an official appeal to the population to hand over their satellite phones so it is easier to identify ``infiltrating'' transmissions.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that U.S. commanders were expanding to all of Iraq a ban on the use of satellite phones from the Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Co. of the United Arab Emirates, a Persian Gulf state.
The indefinite ban applies both to U.S. units and the journalists traveling with them, said Marine Lt. Col. David Lapan in Washington. He said the decision was made for security reasons but that he did not know the technical details.
U.S. commanders had imposed a ban late last week in some areas, calling it temporary and saying they feared the Iraqis could pinpoint the location of front-line units with Thuraya phones.
Satellite telephones have been a lifeline for reporters in the region and are also routinely carried by U.S. troops.
Unlike other major satphones, Thurayas can use the U.S. military's global satellite positioning system, or GPS, for navigation purposes. The GPS system relies on radio signals from a constellation of more than two dozen satellites and has broad military and civilian uses.
Jamal Aljarwan, Thuraya's executive director of business development, said Tuesday from Abu Dhabi that the Pentagon's concerns appeared to result from ``a misunderstanding,'' probably about the phones' features.
Thuraya says its phones are accurate to within 100 yards, but company chairman Mohammad Omran says subscribers must activate the phones' GPS function to be tracked. With the GPS function activated, the phone can send a short message with location details. It is theoretically possible to locate a satphone that lacks GPS functions by measuring the direction of its signals from at least two locations.
It would be ``expensive but feasible'' for the Iraqis to acquire the equipment do so, said Michel Fattouche, chief technology officer at Cell-Loc Inc., a Calgary, Alberta, company that makes locating equipment for cellular networks.
They could conceivably locate satellite phones within about 6 miles of the locating equipment, with an accuracy of 300 feet to 1,000 feet, he said.
Fattouche called Iraq's banning of unapproved satellite phones crucial, since they would otherwise have no way of telling which transmissions come from the enemy.
The Iraqi statement said a ``not small'' number of Iraqis have satellite phones.
It appealed to those ``working with the enemy'' to surrender such sets to authorities. Failure to do so, it warned, would leave authorities with no choice but to treat offenders as spies.
Wayne Madsen, a former U.S. National Security Agency analyst now with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that what little locating capability the Iraqis may have had has probably been destroyed.
Last week's initially limited ban by the U.S. military left news organizations scrambling.
Many journalists have had to replace Thurayas with phones from rival carriers, including Iridium Satellite, an Arlington, Va.-based company whose biggest single client is the U.S. Department of Defense.
``We sent journalists into the region with several kinds of sat phones to give them the greatest possible flexibility,'' said Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of The Associated Press. ``Being unable to use Thurayas is an inconvenience, but our folks have so far still been able to file stories, photos and audio from the field.''
EDITOR's NOTE: AP correspondent Hamza Hendawi in Baghdad and technology writer Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this report.
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IFJ Demands Inquiry Over Claim of Reporters "Beaten Up" by US Troops
Media release
28 March 2003,
International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)
http://www.ifj.org/publications/press/pr/030328iraq.html
The International Federation of Journalists today demands an "immediate and full inquiry" into reports that three foreign journalists were arrested by US forces in Iraq, beaten up and detained for 48 hours.
The journalists - two Israelis and a Portuguese television reporter - were allegedly held by US troops and accused of espionage. "If true, this maltreatment of journalists is a grave violation of journalists' rights. This incident must be investigated and those responsible brought to justice," said the IFJ.
The journalists, Dan Scemama, of Israel's Channel 1 TV, Boaz Bismuth of the Israeli Yediot Aharonot and Louis de Castro of Radio Television Portugal, were travelling alongside American convoys, but were not officially "embedded" with the troops. According to statements from relatives and colleagues the journalists were forced to stop on Tuesday, beside six tanks, because of sandstorms. The Americans advised them not to move because they would not be identified in the dust. Early on Wednesday soldiers woke them up, at gunpoint, took them away and accused them of espionage.
The reporters were told to pick up their shirts and let down their pants to prove they were not carrying bombs and they were later kept in a closed jeep for 36 hours. The Portuguese journalist asked to phone home and was allegedly beaten, his ribs were broken and he is now in hospital. One of the Israeli journalists was also beaten. Yediot Aharonot, concerned about loss of contact with the journalists, asked the Pentagon to help find them. After 48 hours, a helicopter flew the reporters to an American military base in Kuwait where they were released and given their telephones back.
The Sindicato dos Jornalistas, the IFJ affiliate in Portugal, has protested over the incident. "We share the concerns of our colleagues," said the IFJ, "this appears to be an outrageous failure of military discipline, and those responsible must be investigated." The IFJ is also asking one of its affiliates, The Newspaper Guild in the United States, to take up the case with the Pentagon.
Further information: + 32 2 235 22 00
The IFJ represents more than 500,000 journalists in more than 100 countries
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Bin Laden seen gaining in Iraq war
By Paul Taylor
(Reuters)
Afgha.com Alerts
Apr 02, 2003
http://www.afgha.com/?af=article&sid=31868
CAIRO - U.S. President George W. Bush sees the invasion of Iraq as an extension of his "war on terror", but many in the Middle East believe Osama bin Laden will be one of the unintended winners.
The fugitive Saudi-born Islamic militant has been silent since the U.S.-led assault to overthrow President Saddam Hussein began two weeks ago, fuelling an outpouring of public anger in Arab and Muslim states against the United States.
His image has been largely absent from anti-war protests in the Arab world.
But many politicians and analysts say bin Laden's cause can only gain from this confrontation between mighty Western armies and a Muslim underdog, especially if the war drags on.
"This war is a major recruiting sergeant garnering foot soldiers for bin Laden," said Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University in Scotland.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a key U.S. regional ally who has cracked down hard on Islamic militants, voiced the concern of governments in the region this week when he said the war could fuel "a vicious cycle of terrorism".
"Terrorism will be aggravated. Terrorist organisations will be united. Instead of one bin Laden there will be 100 bin Ladens. Everything will be insecure," he said.
Some Western leaders have expressed similar fears. French President Jacques Chirac, an outspoken opponent of the war, has said attacking Iraq will weaken the coalition to fight terrorism created after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and draw new recruits for violence.
The United States says its special forces and their Iraqi Kurdish allies have smashed a militant Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam, in Kurdish-held northern Iraq which it accused of links to both bin Laden's al Qaeda network and Saddam.
Bush said one reason for the war was to prevent Saddam sharing alleged weapons of mass destruction with such groups.
Yet experts say the combination of Western military action on Arab, Muslim soil, economies depressed by the fallout of war, and autocratic governments that permit little space for opposition provides a fertile breeding ground for terrorism.
The flow of Arab volunteers to fight in Iraq has been swelling. Iraq says some 4,000 have arrived so far and young men are volunteering from Algeria and Tunisia to Lebanon and Syria.
Some of those fighters may return to join militant groups at home, as Arab volunteers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s did in countries such as Algeria, Yemen and, in bin Laden's case, Saudi Arabia.
Mohamed, 30, a volunteer interviewed by Reuters in Algiers, said he was itching to die in a "Jihad" (holy struggle) operation against Americans.
"I'm convinced that the Americans are fighting Islam. They declared that they are engaged in a crusade against Islam. Going to fight them in Iraq is my opportunity to avenge Muslims," he said as he waited for his visa at the Iraqi embassy.
DURATION KEY
Western experts say the duration of the war may be crucial to whether this militant mood turns into actual violence.
"Obviously, this situation radicalises individuals, but whether they will be deployed in action is a different question," Ranstorp told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"The discourse on militant Islamist websites shows they are poised to exploit the situation in terms of propaganda against those states supporting the war," he said.
He said Jordan, Egypt and Pakistan were particularly at risk of al-Qaeda style attacks.
Abdel-Rahman al-Zamil, a member of the Saudi consultative Shura council, said one of "the first outcomes of the war is the revival of the jihad concept."
"The regime in Iraq is using it, and the Islamic movements are saying that they were right all along, that we have to continue the fight," he said.
Critics of governments such as Mubarak's argue that the lack of political freedom will drive a radical fringe of anti-war activists towards violent underground movements.
"American arrogance is as bad as Arab despotism. Both create anger and frustration. He (Mubarak) spoke half the truth, but the other half is that regimes like his are equally responsible for bin Ladens," said U.S.-Egyptian civil rights campaigner Saadeddin Ibrahim, just acquitted by Egypt of defaming the state.
"It's equally true that his regime can produce 100 Zawahiris," he told Reuters, referring to bin Laden's Egyptian-born deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
A key feature of the September 11 attacks and other actions blamed on bin Laden's al Qaeda network was the attempt to suck U.S. forces into confrontation in the Muslim world, he said.
SHOT IN THE ARM
Bin Laden launched his struggle after the 1991 Gulf War, vowing to drive U.S. forces out of his native Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's holiest sites, and topple the ruling al Saud family.
"Gulf War One brought al Qaeda into being and Gulf War Two is going to give it a real shot in the arm," said Steven Simon, a former White House counter-terrorism official who is now a senior analyst at the RAND Corporation.
Simon said some optimists in Washington believed victory in Iraq and the strengthening of U.S. homeland security would persuade Islamic militants they would do better reverting to fighting their domestic enemies rather than the United States.
"The more likely scenario is that this war really whips people up and, without creating a new terrorist threat as such, expands the pool of recruits," he said.
Since U.S.-led forces routed al Qaeda and its Islamic purist Taliban protectors in Afghanistan, bin Laden is believed to have been in hiding possibly in Pakistani border areas.
Ranstorp said intelligence reports suggest one side-effect of the Iraq crisis had been for al Qaeda fighters to flock back to Afghanistan from Pakistan while U.S. forces were distracted.
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The flowering of fascism
Silencing dissent is extremist and un-American
BY JOHN SUGG, FISHWRAPPER
04.02.03
Creative Loafing Atlanta
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-04-02/fishwrapper.html
Derek Alphran is a regular guy. He's a law professor at a local college. Note I didn't say which college. There's a reason. This column is about that most thuggish and un-American of traditions, intimidating people to give up their constitutional rights.
Alphran doesn't want his face shown, or his law school named, or his exact address in Inman Park given. The night riders have been to his house, brandishing fire and terror.
"It's chilling," he says, "and, yes, I'm chilled a little."
A specialist in civil liberties and a former ACLU lawyer, Alphran not only believes abstractly in "rights," he exercises his freedoms -- which is exactly what real patriots from Tom Jefferson and Tom Paine to MLK and Paul Wellstone intended.
"I put some 'War Is NOT the Answer' signs in my yard," he says. "I went to a few demonstrations. This war is a burning issue, and I wanted to make a statement as a patriotic American."
On March 21, the terrorists came, torching the signs.
I've received a half-dozen calls about what appears to be a fairly organized group that is, in all respects other than they neglect to wear sheets, a reincarnation of the Klan. The Kluxers used violence to keep blacks from voting and exercising their rights; the latter-day goons are targeting citizens who practice what the Founding Fathers preached.
"What do the sign burners think our country stands for if not freedom of speech?" Alphran says. "I just do not understand the virulent reaction to people who speak out. Now is the one time when free speech is most important."
Todd Collins runs Your Friendly Grocery on Lake Avenue, near Alphran's home. Collins has alerted me to incidents of political vandalism more reminiscent of Germany's Brown Shirts or Italy's Black Shirts than the red, white and blue ideal of American liberty.
"What's happening around here is frightening," he says. "The people who would burn signs are IG-NOR-ANT. I mean, who is the true patriot? It sure isn't the guy destroying someone else's attempt at free speech."
On Columns Drive, which parallels the Chattahoochee River in Cobb County, Dan Lowe spied a truck trashing a yard and destroying "War Is NOT the Answer" signs.
"I'm pissed, Mr. Sugg, and I have no idea what to do about it, at least if I don't want to get my yard terrorized," Lowe says. "This is a time I thought I'd never see as an American, where it's quite dangerous to speak your mind."
Among my callers last week was a mucho irate guy name Jerry. After a few minutes of screeching into the phone ("You're slime ..." blah, blah, blah), he simmered down and we had a fairly civil discussion. The burned signs were on my mind, so I asked him what he thought of the modest blue card peace statements. He bragged that whenever he saw one of the "War is NOT the Answer" signs, he'd stop his car and rip it out of the ground.
I asked Jerry if he really believed destroying the signs was an all-American act, and he assured me he did. So, I queried him about where he got his information. Not surprising, Jerry is one of the lumpen masses who depend on talk radio for their reality. He said he only watches Fox News and doesn't read newspapers.
Jerry told me that he had heard the same message broadcast by all of the airwave hate clones -- Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Neal Boortz and Rush Limbaugh are four he named. The message was that anti-war protest threatens national security, is unpatriotic and that dissent endangers our troops.
I asked Jerry if he found it curious that he heard the same message up and down the AM dial. "Huh?" he responded. So here's what I explained to him:
Almost daily, the radical right's think tanks and command centers -- the Republican National Committee and the Heritage Foundation, for example -- suggest "talking points" to the talk shows. The hosts trumpet the message in unison, and it sounds like some Great Truth has been revealed. After all, everyone is yapping the same thing.
That's why, across the radio spectrum and on, say, Fox's Bill O'Reilly All-Spin Zone, you've been hearing that "homeland security" is jeopardized by anti-war demonstrations. The word -- from the White House agitprop masters through the foundations to the airwaves -- is that when police are needed to monitor demonstrations, cities are left vulnerable to terrorist attacks.
Puh-leeze, it's total claptrap, as any of the hosts could find out if, as I did, they contacted their local cop shops.
But, of course, truth isn't a word in the vocabulary of either the Bush administration or the talk show hosts. Thus, the profound ignorance of people such as Jerry.
fas-cism: [fa] shizzem: noun; dictatorial movement: any movement, tendency or ideology that favors dictatorial government, centralized control of private enterprise, repression of all opposition, and extreme nationalism.
-- Encarta Dictionary
I can already hear the howls at the suggestion we are heading for Big Brotherdom. So, let's consider the dictionary's four criteria for fascism.
First, a passing comment on the private enterprise component. "Free enterprise" has come to mean just the opposite -- we now have an intensely corrupt corporate culture nurtured by and entwined with government, resulting in a cartel of unimaginable power. You have one vote. Halliburton and the Carlyle Group own politicians and bureaucrats by the score. Consider the resignation last week of super-hawk Richard Perle from a Pentagon advisory post after he was outed as a war profiteer. The latest revelations were that he arranged to pocket $725,000 from corporate criminal Global Crossing to engineer a deal that likely would have put some of our most sensitive technology in the hands of Communist China. War Boss Donald Rumsfeld nonetheless dubbed the twisted Perle a man of morality.
It's the first and last two criteria, however, that come into focus as Derek Alphran morosely views his scorched anti-war signs.
An ambitious cabal, disdainful of democracy and besotted with the devilish belief they are on a Mission From God, has its hands on America's control levers. They have dressed themselves up in the flag. The uninformed, misinformed and, often Nazi-caliber racists on talk radio (Michael Savage), join with government in damning dissent. Their book-burners-in-training are honing their skills by immolating dissenters' anti-war yard signs.
The rise in attacks on mosques is a related symptom, one frighteningly reminiscent of the swastika scribblers of another era. Those jacking up the hate are elevated to the status of seers. To wit, one of America's chief vitriol-slingers is Daniel Pipes, a shill for Israel's ultra-right Likud party. He is demanding that all of the 6 million Muslims in America be monitored and their activities regulated. He wants campuses purged of attitudes sympathetic to Islam and Arabs. Pipes also claims that his "research" shows 15 percent of Muslims are proto-terrorists. At an Emory University forum earlier this year, his claim was exposed as a fraud and he admitted under fire that he has no evidence. Yet, he remains a frequent network chattering head denouncing Islam.
We are demanding that other nations -- Canada, for example -- "muzzle anti-U.S. sentiment." At home, taking a page straight from Joseph Goebbels, the Bushies time terrorist alerts (likely bogus) to tweak public anxiety. When citizens are fixated on survival, attention is deflected from Bush's domestic and economic catastrophes, and his wholesale squandering of the nation's wealth to benefit his privileged class.
The horribly deceitful Ari Fleischer has warned Americans to "watch what they say." His bullhorns, such as Savage, are calling for dissidents to be jailed. Others, like Ann Coulter, call those not in the goose-stepping parade "traitors." She suggests government "physically intimidate liberals."
Those that don't pay heed are starting to pay the price. You may have heard that Stephen Downs of Albany, N.Y., was arrested after refusing to take off a "Give Peace a Chance" T-shirt in a mall. The ludicrousness of that attracted international press attention. There have been many, many similar but largely unnoted incidents, such as what happened to Andrew O'Connor in New Mexico. After opining in an online chat room that Bush "was out of control" (a tautology, I'd argue), O'Connor was besieged by the Secret Service, who handcuffed him and interrogated him for hours on his political views.
And what you haven't had hardly a hint about (one buried story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) is what the Bush cartel plans next. John Ashcroft is cobbling together an expansion of the grossly mis-monikered PATRIOT Act. Bush wants the power to strip people of their citizenship and to conduct secret arrests -- all without judicial oversight. We'd create our own army of the "disappeareds." Will they be terrorists, or just those who oppose the Reich? You will have no right to know. Or to ask.
So, yes, I think the jackboots are being polished.
Mea culpa: Last week I referred to some cops using "throwaway guns." The actual term is "throwdown guns."
Senior Editor John Sugg -- whose favorite recent story unreported by the AJC and most other media (except the BBC) was how Bush had his hair primped and was cracking jokes before he disingenuously donned an actor's somber face and announced we were going to war -- can be reached at 404-614-1241 or at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- courts
U.S. Tries to Block Access to Witness for Terror Trial
Secret Briefs in Moussaoui Case Say Civilian Courts Must Defer to Military
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 2, 2003; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6605-2003Apr1?language=printer
The government is invoking unprecedented national security powers in asking an appellate court to deny alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui access to a key al Qaeda detainee, arguing that civilian courts should not interfere with military decisions, according to sources with knowledge of secret court documents.
In classified briefs filed with the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, federal prosecutors are citing a World War II-era Supreme Court decision as part of their effort to overturn a judge's ruling that Moussaoui's lawyers can interview Ramzi Binalshibh, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the sources said. But that decision concerned war prisoners tried by the military outside the United States. The government is for the first time trying to apply it to someone charged in a civilian court.
If the government's argument is accepted by the 4th Circuit and ultimately the Supreme Court, it would hold far-reaching implications for the war on terrorism and the power of the courts, legal experts said. It would create a legal standard for accused terrorists or enemy combatants that differs from how courts have treated criminal defendants for generations. Some experts say that's justified during the war with Iraq and a global crackdown on the al Qaeda network.
"We're still in the middle of a war, needing intelligence information about terrorists," said Victoria Toensing, a Washington lawyer who created the terrorism unit in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department. "In the middle of a war, when you have to not only punish but prevent another attack, you can't have the same rules. Creating new law is what the law has been about for over 200 years."
The sources also said that the Defense Department and the CIA, which originally took custody of Binalshibh, have told the Justice Department that they would not allow Moussaoui's lawyers any access to the al Qaeda detainee. That means that the civilian prosecution of Moussaoui most likely is done if the government does not win the appeal.
Defense attorneys, in their reply briefs filed yesterday under court seal, were using a series of cases to show that Moussaoui's ability to interview witnesses who can aid his defense is a constitutional right.
Moussaoui's attorneys, prosecutors handling the appeal and Justice Department officials declined to comment.
The weighty legal issues stem from a sealed Jan. 30 decision by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema that granted Moussaoui's attorneys access to Binalshibh. Specifically, sources said Brinkema allowed the defense to depose Binalshibh as a possible witness at Moussaoui's trial. Sources have said that Binalshibh has told interrogators that he was concerned that Moussaoui was drawing attention to himself and that Moussaoui would have been used in the Sept. 11 plot only as a last resort.
Moussaoui, 34, a French citizen, is the only person charged in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. He was indicted in December 2001 on charges of conspiring with other al Qaeda members to hijack the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
Moussaoui's indictment was announced with great fanfare by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft as an example of how the United States could prosecute terrorists in the criminal justice system. But the case has been marked by delays and complications.
The indictment says Binalshibh wired Moussaoui at least $14,000 as part of the conspiracy. Binalshibh was captured last fall in Pakistan and is being questioned at an undisclosed location.
Despite Brinkema's order, the military and intelligence communities have made it clear that Binalshibh will not be turned over, sources said. The government, bolstered by recent successes in the campaign against al Qaeda, says that would disrupt a key interrogation and lead to the disclosure of information harmful to national security.
The government on March 14 filed sealed briefs to the 4th Circuit, and the Richmond court took the extraordinary step last week of closing the May 6 oral arguments to the public.
Attorneys can view the briefs only in locked facilities known as SCIF (Secure Classified Information Facility) rooms. The defense room is in the basement of the federal courthouse in Alexandria; the government room is within the U.S. attorney's office, located in the same building.
According to people familiar with them, the government briefs use mostly national security arguments, saying that those issues outweigh the importance Binalshibh might have to Moussaoui's defense. One case prosecutors cite is Johnson v. Eisentrager, the Supreme Court decision from 1950. That case involved German prisoners captured in China at the end of World War II, convicted of war crimes by a U.S. military commission and imprisoned in occupied Germany. The Germans petitioned the courts for a writ of habeas corpus, but the Supreme Court refused, saying aliens detained outside the United States could not access U.S. courts.
The Moussaoui case is different. Although he is not a U.S. citizen, Moussaoui was arrested in this country when his activities aroused suspicion at a Minnesota flight school. And unlike the Germans, Moussaoui is being tried in an American courtroom.
The 1950 decision says that allowing legal proceedings for the Germans would "bring aid and comfort to the enemy," engender a "conflict between judicial and military opinion" and hurt the prestige of any military commander called "to account in his own civil courts." The government is applying those principles to the Moussaoui case, sources said, arguing that the civil courts lack jurisdiction to question military decisions during wartime.
Federal prosecutors made a similar -- and successful -- argument to an appeals court in Washington recently, saying that suspected terrorists and Taliban fighters held at a U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot ask civil courts to review their detentions.
The 1950 case "reflects a careful consideration of core separation of powers principles and avoids the truly dangerous precedent of judicial second guessing of quintessentially military decisions," the government wrote in a brief filed in December.
Richard Samp, chief counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation -- a conservative public-interest law firm that intervened on the government's side in the Guantanamo case -- said it is reasonable for the government to now apply that case to Moussaoui "for the general proposition that we shouldn't be second-guessing military decisions, particularly at a time of war."
But Donald Rehkopf, co-chairman of the military law committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the government is "inventing the law as they go along. The Constitution is not suspended, even during times of war," he said. "I'm not saying there are not national security arguments, but they are false arguments in the sense that national security somehow trumps a person's due-process rights. There is absolutely no law for that."
The 4th Circuit, though it is known as the nation's most conservative appellate court and has been highly deferential to the government on matters of national security, has also ruled in favor of defendants who claim that their core rights override national security.
One of those decisions, which sources said Moussaoui's lawyers would cite in their briefs, involved a CIA station chief in Costa Rica who was charged with lying to investigators probing the Iran-contra affair in the 1980s. The government objected to some of the classified information he sought to use at his trial. A federal judge in Alexandria said the information, no matter how sensitive, was vital for the defense. The 4th Circuit agreed.
The court chided the government for "simultaneously prosecuting the defendant and attempting to restrict his ability to use information that he feels is necessary to defend himself against the prosecution. . . . Courts must not be remiss in protecting a defendant's right to a full and meaningful presentation of his claim to innocence."
-------- homeland security
Traditional Coast Guard Duties Suffer, Study Says
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5637-2003Apr1?language=printer
Coast Guard efforts to capture drug traffickers and patrol commercial fisheries have suffered as it has turned its focus to homeland security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a study released yesterday.
The declines uncovered by the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency, stoked concerns among some lawmakers that the Coast Guard might neglect its old missions as it trains its energy on securing the nation's ports, waterways and coastal areas.
At a hearing yesterday on the Coast Guard's transition to the Department of Homeland Security, which it joined March 1, Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo (R-N.J.), chairman of a House subcommittee on Coast Guard and maritime transportation, called the GAO report "thorough and eye-opening."
"The Coast Guard's traditional missions such as search and rescue, drug and migrant interdiction, pollution prevention, boater safety and fisheries law enforcement must be preserved," LoBiondo said.
Adm. Thomas H. Collins, head of the Coast Guard, tried to assure lawmakers that his agency could meet all of its old obligations while ramping up its counterterrorism efforts, such as conducting vulnerability assessments at all of the nation's ports and, more recently, supporting military operations in the Middle East.
"I assure you that nothing is more important to the United States Coast Guard than to be ready to perform all of these missions with distinction and with excellence," he testified yesterday.
Collins said President Bush's $6.8 billion budget request for the Coast Guard represents a $1.6 billion increase over the agency's initial fiscal 2002 budget. He said that by fiscal 2004, the Coast Guard will have increased its workforce by 4,100 people since Sept. 11, 2001, and mobilized thousands of reservists. He said Bush has asked for an additional $580 million for the agency in his 2003 supplemental funding request.
After questioning from lawmakers, Collins conceded the 42,000-person Coast Guard has more challenges than resources to meet them. He said some equipment and personnel will have to be diverted from more traditional roles to homeland security efforts, although partnerships with the Navy and foreign governments could help take up the slack.
He also conceded that the Coast Guard is behind schedule in completing its vulnerability assessments of 55 ports.
"Do we have more business than we have resources? Yes," Collins said. "We are challenged like never before to do all that America wants us to do."
The GAO catalogued a 60 percent decline in Coast Guard hours spent on drug interdiction in the past three months of 2002, compared with the same period in 1998. It also found a 38 percent decline in fisheries enforcement -- protecting fishing grounds from foreign encroachment and enforcing domestic fishing laws.
At the same time, the Coast Guard dramatically shifted resources to protect the nation's ports and waterways, including redeployments of search-and-rescue boats for harbor patrols. The Coast Guard devoted 91,000 "resource hours" -- a measurement of equipment used on missions -- to coastal security in the first quarter of fiscal 2002. That was up from 2,400 hours during a similar period in fiscal 1999. The number fell to 37,000 hours during the beginning of fiscal 2003.
Other areas, such as search-and-rescue efforts and maintaining navigation aids, remained at more or less the same levels as before Sept. 11, 2001, the GAO said.
JayEtta Z. Hecker, the GAO analyst who presented the report, told lawmakers the Coast Guard "cannot be all things to all people."
"Even if you give them more money," she said, "the challenge of absorbing more money is such that you cannot naturally solve this."
Collins agreed with the GAO figures, but said they account for only resource allocation, not results. He noted, for instance, that the Coast Guard seized 72.2 tons of cocaine in fiscal 2002, its third-highest yearly total.
"We're getting outcomes and high productivity," he said. "That's efficiency."
Committee members told Collins they recognized that Congress has heaped new responsibilities on the Coast Guard.
"We're yelling about security and we're saying, 'Keep your traditional roles' at the same time," said Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.). "We've put you in a very difficult position."
----
Senate Rejects Boost for Port Spending
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Budget.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate rejected a Democratic effort Wednesday to boost security spending for ports as it began debating a nearly $80 billion bill financing the first costs of the war with Iraq, the fight against terrorism and aid to struggling airlines.
A Democratic drive to add $4.8 billion for domestic safety -- which Republicans opposed -- came as Congress moved toward complying with President Bush's call to provide the war funds by April 11. The House was expected to approve its $77.9 billion version of the bill on Thursday, as both chambers exhibited a bipartisan desire to avoiding a drawn-out fight while American forces drive toward Baghdad.
In an early show of compromise, the Senate used a voice vote to approve an amendment by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., giving modest salary increases to thousands of troops in the field.
The provision, retroactive to last Oct. 1, would boost monthly combat pay from $150 to $225, and monthly payments to soldiers separated from their families from $100 to $250. Durbin had initially proposed a more expensive version than the estimated $600 million one that passed.
As they have done for weeks, Democrats argued that security for U.S. airports, nuclear facilities and other domestic safety programs was being shortchanged. Among their amendments was one by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., to add $1 billion to upgrade safety at U.S. ports, which was defeated by a near party-line 52-47.
``We are in a crisis,'' Hollings said, arguing that the nation's ports are ``the most vulnerable targets that you could possibly imagine.''
But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said a parade of Democratic amendments would complicate the job of passing the bill quickly.
``Every one of these is like another straw on the camel's back,'' he said. ``It will take more time ... and meanwhile we don't get the money out there for the troops.''
Also rejected 52-47 was a proposal by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., to add $1 billion for National Guard and Reserve equipment. Republicans used Senate procedures to kill another amendment by Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., requiring chemical plants to take safety measures.
The Senate bill contains $4.2 billion for the new Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard and state and local security and emergency agencies. Democrats wanted to boost that to $9 billion with their amendments.
Like the House bill and Bush's $74.7 billion request, the Senate bill was dominated by $62.6 billion for the military, plus other funds for rebuilding Iraq and aid to allies.
The Senate version also contained funds for more parochial initiatives like $50 million for subsidizing U.S. shipbuilders and $23 million for a budget problem at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In addition, the bill set aside funds from earlier approved legislation to make improvements at military facilities in Alaska and South Carolina, and to build a memorial to the Columbia space shuttle astronauts in Arlington National Cemetery.
In a statement, the White House budget office complained about restrictions both chambers put on administration requests for wide berth to determine the details of how most of the money would be spent.
But no veto was threatened. Instead, the statement said White House officials ``look forward to working with the Congress to ensure an appropriate balance is maintained between changing operational requirements and allocation of funds to specific accounts.''
The Senate bill provided an early glimpse of what some U.S. postwar activities in Iraq might be. It included $10 million to help start a tribunal to prosecute Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ``and other Iraqi war criminals.'' It also has $20 million for temporary U.S. diplomatic quarters in Baghdad for 200 Americans and ``300 Iraqi local hires.''
Adding time to the Senate's consideration of the bill, Stevens introduced an amendment raising the government's $6.4 trillion borrowing limit by vaguely defined costs of the war with Iraq and other U.S. anti-terrorism expenses. But that amendment -- which Republican aides suggested could mean an increase of up to $887 billion -- was expected to be withdrawn.
Republicans have been trying to avoid a direct vote on raising the debt ceiling because it focuses attention on the huge runup of federal deficits in the last two years.
-------- terrorism
Panel probes government security lapses in 9/11
April 2, 2003
By Liz Trotta
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-41842044.htm
NEW YORK - An independent panel continued its probe into the causes of the September 11 attacks yesterday, focusing on the government agencies responsible for the security of the United States.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States listened as various officials tried to identify what went wrong in the days leading up to the hijackings that brought down the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon.
Testimony focused on lapses in homeland security, especially on the part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), which may have prepared the way for the attacks. The screening of foreign students, stolen passports and border security and the funding of terrorists and airport security were among the key issues raised.
Steven Brill, columnist and author of "After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era," testified that no amount of security - patrolling the borders, guarding the food system, monitoring ventilation systems - would ever be enough to guarantee safety.
"There's never going to be enough money to solve everything, and I think the opportunity that this commission has is that it can set specific, tangible standards for improvement in homeland security," said Mr. Brill.
Glenn Fine, a Department of Justice official, said most of the September 11 hijackers entered the United States with valid visas, and the immigration inspectors did not have intelligence or information that would have changed their inspection.
"It's hard to say what would have happened if the INS had been better-funded or had more information," said Mr. Fine.
The 19 terrorists involved in the attacks passed through security checkpoints with box cutters they used to hijack four airplanes.
General Accounting Office official Gerald Dillingham said security had improved at the airports, but that they were still vulnerable.
"People at airports see grandmothers and children being examined, and it seems embarrassing. But there is intelligence to say terrorists have used these ways to get things through," he said. The official, who oversees aviation matters for the GAO, said new screeners have confiscated millions of forbidden items, including more than 1,000 firearms.
Kenneth Holden, the city's Commissioner of Design and Construction, testified that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey owned the World Trade Center, thus exempting it from the city's building-code requirements.
"Isn't that something that should be remedied?" asked panel member John Lehman. "Why should a building like that in the middle of the city of New York be exempt from building codes?" Applause broke out among the two dozen people in attendance.
Former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean chaired the 10-member panel created by Congress in November to investigate the government failures that may have allowed the terrorists to succeed.
"Our fundamental purpose will not be to point fingers. The most important thing I think we have to do is make recommendations to make the American people safer," said Mr. Kean. "We may end up holding individual agencies, people and procedures to account, but it's rather to answer fully the questions that so many people still have."
This was the last of the two-day hearings. On Monday, victims' relatives and survivors of the disaster told their stories in a wrenching session often marked by weeping.
One witness, Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee, died in the attack, drove home the poor performance of the INS prior to the September 11 attacks. She showed copies of immigration documents submitted by one of the hijackers, documents that indicated his answers were vague when questioned about how he managed to stay in the United States.
The panel is expected to release a draft report by May.
--------
U.S., Britain to train jointly for terror attacks
April 2, 2003
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-68231198.htm
The United States and Britain yesterday announced an agreement to conduct joint exercises to prepare for simultaneous terrorist attacks, but officials reiterated there is no new information suggesting an attack is imminent.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge meet with David Blunkett, home secretary for the United Kingdom, to agree upon what they call an unprecedented degree of cooperation.
A joint working group will be formed to share lists of terrorist suspects and other intelligence information, create joint border-security initiatives, and review cyber-security, research, science and technology.
Mr. Blunkett said Britain has extensive experience battling terrorists from Ireland that would be beneficial to the United States.
"We are intent on developing joint exercises which will build on the domestic exercises that you're undertaking in terms of counterterror and in terms of protection of the public ... so that we can look at what might formulate the necessary steps to protect us from simultaneous joint attacks," Mr. Blunkett said.
The officials said the preparations have nothing to do with concerns the two countries are taking the lead in the war against Iraq and may face retaliation.
"There's nothing in the contemporary threat information that we have that suggests such attacks are imminent," Mr. Ridge said.
"But both our intelligence communities know full well that the United States and the United Kingdom are potentially subject to attack, and if they would occur simultaneously, we want to be in the position to reinforce and to assist each other."
Senior officials will meet regularly to work on a menu of priorities including the development of biometrics technology, such as iris or facial recognition to use at borders and ports of entry.
The group also will pool knowledge and resources of vaccines to counter chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats.
"The closer we work together, the more difficult the terrorists' job becomes," Mr. Blunkett said.
The officials said it is almost certain a future terrorist attack will not replicate previous attacks.
The group will be given warning of changes in alert status and plan exercises to test different scenarios.
The national terrorist-threat level remains high (Code Orange) and Mr. Ridge signaled that it will not be lowered anytime soon.
"We know that we do have an additional level of protection around this country which we will sustain as long as the threat and our military activities in Iraq require us to sustain it," Mr. Ridge said.
--------
Attacks on U.S. targets thwarted
April 2, 2003
By Joshua Mitnick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030402-82116683.htm
AMMAN, Jordan - Security agents have uncovered two Iraqi attempts to strike U.S. targets in Jordan, including a plan to poison drinking water at air bases used by hundreds of American troops.
The second plot involved a bungled attempt to bomb Amman's Grand Hyatt Hotel, where scores of foreign journalists are staying while covering the war.
The explosive's detonator blew a fuse, causing a fire to break out on the ninth floor of the hotel last week. The fire was doused by the Hyatt's sprinkler system.
Four Iraqis have been taken into custody in connection with the attempted attack on the Hyatt.
"It was a botched effort to blow up the hotel," a Western diplomatic source said.
Although it publicly laments the decision by the United States and Britain to go to war, Jordan has allowed U.S. forces military access to airfields near its border with Iraq.
The Jordanian government officially denies the existence of American personnel and equipment on its bases, but unmarked U.S. helicopters and transport planes can be seen from the desert highway in eastern Jordan.
American military personnel are manning Patriot missile batteries in the region, and U.S. Special Forces are believed to be moving into western Iraq to scour the desert for missiles capable of reaching Israel.
The water contamination attempt involved pumping stations near the Jordanian city of Zaqra, located 17 miles northeast of Amman, which supplies the military bases and towns in the desert near the Iraqi border, the Associated Press reported.
Five Iraqi diplomats were expelled from the country March 23 over the poisoning attempt, the AP said.
"We've been concerned about potential threats against American citizens, here and worldwide," said Justin Ciberell, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy. "Among these threats were actions by Iraqi intelligence services."
Madian Al-Jazerah, a spokesman for the Amman Hyatt, said he didn't believe that the fire was the result of espionage. Most of the damage was caused by smoke and water on the ninth floor.
In the last month, the hotel has beefed up security because of concern about an attack. Agents from the Jordanian secret service, the Mughabarath, also patrol the hotel. Almost all of the guests at the hotel are foreign journalists, the spokesman said.
Last month, the United States asked about 60 countries to expel about 300 Iraqi diplomats suspected of operating as intelligence agents and planning attacks.
An Iraqi Embassy official denied the charges in comments to Paris-based Radio Monte Carlo, AP reported.
Jordan and Iraq historically have enjoyed close relations. Jordan's King Hussein was one of the few Arab leaders to support Iraq during the 1991 Gulf war. During the ensuing decade, Iraq supplied Jordan with free oil as a sign of gratitude for allowing Baghdad to export its oil through Jordan.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Finns seek to kickstart lagging wind power sector
REUTERS FINLAND:
April 2, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/20341/story.htm
HELSINKI - A Finnish renewable energy lobby said yesterday it will start a study to find areas on the country's west coast that could host several wind farms in a bid to raise Finland's sluggish wind energy output.
The regional energy agencies of southwest Finland together with energy group Fortum (FUM1V.HE) will start in April one-year studies in seven coastal areas to find two to five sites for local authorities' final approval.
"It is reasonable to expect 100 megawatts of capacity from this area," regional energy official Anne Ahtiainen told Reuters.
"This could be achieved by one large farm with 50 turbines, as modern turbines have a capacity of some two megawatts. But the capacity could possibly be bigger (if more farms are built)," Ahtiainen added.
She said the farms could be built towards the end of the decade.
Finland has set a goal of boosting wind power production to 500 megawatts (MW), or one percent of the country's total power output by 2010, up from current levels of around 40 MW.
According to the Finnish Wind Power Association, Finland's wind power capacity is one of lowest in the European Union, which had a combined capacity of 17,000 MW at the end of 2001 with global leader Germany taking the lion's share.
Wind power accounts for less than one percent of the global energy supply, but the sector is growing fast as countries try to bring down greenhouse gas emissions, which many scientists say cause global warming.
----
Energy Agency Gets Serious about Biomass Generation
April 2, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2003/2003-04-02-09.asp#anchor2
CHICAGO, Illinois, Using agriculture biomass for energy production supports the energy security mission of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) by reducing dependence on foreign oil, and agency experts are holding workshops this spring on how to harvest this source of renewable energy. Scientists, engineers, farmers and agriculture experts are working out ways to convert leftover crops, or biomass, into new fuels and products and ways to get this new industry up and running.
The DOE's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) will host two days of discussion on whole crop utilization. These round robin talks, held in five U.S. locations, focus on gathering, transporting, storing and conditioning plant materials as feedstock for future commercial biorefineries.
INEEL's team of scientists, assisted by scientists from DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will incorporate comments into a roadmap, or outline, that defines future research and development activities.
The focus is to apply science, engineering and technology to create an economically viable and sustainable flow of feedstock materials to biomass refineries, the DOE says. The DOE says feedstock supply systems "must be economically and environmentally sustainable" across many different growing areas of the country. Many technical and logistical challenges will have to be overcome - large scale biomass harvesting and collection, transportation, storage and pre-treating plant material for processing.
Similar roadmap discussions with potential industrial partners and customers will be held over the next two months in Boise, Idaho; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Oklahoma City. A previous meeting was held in Washington, DC.
See an overview of INEEL's bioenergy initiative at: http://energy.inel.gov/bioenergy/
----
World's Largest Solar Irrigation Pump Unveiled
April 2, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2003/2003-04-02-09.asp#anchor3
PENNINGTON, New Jersey, The first solar powered 50 horsepower irrigation pump was unveiled at a commissioning ceremony today at the D.T. Locke Ranch in Mendota, in California's San Joaquin Valley. Farmers in the valley will now have a clean air alternative energy source for pumping groundwater as well as savings in energy costs over the long term.
The event showcased WorldWater Corporation's hybrid solar water pumping system, which at the Locke Ranch features a 108 foot long solar array that powers a three-phase 36 kilowatt, 50 horsepower irrigation pump. The system also provides solar energy to power the nearby farm shop, a house and domestic water well.
The controller converts solar DC current to AC, which powers the pump from either the solar array or from the electrical grid, or from both sources if necessary, WorldWater explains. The system is suitable for farms, ranches, dairies, water districts and food processing companies.
"This system can play a key role in the long term viability of California's great agricultural industry," said Quentin Kelly, chairman and CEO of WorldWater, designer and builder of the system. "Solar power offers farmers an alternative energy source that is reliable, affordable and clean, which is a significant plus for air quality in the San Joaquin Valley."
Joining Kelly and WorldWater-California President Dr. Guy Phillips at the event were California Energy Commissioner Robert Pernell, California Farm Bureau President Bill Pauli and International Center for Water Technology Director David Zoldoske.
The system works as a hybrid in automatic combination with the conventional power grid, allowing the electric meter to spin backwards when the solar power is not used in the field.
The system provides farmers with an energy source for continued irrigation during an electrical black- or brown-out.
WorldWater Corporation is a solar engineering and water management engineering company active in developing countries and around the world.
-------- health
House panel weighs global AIDS effort
April 2, 2003
By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-902750.htm
The House International Relations Committee today will consider a bill aimed at preventing and treating AIDS worldwide, but panel conservatives want changes, including a stronger emphasis on abstinence over condom use.
They say the current bill - crafted by Rep. Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican and panel chairman - does not reflect President Bush's vision of what the program should look like.
"It's unacceptable and I will vote against it," said Rep. Joe Pitts, Pennsylvania Republican.
"As we address the global AIDS crisis, we don't want to offend the values we came here to promote," said Rep. Mike Pence, Indiana Republican. He added, however, that Mr. Hyde is sensitive to these concerns and "there has been progress made."
The AIDS initiative is a top priority for Mr. Bush, but Congress is having problems agreeing on the details. Both Mr. Hyde and Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee - have postponed votes on their bills in recent weeks, amid objections from the White House and congressional conservatives.
An administration official, while not embracing every aspect of Mr. Hyde's bill, seemed more hopeful late yesterday.
"We believe there is a bipartisan consensus emerging in helping to get this legislation moving in the House," the aide said. "We think it is moving in a direction that reflects what the president outlined and we hope the Senate gets moving as well."
Mr. Hyde's bill would provide $15 billion over five years - as the president's plan laid out - to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in Africa and the Caribbean. It supports efforts to treat and care for people living with AIDS, to find vaccines for AIDS and malaria, and to care especially for children and young people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
"I'm afraid if we start getting into all these fights, it'll derail the bill," said Rep. Howard L. Berman, California Democrat and panel member.
Conservatives say the Hyde bill, among other faults, does not closely follow Uganda's notably successful campaign to reduce HIV infections. Uganda emphasized the "ABC" approach - abstinence, being faithful, and condoms, in that order - and Mr. Bush wants the U.S. initiative to do the same.
"The science is clear here: Promoting abstinence and being faithful effectively reduces HIV," said one House Republican aide, adding that under the Hyde bill, "the status quo - which has largely been the social marketing and distribution of condoms - will continue."
Mr. Pitts said Republicans may be able to work out the ABC priority issue, but noted there are other problems with the bill.
He and others want the bill to take a strong stance to eradicate prostitution and to protect the rights of religious groups to opt out of such anti-AIDS strategies as condom distribution.
Conservatives also want to mandate that most of the money go toward treatment and to limit the amount given to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, because they say there is no way to control how the international group spends the money.
House conservatives worked with Mr. Hyde recently to craft a package of amendments that addressed many of their concerns. But Republican aides say Mr. Hyde will offer a different, Democrat-approved package of amendments.
The details of the second package were not known and Mr. Hyde's office did not returns calls yesterday.
Conservatives still plan to offer many amendments today. But aides conceded the efforts would likely fail because they will not have the support of the panel's more liberal Republicans - Reps. Jim Leach of Iowa and Amo Houghton of New York.
"I suspect the only way we'll make improvements is if we do it on the House floor," one aide said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Billy Tauzin, Louisiana Republican and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, is crafting his own global HIV/AIDS bill, which some conservatives hope will be a better alternative.
"We intend to work closely with the president so that any money approved for his AIDS initiative achieves meaningful results," said Ken Johnson, spokesman for Mr. Tauzin's committee.
--------
China Allows WHO to Probe Mystery Illness
April 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Mystery-Illness.html
BEIJING (AP) -- Under escalating global pressure, China agreed Wednesday to let international health investigators visit the place where the mystery illness apparently began -- the southern province of Guangdong.
The four-member World Health Organization team arrived in Guangdong on Thursday and said they would confer with local authorities to work a plan of whom to meet. They did not wear protective masks.
``We are going to start immediately,'' said team member James H. Maguire, an epidemiologist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Officials also updated China's death toll by a dozen to 46 as they revealed the illness had spread to other regions and sickened far more than they initially reported.
China's move comes after days of criticism over its secretiveness about the disease. Worldwide, at least 78 people have died and more than 2,200 are believed to be sick with severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, the World Health Organization said.
There is no medicine to treat the illness, and scientists still have not confirmed which virus causes it. The WHO health investigators believe Guangdong offers valuable clues to the disease.
As China agreed to more openness, the Geneva-based WHO advised travelers not to go to Hong Kong and Guangdong -- the first time the agency has issued such an advisory in at least a decade. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already recommended postponing nonessential trips to mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Hanoi, Vietnam.
For months after the disease began sickening people in Guangdong in November, China kept the details quiet. On March 16, as the WHO was issuing a global health alert, the China Ministry of Health reported ``the epidemic situation has been controlled and the patients are being cured one by one.''
Initially, the government reported only five deaths and 305 cases. On Wednesday, the number of reported Chinese cases swelled to 1,190.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Tuesday that ``more pressure'' would be applied on China and he hoped to talk with China's health minister soon.
The same day, The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial under the headline, ``Quarantine China,'' and suggested other nations simply should suspend all travel links with China until it provides the truth about its public health.
For weeks, U.N. agency officials have delicately appealed for more cooperation from China, which has a tradition of hiding bad news, even as China's neighbors have complained loudly.
``Because the mainland is not sharing information ... the outbreak has been lengthened,'' Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council said in a recent report.
At the Centers for Disease Control in the United States, director Dr. Julie Gerberding said those trying to control SARS want to find out if it's still being spread in China. Health investigators also want to know what those who die from the illness might have in common, she said.
Of the 12 newly disclosed deaths, nine were in Guangdong and the others were in the Guangxi region to its west. WHO officials said the newly reported cases were from February and March, suggesting they did not necessarily signify the outbreak was worsening.
Still, worries grew worldwide as travel advisories sprouted, quarantines were enforced as far away as Singapore and Canada, and cultural practices involving human contact were reviewed. More companies were canceling events, which could take a toll on China's economy.
Sixteen deaths from SARS have been reported in Hong Kong, six in Canada, four each in Vietnam and Singapore and two in Thailand.
Even as they revealed that their outbreak had widened, Chinese officials insisted it was under control -- a theme that journalists for the mainland's state-controlled domestic media say they are under orders to promote.
``Since the beginning of March, this disease has been brought under control,'' Health Minister Zhang Wenkang said in an interview on state television.
He said 80 percent of those diagnosed with SARS have recovered.
Intel Corp., the world's biggest computer chipmaker, said it is backing out of important trade shows in China and Taiwan because of SARS. Computer firm Sun Microsystems also announced it was canceling a convention this month in Shanghai due to SARS-related travel advisories.
In Thailand on Wednesday, the government said it would turn back foreigners suspected of having SARS and would force those allowed in from affected countries to wear masks in public.
In the Philippines, which has no confirmed cases, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo put in place a contingency plan -- including air and seaport checks -- to prevent an outbreak. She said the problem would be treated on the magnitude of the Iraq war.
Health officials in New Zealand urged indigenous Maori tribesmen to forgo their traditional ``hongi'' nose-rubbing greeting for visiting Chinese at a convention. In Hong Kong, the Roman Catholic Church ordered priests to wear masks during Communion and put wafers in the hands of the faithful rather than directly on the tongue.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Oregon Law Would Jail War Protesters as Terrorists
Wed April 2, 2003
By Lee Douglas
(Reuters)
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2498528
PORTLAND, Oregon - An Oregon anti-terrorism bill would jail street-blocking protesters for at least 25 years in a thinly veiled effort to discourage anti-war demonstrations, critics say.
The bill has met strong opposition but lawmakers still expect a debate on the definition of terrorism and the value of free speech before a vote by the state senate judiciary committee, whose Chairman, Republican Senator John Minnis, wrote the proposed legislation.
Dubbed Senate Bill 742, it identifies a terrorist as a person who "plans or participates in an act that is intended, by at least one of its participants, to disrupt" business, transportation, schools, government, or free assembly.
The bill's few public supporters say police need stronger laws to break up protests that have created havoc in cities like Portland, where thousands of people have marched and demonstrated against war in Iraq since last fall.
"We need some additional tools to control protests that shut down the city," said Lars Larson, a conservative radio talk show host who has aggressively stumped for the bill.
Larson said protesters should be protected by free speech laws, but not given free reign to hold up ambulances or frighten people out of their daily routines, adding that police and the court system could be trusted to see the difference.
"Right now a group of people can get together and go downtown and block a freeway," Larson said. "You need a tool to deal with that."
The bill contains automatic sentences of 25 years to life for the crime of terrorism.
Critics of the bill say its language is so vague it erodes basic freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism under an extremely broad definition.
"Under the original version (terrorism) meant essentially a food fight," said Andrea Meyer of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which opposes the bill.
Police unions and minority groups also oppose the bill for fear it could have a chilling effect on relations between police and poor people, minorities, children and "vulnerable" populations.
Legislators say the bill stands little chance of passage.
"I just don't think this bill is ever going to get out of committee," said Democratic Senator Vicki Walker, one of four members on the six-person panel who have said they oppose the legislation.
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Nuns Who Defaced Missile Silo Defended
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuns-Missile-Silo.html
DENVER (AP) -- Three nuns accused of defacing a missile silo by swinging hammers and painting a cross on it with their own blood were carrying out a peaceful protest that did not jeopardize national security, a defense attorney said.
Sisters Ardeth Platte, 66, Jackie Hudson, 68 and Carol Gilbert, 55, are accused of breaking into a Minuteman III missile silo site on Colorado's northeastern plains Oct. 6. They have been charged with interfering with the nation's defense and causing property damage of more than $1,000.
Hudson's attorney, Walter Gerash, said the sisters entered the N-8 site to protest. They read Bible verses about pounding swords into plowshares and sang hymns.
The nuns 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. He said the Minuteman and other nuclear missiles have been vital to the nation's defense and have deterred other nations from using nuclear weapons.
``It would have been nice if they never were invented. But they were,'' Brown 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. All joined the Dominican order in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Platte, who is representing herself, tearfully told jurors Tuesday that the peace protest was worthwhile, even if she and the others are jailed. She said she hoped the demonstration would make people think more about the weapons.
The nuns could receive up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
``If we have to spend the rest of our lives in prison we will,'' Platte said, fighting tears. ``We have friends who are in the war zone. We must do more for peace.''
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Foundation cash funds antiwar movement
April 2, 2003
By Julia Duin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030402-42181748.htm
The American antiwar movement is decked out with all the elements of the counterculture, but it is getting some very establishment funding.
In a few months, foundations and donors have kicked in millions of dollars to help antiwar groups stage demonstrations, take out expensive newspaper and TV ads, maintain Web sites, hire and pay staff, and lease office space in high-rent New York, Washington and San Francisco locales.
Most work under the umbrella of sympathetic "fiscal sponsors," groups with tax-exempt status that have also lent out staff and office space. For instance, Code Pink Women for Peace, a feminist movement known for its pink clothing and awarding of "pink slips," or pink lingerie, to legislators they deem pro-war, operates under the aegis of Global Exchange, a San Francisco organization with a $4.2 million budget.
Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, a director for Global Exchange, says they are paying a bargain $400 a month for a cubicle office at 15th and H streets in the District. More space for Code Pink is on loan from two organizations down the hall, the National Organization for Women and the Institute for Policy Studies.
Code Pink has raised $70,000 to $80,000 in its four-month existence, mostly through its www.codepinkalert.org site and sales of Code Pink buttons and T-shirts, "which we can't keep in stock," she adds.
The Institute for Policy Studies, a left-wing think tank, has released a drumbeat of antiwar essays in recent months. The institute has a $2.2 million budget for 2003 provided by the Turner, Ford, MacArthur and Charles Stewart Mott foundations, among others.
The brunt of the peace funding, says institute director John Cavannagh, is being done by smaller foundations able to quickly shift funds from other programs.
"Individual peace groups have all gone out and raised funds," he says. "It's a lot of money, but I don't know how much. There's a pooling of resources between peace groups I've not seen before, which explains the large numbers of demonstrations and peace marches created."
For instance, the institute's 2002 foreign policy budget of $400,000, which includes antiwar activism, received $50,000 from the HKH Foundation, $50,000 from the Arca Foundation, $20,000 from the Samuel Rubin Foundation, $15,000 from the Solidago Foundation and $50,000 from the MacArthur Foundation.
Gordon Clark, the sole staff member and national coordinator of the Iraq Pledge of Resistance Network in Silver Spring, has run his organization during the past six months on $32,000 in grants from donors and institutions.
"I think this war has a greater air of illegitimacy around it than other wars," he said, "so there have been greatly increased contributions."
Not all antiwar groups are forthcoming about their finances. One of the leading organizers of antiwar demonstrations, International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) refused to divulge its funding sources.
But TrueMajority.com, an Internet activism group founded during the summer by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, boasts of its fund-raising prowess. TrueMajority.com says it is bringing in substantial amounts of money thanks to high-profile newspaper ads. These started in November, when 150 members of its related nonprofit corporation, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities Inc., ran a $40,000 antiwar ad in the New York Times.
That brought in $80,000, partly because "we had the foresight to include a coupon," executive director Gary Ferdman says. That revenue helped pay for a $170,000 ad in the Jan. 13 Wall Street Journal national edition and later a $40,000 ad in the Journal's New York metro edition. Thanks to the Turner Foundation and the San Francisco-based Plowshares Fund, TrueMajority.com says, its $1.5 million operating budget helps pay for five full-time staff and six consultants.
"People have been so concerned about the war and outraged enough to express their dissent," through contributions, Mr. Ferdman says. "Our problem is the more successful we are, the more expensive this becomes."
TrueMajority.com webmaster Andrew Greenblatt, who has free office space at the National Council of Churches headquarters in uptown Manhattan, says the site brings in several thousand dollars a month.
"It is not rocket science," he says. "You ask for money, and people give it to you."
Because U.S. tax laws allow at least a year's grace period before a nonprofit must file a 990 tax form revealing who its donors are, most antiwar groups will not have to reveal their funding sources until 2004.
The San Francisco-based Tides Foundation has given $1.5 million to antiwar efforts since September 11, 2001, including a salary for former U.S. Rep. Tom Andrews of Maine, who directs the 38-member Win Without War coalition.
Win Without War, which announced its formation at a press conference Dec. 11, has drummed up $1 million in support, founder David Cortright says. Mr. Cortright is also president of the Fourth Freedom Foundation in Goshen, Ind., which has provided substantial antiwar support.
Moveon.org, a Web site that raised $3.5 million for liberal political candidates in the 2002 election, has also raised $1.3 million for large newspaper ads against the war, says Eli Pariser, its international campaigns director. Its legendary fund raising from its 2 million members includes $400,000 raised in 48 hours to fund a Jan. 16 antiwar TV spot that accused President Bush of risking nuclear war. The ad, styled after the notorious Democrat "Daisy" commercial of 1964, shows a girl plucking petals from a daisy, along with a missile launch countdown and a nuclear mushroom cloud.
Moveon.org's operating budget, he adds, is $300,000 a year for four staff and consultants. On average, donors give $35, Mr. Pariser says. But the donor volume has been so high that "we've turned off our log-in [mechanism] because it was blowing out our servers. We must be the only organization in history to have a ratio of one staff member to a half-million members."
As for the type of donor, "These are mainstream folks who have not been active before, but because of the scariness of Bush's policy, they need to do something about it," he says. "The urgency level is so high that if money is what it takes to make a difference, they will make a contribution."
United for Peace and Justice (UPJ), an antiwar coalition of 200 groups formed Oct. 25, farms out its staff to other nonprofits, such as Peace Action and Democracy Rising. Its finance committee chairman, Van Goss, is the organizing director of Peace Action and a professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. As of March 1, he said, they had raised "several hundred thousand dollars" with the help of several foundations that kicked in $5,000 and $10,000 donations to fund a large antiwar rally in New York on Feb. 15.
UPJ raised less than $30,000 from the demonstrators themselves.
"By breaking us up and penning us in little holding pens over 50 city blocks, that directly interfered with the key component of any large rally: the fund-raising pitch," Mr. Goss says. "What we got was a minute figure from what we could have raised from that crowd.
But UPJ recouped some of its losses by raising $65,000 at a rally March 22.
"People," Mr. Goss says, "are very willing to give."
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Man Arrested in Death of Indian Activist
April 3, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-AIM-Slaying.html
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- In a case that has haunted South Dakota for nearly 30 years, police have arrested a man in the slaying of an American Indian Movement activist whose frozen body was found on the Pine Ridge reservation in 1976.
Authorities said Arlo Looking Cloud, 49, was arrested in Denver last week. He pleaded innocent Monday to a charge of first-degree murder in the death of Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, U.S. Attorney James McMahon said Wednesday in Sioux Falls.
Pictou-Aquash, 30, disappeared in late 1975 from a Denver home where she had been staying. Her body, with a gunshot wound to the head, was found in February 1976 on the sprawling reservation 90 miles east of Rapid City.
McMahon said he could not comment on the case or say whether more arrests are possible. Looking Cloud and another man were indicted for allegedly shooting Pictou-Aquash after kidnapping her, according to a March 20 indictment. The other man was named in the document but it was not clear if he had been arrested.
Looking Cloud and another man were indicted for allegedly shooting Pictou-Aquash after kidnapping her, according to a March 20 indictment. The other man was named in the document but it was not clear if he had been arrested.
Because Pictou-Aquash was Canadian, the long-unsolved case has been closely followed in Canada. AIM leaders often cite the case and other unsolved slayings to suggest U.S. federal authorities don't aggressively pursue murders on reservations.
Looking Cloud worked as a security guard at AIM events during the 1970s, said Paul DeMain, editor of the bimonthly newspaper News From Indian Country in Wisconsin.
AIM was beset by internal disputes at the time, DeMain said.
Pictou-Aquash, a member of Canada's Mi'kmaq Tribe, was among the Indian militants who occupied the village of Wounded Knee in a 71-day standoff with federal authorities in 1973.
Some speculated she was killed by AIM members because she knew some of them were government spies, while others said Pictou-Aquash was killed because she herself was an informant. Federal authorities have repeatedly denied any involvement.
She disappeared from the Denver home of Troy Lynn Yellow Wood.
``She had been brought to my house as a place of refuge,'' Yellow Wood said in January. ``To hide, basically. That's about all I can say.''
Indians have said for years that federal investigators and prosecutors knew who kidnapped and killed Pictou-Aquash. Several grand juries had investigated the case over the years.
A hearing was planned for Thursday to determine whether Looking Cloud should be brought to South Dakota to face charges. If convicted, he would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison.
Bernice Bull Bear, of Denver, said she is Looking Cloud's cousin and grew up with him on the Pine Ridge reservation.
``He's a very good person. He's a very gentle man. The children like him and he's really good with my mother. He helps her. He's not a bad person,'' she said. ``He's never harmed anybody around here.''
Looking Cloud had been living homeless in Denver, she said.
Pictou-Aquash's daughters released a statement saying they were pleased there had been an arrest. They said they were making contact with authorities in order to be part of the case.
``We have known for a long time that people have discussed amongst themselves the events that led up to her death, yet publicly have remained silent,'' wrote Denise Maloney Pictou, of Ontario, Canada, and Debbie Maloney Pictou, who lives in Nova Scotia, Canada.
``We are inspired with the actions of those who choose to courageously stand on their own and honor our mothers' spirit with truth and integrity.''
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Military Town Protests Can Be Lonely
April 2, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Base-Town-Protesters.html
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- Being a war protester in a military town can be pretty lonely.
At a recent peace rally, the crowd on the traffic circle across from city hall hovered between six and a dozen, barely outnumbering the officers stationed there to protect them.
But in some respects, it's remarkable they had that many.
Fayetteville is host to Fort Bragg, home to the famed 82nd Airborne Division and the Army Special Operations Command. With 45,000 soldiers and dependents stationed hereabouts, this is a town awash in olive drab and red-white-and-blue, a town where billboards ask God to ``bless our troops'' and the air is filled with the slap of fluttering American flags and the rustle of yellow-ribbon-ringed trees.
When bombs started falling on Baghdad last month, about 1,500 people turned out to cheer the soldiers, not jeer them.
In Fayetteville, said Quaker House director Chuck Fager, anti-war protesters have become accustomed to a delicate tap dance. He makes it a point not to plaster his car with anti-war bumper stickers, and he goes out of his way to say that he supports the troops, even though he's against the war.
``I personally don't feel unsafe from day to day,'' said Fager, whose organization counsels soldiers and has helped stage peace protests.
``But it's worth noting, and I'm continually reminded of the fact that, in 1970, the first Quaker House was firebombed in the middle of the night,'' he said, referring to a still-unsolved arson four days after a massive rally by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
A rally Wednesday by about a dozen peace protesters was met by a boisterous counterdemonstration of more than 100. The event coincided with a visit by former President George H.W. Bush to nearby Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station.
At a rally Saturday by the group Women in Black, a passing motorist threw an empty plastic soda bottle at six demonstrators, prompting talk of canceling this Saturday's planned vigil. Group member Darlene Hopkins said these developments illustrate what she sees as a growing hostility toward the anti-war protesters.
``It's very much a struggle for me,'' said Hopkins, a psychologist and counselor at Methodist College who worked with soldiers returning from the first Gulf War. ``I don't want to make anyone's pain worse, and yet I feel I have to tell the truth -- that this war is not the answer.''
As 19-year-old Drew Plummer hoisted a sign saying ``Bring our troops home,'' a man in a white Volvo gave him the thumbs-down. Another shouted insults as he circled the tiny group gathered beneath the arches of Fayetteville's old slave market.
With his green Army shirt and multiple piercings, Plummer may have looked like just another peacenik. But in a few weeks, Petty Officer 3rd Class Plummer will report back to his job as a nuclear electrician's mate on the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower.
``I'm not a pacifist; I'll do my part,'' Plummer said the fourth-generation military man. ``I just don't agree with what we're doing right now. ... I don't think our guys should be dying in Iraq.''
Plummer joined the Navy to see the world, serve his country and earn a little money for college. He said he never dreamed he'd be helping wage a war he doesn't believe in, a war he thinks is all about money.
With Americans being killed and taken hostage, Plummer expected angry confrontations. Instead, he found some encouragement.
``Let me shake your hand, young man,'' Ashley Rozier II said to Plummer. ``I knew there were some smart people around here.''
But that doesn't translate into more people standing on the street corners.
City Councilwoman Anne Fogleman said it's a good thing she's not running for re-election. She's never protested before, and is uncomfortable doing so this close to a military base. But she just couldn't stay home this time.
``We've never been the bully,'' she said. ``And all of a sudden the world hates us.''
As a 13-year veteran of the 82nd Airborne who has worn the uniform in Saudi Arabia, Grenada, Panama and Honduras, Jeffery Portee thinks we should ``support our country 100 percent.'' But he also thinks people should be allowed to protest anywhere they want.
``That's a double-bladed sword,'' he said as he passed by, shaking his head.
Lorraine Buttner served in the Army five years and left just before the first Gulf War. Her husband wore the uniform, too, and her son is in Korea right now. But there she was at a recent protest, holding a sign that asked, ``How many lives per gallon?''
``Although we all hope that this war will be over rapidly, we'll be in the Middle East for a long time to come,'' she said. ``And who knows what our president has in mind next?''
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Allen G. Breed is the AP's Southeast regional writer, based in Raleigh.
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D.C. Marchers Protest War, Rising Joblessness
By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 2, 2003; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6446-2003Apr1?language=printer
A few hundred protesters in natty suits and union baseball caps snaked through downtown Washington during the evening rush hour yesterday in a labor-sponsored antiwar march that called attention to the rising unemployment rate.
"Make jobs, not war," read a sign carried by Nancy Lessin, a steelworker from Boston. "I'm here because I want to support the troops," she said. "And the way we support them is to bring them back home and give them jobs."
Many of the protesters who gathered at Farragut Square last night were new to the antiwar scene -- teachers in high heels, union bosses carrying briefcases and steelworkers in satin baseball jackets embroidered with union logos. The familiar protesters with drums and wild hair were there, too, but they were in the minority.
Computer systems analyst Noel Albert wore a green union T-shirt under his gray wool suit to his first antiwar rally last night.
"We have a hiring freeze in the county now," said Albert, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1924 in Fairfax County. "We're about to have 160 employees laid off, and in this economy, we're paying billions of dollars for a war? That didn't make sense to me, so I had to come out here today."
The situation is also severe in the hospitality industry, where 15 percent of the 5,000 members of the District's Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 25 have lost their jobs since the nation's first Code Orange homeland security alert a year ago, said John Boardman, the local's executive secretary-treasurer.
Because of a slowing economy and a 6 percent unemployment rate, many jobless men and women went into the military, looking for training and career opportunities, "only to find themselves cannon fodder in this war," said the Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, senior pastor at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in the District.
After nearly an hour of speeches at Farragut Square, the group formed a long queue to symbolize the nation's unemployment lines and marched about a dozen blocks. But police officers blocked off several streets and, after an hour, steered the protesters back to Farragut Square.
Harold Nelson, 70, shoved his hands in his jacket and marched the entire way, ready to be cuffed again after his arrest last week.
Nelson, a former teacher, said he has been going to demonstrations because the condition of D.C. public schools should be government's first priority, rather than a war. "The money spent on one day of war could do miracles for our public schools," he said.
Neither Nelson nor anyone else was arrested last night.
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