Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
U.S. `discovery' of nuclear materials was breach of U.N.-monitored site
U.S. Nuke Find Claim in Iraq Critiqued
Weapons-Grade Plutonium Possibly Found at Iraqi Nuke Complex
Annan Seeks Inspectors' Return to Iraq
CIA Report: N. Korea Goal Is Two Nukes a Year
N. Korea Treaty Withdrawal Concerns U.N.
Security Council Averts Standoff on North Korea Nuclear Issue
Russia Says N.Korea May Ignore UN on Nuclear Crisis
US to bolster its nuclear test readiness
Judge Orders Faster Review of Cooling Unit at Indian Point
U.S. Energy Department Sues Washington State
Iraq's weapons 'must be found'
The neoconservative agenda
How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington - and Launched a War
Pentagon's favorites get a foot in the door
Hawks Set Sights on Iran, Syria as Baghdad Falls
Powell Says U.S. Has No List of Countries to Attack
MILITARY
CIA: New bin Laden tape likely authentic
Briefly
Gun makers get boost from House
Looting breaks out as Baghdad falls
Descent into a charnel-house hospital hell
Baghdad Is Hit by Arson and Looting
Final proof that war is about the failure of the human spirit
Fierce gun battles as Marines search for Saddam
Allies shift strength to Saddam's home
If Saddam is dead, the US might have trouble proving it
Crowd Kills Islamic Cleric in Iraq
Three shot dead as thousands protest at Israeli air strike
Israeli-Palestinian Clashes Leave Six Dead
Turkish Leaders Sending Military Observers to Kirkuk
Pakistan not Iraq
US holds 7,300 POWs in Iraq, weighs their fate
Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot
Bush Administration Describes Secondary Role for U.N. in Iraq
Far From the Cheering Crowds, Marines in 'Standby Mode'
The photographs tell the story...
News anchors glum amid Iraqi jubilation
Army Seeks to Demonstrate That Troops Are 'Liberators'
Bush and Blair Take Their Message Directly to the Iraqis
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Ex-agent for FBI arrested in theft
University president given immunity
UK: Rise in child prisoners is blamed on Bulger case
OTHER
EPA Encourages Hazardous Waste Site Reuse
ACTIVISTS
20,000 stage demo outside US embassy in Moscow
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- iraq
Experts say U.S. `discovery' of nuclear materials in Iraq was breach of U.N.-monitored site
By William J. Kole,
Associated Press,
4/10/2003 19:43
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/100/world/Experts_say_U_S_discovery_of_n%3A.shtml
VIENNA, Austria (AP) American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said Thursday. They said the U.S. troops may have broken U.N. seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material.
Leaders of a U.S. Marine Corps combat engineering unit claimed earlier this week to have found an underground network of laboratories, warehouses and bombproof offices beneath the closely monitored Tuwaitha nuclear research center just south of Baghdad.
The Marines said they discovered 14 buildings at the site which emitted unusually high levels of radiation, and that a search of one building revealed ''many, many drums'' containing highly radioactive material. If documented, such a discovery could bolster Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weaponry.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said officials there have not heard anything through military channels about a Marine inspection at Tuwaitha.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which has inspected the Tuwaitha nuclear complex at least two dozen times and maintains a thick dossier on the site, had no immediate comment.
But an expert familiar with U.N. nuclear inspections told The Associated Press that it was implausible to believe that U.S. forces had uncovered anything new at the site. Instead, the official said, the Marines apparently broke U.N. seals designed to ensure the materials aren't diverted for weapons use or end up in the wrong hands.
''What happened apparently was that they broke IAEA seals, which is very unfortunate because those seals are integral to ensuring that nuclear material doesn't get diverted,'' the expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Army Times, meanwhile, reported that troops with the 101st Airborne Division have unearthed 11 shipping containers, filled with sophisticated lab equipment, buried at a chemical plant in Karbala. It said the equipment's value and evidence that some of it may have been smuggled into Iraq raised suspicions that the facility had been used to manufacture chemical weapons.
U.N. arms inspectors visited a facility in the immediate vicinity of the chemical plant Feb. 23, but did not find the buried equipment. Officials at the U.S. Central Command suggested that no conclusions should be drawn.
Several tons of low-grade uranium has been stored at Tuwaitha, Iraq's principle nuclear research center and a site that has been under IAEA safeguards for years, the official said. The Iraqis were allowed to keep the material because it was unfit for weapons use without costly and time-consuming enrichment.
Tuwaitha contains 1.8 tons of low-grade enriched uranium and several tons of natural and depleted uranium.
The uranium was inspected by the U.N. nuclear agency twice a year and was kept under IAEA seal at least until early this week, when the Marines seized control of the site.
The U.N. nuclear agency's inspectors have visited Tuwaitha about two dozen times, including a dozen checks carried out since December, most recently on Feb. 6. It was among the first sites that IAEA inspectors sought out after the resumption of inspections on Nov. 27 after a nearly four-year break.
On at least one occasion, inspectors with special mountaineering training went underground there to have a look around, according to IAEA documents.
David Kay, a former IAEA chief nuclear inspector, said Thursday that the teams he oversaw after the 1991 Gulf War never found an underground site at Tuwaitha despite persistent rumors.
''But underground facilities by definition are very hard to detect,'' he said. ''When you inspect a place so often, you get overconfident about what you know. It would have been very easy for the inspectors to explain away any excessive radiation at Tuwaitha. The Iraqis could have hidden something clandestine in plain sight.''
American intelligence analysts said before the U.S.-led campaign began that new structures photographed at Tuwaitha might indicate a revival of weapons work. IAEA inspectors checked but found nothing.
The Tuwaitha complex, run by the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission on a bend in the Tigris River about 18 miles south of Baghdad, was the heart of Saddam's former nuclear program and was involved in the final design of a nuclear bomb before Iraq's nuclear program was destroyed by U.N. teams after the 1991 Gulf War.
The IAEA, charged with the hunt for evidence of a nuclear program in Iraq, told the Security Council just before the war that it had uncovered no firm evidence that Saddam was renewing efforts to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, clearly wary of any coalition claims, said this week that any alleged discoveries of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would have to be verified by U.N. inspectors ''to generate the required credibility.''
ElBaradei said the inspectors should return as soon as possible, subject to Security Council guidance, to resume their search for banned arms.
----
U.S. Nuke Find Claim in Iraq Critiqued
April 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Nuclear-Find.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said Thursday. They said the U.S. troops may have broken U.N. seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material.
Leaders of a U.S. Marine Corps combat engineering unit claimed earlier this week to have found an underground network of laboratories, warehouses and bombproof offices beneath the closely monitored Tuwaitha nuclear research center just south of Baghdad.
The Marines said they discovered 14 buildings at the site which emitted unusually high levels of radiation, and that a search of one building revealed ``many, many drums'' containing highly radioactive material. If documented, such a discovery could bolster Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weaponry.
Lt. Cmdr. Charles Owens, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said officials there have not heard anything through military channels about a Marine inspection at Tuwaitha.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which has inspected the Tuwaitha nuclear complex at least two dozen times and maintains a thick dossier on the site, had no immediate comment.
But an expert familiar with U.N. nuclear inspections told The Associated Press that it was implausible to believe that U.S. forces had uncovered anything new at the site. Instead, the official said, the Marines apparently broke U.N. seals designed to ensure the materials aren't diverted for weapons use -- or end up in the wrong hands.
``What happened apparently was that they broke IAEA seals, which is very unfortunate because those seals are integral to ensuring that nuclear material doesn't get diverted,'' the expert said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Army Times, meanwhile, reported that troops with the 101st Airborne Division have unearthed 11 shipping containers, filled with sophisticated lab equipment, buried at a chemical plant in Karbala. It said the equipment's value and evidence that some of it may have been smuggled into Iraq raised suspicions that the facility had been used to manufacture chemical weapons.
U.N. arms inspectors visited a facility in the immediate vicinity of the chemical plant Feb. 23, but did not find the buried equipment. Officials at the U.S. Central Command suggested that no conclusions should be drawn.
Several tons of low-grade uranium has been stored at Tuwaitha, Iraq's principle nuclear research center and a site that has been under IAEA safeguards for years, the official said. The Iraqis were allowed to keep the material because it was unfit for weapons use without costly and time-consuming enrichment.
Tuwaitha contains 1.8 tons of low-grade enriched uranium and several tons of natural and depleted uranium.
The uranium was inspected by the U.N. nuclear agency twice a year and was kept under IAEA seal -- at least until early this week, when the Marines seized control of the site.
The U.N. nuclear agency's inspectors have visited Tuwaitha about two dozen times, including a dozen checks carried out since December, most recently on Feb. 6. It was among the first sites that IAEA inspectors sought out after the resumption of inspections on Nov. 27 after a nearly four-year break.
On at least one occasion, inspectors with special mountaineering training went underground there to have a look around, according to IAEA documents.
David Kay, a former IAEA chief nuclear inspector, said Thursday that the teams he oversaw after the 1991 Gulf War never found an underground site at Tuwaitha despite persistent rumors.
``But underground facilities by definition are very hard to detect,'' he said. ``When you inspect a place so often, you get overconfident about what you know. It would have been very easy for the inspectors to explain away any excessive radiation at Tuwaitha. The Iraqis could have hidden something clandestine in plain sight.''
American intelligence analysts said before the U.S.-led campaign began that new structures photographed at Tuwaitha might indicate a revival of weapons work. IAEA inspectors checked but found nothing.
The Tuwaitha complex, run by the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission on a bend in the Tigris River about 18 miles south of Baghdad, was the heart of Saddam's former nuclear program and was involved in the final design of a nuclear bomb before Iraq's nuclear program was destroyed by U.N. teams after the 1991 Gulf War.
The IAEA, charged with the hunt for evidence of a nuclear program in Iraq, told the Security Council just before the war that it had uncovered no firm evidence that Saddam was renewing efforts to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, clearly wary of any coalition claims, said this week that any alleged discoveries of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would have to be verified by U.N. inspectors ``to generate the required credibility.''
ElBaradei said the inspectors should return as soon as possible, subject to Security Council guidance, to resume their search for banned arms.
----
Weapons-Grade Plutonium Possibly Found at Iraqi Nuke Complex
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,83821,00.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. Marines may have found weapons-grade plutonium in a massive underground facility discovered beneath Iraq's Al Tuwaitha nuclear complex, an embedded reporter told Fox News Thursday.
Coalition forces are investigating a stash of radioactive material found at the site south of Baghdad, the reporter, Carl Prine of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, told Fox News.
The material was discovered at the complex, which is operated by the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission and is located south of Baghdad's suburbs.
While officials aren't prepared to call the discovery a "smoking gun," two preliminary tests conducted on the material have indicated that it may be weapons-grade plutonium.
The discovery of the underground labyrinth of labs and warehouses was unexpected, Fox News has confirmed, and forces in the area are testing a variety of things to best determine the significance of the find.
So far, Marine nuclear and intelligence experts have found 14 buildings that have high levels of radiation, Prine reported Thursday.
His report noted that some of the tests have found nuclear residue too deadly for human contact.
The Marine radiation detectors go "off the charts" a few hundred meters outside the nuclear compound, where locals say "missile water" is stored in enormous caverns, reported Prine, who is embedded with the U.S. 1st Marine Division.
"It's amazing," Chief Warrant Officer Darrin Flick, the battalion's nuclear, biological and chemical warfare specialist told the newspaper. "I went to the off-site storage buildings, and the rad detector went off the charts. Then I opened the steel door, and there were all these drums, many, many drums, of highly radioactive material."
This underground discovery could still test to be perfectly legitimate and offer no proof of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The CIA encouraged international inspectors in the fall of 2002 to probe Al Tuwaitha for weapons of mass destruction, and the inspectors came away empty-handed.
"They went through that site multiple times, but did they go underground? I never heard anything about that," physicist David Albright, a former IAEA Action Team inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997, told the Tribune-Review.
"The Marines should be particularly careful because of those high readings," he told the paper. "Three hours at levels like that and people begin to vomit. That leads me to wonder, if the readings are accurate, whether radioactive material was deliberately left there to expose people to dangerous levels.
"You couldn't do scientific work in levels like that. You would die."
Capt. John Seegar, a combat engineer commander from Houston, is currently running the operation in Al Tuwaitha. "I've never seen anything like it, ever," he told the Tribune-Review. "How did the world miss all of this? Why couldn't they see what was happening here?"
Fox News' Carl Cameron contributed to this report.
----
Annan Seeks Inspectors' Return to Iraq
April 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-UN-Inspectors.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- With U.S. disarmament teams already operating inside Iraq, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday he expects U.N. weapons inspectors to be able to return as soon as possible.
``I think they are the ones with the mandate to disarm Iraq, and when the situation permits they should go back to resume their work,'' Annan said.
But the Bush administration, which argued bitterly with chief inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei over whether Iraq has chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, hasn't invited U.N. inspectors to take part in the disarmament process.
Instead, the United States has tried to hire away some of the U.N. inspectors, whose years of dealing with Iraq have made them the world's foremost authorities on the country's weapons arsenal.
``We're still in a military phase,'' said Richard Grenell, spokesman for U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, when asked whether U.N. inspectors would be returning.
Under Security Council resolutions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, U.N. inspectors must certify that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs have been dismantled before sanctions can be lifted. It isn't clear how sanctions could be eliminated if the inspectors are barred from returning.
The U.N. Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission -- known as UNMOVIC and headed by Blix -- is responsible for overseeing the elimination of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs, along with the long-range missiles that deliver them. The International Atomic Energy Agency, headed by ElBaradei, is responsible for eliminating Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
While the United States has given no indication it wants the U.N. inspectors back, its closest ally, Britain, has backed their return.
``That suits us,'' said Britain's U.N. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock. ``We would like UNMOVIC to play a role in objective identification and verification of what WMD (weapons of mass destruction) turn up.''
The U.S. disarmament specialists are equipped with ground-penetrating radar, sensors and sample-taking apparatus similar to that used by U.N. inspectors. Working with several former U.N. inspectors, they will probably go to many of the same locations the U.N. teams have visited.
U.S. intelligence experts will question Iraqis involved in weapons programs, while experts comb sites and analyze samples in the field using mobile labs.
U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq for the first time in four years in late November, soon after the Security Council strengthened inspections and gave Baghdad a final chance to disarm peacefully or face serious consequences. When the council refused to back a war, President Bush gave Saddam Hussein an ultimatum to disarm and then launched an attack March 20.
Annan ordered all U.N. international staff to leave Baghdad shortly before the war began.
The secretary-general stressed the inspectors' ``mandate is still valid'' and Blix has said his teams are ready to return on short notice.
-------- korea
CIA Report: N. Korea Goal Is Two Nukes a Year
Thu April 10, 2003
By Tabassum Zakaria
(Reuters)
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2547057
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-cia.html
WASHINGTON - North Korea early last year appeared to have the goal of building a plant that could produce enough uranium for two or more nuclear weapons a year, a CIA report said on Thursday.
The semiannual unclassified report to Congress assessed the acquisition of technology related to weapons of mass destruction for various countries during the first half of 2002. It was posted on the CIA's Web site, www.cia.gov.
Since the period covered by the report, a North Korean nuclear crisis has erupted with Pyongyang expelling U.N. arms inspectors, withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarting a nuclear reactor.
"The United States has remained suspicious that North Korea has been working on uranium enrichment for several years," the CIA report said. "However, we did not obtain clear evidence indicating that North Korea had begun constructing a centrifuge facility until recently," it said.
"North Korea's goal appears to be a plant that could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for two or more nuclear weapons per year when fully operational," the report said.
The CIA has at other times said that North Korea probably already has one or two nuclear weapons.
The report repeated U.S. intelligence assertions that North Korea has a Taepodong-2 ballistic missile capable of reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear weapon that may be ready for flight-testing.
North Korea was believed to have a "sizable stockpile" of chemical weapons and could weaponize biological warfare agents "and may have such weapons available for use," it said.
IRAN WEAPONS
The United States was convinced that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, the CIA assessment for early last year said. "We suspect that Tehran is interested in acquiring foreign fissile material and technology for weapons development as part of its overall nuclear weapons program," it said.
Russia has provided expertise and assistance to help Iran develop a nuclear technology infrastructure, the report said.
Iran sought chemicals and technology and expertise from Chinese entities that could further its efforts to produce nerve agents, the report said.
"Iran already has stockpiled blister, blood, and choking agents -- and the bombs and artillery shells to deliver them -- which it previously has manufactured. It probably also has made some nerve agents," the report said.
Iran "probably" has a biological warfare program, the report said. "It is likely that Iran has capabilities to produce small quantities of BW agents, but has a limited ability to weaponize them," the report said.
The United States has dubbed North Korea, Iran and Iraq as members of an "axis of evil."
The lengthiest section was on Iraq's suspected weapons programs, but that issue has been overtaken by events given the current U.S. war against Baghdad that appears to have toppled the old government.
The main reason given by the United States for the war against Iraq was that Baghdad was allegedly hiding nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs. So far there is no confirmation that any such programs have been uncovered by U.S. troops.
The threat of terrorists using chemical, biological and nuclear materials continued to rise, said the report, which covered the period shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the United States has blamed on the al Qaeda network.
But "terrorists" would probably continue to favor conventional tactics such as bombings and shootings, it said.
"We assess that terrorist groups are capable of conducting attacks using radiological dispersal devices," the report said, referring to so-called dirty bombs.
"In addition, we must be alert to the possibility that al Qaeda or other terrorist groups might also try to launch conventional attacks against the chemical or nuclear industrial infrastructure of the United States to cause panic and economic disruption," the report said.
----
N. Korea Treaty Withdrawal Concerns U.N.
April 10, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-North-Korea.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. Security Council refused Wednesday to act on a U.S. request to condemn North Korea for pulling out of a treaty to curb nuclear weapons because of strong opposition from China and Russia. But U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte called the council's expression of concern ``an acceptable outcome.'' He expressed hope that North Korea ``will not reject diplomatic efforts to address its nuclear program'' and warned Pyongyang against any ``further escalatory steps.''
At the heart of the dispute is North Korea's insistence on direct talks with the United States, which it views as a threat to its security.
The Bush administration, which has called North Korea part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iran and Iraq, insists that the problem be addressed in a multilateral forum, including countries threatened by Pyongyang's nuclear program.
China, Russia, the European Union and Secretary-General Kofi Annan have tried to get North Korea and the United States to the negotiating table. U.N. envoy Maurice Strong, who just returned from Pyongyang, said Tuesday both sides now agree to hold direct and multilateral talks, but haven't agreed on the format.
North Korea has warned that any Security Council action would undermine peace efforts and it has reiterated several times that it would regard U.N. sanctions as a declaration of war.
With such high stakes, council members chose to take no action, hoping to instead find an acceptable framework for talks.
``The council will continue to follow up developments of this matter. There is nothing else to add to this,'' said council president Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Mexico's U.N. Ambassador.
China's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday the Security Council had no business discussing North Korea's nuclear program.
Leaving Wednesday's meeting, China's U.N. Ambassador, Wang Yingfan, said, ``I think it was a good discussion. All the efforts are being done, and will continue, to promote political dialogue -- that's what I stressed.''
``The only way the problem is going to be solved is direct bilateral dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang, and whatever multilateral formats are used should be in addition to this,'' said Russia's U.N. Ambassador, Sergey Lavrov.
The standoff began in October when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted it had a clandestine nuclear program. North Korea's U.N. Ambassador Pak Gil Yon called the report ``a rumor.''
Washington suspended fuel shipments that were part of a 1994 agreement with the United States that froze North Korea's nuclear program. The North retaliated by expelling U.N. nuclear monitors and withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as of Thursday.
It then took steps to restart its frozen nuclear program, saying it would be limited, for the moment, to peaceful purposes such as electricity production.
The International Atomic Energy Agency referred the issue of North Korea's withdrawal to the council in February.
Even though the council did not agree on a statement, Negroponte said the outcome of Wednesday's meeting was ``acceptable.''
``Diplomatic contacts ... are taking place bilaterally, multilaterally, between all the countries in the region around the Korean peninsula -- China, Japan, South Korea and so forth,'' he said.
According to Japan's Kyodo news agency, the United States and North Korea held working-level talks over three days last week.
While Negroponte stressed that the United States seeks a peaceful solution, he said: ``I don't think we rule out the possibility of action by the council in the future. We haven't taken any option off the table.''
On Wednesday, North Korea warned Japan against raising tensions in the region, saying Japan was within range of the communist state's missiles.
``Japan should behave with discretion, clearly mindful that it is also within the striking range of the DPRK,'' said Pyongyang's official news agency KCNA, using the initials of North Korea's official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
--------
UNITED NATIONS
Security Council Averts Standoff on North Korea Nuclear Issue
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 9 - The Security Council today stepped back from a potential standoff over North Korea's withdrawal from the treaty that prohibits it from developing nuclear weapons, as China signaled its openness to "promote political dialogue" and the United States eased off its pursuit of a formal statement of condemnation.
Both the Chinese and American actions represented discreet pullbacks from earlier positions taken after the International Atomic Energy Agency referred the question of North Korea's nuclear program to the Security Council two months ago.
Beijing, like Moscow, had pushed for bilateral talks between the United States and the North Koreans, something that the Bush administration opposes. It has said that the North Korean question should be the responsibility of all its major neighbors, and should be handled in a multilateral forum.
The United States, Council diplomats said, had indicated its preference for some kind of Security Council statement, a move which both the Chinese and the South Koreans felt would be unduly provocative.
South Korea's permanent representative to the United Nations, Sun Joun Yung, said this afternoon, "now, as you know, the efforts for realizing a multilateral forum proposed by the U.S. and supported by my government" are continuing.
He added, "I am of the view that any actions taken at this time by the Security Council is not conducive to such an effort."
North Korea's bellicose response to Security Council involvement was typified by its statement Sunday that any move by the Security Council would be considered "a prelude to war." North Korea's withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty takes effect on Thursday.
John D. Negroponte, the United States ambassador, said that North Korea's recent actions, including the restarting of its nuclear reactor and preparations for reprocessing spent fuel into weapons-grade plutonium, "all threaten the stability of Northeast Asia."
North Korea, he said, must not only abandon its "nuclear weapons ambitions," it must "accept a reliable verification regime. This would include cooperation, declarations, inspections and monitoring."
But, he added, "Achieving a multilateral solution may take time but efforts can proceed on several tracks." These words appeared to be a nod to the discussions by diplomats representing Japan, China, Russia and South Korea.
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Wang Yingfan, avoided reporters as he left the chambers today, pausing at the front door of the United Nations to say: "I think it was a good discussion. All the efforts are being done, and will continue, to promote political dialogue. That's what I stressed."
Russia's ambassador, Sergey Lavrov, continued to insist that the primary solution to the North Korean nuclear issue should come through bilateral talks between Washington and North Korea, adding, "whatever multilateral formats are used should be in addition to this."
Since the last significant confrontation between Washington and North Korea six weeks ago when North Korean fighter jets tried to force an American reconnaissance plane to land in North Korea there has been little if anything new in the way of provocative action from the North, though that government's rhetoric remains strident.
South Korea's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Yoon Young kwan said today that Seoul was "cautiously optimistic" over the prospects of resolving the North Korean nuclear row in a peaceful way through dialogue. He added, "It would be better if the issue can be settled through multilateral dialogue outside the U.N. organization."
Council diplomats expressed muted satisfaction today that this new, potentially divisive disarmament issue, which appeared on their agenda a month before the bombs began to drop on Baghdad, was evolving into a far less divisive issue than the question of Iraqi disarmament.
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, the envoy from Mexico, which holds the rotating Council presidency this month, made it clear that the Council was not abandoning the North Korean issue, but waiting to see how it develops. "The Council will continue to follow up developments of this matter," he said.
-------- russia
Russia Says N.Korea May Ignore UN on Nuclear Crisis
April 10, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-russia.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Thursday North Korea could well ignore any decision reached by the United Nations on its suspected nuclear weapons program.
Speaking to reporters after talks with South Korean Defense Minister Cho Young-kil, Ivanov said Seoul and Moscow agreed North Korea and the United States should refrain from using harsh language during the crisis, which began last October when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted having an atomic plan.
``I do not rule out that if any decision whatsoever is taken by the United Nations on this question it will be ignored by Pyongyang, which will refer to other precedents,'' Ivanov said.
The minister, who was also meeting President Roh Moo-hyun, said bilateral or multilateral talks should be held so that North Korea would re-enter the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it left on January 10 and allow U.N. nuclear inspectors back in.
``Of course, that would occur after having received full and absolute guarantees on its territorial integrity and independence and guarantees against any kind of hostile intentions toward that state,'' Ivanov said, referring to North Korea's demand for a non-aggression pact with Washington.
He said Russia was prepared to offer such a guarantee of its own to North Korea but, clearly, Pyongyang's main concern is Washington -- North Korea says the United States will attack it after Iraq, something U.S. officials deny.
U.S. officials reiterated on Wednesday that they wanted a peaceful solution to the nuclear standoff and that diplomatic efforts could follow several tracks.
The officials spoke after the U.N. Security Council had failed to issue a statement on North Korea because of resistance from China and Russia.
Ivanov said Pyongyang's logic in deciding to acquire a deterrent -- he did not specifically refer to nuclear weapons -- was based on the U.S. strategy toward Iraq, which went from failed diplomatic efforts to a U.S.-led war that has ended Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's 24-year reign.
``If one talks frankly about a link between the crisis in Iraq and on the Korean peninsula, then in my view there clearly is one,'' he said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
US to bolster its nuclear test readiness
AFP,
April 9, 2003
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_230567,0005.htm
Washington - The United States has decided to dramatically bolster its readiness for conducting underground nuclear tests in order to ensure the reliability of its nuclear deterrent force, a senior administration official has announced.
Linton Brooks, the acting head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, told Congress on Tuesday that a study conducted by his agency last year had led the US government "to conclude that the right posture is to be ready for a test within approximately 18 months."
The United States has maintained a voluntary moratorium on nuclear tests since 1992, along with Britain, China, France and Russia.
But under a directive signed by former president Bill Clinton in 1993, the US government should have the capacity to resume nuclear testing in 24 to 36 months, if the international situation would warrant such a step.
The decision, announced by Brooks before the Senate Sub committee on Strategic Forces, essentially discards Clinton's order while placing the Republican administration of President George W Bush on a faster track toward resuming nuclear testing, should it decide to do so.
The money needed for altering the posture has already been included in the nearly 5.9-billion-dollar US nuclear weapons budget approved by Congress earlier this year, according to Brooks.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Judge Orders Faster Review of Cooling Unit at Indian Point
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By WINNIE HU
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/nyregion/10INDI.html
ALBANY, April 9 - A State Supreme Court justice ordered state environmental officials today to speed up their review of the cooling system for the Indian Point nuclear complex in Westchester County, after environmentalists argued that it killed large numbers of fish by drawing water from the Hudson River.
After hearing oral arguments, Justice Thomas W. Keegan ordered the State Department of Environmental Conservation to issue a draft permit for Indian Point's cooling system by Nov. 14. The environmentalists and the plant's owners each called the ruling a victory.
The twin reactors are situated along the river in Buchanan, N.Y., about 40 miles from Manhattan.
Indian Point initially received a permit from the state environmental agency in 1982, which was renewed in 1987, and it was allowed to continue operating its cooling system after that permit expired in 1992. The water-based system, which is standard for nuclear power plants, draws up to 2.5 billion gallons of river water a day during the summer to cool the steam turbines at Indian Point.
In October, Assemblymen Richard L. Brodsky - who represents central Westchester - and a coalition of environmentalists and politicians, including the folk singer Pete Seeger, sued the D.E.C. and Indian Point's owner, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, citing what they called illegal delays in the permit process and a lapse in oversight over Indian Point.
Dan Gilbert, a spokesman for the environmental department, said that Indian Point submitted a "timely and sufficient renewal application" in 1992. Afterward, he said, state officials spent years negotiating with Indian Point and environmental groups over the permit process and only completed a draft environmental-impact study in 1999, shortly before it was sued. "It's been a long process," he said. "And there were absolutely no intentional delays."
Mr. Brodsky said that under today's court order, the D.E.C. will have to issue a draft permit for Indian Point compelling it to "use the best technology available" to stop polluting the river. "The goal was to stop the enormous damage done to the Hudson for the past 25 years," he said. "It was illegal, and it was bad for the river and bad for the public, and that ended today."
But Entergy officials countered that they were not harming the fish population, and pointed out that the court order did not specify that they would have to change their cooling system. Larry Gottlieb, director of communications for Entergy Nuclear Northeast, even called the ruling "a major victory for us because we've been waiting for this permit for 10 years."
Mr. Gottlieb called the lawsuit another attempt by Indian Point's opponents to shut it down. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many citizens' groups and state and local politicians have questioned the safety of Indian Point, and jammed public hearings to demand that it be closed. "What they're trying to do is make it so cost-prohibitive to run a nuclear generating plant in this area that you'll be forced to shut down," he said.
For decades, environmental groups have argued that Indian Point has killed millions of fish by sucking them into its cooling system, or by discharging heated water back into the Hudson - a claim that has been vigorously disputed by Indian Point workers.
-------- washington
U.S. Energy Department Sues Washington State
April 10, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2003/2003-04-10-09.asp#anchor1
WASHINGTON, DC, The U.S. Department of Energy filed suit Wednesday against the state of Washington's Department of Ecology over its attempt to influence shipments of radioactive waste to and from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
The Department of Energy filed suit, according to officials, because Washington state officials with the Ecology Department imposed deadlines on some of the cleanup of the site's transuranic waste. It is the latest salvo in a battle between state and federal officials who disagree about the progress being made to clean up the waste.
Decisions by officials within the Washington Department of Ecology "could have a chilling effect on cleanup operations at Hanford and elsewhere," explained Jessie Roberson, assistant secretary of environmental management at the U.S. Department of Energy.
"Washington was the first state to sign-up to the [Energy Department's] accelerated clean up program," Roberson said. " But we are not sure the state understands the unintended consequences of its recent actions, which could call shipments of transuranic waste around the country into question, not just shipments of waste into Washington, but also shipments of waste out of Washington."
The government filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington and in state court.
The state of Washington sued the Department of Energy at the end of February, challenging its shipments of radioactive waste to the site. State officials contend the federal government should be moving forward with disposal of the site's existing waste before accepting more.
A coalition of public interest groups have also filed suit to prevent further shipments to Hanford, which holds 60 percent of the nation's radioactive waste.
Additional shipments have been temporarily suspended by a court order.
"We believe we can work with the state of this issue to an eventual agreement, but in light of Washington's actions, we felt we had to file this lawsuit to protect out interests," Roberson said.
-------- us politics
Iraq's weapons 'must be found'
Thursday, 10 April, 2003
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2933923.stm
One of the satellite photographs used by Colin Powell on 5 February in his speech to the UN Security Council
In a presentation before the war, the US tried to prove Iraq still had banned weapons
The US defence secretary has said that finding any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is still a major concern.
Asked at a news conference whether the rationale behind the war required that such banned weapons be found, Donald Rumsfeld said he did not "quite get the thrust of the question", but agreed that "it obviously is important to find them".
Washington based its case for an invasion on Iraq's alleged possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, but UN inspectors failed to find definitive examples of such possession and fears that Iraqi forces would use such weapons have failed to materialise.
Earlier, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said he had no doubt they would be found.
Mr Rumsfeld said weapons production facilities needed to be "found and secured".
He warned of a "nexus between terrorist states... and terrorist groups".
The possibility that "some of these weapons could leave the country and [get into] the hands of terrorist networks would be a very unhappy prospect," he said.
'No doubt'
Facing questions in parliament, Mr Blair said it was not surprising that no banned weapons had yet been found, only three weeks after US and British forces invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
But he added: "I have no doubt at all that these weapons of mass destruction exist... The truth is there has been a six-month campaign of concealment."
It was important for the world to have any banned weapons finds "objectively verified", perhaps by United Nations inspectors, he added.
This concern was echoed by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Mr ElBaradei said any suspected weapons finds by the UK or the US should be verified by UN inspectors "to generate the required credibility".
Mr Blair and Mr ElBaradei's stress on external verification of suspect weaponry found is being seen as tacit acknowledgement that some observers believe coalition forces could be tempted to fabricate such "evidence" if it proves elusive.
Blix's doubts
In an interview with Spanish daily El Pais, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix hinted he believed Iraq's contended possession of weapons of mass destruction had served as a pretext for a US-led invasion.
"There is evidence this war was planned well in advance," he said.
"You ask yourself a lot of questions when you see the things they [the US] did to try and demonstrate that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons, like the fake contract with Niger," he said.
He was referring to the discovery by UN inspectors that documents the US alleged proved Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state had been forged.
Mr Blix said he thought finding banned weapons in Iraq was now a low priority for coalition forces - and that "today, the main aim is to change the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein".
'Threat remains'
US commanders continue to stress the threat posed by banned weapons.
On Wednesday, US Brigadier General Vincent Brooks warned that Saddam loyalists were still holding out in some parts of northern Iraq, and might resort to using weapons of mass destruction.
On Monday, US defence officials said that initial field tests on a number of chemicals found near the city of Karbala suggested the possible presence of the nerve agents sarin and tabun, as well as mustard gas.
But there have already been a series of false alarms.
On Saturday, US officials admitted to the latest, when they said tests on thousands of vials of white powder touted to be a possible chemical warfare agent revealed it was more likely to be an explosive or antidote.
----
The neoconservative agenda
Which country is next on the list?
William Pfaff
IHT
Thursday, April 10, 2003
http://www.iht.com/articles/92679.html
PARIS - The Bush administration, determined to remake the Middle East by remaking Iraq, now has the bit between its teeth.
Few had seriously doubted that the military forces of the United States would overcome Iraq's army in fairly short order. It was the administration itself that fueled contrary fantasies of military disaster caused by the supposed threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - weapons that might tomorrow be used against the American "homeland" itself.
The balance of conventional forces said that Iraq's defeat was a military inevitability; the single question open to discussion was whether Iraq's population or a part of it might rally to the invaders, or on the other hand support irregular or terrorist resistance.
Quick victory now is taken for granted in Washington, and the debate has moved on to two other matters: who will govern a conquered Iraq, and which country will be the next American target.
President George W. Bush went to Belfast on Monday to discuss the first of those questions. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who still believes that he can bridge certain now-unbridgeable Atlantic differences, settled for a common statement that the United Nations will play a "vital" role in conquered Iraq.
That will not satisfy Europeans or others who insist on international law, which holds that military conquest affords only limited authority to alter the political structure and rights of a defeated country - and limits the disposition of such national assets and resources as Iraq's oil.
But even Secretary of State Colin Powell - internationalism and multilateralism's bulwark in the Bush government - has said that the United States has not come all this way in order to let some other authority dominate Iraq.
Given that possession is nine-tenths of the law, the government of Iraq will undoubtedly be taken over by former General Jay Garner - a protégé of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a unilateralist - and his shadow cabinet of former diplomats and businessmen named as interim authority for Iraq.
The more important question is what country will be next.
Until now the existence of a "next" has been in some doubt. But unless victory in Iraq is marred by a punishing irregular resistance, or a persisting political breakdown and factional struggle, the Bush administration seems likely to proceed with the neoconservatives' program for remaking, by military means if necessary, the political culture of the Muslim Middle East.
That means building on the political reconstruction of Iraq to cause eventual "regime change," spontaneous or otherwise, in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Libya. (North Korea is another problem.)
The neoconservative publicist and Washington columnist Charles Krauthammer says that if Iraq becomes "pro-Western and if it becomes the focus of American influence," an American presence in Iraq "will project power across the region, [suffusing] the rebels in Iran with courage and strength, and [deterring and restraining] Syria." (I am quoting a summary of his views recently published in the Israeli daily Haaretz.)
This will "enhance the place of America in the world for the coming generation." The outcome "will shape the world for the next 25 years."
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz is generally acknowledged as the man whose determination and bureaucratic skill turned President George W. Bush's reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks into a decision to overturn Iraq's regime. He calls the neoconservative crusade to change the Arab world an application of "the power of the democratic idea." His critics call him a naive and dangerous ideologue. But his program, at this moment of success in Iraq, seems the most important single influence on Bush administration policy.
This is not good news. There are three things to be said about the neoconservatives and what they want.
The first is that they act out of fear. They are motivated by fear of terrorist bands, armed by Islamic states, wielding weapons of mass destruction, even though this is politically, technologically and militarily highly implausible.
There is an element of hysteria in this fear, as there was a quarter-century ago when Washington convinced itself that a victory by peasant insurgents in Vietnam would lead to world domination by "Asian communism" and to the isolation and destruction of the United States.
Second, they are naive. Krauthammer says it is "racist" to think that "Arabs" can't govern themselves democratically. The problem in the Middle East is not "Arabs." The problem is a powerful historical culture that functions on categories of value absolutes and religious certainties hostile to the pragmatic relativisms of Western democracy. Military conquest and good intentions will not change that.
Finally, the neoconservatives are fanatics. They believe it is worth killing people for unproved ideas. Traditional morality says that war is justified in legitimate defense. Totalitarian morality justifies war to make people or societies better.
----
How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington - and Launched a War
by Michael Lind
April 10, 2003
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html
Save a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.comSave a link to this article and return to it at www.savethis.com Email a link to this articleEmail a link to this article Printer-friendly version of this articlePrinter-friendly version of this article View a list of the most popular articles on our siteView a list of the most popular articles on our site
America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve? Quasi-Marxist explanations involving big oil or American capitalism are mistaken. Yes, American oil companies and contractors will accept the spoils of the kill in Iraq. But the oil business, with its Arabist bias, did not push for this war any more than it supports the Bush administration's close alliance with Ariel Sharon. Further, President Bush and Vice President Cheney are not genuine "Texas oil men" but career politicians who, in between stints in public life, would have used their connections to enrich themselves as figureheads in the wheat business, if they had been residents of Kansas, or in tech companies, had they been Californians.
Equally wrong is the theory that the American and European civilizations are evolving in opposite directions. The thesis of Robert Kagan, the neoconservative propagandist, that Americans are martial and Europeans pacifist, is complete nonsense. A majority of Americans voted for either Al Gore or Ralph Nader in 2000. Were it not for the overrepresentation of sparsely populated, right-wing states in both the presidential electoral college and the Senate, the White House and the Senate today would be controlled by Democrats, whose views and values, on everything from war to the welfare state, are very close to those of western Europeans.
Both the economic-determinist theory and the clash-of-cultures theory are reassuring: They assume that the recent revolution in U.S. foreign policy is the result of obscure but understandable forces in an orderly world. The truth is more alarming. As a result of several bizarre and unforeseeable contingencies - such as the selection rather than election of George W. Bush, and Sept. 11 - the foreign policy of the world's only global power is being made by a small clique that is unrepresentative of either the U.S. population or the mainstream foreign policy establishment.
The core group now in charge consists of neoconservative defense intellectuals. (They are called "neoconservatives" because many of them started off as anti-Stalinist leftists or liberals before moving to the far right.) Inside the government, the chief defense intellectuals include Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. He is the defense mastermind of the Bush administration; Donald Rumsfeld is an elderly figurehead who holds the position of defense secretary only because Wolfowitz himself is too controversial. Others include Douglas Feith, No. 3 at the Pentagon; Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a Wolfowitz protégé who is Cheney's chief of staff; John R. Bolton, a right-winger assigned to the State Department to keep Colin Powell in check; and Elliott Abrams, recently appointed to head Middle East policy at the National Security Council. On the outside are James Woolsey, the former CIA director, who has tried repeatedly to link both 9/11 and the anthrax letters in the U.S. to Saddam Hussein, and Richard Perle, who has just resigned his unpaid chairmanship of a defense department advisory body after a lobbying scandal. Most of these "experts" never served in the military. But their headquarters is now the civilian defense secretary's office, where these Republican political appointees are despised and distrusted by the largely Republican career soldiers.
Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy." They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.
The neocon defense intellectuals, as well as being in or around the actual Pentagon, are at the center of a metaphorical "pentagon" of the Israel lobby and the religious right, plus conservative think tanks, foundations and media empires. Think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) provide homes for neocon "in-and-outers" when they are out of government (Perle is a fellow at AEI). The money comes not so much from corporations as from decades-old conservative foundations, such as the Bradley and Olin foundations, which spend down the estates of long-dead tycoons. Neoconservative foreign policy does not reflect business interests in any direct way. The neocons are ideologues, not opportunists.
The major link between the conservative think tanks and the Israel lobby is the Washington-based and Likud-supporting Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa), which co-opts many non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq. In October 2000, he cosigned a Jinsa letter that began: "We ... believe that during the current upheavals in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces have exercised remarkable restraint in the face of lethal violence orchestrated by the leadership of [the] Palestinian Authority."
The Israel lobby itself is divided into Jewish and Christian wings. Wolfowitz and Feith have close ties to the Jewish-American Israel lobby. Wolfowitz, who has relatives in Israel, has served as the Bush administration's liaison to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Feith was given an award by the Zionist Organization of America, citing him as a "pro-Israel activist." While out of power in the Clinton years, Feith collaborated with Perle to coauthor a policy paper for Likud that advised the Israeli government to end the Oslo peace process, reoccupy the territories, and crush Yasser Arafat's government.
Such experts are not typical of Jewish-Americans, who mostly voted for Gore in 2000. The most fervent supporters of Likud in the Republican electorate are Southern Protestant fundamentalists. The religious right believes that God gave all of Palestine to the Jews, and fundamentalist congregations spend millions to subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
The final corner of the neoconservative pentagon is occupied by several right-wing media empires, with roots - odd as it seems - in the British Commonwealth and South Korea. Rupert Murdoch disseminates propaganda through his Fox television network. His magazine, the Weekly Standard - edited by William Kristol, the former chief of staff of Dan Quayle (vice president, 1989-1993) - acts as a mouthpiece for defense intellectuals such as Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and Woolsey as well as for Sharon's government. The National Interest (of which I was executive editor, 1991-1994) is now funded by Conrad Black, who owns the Jerusalem Post and the Hollinger empire in Britain and Canada.
Strangest of all is the media network centered on the Washington Times - owned by the South Korean messiah (and ex-convict) the Rev. Sun Myung Moon - which owns the newswire UPI. UPI is now run by John O'Sullivan, the ghostwriter for Margaret Thatcher who once worked as an editor for Conrad Black in Canada. Through such channels, the "gotcha!" style of right-wing British journalism, and its Europhobic substance, have contaminated the US conservative movement.
The corners of the neoconservative pentagon were linked together in the 1990s by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), run by Kristol out of the Weekly Standard offices. Using a P.R. technique pioneered by their Trotskyist predecessors, the neocons published a series of public letters whose signatories often included Wolfowitz and other future members of the Bush foreign policy team. They called for the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq and to support Israel's campaigns against the Palestinians (dire warnings about China were another favorite). During Clinton's two terms, these fulminations were ignored by the foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media. Now they are frantically being studied.
How did the neocon defense intellectuals - a small group at odds with most of the U.S. foreign policy elite, Republican as well as Democratic - manage to capture the Bush administration? Few supported Bush during the presidential primaries. They feared that the second Bush would be like the first - a wimp who had failed to occupy Baghdad in the first Gulf War and who had pressured Israel into the Oslo peace process - and that his administration, again like his father's, would be dominated by moderate Republican realists such as Powell, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. They supported the maverick senator John McCain until it became clear that Bush would get the nomination.
Then they had a stroke of luck - Cheney was put in charge of the presidential transition (the period between the election in November and the accession to office in January). Cheney used this opportunity to stack the administration with his hard-line allies. Instead of becoming the de facto president in foreign policy, as many had expected, Secretary of State Powell found himself boxed in by Cheney's right-wing network, including Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton and Libby.
The neocons took advantage of Bush's ignorance and inexperience. Unlike his father, a Second World War veteran who had been ambassador to China, director of the CIA, and vice president, George W was a thinly educated playboy who had failed repeatedly in business before becoming the governor of Texas, a largely ceremonial position (the state's lieutenant governor has more power). His father is essentially a northeastern moderate Republican; George W, raised in west Texas, absorbed the Texan cultural combination of machismo, anti-intellectualism and overt religiosity. The son of upper-class Episcopalian parents, he converted to Southern fundamentalism in a midlife crisis. Fervent Christian Zionism, along with an admiration for macho Israeli soldiers that sometimes coexists with hostility to liberal Jewish-American intellectuals, is a feature of the Southern culture.
The younger Bush was tilting away from Powell and toward Wolfowitz ("Wolfie," as he calls him) even before 9/11 gave him something he had lacked: a mission in life other than following in his dad's footsteps. There are signs of estrangement between the cautious father and the crusading son: Last year, veterans of the first Bush administration, including Baker, Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger, warned publicly against an invasion of Iraq without authorization from Congress and the U.N.
It is not clear that George W fully understands the grand strategy that Wolfowitz and other aides are unfolding. He seems genuinely to believe that there was an imminent threat to the U.S. from Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," something the leading neocons say in public but are far too intelligent to believe themselves. The Project for the New American Century urged an invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years, for reasons that had nothing to do with possible links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Public letters signed by Wolfowitz and others called on the U.S. to invade and occupy Iraq, to bomb Hezbollah bases in Lebanon, and to threaten states such as Syria and Iran with U.S. attacks if they continued to sponsor terrorism. Claims that the purpose is not to protect the American people but to make the Middle East safe for Israel are dismissed by the neocons as vicious anti-Semitism. Yet Syria, Iran and Iraq are bitter enemies, with their weapons pointed at each other, and the terrorists they sponsor target Israel rather than the U.S. The neocons urge war with Iran next, though by any rational measurement North Korea's new nuclear arsenal is, for the U.S., a far greater problem.
So that is the bizarre story of how neoconservatives took over Washington and steered the U.S. into a Middle Eastern war unrelated to any plausible threat to the U.S. and opposed by the public of every country in the world except Israel. The frightening thing is the role of happenstance and personality. After the al-Qaida attacks, any U.S. president would likely have gone to war to topple bin Laden's Taliban protectors in Afghanistan. But everything that the U.S. has done since then would have been different had America's 18th century electoral rules not given Bush the presidency and had Cheney not used the transition period to turn the foreign policy executive into a PNAC reunion.
For a British equivalent, one would have to imagine a Tory government, with Downing Street and Whitehall controlled by followers of the Rev. Ian Paisley, extreme Euroskeptics, empire loyalists and Blimpish military types - all determined, for a variety of strategic or religious reasons, to invade Egypt. Their aim would be to regain the Suez Canal as the first step in a campaign to restore the British empire. Yes, it really is that weird.
----
Pentagon's favorites get a foot in the door
By Jim Lobe
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED10Ak02.html
WASHINGTON - When US President Franklin Roosevelt asked Joseph Stalin to consider seeking the advice of Pope Pius XII about the shape of post-World War II Europe, the Soviet dictator famously replied, "How many divisions does the pope have?"
The same question can now be asked about the US State Department, or even the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the British government, which have all argued for months that any postwar Iraq leadership should emerge only as a result of consultation, optimally under United Nations auspices, among mainly internal forces, as well as exile groups.
The Pentagon, on the other hand, has long favored the installation as soon as possible of an Interim Iraqi Authority (IIA) led by the exiled Iraqi National Congress (INC) of Ahmed Chalabi, to give an Iraqi face to the occupation authorities.
The White House has been coy. But on Sunday, President George W Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice appeared to side with the State Department, declaring that both internal figures and exile parties should play a role in any IIA.
So it came as some surprise when, as Rice was speaking, the Pentagon flew some 500 INC activists - plus Chalabi himself - from the northern Iraqi safe haven where they had been cooling their heels into the southern US-occupied city of Nasiriyah, where Chalabi quickly met with local dignitaries, apparently to gain their backing.
That this took place on the eve of Bush's Belfast meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair was regarded as particularly significant, since Blair had lined up solidly behind the State Department. "Bush agreed that we would not dream of parachuting people from outside Iraq to run Iraq," a senior Blair aide had told Newsweek two days before.
While senior Pentagon officials insisted that the move was not intended to give a leg up to Chalabi in the competition to succeed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the contingent as "basically the core of the new Iraqi army once Iraq is free".
An INC press release touted the force more precisely as the "First Battalion, Free Iraqi Forces (FIF)", although most of the activists were, according to the Washington Post, "so lightly armed they lacked even pistols, let alone assault rifles".
Their arrival, however, marked the successful culmination of a two-week-old campaign by neo-conservatives in and outside the administration to get the INC and Chalabi into Iraq before any other group, presumably to preempt any moves by the State Department or other opposition groups to claim the media spotlight.
It also marked the fact that, with 250,000 men on the ground, the Pentagon will be calling the shots in Iraq, even in defiance of other bureaucracies that, in contrast to the Defense Department, have real experts on Iraqi politics, history and culture who could prove helpful in carrying out an occupation.
"You can call this another aspect of [Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz's preemption strategy," said one administration official. "You can call this a coup d'etat."
Chalabi has long been a favorite of the neo-conservatives, particularly Wolfowitz and the powerful former chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle, who have led the drive to war with Iraq since September 11, 2001.
An extremely controversial figure, Chalabi, a London-based banker, first came to prominence in the West shortly after the first Gulf War in 1991 when he co-founded the INC, the first effort at building an umbrella for various opposition groups to rally against Saddam.
His opponents, particularly in the State Department and the CIA, which worked closely with him in the early 1990s to help instigate a coup against Saddam, consider him unreliable. They note that the INC itself has suffered many defections of promising Iraqis over the past decade due in major part to their complaints about Chalabi's imperious style and authoritarianism.
The former head of the US Central Command, retired General Anthony Zinni, who also has advised Secretary of State Colin Powell on the Middle East, has been particularly outspoken, referring to Chalabi and his INC colleagues as "silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London".
Chalabi's critics also point to his 1989 conviction for bank fraud in Jordan, from which he hurriedly fled after being tipped off about his indictment, as well as his and the INC's failure to predict the extent and ferocity of resistance to the US invasion of Iraq despite their long-standing claims of having thousands of sympathizers in key posts in Iraq ready to rise up once US troops appeared on the horizon.
Indeed, Chalabi and his major supporters in Washington were those who most confidently predicted that US soldiers would be greeted with "flowers and sweets" by the Iraqi population as they made their way from Kuwait to Baghdad.
Nonetheless, his backers have stuck ferociously behind him. They accuse the State Department and his other foes of representing the interests of the Sunni-dominated governments in the region, especially Saudi Arabia, which, say analysts at Perle's neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), fears that an Iraqi government headed by Chalabi, a Shi'ite like the majority of Iraqis, may provoke instability among its own Shi'ite population.
They also insist that Chalabi is devoted to human rights, democratization and a federal structure for a future Iraq that would provide greater autonomy for the country's disparate regions and groups, a model that also explains, they say, why he is opposed by many of Iraq's neighbors.
On foreign policy, the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon see in Chalabi a reliably ally, particularly in dealing with Syria and Iran, and who has also pledged to recognize Israel, thus moving the balance of power in the region solidly toward those wishing to make peace with Israel.
While Chalabi's networks inside Iraq may be less than what he has claimed - a recent CIA study reportedly found that "overwhelming numbers" of Iraqis were suspicious of Chalabi and the INC - his network of support in Washington and especially the Pentagon is considerable.
Half a dozen Republican senators called this week for the administration immediately to provide millions of dollars to the INC, while on Monday the Wall Street Journal, a longtime Chalabi champion, called on Bush to reject the State Department's and Blair's advice. The editorial page also doubled the INC force sent to southern Iraq from 500 to 1,000.
In addition, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a "citizens' group" chaired by former secretary of state George Shultz whose membership consists of a who's who of neo-conservatives outside the administration, has turned over its website to the INC.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Monday suggested that he might even defy Congress, which is leaning toward earmarking US$2.5 billion in relief and reconstruction aid for Iraq to the State Department instead of the Pentagon. "In the last analysis," he told reporters, "it's the president's policy, and whatever is put forward by the Congress by way of money will be expended in a way that the president decides should be expended."
--------
Hawks Set Sights on Iran, Syria as Baghdad Falls
April 10, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-hawks.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Emboldened by the U.S. military's apparent quick rout of Iraqi forces, conservative hawks in America are setting their sights on regime change in Iran and Syria.
``It's time to bring down the other terror masters,'' Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute wrote on Monday -- two days before U.S. troops swept into the heart of Baghdad -- in a piece entitled ``Syria and Iran Must Get Their Turn.''
``Iran, at least, offers Americans the possibility of a memorable victory, because the Iranian people openly loath the regime, and will enthusiastically combat it, if only the United States supports them in their just struggle,'' he added. ``Syria cannot stand alone against a successful democratic revolution that topples tyrannical regimes in Kabul, Tehran and Iraq.''
No one is explicitly advocating force against Syria or Iran but conservatives inside and out of the U.S. government hope the Iraq war will signal to Damascus and Tehran that seeking weapons of mass destruction may be hazardous to their health.
``I hope we could change the regimes without military force and I would not contemplate using military force in those places,'' said Kenneth Adelman, a former Pentagon aide and early advocate of toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by force.
``The combination of totalitarianism and weapons of mass destruction is a deadly combination for the world,'' he added.
While some conservatives believe the example of Iraq could serve to undermine the governments of some of its nondemocratic neighbors, others simply hope it will dissuade them from seeking biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
GETTING THE MESSAGE
John Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, told reporters in Rome he hoped Iran, Syria and North Korea -- which the United States believes is pursuing a nuclear weapons program -- will get the message.
``We are hopeful that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is not in their national interest,'' he said, citing the three when asked what the post-war period may hold.
A U.S. official played down the idea that the United States was contemplating using force against Iran or Syria, suggesting the hawks were simply reflecting the ``strategic ambiguity'' that the U.S. has long practiced with potential adversaries.
``When talking about threats from countries that have really bad track records and don't wish you well, U.S. policy has been to never rule anything out,'' he said. ``That doesn't mean you're actively contemplating an invasion or the use of force.''
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who on March 28 warned Syria and Iran not to meddle in the Iraq war, said on Wednesday the United States had evidence Damascus might be helping Saddam's relatives and supporters flee the country.
While he did not cite Syria or Iran by name, Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech to newspaper editors that the United States must ``do whatever it takes'' to defeat terrorism and must confront nations that sponsor it.
The United States regards Iran and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism. U.S. officials believe both are pursuing weapons of mass destruction, accusing Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program aims to produce electricity.
``In removing the terror regime from Iraq, we send a very clear message to all groups that operate by means of terror and violence against the innocent,'' Cheney said. ``The United States and our coalition partners are showing ... we have the capacity and the will to wage war on terror and to win decisively.''
``We have a further responsibility to help keep the peace of the world and to prevent the terrorists and their sponsors from plunging the world into horrific violence,'' he added.
Frank Gaffney, a senior Pentagon official under former President Ronald Reagan, said he believed that regime change should be the U.S. policy toward Iran and Syria and said the United States could not rule out the use of force.
``If the threat metastasizes in such a way that we consider it to leave us no choice but to use military force then that would have to be an option,'' he said.
Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy think tank, said many Iranians would like to see their government change and the United States should help them through information flows, economic assistance and possibly covert activity. ``The use of military force is probably genuinely the last resort here, but I certainly think it's like that we're going to see efforts made to bring about change in Iran as well as Syria ... and perhaps elsewhere in the region as a matter of the natural progression of this war on terror,'' he added.
--------
Powell Says U.S. Has No List of Countries to Attack
April 10, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iraq-usa-powell.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday Washington did not have a list of nations it plans to attack, as he tried to quell speculation that the United States may move on from Iraq to nations like Iran and Syria.
``The United States does not have some plan or some list with nations on the list that we're going to go attack one after another,'' Powell told Pakistan Television. The State Department released a transcript of the interview.
The U.S. military operation against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has sparked speculation it may turn its sights to Iran and Syria, which U.S. officials also accuse of supporting terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on March 28 accused Syria of providing military equipment to Iraq and said the United States viewed such trafficking ``as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments.''
Powell and other senior U.S. officials have said they hope Iraq's experience will persuade countries like Iran and Syria to stop pursuing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and to cease supporting what they call ``terrorist'' groups.
``We hope that as a result of what's happened in Iraq and ... of the revulsion that the world has for terrorist activity and the development of weapons of mass destruction, that some of the nations that we have been in touch with and speaking to, Syria and Iran, will move in a new direction,'' he said.
``The president has not ... been looking willy-nilly to use U.S. military force,'' added State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. ``He has made clear again and again ... that force was never his first option.''
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
CIA: New bin Laden tape likely authentic
4/10/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-04-10-binladen-tape_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Central Intelligence Agency has determined that a new audiotape obtained earlier his week is likely an authentic recording of Osama bin Laden, a U.S. intelligence official said Thursday.
The audiotape exhorts Muslims to rise up against Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bahrain and Afghanistan, which it claims are "agents of America," and calls for suicide attacks against U.S. and British interests to "avenge the innocent children" of Iraq.
CIA analysts, after listening to the audio, were fairly certain the voice was bin Laden's, according to the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The agency analyzed a brief excerpt from the tape after The Associated Press and other news organizations sought to authenticate whether the speaker was that of the terrorist leader.
There was also no clear indication of when the recording was made. It refers to the outbreak of war in Iraq, so officials suspect it was a recent recording. However, the references are so general that it is conceivable it was recorded before the war, the official said.
The 27-minute tape quotes extensively from the Muslim holy book, the Quran, and says jihad, or holy war, is the "only solution to all the problems."
The tape was obtained Monday by The Associated Press from an Algerian national, known as Aadil, who said he had slipped across the border from Afghanistan, where the tape was apparently recorded.
The message focused exclusively on suicide attacks, unlike many of bin Laden's previous messages, which bore many themes.
"Do not be afraid of their tanks and armored personnel carriers. These are artificial things," he said. "If you started suicide attacks you will see the fear of Americans all over the world. Those people who cannot join forces in jihad should give financial help to those mujahedeen who are fighting against U.S. aggression."
"The United States has attacked Iraq and soon he will also attack Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan. The attacks in Saudi Arabia and Egypt will be against Islamic movements there," the speaker says.
-------- africa
Briefly
April 10, 2003
Combined dispatches and staff reports
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030410-44271448.htm
CONGO: April 3 massacre toll revised as leaders meet
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Leaders from Africa's bloodstained Great Lakes region met here yesterday at a summit hosted by South African President Thabo Mbeki, hoping to stem a new wave of ethnic killing in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo's long and devastating war.
Reports that an ethnic Lendu militia allied to Uganda massacred nearly 1,000 Hema people April 3 in Congo's Ituri province were revised by Behrooz Sadry, a senior official with the United Nations' mission in Congo, who told Reuters news agency late Tuesday: "As far as our team has been able to verify, they have been able to determine 150 to 350 dead."
But as leaders arrived here, Uganda's army said Rwandan troops had returned to Congo and were advancing toward Ugandan positions in Ituri province. Rwanda's army, which has threatened to send troops back into Congo unless Uganda withdraws, said it had not yet done so.
LIBERIA: Fighting in northeast sends refugees fleeing
MONROVIA - Fighting in and around the northeastern town of Ganta has prompted thousands of refugees from Ivory Coast's war and internally displaced Liberians to flee to unknown areas, the Inquirer daily reported yesterday.
A transit center established by the YMCA in Ganta, about 150 miles northeast of Monrovia, and that sheltered 3,000 displaced persons is empty, the newspaper said. About 20,000 refugees, mostly women and children, camped in the town of Saclepea, nearly 25 miles east of Ganta, also were driven out by the fighting between rebels and President Charles Taylor's government.
Tracking fleeing civilians is difficult because the United Nations and international agencies withdrew staff after three aid workers, including a Norwegian, were killed in the region.
ZIMBABWE: Army, opposition point fingers over strife
HARARE - The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change dismissed this week government assertions that the party has hired army deserters to stir unrest in the country.
"There is absolutely no truth in those allegations. They are pure and simple fabrication," MDC Secretary-General Welshman Ncube said.
The army has denied accusations that it beat up opposition members after a national strike last month against President Robert Mugabe's rule. The authorities, instead, suggested that military deserters were being enlisted by the MDC to beat up civilians.
Weekly notes ...
Ten persons were killed and 11 injured when rebel suspects from the Lord's Resistance Army ambushed a convoy of two cars and two buses at Miri-Miri in Adjuman district, northern Uganda, the army said yesterday. The resident district commissioner said that the injured were in critical condition, and that the death toll was likely to rise....
-------- arms sales
Gun makers get boost from House
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030410-646144.htm
The House yesterday voted to pre-empt the lawsuits that dozens of cities have filed against gun manufacturers and dealers to recover costs associated with gun crimes.
The bill, approved 285-140, would head off the series of lawsuits already filed against the gun industry and prohibit new ones. The lawsuits essentially argue that particular gun and ammunition makers, dealers and distributors should be held responsible for how some criminals used their firearms.
The victory on the House floor is the furthest the bill has ever progressed. Last year, a bill passed the House Judiciary Committee, but Republican leaders did not bring it up for a vote that would have occurred in the middle of the sniper shootings around Washington.
Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, said yesterday the House was acting to end frivolous lawsuits against the gun industry.
"Congress must do what it can to stop the slide down this slippery slope," he said, pointing to lawsuits against the fast-food industry. "It's time for Congress to fulfill its constitutional duty and exercise its authority under the commerce clause to prevent a few state courts from bankrupting the national firearms industry and denying all Americans their fundamental right to bear arms."
A companion bill is pending in the Senate and although it is not on the schedule, it does have a majority of the chamber - 52 members - listed as co-sponsors.
The Bush administration issued a statement of support yesterday, saying the bill strikes a balance between preventing abuse of the courts and preserving the rights of some individuals to sue.
Gun control is a contentious political issue, and some Democrats say the party's support for it has cost them support in elections. But in yesterday's House debate, most Democrats opposed the bill to limit lawsuits, while all but three Republicans voted for it.
Democrats argued that passing the bill creates special protections for gun manufacturers that other industries don't enjoy. They also said Republicans were acting so quickly on the bill because they wanted it passed before the National Rifle Association's national conference, scheduled for the end of April.
"This is a cynical, political bill," said Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, Florida Democrat.
Suing gun manufacturers and dealers became a new strategy in the late 1990s for gun-control advocates, such as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Several dozen cities, counties and states began bringing the suits. They argue that manufacturers make and market some guns expecting they will fall into criminal hands, and that dealers sometimes sell guns when they know, or should foresee, that the guns will be used criminally.
Those suits have met with mixed success, although in no case has any plaintiff secured a favorable final judgment. Many lawsuits have been summarily dismissed by courts even before trial.
But gun-industry representatives and the bill's supporters in Congress say the real purpose of the lawsuits is to bankrupt gun manufacturers.
"The Democrat Party chooses to take this up as an issue because they're antigun. That's what this is about," said Rep. Pete Sessions, Texas Republican. "This is another way to get in the way of the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States."
Democrats particularly wanted to allow pending lawsuits to continue, and Rep. Melvin Watt, North Carolina Democrat, said if the bill becomes law, it will end 300 pending lawsuits. But the House voted down that proposal as well.
Many of those lawsuits have been filed not by municipalities, but by victims or families of victims of gun crimes. One of those pending lawsuits is from families of victims of the Washington-area sniper attacks.
-------- iraq
Looting breaks out as Baghdad falls
By Paul McGeough,
Herald Correspondent in Baghdad with Reuters, Press Association
April 10 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/10/1049567757398.html
CASUALTY LIST
US
• Dead (in combat) - 81">
• Wounded - 172
• Missing - 10
• Dead (non-combat) - 15
UK
• Dead (in combat) - 8
• Wounded - 74
• Dead (non-combat) - 22
IRAQ
• Dead (military) - 2,320#
• Dead (civilian) - 1,252
NOTE: These casualties were announced by US, British and Iraqi authorities or independently confirmed by Reuters correspondents.
= Figure does not include unconfirmed toll from US bombing of convoy south of Mosul on April 6
# = US military estimates relating only to fighting in or near Baghdad. No other figures available.
Non-combat is defined as accidents, US or British fire killing/wounding their own troops or other incidents unrelated to fighting.
Jubilation and wholesale looting in Baghdad yesterday signalled the end of the regime of Saddam Hussein as thousands of United States troops met little or no resistance on their way into the heart of the city.
The US military declared that Saddam's rule over the capital had ended. Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said at central command in Qatar: "The capital city is now one of those areas that has been added to the list of where the regime does not have control."
Marine tanks rolled into the heart of the city, greeted by people cheering, waving white flags and gesturing with V-for-victory signs. "We were nearly mobbed by people trying to shake our hands," said Major Andy Milburn of the 7th Marines.
Symbolically, the Americans stationed tanks and other military vehicles around the very heart of Baghdad - Tahrir Square on the east bank of the Tigris River.
There were wild scenes as residents - some in tears, others singing and dancing - crowded on to city freeways, showering the Americans who rode into town atop their tanks with flowers and the classic Iraqi greeting for foreigners: "Welcome! Welcome in Baghdad."
"Today Baghdad is like Berlin in 1945," an egg-seller told the Herald.
In scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, ropes and pulleys were attached to a six-metre statue of Saddam in central Baghdad and it was pulled down by a US tank.
The crowd stamped on the toppled dictator. Crowds of Iraqis yelled "Hello, hello" as the Americans advanced through traffic. "No more Saddam Hussein," chanted one group, waving to the troops. "We love you, we love you."
There was no sign of any arm of government. The Information Ministry, which has tried to keep the foreign press on a tight rein, was abandoned and none of the agencies that might maintain law and order was on the streets.
And while the people clearly felt that they had shaken off the Saddam yoke, US officers said there was still some resistance - small and disorganised, but fierce.
But the jubilation in Baghdad prompted the US military to say it believed the whole of Iraq had now reached a "tipping point" at which ordinary people began to realise that the Saddam administration was over.
There was no word on the fate of Saddam or his sons, Uday or Qusay, all of whom were targeted in a "bunker-buster" bombing attack on a residential area in Baghdad on Tuesday.
But presuming his era had ended, a white-haired man in the inner city took a poster of Saddam and beat it with his shoe - a traditional insult. Others gathered to spit on or kick the portrait.
"Come see, this is freedom," the man said. "This is the criminal, this is the infidel. This is the destiny of every traitor. He killed millions of us ... Oh people, this is freedom."
But another old man who has spent the past few weeks quietly telling the Herald how much he longed for this day, said simply: "Now we dance."
The looting was on such a scale that it caused traffic jams in the eastern suburbs as huge crowds ripped all that they could from government buildings - air-conditioning units, ceiling fans, hat-stands and anything else they could carry.
They brought trucks and packed their cars so high that much of the loot fell off as they drove away. With great high spirits, they hijacked police cars and motorcycles, full-length curtains and sports trophies.
The used wheeled office chairs to push their loot away into the suburbs while some guarded their booty on street corners, waiting for family vehicles to return to collect it.
One of them said: "This is our peace dividend."
When they had done with the Transport Ministry and the headquarters of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, a part of Uday Hussein's fiefdom, they torched the buildings. They stole dozens of Uday's thoroughbred horses from a nearby stables.
On Palestine Street, a favourite regime venue for rallies and shows of military and Ba'ath party support, Iraqis looted a Trade Ministry warehouse, emerging with air-conditioners, ceiling fans, refrigerators and TV sets.
Posters of Saddam were shredded, statues pushed over and many people chanted "Bush! Bush!" and "America! America!" as others tore up 250-dinar notes bearing the face of the dictator. Not far away a bare-chested young man danced in the middle of an intersection, madly swirling his shirt over his head.
In a central square a crowd of about 20 Iraqis threw their shoes at a statue of Saddam and ripped a metal plaque off the marble pedestal.
The crowds relished saying things that a few days ago would have had them tortured or imprisoned. They spat at portraits of Saddam and denounced him with great bitterness.
Murtha Odari, a 27-year-old army deserter, said: "He is a criminal - he killed so many of our people. He made us fight against Iran. He invaded Kuwait and now he makes us fight the world. Now we are so happy."
Asked why he had joined in the Saddam cheer squads over the years, he said: "We were scared. We did not have a choice."
Standing outside the blazing Olympic headquarters, 46-year-old Abu Mantazar condemned the looting. And while he celebrated the arrival of the Americans, he had a warning for them. "Before it was so bad for us - so this makes us happy. We look forward to having a new government and an end to this mess.
"Look, the US is welcome here - but not for long, just for a while to help the next Iraqi government get going. And after that they have no right to stay here; and while they are here they must see us as human beings and not as barrels of oil."
Streets in the centre of the city were virtually deserted. Small numbers of men in civilian clothing carried Kalashnikovs and local people said a group of militias still stationed at the eastern end of Synak Bridge were diehard Syrian volunteers.
US infantry units began pushing in from the east and the marines from the west on Tuesday night, planning to link up on central Tharir Square in the centre.
They claimed to have secured all routes into the capital as the last resistance they faced was put down early yesterday.
As his men set up checkpoints at an intersection about three kilometres from the city, marine Lieutenant Geoff Orazem said: "I love being in Baghdad." But one of his men was confused, asking: "Hey man, what city is this?"
Iraqi tanks and armoured personnel carriers were abandoned across the suburbs with articles of military clothing scattered around - apparently those of fighters who had changed into civilian clothing for their getaway.
The US military cordoned off with tanks the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, where international media crews have been based.
When a motorist approached one of the tanks and failed to slow down, one of the soldiers opened fire on him.
US commanders are now focusing on targets to the north - Saddam's home town of Tikrit, still a stronghold of loyalist troops, and the northern city of Mosul.
Brigadier-General Brooks said of the scenes in Baghdad: "That's a very important point in the operation. Militarily, however, we proceed on a plan that says there is more to follow. All of the regime is not gone, there's still regime appendages in a variety of places. There's still capability."
Amid the jubilation, some Baghdad citizens remained indoors, still wary of the advancing troops and not yet certain that Saddam's influence has disappeared. Baghdad radio could be heard faintly transmitting patriotic songs.
Late yesterday, the International Committee of the Red Cross temporarily suspended its operations in the city after one of rescue convoys came under fire, leaving at least one person seriously injured.
----
Descent into a charnel-house hospital hell
April 10 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/09/1049567748685.html
A searing visit to a trauma ward has Paul McGeough questioning the very essence of humanity.
There's a man who goes up to his roof terrace every time the fighting starts. Often in his underwear, he watches with his hands spread nonchalantly on the parapet wall.
In a vegetable patch down by the Tigris River, a family of gardeners always crane their necks to see what is happening as the F/A-18s, usually in pairs, wheel in from the south.
And now, a Vespa motor scooter is careering erratically down Abu Nuwas Street - its rider with his face turned to the sky as an Iraqi surface-to-air missile whistles off in pursuit of a United States fighter jet.
The plane is so low I can count the missiles clipped to its wings - five. The SAM seems to be catching up; the jet does an evasive belly roll, clears the area, takes a new bead on the high-rise that the pilot and his colleagues are trying to demolish, and fires. It's a direct hit.
Baghdad is gripped by a fatalism about life and death. People can't run, so sometimes they don't even bother to hide as the world's most ferocious firepower is turned on a sprawling city with a defenceless civilian population of five million.
The instinctive reaction of parents is to get their children out of the city. Some are even making them walk to the country. But Wael Sabah was stuck in Baladiyat, on the city's far eastern flank where, neighbours say, she thought her children were out of harm's way.
But their descent deep into hell starts the second the pilot in a low-flying F/A-18 pulled the trigger, unleashing a missile that rips apart their home and their lives.
Tiny 12-year-old Noor, her long black plait a tangle of blood and dust, is dead; in the next cubicle in the Kindi Hospital trauma ward, her younger brother, Abdel Khader, is dead; and across the way, their mother is dying in a sea of her own blood.
If it is possible to have a nightmare within a nightmare, Kindi Hospital is it. The horror of war in Baghdad is distressing, but it is not possible to walk into this hospital without questioning the very essence of humanity as we think we know it.
Kindi has too much death and too much pain. It doesn't have enough medical staff, drugs and equipment; it's running out of body bags and clean water is dependent on electricity in a city of day-long blackouts.
Patients facing emergency surgery can have only 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, the same amount an Australian doctor might prescribe for muscle pain, and there is a critical shortage of anaesthetics. They have resorted to making their own fracture-fixing frames with lengths of steel and moulding clay.
Hygiene is poor - the wards and emergency rooms are filthy and because its laundry has been forced to close by the blackouts, doctors are making do with torn gowns instead of towels and wipes.
Patients keep arriving in a procession of racing ambulances, muddied utilities and battered taxis. An army of exhausted, weepy support staff help them on to trolleys, scattering the flies that feed on the blood of the last patient.
And dozens of relatives stand in the shadows of the forecourt, consoling each other about the dead and waiting for news on the half-dead. Men cry openly, uncontrollably; women wail, clutching each other for support.
Anger at the West occasionally becomes violent. Guns have been cocked and punches thrown at foreign reporters seen to be intruding on Iraqi grief.
A woman drops to the floor in the waiting area, screaming her 12-year-old son's name: "Feran! Feran! Tell me where he is!" Another son tries to console her, assuring her that he is merely wounded after an air strike on their neighbourhood, and that he's going to be fine.
But Feran had just been declared dead on arrival at Kindi.
A utility races in - lights on, horn blaring. On the back, an old man sobs broken-heartedly. He cradles a small boy who seems lifeless, his eyes peering blankly from pools of his own blood; the rose-coloured stain on his white shirt is getting bigger and his tongue hangs from his mouth in a foamy mess.
His head is split open but there is no time to learn his story. He is wheeled into the hospital. A medical team takes one look at him, decides he needs services they can't provide and he is wheeled back out; into an ambulance that screeches off through the hospital gates, to another medical centre.
The utility gives chase, with the man on the back still in tears. And nobody has time for the two corpses next to him which have been locked in an intimate embrace by the movement of the vehicle.
Kindi's 12 operating theatres are in use around the clock. A haggard and tearful Dr Tarib Al Saddi stands outside the hospital, trying to have a break, hoping to compose himself as the wind whips at his soiled white coat.
"I have done 12 operations today - crushings, fractures and amputations. You see that these Americans are hitting civilians - their homes, their streets, their cars and even those who walk about. They hit anyone. One of the ambulance drivers says they have struck Al Yarmuk Hospital, so now we worry about a strike here."
Lips quivering and cheeks stained by his own tears, Dr Al Saddi goes on: "Everyone is anxious and angry, maybe I'm the only calm one here."
He locks onto a disconsolate woman in black, slumped against a wall. He makes me look at her beautiful face, into her tragic eyes, and says: "She was driving in the car with her 23-year-old son. They put a bullet in the head because he failed to stop at an American check-point."
The woman cuts in: "He was innocent. We were on our way home. Why do the Americans do this? God forgive them!"
Dr Al Saadi asks: "How can anyone who comes to liberate a country do this - lacerate and destroy our people? Do they really think that somehow after a few days this woman will love them?"
There is little talk of Saddam Hussein here.
Hazem Mohammed Jabeel, 37, feels the need to prompt his wounded seven-year-old son, Ayman, to give reporters a V-for-victory sign. And despite the fact that his wounded foot will be keeping him here for some time, Haroot Manouk, a 32-year-old fighter, wants to soldier on: "We'll show them, you'll see, all of you will see."
Surgeon Mohamed Kamil says there has been a marked change in the nature of Kindi's workload since the arrival of US troops in Baghdad at the weekend. "We're now getting not just shrapnel wounds, but pieces of people," he says. "These are wounds from missiles and rockets. They are amputations. They require more urgent surgery."
The numbers have been rising steadily at the hospital - today it received more than 200 injuries and 35 corpses. Six other hospitals serving the city report similar figures and now they are having the overflow from Iraq's hard-pressed military hospitals foisted on them.
Nothing prepares a visitor for the scene at the hospital morgue. I've been into several in Iraq now and I think I know what to expect - the bodies are always mangled, frequently burnt beyond recognition, but usually treated with as much dignity as each having its own cold metal tray allows.
But when the double refrigeration doors are opened on one of several buildings out the back at Kindi, there is just a pile on the floor - maybe 20 or 25 corpses; it is impossible to tell.
Some of the faces are scorched black. Some have their clothes ripped off, their intestine hanging out. Limbs protrude from the pile, lying across other corpses and it is impossible to tell who is who in this Dalian drama.
The traffic to and from the morgue is pitiable. Hospital orderlies wheel the dead in and families bring makeshift coffins to take the dead out.
And when a group of foreign cameraman moves in to film the scene, the four men charged with moving the bodies in and out of the morgue react badly, angrily chasing them away.
"Why are you taking photos? For Bush?" one of them yells, waving his arms. "Tell him to go to hell."
----
Baghdad Is Hit by Arson and Looting
By HAMZA HENDAWI
Associated Press Writer
Apr 10, 2003 8:10 AM EDT
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_BAGHDAD?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Looting surged and government buildings were set on fire across Baghdad on Thursday while U.S. troops concentrated more on fighting pockets of resistance than on keeping order.
Tens of thousands of people - young and old, men and women - roamed the city in the second round of looting to hit Baghdad since the fall of Saddam Hussein on Wednesday, with American forces making little or no effort to stop them as they carried off TV sets, refrigerators, carpets and other plunder.
Many of the looters moved into the city center from the poor outlying districts with wheelbarrows and pushcarts, intent on getting their share of the booty.
Some U.S. forces received word Thursday that they should begin trying to stop the looting, but they were only just beginning to devise ways to do so.
"There's civilian looting like crazy, all over the place. There just aren't enough of us to clear it out," said Marine Lance Cpl. Darren Pickard, 20, Merced, Calif., who was trying to protect an Iraqi police academy compound that was being picked over by looters.
Reinforcements had to be called in to help protect the compound's armory, which included hundreds of rifles along with grenades, knives, pistols and mortars.
At U.S. Central Command, Maj. Gen. Gene Renuart said that the Iraqis' anger toward symbols of the regime is not surprising, after years of oppression. He said the U.S. military's civil affairs teams will work with neighborhood leaders to try to restore calm while the Iraqis rebuild their police force.
He said curfews are possible, but "our intent is not to be heavy-handed, but it is to ensure that stability is brought back to the areas." He said the military hopes to establish "compassionate relationships with members of the community."
Meanwhile, smoke billowed from buildings across the city. Marines said Iraqi holdouts were setting fire to their own quarters and blaming the Americans. In at least one case, however, looters were seen setting fire to some buildings in the Interior Ministry complex.
U.S. troops occupied the Oil Ministry. But the nine-story Ministry of Transport building was gutted by fire, as was the Iraqi Olympic headquarters, while the Ministry of Education was partially burned. Near the Interior Ministry, the office building of Saddam's son Odai stood damaged, its upper floors blackened.
A building on fire near the Interior Ministry was rocked by deafening explosions apparently caused by ammunition and rockets stashed inside. The blasts went on for more than 15 minutes. No immediate injuries were reported.
In and around the capital, skirmishes flared between U.S. forces and Iraqi holdouts, and bursts of gunfire and explosions continued to echo through the city nearly a day after the people of Baghdad danced in the streets over the fall of Saddam.
Marines seized a palace on the northern outskirts of the capital early Thursday in a fierce, seven-hour battle that demonstrated all too clearly that the fighting is far from over in Iraq. One Marine was killed and as many as 20 were wounded.
Marines also battled holdout fighters at a Baghdad mosque and the house of a leader of Saddam's Baath Party.
Marines set up checkpoints at the heart of the city, conducting thorough searches of all vehicles and body searches of passengers and drivers. Some Marines crouched behind sandbags, weapons at the ready, as the searches were conducted.
Around the city, looters hit stores and government installations, including the Irrigation Ministry, the Transport Ministry, the Air Force officers club, the government computer center, the Olympic hospital and state laboratories.
The German Embassy, a three-story off-white building in the center of al-Karada district, was also sacked. Looters emerged with air conditioners and computers. Looters also cleaned out the French Cultural Center and Odai's house, the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera reported.
In the city center, donkey-drawn and horse-drawn carts were seen loaded with office furniture, TV sets, appliances and carpets.
In Saddam City, a poor, densely populated Shiite Muslim section of Baghdad, residents set up roadblocks and confiscated looted items, sending them to a mosque, said Imam Amar Al-Saadi.
On Wednesday, after looting first broke out in Baghdad, U.S. Central Command said American civil affairs troops were there and in other cities to help Iraqis move away from lawlessness and re-establish order.
However, Central Command spokesman Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said he expected much of the unrest to die down on its own as the euphoria over the regime's collapse wore off. "We believe that this will settle down in due time," he said.
Around the city, most motorists were flying white flags. Some public buses were even running.
The Interior Ministry offices were being turned into a command center for U.S. forces, who went through them to see what they find.
Saddam pictures, posters, calendars and oil paintings adorned practically every surface. Some pictures of his face had been cut out or punched in with fists before U.S. forces got there. Some Marines, encountering large pictures of Saddam with his face cut out, posed for pictures with their own faces thrust through the hole.
Two floors down from the Interior Minister's office was the office of an unidentified three-star general. On the bookshelf behind his desk sat a gold-embossed, green-leather volume dating to the 1990s. It resembled a family photo album, but the pictures - page after page - were of bombed-out buildings and charred, mangled corpses.
On Wednesday, in a scene that called to mind the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Marines used a winch to pull down a 40-foot bronze statue of Saddam and break it in half. Iraqis attacked the statue with sledgehammers and sticks, danced on its fallen chest and face, and threw garbage on it.
Others dragged the torn-off head through the streets, while children beat it with shoes and slippers - a grave insult in the Arab world.
Iraqis and Marines hugged, high-fived or shook hands. Some of the Marines held their rifles aloft in a victorious pose.
"Now my son can have a chance in life," said Bushra Abed, pointing to her 2-year-old son, Ibrahim.
EDITOR'S NOTE - Associated Press writers Ravi Nessman and Alexandra Zavis with the Marines in Baghdad also contributed to this report.
---
Final proof that war is about the failure of the human spirit
Robert Fisk:
10 April 2003
UK Independent
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=395680
It was a scene from the Crimean War; a hospital of screaming wounded and floors running with blood. I stepped in the stuff; it stuck to my shoes, to the clothes of all the doctors in the packed emergency room, it swamped the passageways and the blankets and sheets.
The Iraqi civilians and soldiers brought to the Adnan Khairallah Martyr Hospital in the last hours of Saddam Hussein's regime yesterday - sometimes still clinging to severed limbs - are the dark side of victory and defeat; final proof, like the dead who are buried within hours, that war is about the total failure of the human spirit. As I wandered amid the beds and the groaning men and women lying on them - Dante's visit to the circles of hell should have included these visions - the same old questions recurred. Was this for 11 September? For human rights? For weapons of mass destruction?
In a jammed corridor, I came across a middle-aged man on a soaked hospital trolley. He had a head wound which was almost indescribable. From his right eye socket hung a handkerchief that was streaming blood on to the floor. A little girl lay on a filthy bed, one leg broken, the other so badly gouged out by shrapnel during an American air attack that the only way doctors could prevent her moving it was to tie her foot to a rope weighed down with concrete blocks.
Her name was Rawa Sabri. And as I walked through this place of horror, the American shelling began to bracket the Tigris river outside, bringing back to the wounded the terror of death which they had suffered only hours before. The road bridge I had just crossed to reach the hospital came under fire and clouds of cordite smoke drifted over the medical centre. Tremendous explosions shook the wards and corridors as doctors pushed shrieking children away from the windows.
Florence Nightingale never reached this part of the old Ottoman Empire. But her equivalent is Dr Khaldoun al-Baeri, the director and chief surgeon, a gently-spoken man who has slept an hour a day for six days and who is trying to save the lives of more than a hundred souls a day with one generator and half his operating theatres out of use - you cannot carry patients in your arms to the 16th floor when they are coughing blood.
Dr Baeri speaks like a sleepwalker, trying to describe how difficult it is to stop a wounded man or woman from suffocating when they have been wounded in the thorax, explaining that after four operations to extract metal from the brains of his patients, he is almost too tired to think, let alone in English. As I leave him, he tells me that he does not know where his family is.
"Our house was hit and my neighbours sent a message to tell me they sent them away somewhere. I do not know where. I have two little girls, they are twins, and I told them they must be brave because their father had to work night and day at the hospital and they mustn't cry because I have to work for humanity. And now I have no idea where they are." Then Dr Baeri choked on his words and began to cry and could not say goodbye.
There was a man on the second floor with a fearful wound to the neck. It seemed the doctors could not staunch his blood and he was dribbling his life away all over the floor. Something wicked and sharp had cut into his stomach and six inches of bandages could not stop the blood from pumping out of him. His brother stood beside him and raised his hand to me and asked: "Why? Why?"
A small child with a drip-feed in its nose lay on a blanket. It had had to wait four days for an operation. Its eyes looked dead. I didn't have the heart to ask its mother if this was a boy or a girl.
There was an air strike perhaps half a mile away and the hospital corridors echoed with the blast, long and low and powerful, and it was followed by a rising chorus of moans and cries from the children outside the wards. Below them, in that worst of all emergency rooms, they had brought in three men who had been burned across their faces and arms and chests and legs; naked men with a skin of blood and tissues whom the doctors pasted with white cream, who sat on their beds with their skinless arms held upwards, each beseeching a non-existing saviour to rescue him from his pain.
"No! No! No!" another young man screamed as doctors tried to cut open his pants. He shrieked and cried and whinnied like a horse. I thought he was a soldier. He looked tough and strong and well fed but now he was a child again and he cried: "Umma, Umma [Mummy, mummy]".
I left this awful hospital to find the American shells falling in the river outside. I noticed, too, some military tents on a small patch of grass near the hospital's administration building and - "God damn it," I said under my breath - an armoured vehicle with a gun mounted on it, hidden under branches and foliage. It was only a few metres inside the hospital grounds. But the hospital was being used to conceal it. And I couldn't help noticing the name of the hospital. Adnan Khairallah had been President Saddam's minister of defence, a man who allegedly fell out with his leader and died in a helicopter crash whose cause was never explained.
Even in the last hours of the Battle of Baghdad, its victims had to lie in a building named in honour of a murdered man.
----
Fierce gun battles as Marines search for Saddam
Day 22: Bush and Blair broadcast directly to Iraqi people: Saddam loyalists retreat to Tikrit
UK Independent,
10 April 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=395753
US Marines were involved in fierce gun battles with elements of Iraq's Republican Guard on the banks of the river Tigris in Baghdad today.
The battle started around one of Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces and then moved on to a mosque where it was thought Saddam may have been hiding.
BBC journalists reported heavy machine gun and mortar fire during which one marine was killed by shrapnel and up to 20 others injured. They also reported 'hit and run' attacks by Iraqi militiamen on US troops in the Baghdad suburbs.
Capt. Frank Thorp, a spokesman at Central Command in Doha, said US troops acted on information that regime leaders were trying to organise a meeting in the area. During the operations, he said, Marines were fired on from the mosque compound.
He said he didn't know whether Saddam was among those trying to organize the meeting, and he had no information on any regime leaders being captured or killed.
The battles dispelled some of the euphoria after the marines' triumphal arrival in the centre of the city yesterday. Overnight parts of the city remained tense amid concerns over looting and a breakdown in law and order.
Small arms fire was heard, evidence it was reported, of people trying to defend their belongings. Many residents were reported to have barricaded their homes.
Despite renewed firefights between American troops and fighters still loyal to the ousted leader, Marines were free to move about much of the city unresisted.
London and Washington, however, avoided claiming victory, warning that troops still faced tough fighting ahead.
Loud explosions were reported in the north and west of the capital at sunrise as B-52 bombers flew overhead.
At Tikrit, north of Baghdad, where Republican Guard fighters were still holed up, there was sustained bombing overnight and US forces were expected to turn their attention on the city amid reports that Saddam loyalists were retreating there.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Al-Douri, declared "the game is over", becoming the first Iraqi official to concede defeat.
Speaking outside his New York residence he said: "My work now is peace. The game is over, and I hope the peace will prevail."
The looting continues: The German embassy and the Transport Ministry were among the latest buildings to be ransacked.
In Saddam City, a densely populated Shiite district, residents set up roadblocks to confiscate the stolen goods and planned to send it to a nearby mosque, said Imam Amar Al-Saadi. He said he would continue doing so until order was restored and the material could be handed back.
President George Bush and Tony Blair tried to re-assure the Iraqi people that British and Amerrican forces would leave Iraq as soon as quickly as possible.
In remarks televised throughout Iraq, President Bush told the Iraqi people: "The regime of Saddam Hussein is being removed from power."
The messages will be broadcast this evening by a new Arabic TV network, set up by by the US and UK governments, called Nahwa Al-Hurrieh or "Towards Freedom".
The two-and-a-half minute address, taped on Tuesday while the president was meeting the Prime Minister in Northern Ireland was broadcast as part of the two governments' campaign to convince Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world that U.S. troops are not a hostile invasion force.
"The long era of fear and cruelty is ending," President Bush said, in excerpts released by the White House. "The government of Iraq and the future of your country will soon belong to you. You deserve to live as free people."
In the north: Kurdish fighters moved into the Khaneqin - a city of about 100,000 people - and were greeted by cheering crowds. There were also reports that US-backed Kurdish forces had taken the major oil town city of Kirkuk, but the situation there remained unclear.
----
Allies shift strength to Saddam's home
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030410-93364392.htm
With Baghdad overrun, U.S. military forces are now aiming at the northern city of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's ancestral home and the last stronghold of his regime.
"We certainly are focused on Tikrit ... to prevent the regime from being able to use it as a place to command and control, to restore command and control, or to hide," Army Brig Gen. Vincent Brooks, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, said yesterday.
Heavy coalition bombing raids were carried out on Iraqi army positions near Tikrit, about 100 miles north of Baghdad. U.S. military officials said the bombing campaign over the past several days is preparing the way for future allied ground forces to drive north into the city.
Iraqi army and guerrilla forces are expected to put up resistance based on the city's tribal ties to Saddam and the prominent roles played by some residents of Tikrit in the Iraqi leader's crumbling regime.
Gen. Brooks told reporters in Qatar that Iraqi forces are deployed in and around Tikrit. He would not say when or how U.S. forces will take the city.
At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more than 10 regular Iraqi army divisions are left north of Baghdad, as well as one brigade of a Republican Guard infantry division.
"They have been subjected to bombing by air power and will continue to be dealt with in that way for some time," Gen. Myers said.
Tikrit is a city of between 100,000 and 200,000 people and is the site of at least one of Saddam's numerous presidential palaces.
U.S. intelligence officials said they believe that Tikrit may be a storage area for some of Iraq's banned chemical and biological weapons, which could be stored in underground bunkers beneath the palaces.
Tikrit also was the birthplace of the Muslim warrior Saladin, who is credited with defeating the Christian Crusaders in the 12th century in the battle for Jerusalem.
Saddam in the past has compared himself to Saladin.
Saddam was born near Tikrit in the village of Awja on April 28, 1937, and the city has been the site of large, annual birthday celebrations for the Iraqi leader.
Saddam also has relied heavily on the loyalty of the residents of Tikrit, many of whom hold key positions in the Iraqi military and Ba'ath Party.
Residents of Tikrit also make up key elements of Saddam's internal security apparatus, including the Special Security Organization and Special Republican Guard troops. These forces are tasked with protecting Saddam and keeping him in power.
Gen. Myers said the command and control of Iraqi forces has been severely weakened by the collapse of the military in Baghdad.
"In the north, the forces there have essentially not moved," Gen. Myers said. "I mean, elements of the Republican Guard divisions did move south; that was some time ago now. But the rest of them are pretty much in static positions, falling back a little bit from the green line, if you will, but no movement. And their communications are diminished."
Allied aircraft are bombing the remnants of the Republican Guard Adnan division in Tikrit, U.S. military officials said.
Aircraft carrier-based bombers struck a Republican Guard barracks and a garrison in Tikrit, according to Rear Adm. Barry Costello, commander of the USS Constellation.
U.S. Army Special Forces also are "actively engaging" Iraqi forces in Tikrit, said Lt. Mark Kitchens, a Central Command spokesman.
Allied ground troops also have blocked roads from Baghdad leading to Tikrit in an effort to stop and capture any Iraqi leaders fleeing from the capital.
Gen. Brooks said the remaining Iraqi forces near Tikrit have carried out some "repositionings" aimed at bolstering defenses. He said it is not clear how strong the Iraqis are in the city.
"We anticipate that any fighting that would occur there, if we happen to go to Tikrit, would be similar to what we've seen in other parts of the country," Gen. Brooks said.
----
If Saddam is dead, the US might have trouble proving it
By Aaron Zitner and Greg Miller in Washington
April 10 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/09/1049567742984.html
Under a smoking mound of rubble in what was once a Baghdad building lies a conundrum for United States officials: what if they did their job of targeting Saddam too well?
As long as Saddam's supporters believe there is a chance he is alive, some are sure to continue fighting for him. US officials, by conducting a massive bombing strike on a building thought to house the Iraqi leader, may have obliterated Saddam's body and deprived them of clear proof of his death.
"People are not going to believe Saddam Hussein is gone until there's indisputable evidence," said Rachel Bronson, director of Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. And if Iraqis continue to live in fear of him and his regime, "the hope of moving forward will be slowed down".
Saddam's fate remained unclear yesterday after a devastating bomb attack on Monday in Baghdad's Mansour district, guided by a CIA informant who provided the address of a building where the Iraqi leader was believed to be meeting with his two sons and senior aides.
A B-1 bomber, already aloft in case such an opportunity arose, was instructed to attack. Twelve minutes after receiving the command and just 45 minutes after the intelligence tip was received by central command in Qatar, four bunker-buster bombs destroyed the target building, a restaurant and several surrounding structures.
Witnesses said as many as 14 civilians were killed and scores wounded, but US officials said it might take days after US troops took control of the area before a full damage assessment was undertaken.
British intelligence sources said Saddam more than likely survived. "He was probably not in the building when it was bombed," The Guardian quoted a source as saying.
The bombing raised the prospect that the coalition may kill Saddam without knowing for certain - and without being able to prove to the world - that he is dead. DNA testing has improved as a result of the challenge of identifying victims of the World Trade Centre disaster.
But to prove that an unidentified body is that of the Iraqi leader, US officials would still need to obtain a sample from the body and compare it to DNA they are sure came from Saddam or from one of his close relatives.
At least 600 victims of the terrorist attack in New York were identified by DNA alone. To make the identification, the samples were sometimes compared to genetic material on toothbrushes, clippings from hair shavers, cigarette butts and even drinking straws provided by family members.
But it is unclear whether US officials have any similar material they could use to identify tissue retrieved from the Baghdad bombing site.
One US official said the US did not have genetic material from Saddam himself. Asked whether the US had DNA samples from relatives of the Iraqi dictator, a second US intelligence official said, "As far as I know, no."
Los Angeles Times, The New York Times
--------
Crowd Kills Islamic Cleric in Iraq
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
0http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CND-SHEIKH.html
NAJAF, Iraq, April 10 - A prominent Islamic cleric, newly returned from exile, was killed by an angry mob here today at one of Shiite Muslims' holiest shrines. Sheikh Abdul Majid al-Khoei - head of the philanthropic Khoei Foundation and son of the late Grand Ayatollah Abul-Qassim al-Khoei, who died under house arrest in Iraq a decade ago - was killed by members of a rival Shiite group in an altercation at Najaf's Imam Ali Mosque. The mosque is said to be the tomb of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and the figure who was the cause of the Shiite sect's seventh-century split from Islam's larger Sunni majority. The majority of Iraqis are Shiites.
An aide to Mr. Khoei was also reported killed at the mosque.
The deaths are the first reported cases of internecine fighting that many people fear may plague Iraq now that Saddam Hussein has been pushed from power. Iraq is a country of hundreds of competing interest groups divided along ethnic, religious and tribal lines and many analysts have warned that the country could descend into a period of violence as old scores are settled and long-dormant rivalries are revived.
Fadel al-Milani, a director of Khoei Foundation, said from London that the violence broke out over control of the mosque now that Mr. Hussein is no longer in power. Mr. Khoei, who arrived in Iraq from London on April 3, had gone to the mosque for a meeting of leading Shiite religious leaders who were to appoint a new caretaker for the shrine. The current caretaker was appointed by Mr. Hussein's Ministry of Religion.
"A group of people were angry over the choice of the caretaker and people started fighting and shooting at each other," Mr. Milani said. "Mr. Khoei and another man were killed in the fighting."
Mr. Milani said Mr. Khoei was shot in the fighting, but witnesses told The Associated Press that Mr. Khoei was stabbed after firing shots himself. According to some reports, the caretaker appointed by Mr. Hussein's government was also killed.
Najaf was the scene of brief fighting between Iraqi and American forces about 10 days ago as American troops moved north toward Baghdad. The city has been quiet since then, with only lightly armed United States military Humvees patrolling the streets.
-------- israel / palestine
Three shot dead as thousands protest at Israeli air strike
By Ibrahim Barzak, AP, in Gaza City
10 April 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=395633
Clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip killed at least three people yesterday, including a boy aged 16, as thousands poured into the streets to mourn seven killed in a missile strike.
Troops shot dead a member of the Islamic militant group Hamas aged 21, a policeman of 35 and the boy, witnesses said. The army said it fired at the Hamas member who was near a rocket launcher but was unaware of the other two deaths.
Earlier, Hamas militants had fired a home-made rocket at an Israeli town in retaliation for a missile strike that killed a Hamas commander and six others. There were no injuries in the rocket attack on the town of Sderot.
Thousands poured into the streets yesterday for the funerals of people killed on Tuesday when an Israeli F-16 warplane fired a missile that destroyed a white car. A second missile exploded in the street, wounding at least 50 bystanders, witnesses said. The coffins of the dead were covered in green Hamas flags. Mourners shouted: "God is great, revenge, revenge!" Some fired guns in the air.
Israel said the target of the air strike was Saed Arabeed, 38, a Hamas commander believed to be responsible for raids against Israelis. Two of the dead were Hamas militants, Palestinians said, while the others were civilians.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Prime Minister-designate, Mahmoud Abbas, has asked for a two-week extension to form his Cabinet, because of a dispute with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian President, over who should be Interior Minister, in command of the security forces.
--------
Israeli-Palestinian Clashes Leave Six Dead
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/10CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, April 10 - In a trio of stealth attacks today, Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants caught each other off guard in strikes that left two soldiers and four militants dead in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The two slain Israeli soldiers, killed in a dawn raid on their isolated base in the Jordan Valley, marked the first Israeli deaths in Mideast violence in more than three weeks, one of the longest such stretches during the current conflict. During the same period, more than 30 Palestinian militants and civilians have been killed by the Israeli army.
A pair of Palestinian gunmen cut a small opening in a chain link fence and crawled onto the Israeli Army's training base near Bekaot, in the northern West Bank, just a few miles from the Jordanian border. The attackers fired bursts from AK-47 rifles at the soldiers, most of whom were sleeping in tents. Nine were wounded in addition to the two killed, the army said.
One attacker was gunned down on the base. The other fled, but was fatally shot in the grassland about a 100 yards outside the fence, the army said. Two radical groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, said they had jointly carried out the assault.
In Gaza City, Israel staged its second airstrike in three days against wanted militants, with helicopters firing at least two missiles on a car, killing a top Islamic Jihad leader who orchestrated one of the deadliest suicide bombings ever in Israel.
The militant, Mahmoud al-Zatma, was traveling in a white Subaru sedan when it received a direct hit in the densely packed Sheik Radwan neighborhood, sending a plume of black smoke into the sky, Palestinian witnesses said. Ten people on the street were injured from shrapnel and flying debris, according to witnesses and officials at Shifa Hospital.
Islamic Jihad has carried out many of the suicide bombings in the current round of fighting, which began 30 months ago. The army described Mr. Zatma as an "engineer and specialist in explosive devices" who was responsible for multiple attacks.
Both the army and Islamic Jihad credited Mr. Zatma with organizing a 1995 suicide bombing at a bus stop that killed 22 Israeli soldiers and civilians, and wounded more than 50.
The air strike came two days after a similar missile attack that killed a Hamas commander and two colleagues in the same car, along with four civilians on foot.
Palestinians accused Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, of using the war in Iraq as cover to step up military actions. "He is exploiting every minute of that war. He knows attention is not focused here," a Palestinian cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, said.
Mr. Erekat also said Mr. Sharon was seeking to "sabotage" a Middle East peace initiative, known as the road map, that President Bush has pledged to present formally in the near future.
Israel says that Palestinians continue to attempt daily attacks and that "pro-active" military measures are required to prevent them. Israel has been mostly calm since the war in Iraq began March 20, though Israeli troops and Palestinians clash daily in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel strongly supports the American military campaign, but has sought to remain on the sidelines, with government leaders offering few comments. However, Israel's defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, said today that he hoped the war would lead the Palestinians to reassess their armed uprising.
"I hope that in the era after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, the Palestinians will understand that the world has changed," Mr. Mofaz said.
In the third violent incident today, Israeli undercover soldiers in a civilian car shot dead one Palestinian militant and wounded four more in the West Bank town of Tulkarm, a military source said.
The forces, in civilian clothes, were near Tulkarm's central square when they spotted five Palestinians in a car, two of them armed, the source said. As the soldiers approached, the Palestinians began to flee on foot. One member of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades was killed and four of his colleagues were wounded, the army added.
The four were taken to Israel for medical treatment, the source added.
A member of the Aksa Brigades, which is loosely affiliated to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, offered a slightly different account. He said the Israelis shot dead one group member from the car, while others in the vehicle escaped. A group of militants nearby then joined a gun battle, with the Israelis eventually arresting those who were wounded.
-------- mideast
Turkish Leaders Sending Military Observers to Kirkuk
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CND-TURK.html
URGUP, Turkey, April 10 - Turkish leaders said today that they were sending military observers to monitor Kurdish forces in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, while American officials worked to discourage Turkey from any steps more provocative than that.
On a day of potentially critical developments for the stability of northern Iraq, Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said that he had sought fresh assurances from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that coalition forces would control Kirkuk.
"We have reminded them of their guarantee," Mr. Gul pointedly told reporters, referring to American vows that the oil-rich northern Iraqi cities of Mosul and Kirkuk would not be controlled by Iraqi Kurds, as seemed to be the case today.
Mr. Gul added that Mr. Powell, who placed a telephone call to him, pledged to send American forces into Kirkuk within hours. Mr. Gul said that Turkish leaders felt "no reason for any concerns" about the solidness of that promise.
But in other comments throughout a tense day in Turkey, Mr. Gul and Turkish leaders also made clear that Turkey would be willing to send its own troops into northern Iraq if it felt that such an action was vital to Turkish interests.
Government officials had previously defined those interests to include the prevention of any autonomous Kurdish state in the region.
Under the nightmare scenario that haunts many Turkish leaders, Kurdish control of Kirkuk and its potential wealth would be the first step in the rise of such a state, which could in turn rekindle separatist demands among ethnic Kurds in southeastern Turkey.
American officials repeatedly assured Turkish leaders that the war in Iraq would not yield any development of the kind. But those officials also acknowledged that Turkish skepticism persisted and that Turkish leaders remained ready to dispatch troops if they sensed that their fears were being realized.
Almost as soon as Kurdish fighters took control of Kirkuk, American officials sought to allay Turkish anxieties and even, Mr. Gul said, agreed to the presence of Turkish military observers in Kirkuk.
American officials worry that if Turkey sends troops into northern Iraq, it will set off violent clashes between Turkish soldiers and Iraqi Kurds, and that hard-won military gains elsewhere in Iraq will be overshadowed by a war within a war.
Late today, Western diplomats here said that there was not yet any sign that Turkish troops were ready to move, and that the mood among Turkish government officials was one of profound wariness and patient calm.
"Everybody's watching, and they've got lots of good reasons to be very alert," one Western diplomat said.
But, the diplomat said, "I think when Colin Powell says the troops are on the way, they take him seriously."
"Kirkuk just went a little faster than everybody expected, and there was suddenly a vacuum, and whoever was in the neighborhood moved in, but everybody knows the rules," the diplomat added.
That was a reference to both a Kurdish pledge to put Kurdish forces under coalition command and Turkish statements that the presence of Kurdish forces in Kirkuk would not in and of itself be a provocation, provided that those forces were not taking independent control.
Turkish government officials and lawmakers said tonight that Turkey was still evaluating events in Kirkuk.
"Of course we're worried," said Mevlut Cavusoglu, a member of the Turkish Parliament and one of the foreign policy leaders within the ruling Justice and Development Party.
"We have to see what's really going on," Mr. Cavusoglu said in a telephone interview. "We are very sensitive about this issue."
American officials have spent many hours over many months trying to address that sensitivity, but those efforts have been complicated by serious strains in the alliance between the United States and Turkey.
Mr. Powell visited the Turkish capital of Ankara last week in an effort to repair the relationship and made clear that the United States did not want Turkey to send troops into Iraq.
Turkish leaders signaled an increased willingness to yield to that desire.
But today, in response to news reports and television images of Kurdish forces occupying Kirkuk, those leaders seemed newly emboldened and possibly defiant.
"We will do whatever is necessary," Mr. Gul said in a statement quoted by the Turkish state-run news agency. "Turkey's stance on this issue is clear."
-------- pakistan
Pakistan not Iraq
April 10, 2003
Embassy Row
by James Morrison
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20030410-89235704.htm
The Pakistani ambassador yesterday rejected India's claim that the war in Iraq sets a precedent for a pre-emptive strike against Pakistan.
"India is not the United States, and Pakistan is certainly not Iraq," Ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "We had a problem with pre-emption for this reason."
The Bush administration justified the invasion of Iraq as the only means to prevent Saddam Hussein from using chemical and biological weapons in terrorist attacks against the United States and to stop him from developing nuclear weapons.
Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, citing the Iraq precedent, said this week that Pakistan is a "fit case" for an attack without the authorization of the United Nations if the international coalition against terrorism fails to stop guerrilla raids from Pakistan into India-controlled Kashmir.
Mr. Qazi called the Indian position "threatening" and "destabilizing" and worried about "Muslim-bashing and Paki-bashing" in the upcoming Indian legislative elections.
"You can talk yourself into a situation," he said, referring to another potential conflict between the two nuclear rivals, which have fought three wars and countless skirmishes.
Mr. Qazi denied that Pakistan backs Islamic terrorists in Kashmir and insisted his government only supports the right of self-determination for the people of the predominantly Muslim region.
"We don't want to fight another war, but we don't want to walk away from the principle," he said.
Mr. Qazi also repeated his government's position that it neither supplies nuclear technology to North Korea nor buys missiles from the reclusive Stalinist state.
-------- prisoners of war
US holds 7,300 POWs in Iraq, weighs their fate
REUTERS
THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2003
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=42901436
WASHINGTON: American-led forces have captured at least 7,300 prisoners of war in Iraq and will soon begin the legal process to determine their future, the US military said on Wednesday.
In a briefing at the Pentagon from the US military's main prisoner of war camp in Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, the colonel in charge of the facility said plans had been prepared to take up to 50,000 prisoners.
"We were planning for about 50,000 ... or higher," said US Army Col. John Della Jacono, adding that the military had expected to see large numbers of Iraqi forces surrender like in the 1991 Gulf War when Americans captured about 83,000 Iraqis. "We developed a capitulation strategy too .... However at this point in time we have seen very few capitulate."
"I think a lot of the soldiers are just leaving," he said. "There have been a lot of reports of tanks and positions just abandoned." The 7,300 prisoners, captured by US and British troops, are currently spread around the country, with about 236 being treated at field hospitals or on the US hospital ship Comfort in the Gulf. Of the prisoners now held at Umm Qasr, three or four are believed to be high-ranking Iraqi military officers.
They will all eventually be processed at the Umm Qasr camp, where lawyers will shortly begin determining their status and how they will be handled by US forces.
"Once they are vetted they are either fully accorded EPW (enemy prisoner of war) status ... or they might at a future point and time be turned over for criminal prosecution for a crime committed against the coalition or against the Iraqi people," Della Jacono said.
Most of the prisoners at Umm Qasr have been through initial interrogation and some have given some basic information on the Iraqi military, he said.
Some prisoners to be repatriated
Once through the tribunal process, the US government will need to determine when and how to repatriate some of the Iraqis.
Della Jacono said once there was a "legitimate" interim government the US government would turn over an unspecified number of the Iraqi prisoners.
Other US officials said earlier the United States planned to conduct trials of Iraqis alleged to have committed war crimes against American forces, possibly including President Saddam Hussein and his sons.
Officials from the Pentagon and State Department have said the United States did not intend to turn to an international tribunal to carry out the proceedings.
Della Jacono said the camp in Umm Qasr would be the final destination of the prisoners of war. The United States has no plans to send them to a detention facility at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds captured in Afghanistan are being held.
The International Committee for the Red Cross has visited the camp.
-------- spies
Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
4/10/2003
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r
U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.
United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.
While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."
According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.
Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."
In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."
According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.
Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.
Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.
The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.
"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.
Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.
One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."
In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.
One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive."
But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.
Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at the time.
In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this.
"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened," this official said.
But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.
Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.
A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business."
A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."
British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."
Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party.
The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.
This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind," the former official told UPI.
A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to meet with the Americans.
According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.
The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become its bitterest enemy.
-------- un
Bush Administration Describes Secondary Role for U.N. in Iraq
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CND-POST.html
WASHINGTON, April 10 - The Bush administration made it clearer than ever today, in sketching its vision for a democratically run Iraq, that it sees a decidedly secondary role for the United Nations in that country when the shooting is over.
"The U.N. can be an important partner," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
But he quickly added that he hoped the international organization could play "a much more positive role in the future" than it has in the past.
"And I think there's reason to think that it can and will," Mr. Wolfowitz went on. "But it can't - it can't be the managing partner. It can't be in charge. We need to make sure that certain functions are working smoothly from day one, and I think the goal should be to pass that responsibility as quickly as possible to Iraqis."
The deputy secretary envisioned an Iraqi interim authority, which he said would draw from all of the country's religious and ethnic groups, embracing people now in the country and those who are outside. Organization of that entity can begin almost at once, he said.
"It will provide a way for Iraqis to begin immediately to direct the political and economic reconstruction of their country," Mr. Wolfowitz told the lawmakers. "The authority would include not only members of the free Iraqi groups that have fought Saddam's tyranny, and the independents among the expatriate community, but will also draw from local leaders who have already begun to participate with the coalition in the liberation of Iraq."
The White House, too, said the Iraqis are already demonstrating their ability to govern themselves. "There is a town in western Iraq in which the mayor and the town council have already started working very closely with coalition forces," said Ari Fleischer, President Bush's chief spokesman. "They're beginning their self-governance once again."
As for the ground-breaking talks to set up a new national government in Iraq, Mr. Fleischer said Secretary-General Kofi Annan would be invited to send a United Nations representative. "He would be most welcome," Mr. Fleischer said.
Mr. Wolfowitz's theme at the Senate hearing, which could be rendered in short as "Iraq for the Iraqis," was not new. But the deputy secretary's comments were significant in view of the Bush administration's lingering dissatisfaction with the United Nations and its apparent failure, at least in President Bush's view, to rise much beyond the level of an international debating society.
The Pentagon official's comments could indicate continuing strong disagreement with Britain, which has been America's staunch ally in the war against Iraq but would like to see a stronger role for the United Nations afterward than Washington sees.
Mr. Wolfowitz said he strongly agreed with the committee chairman, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, who said the main partners in the military campaign in Iraq - the United States and Britain - should manage post-war Iraq, at least in the early going.
"I think you're absolutely correct in that," Mr. Wolfowitz replied. "And I think what we are trying to avoid is a situation that we have seen in other places in the world where Iraq might become a sort of permanent ward of the international community. There's no reason for that to happen. This is a country that has every capability of administering itself, of handling basic functions, and I believe creating a viable government."
Mr. Wolfowitz did say he could see the United Nations helping in the very early stages, "when things like food and water and medicine and basic services have to be delivered." But in saying that, he portrayed the United Nations as a giant charitable and relief organization rather than a governmental entity.
Mr. Wolfowitz also made it clear that Washington's relations with France, which opposed the campaign in Iraq, may not be smoothed over quickly. The deputy secretary took the opportunity to talk about the French when the hearing turned for a moment to the subject of NATO enlargement.
"I agree the French have behaved in ways, particularly since we're here to talk about NATO, that have been very damaging to NATO," Mr. Wolfowitz said. "I think France is going to pay some consequences, not just with us but with other countries who view it that way. But I don't think we want to make the Iraqi people the victims of that particular quarrel."
-------- us
IN THE FIELD | TASK FORCE TARAWA
Far From the Cheering Crowds, Marines in 'Standby Mode'
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CND-STAND.html
WITH TASK FORCE TARAWA, near Qualat Sikur, Iraq, April 10 - In Baghdad, a statue of Saddam Hussein toppled, and a great crowd cheered. Here, a dusty lug nut fell from a Humvee wheel to the sand with a mute puff, and no one said much of anything as the marine began loosening the next one.
If Baghdad is center stage of the war, this is the back lot. No happy crowds, no we-love-the-Americans chants, no roses. Just tires balder than the heads of the men changing them. Used, black oil dripping to the sand, dripping back to where it came from. Marines tried to make their grimy hands ignore what their ears heard from the man on the radio: Baghdad has fallen; plans for nation rebuilding are underway. On the road to this old airfield on Wednesday, a small patch of a huge place somewhere between fighting and victory, a driver removed his helmet, and was scolded.
"We need to tell the commanders to get with their marines," Lt. Col. Glenn Starnes told his officers, "and tell them the war's not over yet."
The question here, then, in this pause in the desert: where is it not over? Where is the fight? Senior officers of the artillery unit here huddled over maps and awaited word from their regimental commanders. There remain several villages and towns and small cities where allied troops have passed by without stopping. Intelligence reports suggest paramilitary activity. Those towns need to be secured. The artillerymen prepared their 18 howitzers for whichever place becomes the next mission, their cannons the bristles of a broom sweeping out the corners of a country.
Two marines sat around their Humvee, one - age 32, looking younger - writing a letter, the other - age 43, looking older - digging into an envelope of teriyaki for breakfast.
"Are we still in the war phase," the younger man asked, "or the peacekeeping phase?"
"We're in the standby mode," the elder of the two, a master sergeant, replied. "Stand by to stand by."
Today was a day of maintenance. These vehicles have been ridden hard over hundreds of miles of rough terrain, most recently a few dozen miles east, to confront an Iraqi armored division. But its soldiers had already given up, leaving tanks and uniforms behind, and the marines turned their tires around and came back here.
Just as important, today was a day of attitude maintenance, focus maintenance.
"I call this a lull. This is a lull," said Col. Ron Bailey, one of the senior officers of the thousands-strong Task Force Tarawa, on a brief visit with the artillery battalion. He is wary of paramilitary confrontations even as his troops approach phase four, the peacekeeping mission. "There's a potential for some combat up here, or it might be time for phase four. That's when your asymmetrical threat could get out and bite you big. Now's the time to be on top of your game."
A few dozen yards away, a marine was on top of a game of computer solitaire. Two young corporals struggled to right a pole with a water-gorged camp shower rigged on top. Their litte victory against the battle against dirt called to mind the famous image of American troops raising the flag at Iwo Jima.
"I don't want to go north," a marine said. "It's a waste of time."
"I like the sound of Basra," another said. "It's spitting distance from Shoup," he said, referring to Camp Shoup, home base in Kuwait, the last stop in the Middle East for the marines on the way home.
Those with radios have, surprisingly, here in the middle of nowhere, found local music stations. One plays American hits from the 1980's, and the marines, seeking a haven from the hot sun, listened in the shade. "There's something about you, girl," the once-popular band INXS proclaimed, "that makes me sweat." A driver pulled out a disposable camera to snap a photo of passing camels, and his friends laughed. "This isn't a tour bus. Just drive."
There has been no mail for several days. Marines are running low on cigarettes, on Gatorade powder to jazz up their hot bottles of water, on precious baby wipes, key to at least feeling, if not exactly being, somewhat clean.
The news from Baghdad yesterday was so positive it was jarring, and led to open speculation on getting home. By Memorial Day? The Fourth of July? Marines allowed themselves to talk that way for the first time since the war began, only to be told to stop and get back to work.
"The marines are starting to get a false sense of security," said Gunnery Sgt. Jerry C. Blackwell, 35, of Chester, S.C., "but they ain't secure yet."
Colonel Starnes, in his orders for the day, almost added to the list filling out missing gear paperwork, but cut himself short. Those forms are generally among the last tasks of a unit in the field.
"Now's not the time to start thinking about going home and relaxing," he said later. "Even though we are in a relaxation period."
He wants the men to leave this camp, whenever that happens, for whatever destination with the same alertness that they crossed the Iraqi border with three weeks ago.
"We're still at war," he said. "We're getting too comfortable with our driving. That's how somebody gets hurt."
And yet, even he cannot help himself. He is quietly thinking ahead to the trip south, which will likely take the battalion through Nasiriya, where the marines fought for a week and lost almost 20 men, one of them one of his artillerymen. He plans to stop short of the city for a prayer service on the side of the road for First Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr., 31. They will leave something there in his honor.
In the hot breeze of this dead airfield, he is preparing his remarks for that day, whenever it may come.
-------- propaganda wars
The photographs tell the story...
Is This Media manipulation on a grand scale?
04/10/03
NYC IndyMedia
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm
Photo: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/images/CHALIB~1.gif
Yes, the occupation has begun.
April 6th: Iraqi National Congress founder, Ahmed Chalabi is flown into the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah by the Pentagon. Chalabi, along with 700 fighters of his "Free Iraqi Forces" are airlifted aboard four massive C17 military transport planes. Chalabi and the INC are Washington favorites to head the new Iraqi government. A photograph is taken of Chalabi and members of his Free Iraqi Forces militia as they arrive in Nasiriyah.
April 9th: One of the "most memorable images of the war" is created when U.S. troops pull down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Fardus Square. Oddly enough... a photograph is taken of a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to one of Chalabi's militia members... he is near Fardus Square to greet the Marines. How many members of the pro-American Free Iraqi Forces were in and around Fardus Square as the statue of Saddam came tumbling down?
The up close action video of the statue being destroyed is broadcast around the world as proof of a massive uprising. Still photos grabbed off of Reuters show a long-shot view of Fardus Square... it's empty save for the U.S. Marines, the International Press, and a small handful of Iraqis. There are no more than 200 people in the square at best. The Marines have the square sealed off and guarded by tanks. A U.S. mechanized vehicle is used to pull the statue of Saddam from it's base. The entire event is being hailed as an equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling... but even a quick glance of the long-shot photo shows something more akin to a carefully constructed media event tailored for the television cameras.
----
News anchors glum amid Iraqi jubilation
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030410-29679624.htm
Baghdad's jubilation got the cold shoulder from some journalists yesterday.
The press did not question the raising of the American flag over Iwo Jima back in 1945.
But only minutes after President Saddam Hussein's statue toppled before overjoyed Iraqis, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell asked Central Command spokesman U.S. Navy Capt. Frank Thorpe whether it was appropriate for Marine Cpl. Edward Chin to briefly cover the statue's face with a U.S. flag. The act implied the United States already had assumed control of the regime, Miss O'Donnell said.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour made a similar query a short time later.
"We are sensitive to the Iraq culture," Capt. Thorpe told the networks separately. "We are a liberating force, not an occupying force."
Octavia Nasr, CNN's analyst for Middle Eastern news media, called the flag moment "a mistake," and a "shock ... sending a message that the U.S. was there to invade." Shock changed to relief among Arab audiences, she said, once the American flag was replaced by an Iraqi flag.
In an interview later in the day, Cpl. Chin's sister Connie gave her own perspective.
"We got a call saying he was a real hero," she told CNN. "We're so proud of him."
Perspectives also differed yesterday. While Fox News described the Baghdad scene as "filled with hundreds of joyful people," ABC's Peter Jennings' characterized the throng as "a small crowd."
Collective media doubt even affected Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"We shouldn't take away from the jubilation these people feel," he told reporters yesterday, noting the situation presented a historic opportunity for journalists to record the stories of newly liberated Iraqi eyewitnesses.
"Truth ultimately finds its way to people's ear and eyes," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
The Media Research Center made light of the skeptical press in an online poll yesterday, asking, "Which journalist do you think is the most glum" after Iraqi cheering started? The poll ranked ABC's Mr. Jennings first with 78 percent of the votes, followed by free-lancer Peter Arnett (17 percent) and CBS' Lara Logan (5 percent.)
The events benefited broadcasters in need of a new plot, however. ABC, NBC and CBS replaced regular programming yesterday with Iraq coverage at 8:45 a.m., ending almost six hours later. CNN is relocating 30 persons to Baghdad to begin reporting without the presence of Iraqi government 'minders.'
The liberation perhaps came just in time. A Pew Research Center poll released yesterday found 39 percent of the respondents said there was "too much coverage" of the war and were "hungry for other news."
Forty percent said they were tired of antiwar coverage, and 36 percent said "ex-military commentary" had received too much attention. Nearly a quarter felt the media were too critical" of the war, though eight in 10 said embedded reporters were "fair and objective."
That new genre of journalists received praise yesterday from Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who said past wars "could well have been much shorter if there had been journalists embedded with the armed forces."
Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, told the American Society of Newspaper editors that press criticism of war plans had been off the mark, calling the chorus of second-guessers "retired military officers embedded in TV studios."
• Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.
--------
Army Seeks to Demonstrate That Troops Are 'Liberators'
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By BERNARD WEINRAUB
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CND-FLAG.html
WITH V CORPS HEADQUARTERS near the Kuwait border, April 10 - Officers whooped and hollered on Wednesday in the Army's command center as they watched the televised scene of a United States Marine draping an American flag over the face of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
But then there were second thoughts.
Today, the Army, seeking to demonstrate that its troops in Iraq are "liberators" and not "conquerors" barred any display of the American flag on vehicles, buildings, statues, and command posts.
The order, which effectively halts the display of the flag virtually anywhere in Iraq, except the United States Embassy, said that flying the flag on buildings in Iraq would only reenforce the anti-American message that the military was "here to oppress the Iraqis."
In issuing the order today, the United States tacitly acknowledged that it was deeply concerned about the perception, among Arabs and others, that American soldiers and Marines in Iraq were being seen as an occupation force who would rule Baghdad for year. Displaying the flag would reinforce that image, officers said. "It's an issue of perception, it's an issue of decorum," General William S. Wallace, the V Corps commander, told his staff this morning.
At the start of the war, the Coalition Forces Land Component Command , at Camp Doha, near Kuwait City, ordered soldiers, Marines and Air Force personnel not to place the American flag on vehicles or buildings. The order was loosely followed.
But then came the the dramatic moment on television on Wednesday, when the marine briefly unfurled the American flag on the face of the statue. The command center, comprised most of mid-level and senior officers, seemed to burst into enthusiastic shouts and applause. Moments later, the marine removed the flag, apparently on orders from a superior.
Today, Brig. Gen Daniel A. Hahn, the V Corps chief of staff, said that it was perfectly natural for American soldiers to seek to carry the American flag and place it at various sites in Iraq. "It's a source of great pride," said General Hahn."It's seen as like a gift to Iraq."
But General Hahn said that sensitivity to Iraqi pride and nationalism was foremost in the minds of the American military, as the United States helps Iraq reshape the Government. "We don't want to flaunt our power," said General Hahn.
There are more than 195,400 American troops in the Iraqi theater of war, which includes Kuwait.
The message sent today to Army commanders from General Wallace, followed his comments made to his officers that the "open display" of American flags in Iraq by soldiers was "not appropriate."
"The Iraqi people should know that we're not here to occupy this country of Iraq," General Wallace said.
The order sent out to the Army officers in Iraq and Kuwait said that "U.S./coalition forces continue operations to remove/disarm the Saddam regime and liberate Iraq. Displaying the American flag counters the perception that we are liberators and allows enemy and other bad actors to use the images of our flags prominently displayed to reinforce their message that the U.S. is here to oppress the Iraqis."
The message added: "The pride and patriotism of V Corps soldiers is beyond question and the motivation to display our flag is understandable."
The message added: "In this environment the display of our flag is not helpful."
--------
Bush and Blair Take Their Message Directly to the Iraqis
April 10, 2003
The New York Times
By JOEL BRINKLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/10/international/worldspecial/10CND-CAPI.html
WASHINGTON, April 10 - The United States and Britain began a broad media campaign in Iraq today with speeches by President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain beamed from an American aircraft to televisions nationwide.
But it was not clear that many Iraqis saw it. Most of Baghdad and some other areas of Iraq had no electricity and, therefore, no television.
In the broadcast, Mr. Bush promised the Iraq people that the United States would help set up a representative government, "and then our military forces will leave."
Amplifying that theme, Mr. Blair said: "Our forces are friends and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors. They will not stay a day longer than is necessary."
The short broadcast, in English with Arabic subtitles, was aired at 6 p.m. Baghdad time (10 a.m. Eastern time) on the channel that used to belong to Iraqi state television. The United States said it would soon begin airing news and other programming on that channel several hours every day.
In addition, starting Saturday, the United States and Britain will publish a daily newspaper in southern Iraq, the White House said. Initially 10,000 copies are to be printed.
All of this came as governments around the world began to react to the sudden crumbling of Saddam Hussein's regime and television images of jubilant Iraqis parading in the streets of Baghdad as it came under the control of American-led forces.
"It appears there's no functioning government in Iraq at the moment," observed Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, adding that he hoped that the organization's weapons inspectors could return soon.
Countries that opposed the war said little about the striking turn of events and instead focused on what should be done in Iraq after the fighting has stopped. Several of them, notably France and Germany, argued again today that the United Nations should fill that vacuum.
"As soon as possible, after the necessary phase of securing" the country, "Iraq must return to its full sovereignty in a stabilized region with the legitimacy of the United Nations," the office of Jacques Chirac, the French president, said.
And Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said Germany would not help to rebuild Iraq unless it was under United Nations leadership - a position that is unlikely to unsettle the White House, given the low regard the Bush administration holds for the Berlin government.
The foreign minister of Japan, in Berlin for meetings, echoed the view that the United Nations should manage Iraq. Even the government of Belarus spoke up today, issuing a statement saying, "We want the United Nations to be given the complex task of rebuilding the country after the war."
The United States has no intention of handing the complete administration of postwar Iraq over to the United Nations, though President Bush said this week that the organization would play a role. In fact, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was dismissive of the calls to give the United Nations central control of Iraq.
"I'm not quite sure what that means," Mr. Powell said today. "They just say central, and they go on to their next meeting."
An interim administration, headed by retired general Jay Garner, now a Pentagon official, is at work in Kuwait and intends to move to Baghdad as soon as it is secure, the Pentagon said.
American officials have rebutted the calls for United Nations administration by saying that Iraqis should manage their own country, a theme Bush stressed in his televised speech today, saying: "The government of Iraq and the future of your country will soon belong to you."
Iraq's neighbors looked with concern at the turn of events. Earlier today, Kurdish forces in northern Iraq took control of Kirkuk, a city that sits amid the nation's northern oil fields, causing consternation among Turkish officials who have said they would not allow that.
"We will do what is necessary," vowed Abdullah Gul, the Turkish foreign minister. "Turkey's position is open and clear."
Later, the White House tried to reassure the Turks.
"We've been in contact with officials in Turkey as well as free Iraqis in the north, and I think it is fair to say that American forces will be in control of Kirkuk," Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said.
Secretary of State Powell said he had communicated that message to Mr. Gul today. "We assured them," he told The Associated Press.
But that assurance was apparently not enough. "Turkish armed forces observers will enter" Kirkuk as well, Mr. Gul said.
At the Pentagon this afternoon, Maj. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal said a battalion-sized force of American troops had entered Kirkuk, but he added that "the situation is fluid." He also said American-led forces were attacking Iraqi forces in the north.
"They are the last significant formations on the battlefield that we're aware of," General McChrystal said, adding that the Republican Guard and regular Iraqi forces there were not surrendering.
Syria, meanwhile, reacted to the fall of Baghdad by calling on the "international community" to bring "an end to the occupation and remedy the catastrophic situation resulting from the aggression," the foreign ministry said. But the Damascus government choose to say nothing about Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's charge that Syria was accepting fleeing Iraqi officials.
Syria has a conflicted relationship with Iraq. Syria is ruled by a rival wing of the Baath Party that governed Iraq and joined the coalition of nations that fought against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. But Syria has adamantly opposed the present war.
Today, Jack Straw, the British foreign minister, added to criticism of Syria, echoing Mr. Rumsfeld. "We look to Syria to end any and all assistance to the Iraqi regime and cooperate fully with the people of Iraq and with coalition forces," he said.
Given all of that, Mr. Powell felt a need today to assert that the United States had no intention of attacking Syria. "We have many ways of dealing with the challenges we face," he said.
But Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was more hawkish. "The Syrians are behaving badly," he warned during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "They need to be reminded of that. And if they continue, we need to think about our what our policy is."
Syria's reaction to the fall of Baghdad was similar to those elsewhere in much of the Arab world. Many people viewed the sudden crumbling of Mr. Hussein's regime with disbelief.
"If Baghdad had fallen heroically and had resisted, then women would have ululated and rejoiced," lamented Taher Adwan, an editor of the Cairo daily al-Yawn, in an article published today. "But Baghdad fell without resistance, without fighters confronting American tanks, and with even some Baghdadis rejoicing, chasing others to take revenge or to loot."
A commentator for Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite television channel, said, "Everything that happens now will have an American smell."
While the world woke up to a new order in Iraq, Iraqi ambassadors in numerous foreign countries tried to adjust. Some burned and shredded boxes of documents. Some, including the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, renounced any ties to Mr. Hussein. The Iraqi leader's portrait disappeared from the facade of the Iraqi embassy in Cairo overnight.
"I haven't had any contact with Baghdad for two or three weeks," Muaead Hussain, the Iraqi charge d'affaires in Berlin, told The Associated Press. "I have no idea what's going on there."
Talal Waleed, first secretary in the Iraqi embassy in Bangkok, said: "There is no clear picture. The collapse happened so quickly." He referred to Mr. Hussein's regime as "the former government."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Ex-agent for FBI arrested in theft
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030410-94740624.htm
Federal prosecutors have arrested a former FBI agent considered an expert in Chinese counterintelligence on charges of allowing unauthorized access to classified information to a woman now believed to be a Chinese agent.
The agent, James J. Smith, 59, now retired, and his purported girlfriend Katrina Leung, 49, described by authorities as having been used by the FBI as an "asset on China," were arrested yesterday in the theft of classified U.S. documents that reportedly were sent to officials in China.
Miss Leung, a Republican political activist, was taken into custody by agents at her home in the affluent San Marino area of Los Angeles and charged with obtaining documents concerning the country's national defense for the advantage of a foreign nation.
Mr. Smith, a 30-year FBI veteran of the bureau's counterintelligence squad who retired two years ago, was accused of allowing access to classified information through gross negligence.
Prosecutors said the couple had "a long-term affair" that began when they started working together for the FBI. Miss Leung also admitted to having a "long-term sexual relationship" with another, unidentified FBI agent based in San Francisco, according to court documents.
That agent, according to prosecutors, told the FBI he obtained a tape recording of Miss Leung speaking with a Chinese intelligence agent in 1991 - a conversation in which she apparently was acting on her own. The agent told Mr. Smith about the taped conversation and was told that the problem had been addressed, prosecutors said.
Documents unsealed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said Miss Leung was paid from 1983 to 2002 as a U.S. government "asset" providing information about China to the FBI. The documents said that Mr. Smith served as Miss Leung's principal FBI handler, and that when he met with her at her house, she would steal classified documents from his briefcase while he was not looking.
The type of national security information Miss Leung is accused of stealing was not disclosed, and it was not clear yesterday whether it had been sent in China, to whom and if it had reached the intended destination.
Miss Leung is president of a business consulting firm in California, known as Glishen Inc. She served as a director of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, which promotes greater understanding of global issues and includes a number of prominent people as directors.
Other directors of the World Affairs Council included Wallis Annenberg, vice president of the Annenberg Foundation; David Baltimore, president of the California Institute of Technology; Stephen F. Bollenbach, president and chief executive officer of Hilton Hotels Corp.; Albert Carnesale, chancellor at UCLA; former Secretary of State Warren Christopher; Michael D. Eisner, chairman and chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Co.; John W. Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League; and Steven Sample, president of the University of Southern California.
Mr. Smith was a key player in the FBI's probe of suspected fund-raising irregularities during the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.
----
University president given immunity
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 10, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030410-71573557.htm
Lawmakers tried to boost their two-year investigation into the FBI's ties to mob informants by granting immunity yesterday to University of Massachusetts President William Bulger and a former New England crime boss in exchange for their congressional testimony.
Members of the House Government Reform Committee said they hope to use the testimony from Mr. Bulger, brother of a fugitive mobster, and Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme to improve whistle-blower protections and address how FBI agents use confidential informants.
"Our number-one objective is to clean up the FBI," said Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican and former committee chairman who led the investigation over the past two years.
The current chairman, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican, said the committee could hear from Mr. Bulger and Mr. Salemme as early as month's end.
"We want to get this over as fast as we can," Mr. Davis said. "This information will help the committee gain a complete understanding of the scope of the FBI's misuse of informants in Boston ... What happened there should never happen again."
Mr. Bulger has maintained an eight-year silence on what he knows about the whereabouts and FBI ties of his brother, James "Whitey" Bulger, who has been linked to 21 slayings. He fled in 1995 to avoid prosecution.
In December, William Bulger appeared before the House committee but invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer questions.
The immunity vote for Mr. Bulger was 30-1, with Rep. Steven C. LaTourette, Ohio Republican, the lone dissenter.
Mr. LaTourette said Mr. Bulger, a Democrat who led the Massachusetts Senate for 17 years, has been withholding information about his brother and there are questions about "whether or not, when he was president of the state Senate that he engaged in retaliatory activities with respect to his brother. I'm saddened the Justice Department does not want to look at this individual any further."
Mr. Bulger, who has a law degree, said he has no idea what the committee will ask, but that the immunity vote was expected.
"It's another step along the way," he said in Boston. "Things have been going along in a pretty cooperative fashion and so we'll do whatever is expected of us next."
The immunity will not shield Mr. Bulger if he contradicts any of his earlier grand jury testimony when he said that he had no idea where his brother was and that he had spoken to him only once since he fled.
He later told reporters: "I don't feel an obligation to help everyone to catch him."
Committee Democrats urged caution, noting that William Bulger has never been convicted of a crime.
"I'm unclear what forcing William Bulger to testify will contribute to this investigation," said the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Henry A. Waxman of California. "We need to take great care before doing this."
Rep. John F. Tierney, Massachusetts Democrat, said the committee should focus on FBI corruption and not taint Mr. Bulger's "exemplary public career."
Lawmakers are hoping William Bulger, 68, will provide information about whether FBI agents obstructed homicide cases to protect his older brother, and whether the agents stalled efforts to find him.
"We have FBI employees who were working for organized crime," said Rep. Christopher Shays, Connecticut Republican. "We want the truth. If you have people in your law enforcement that are corrupt, you need to root it out."
A key issue, he said, is whether FBI agents condoned their informants' criminal behavior and knowingly allowed innocent men to go to prison to protect those informants.
Mr. Salemme has already been interviewed by committee staff, and the panel's vote to give him immunity was 34-0.
-------- prisons / prisoners
UK: Rise in child prisoners is blamed on Bulger case
By Nigel Morris Home Affairs Correspondent
10 April 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=395646
The number of teenagers being locked up has increased sharply in the past decade because of a hardening in attitudes towards young offenders caused by the murder of James Bulger, a crime reduction charity warns today.
Nacro said the number of under-15s placed in custody leapt eight-fold because of draconian laws passed by politicians playing to the gallery. The trend threatened to put the Government in breach of United Nations conventions, it added.
Condemning the youth incarceration rate as shocking, Nacro accused the Government of failing in its aim of limiting the number of children being locked up.
In a report published today, Nacro blamed the rise in child imprisonment on a "rush to custody". Individual cases such as the Bulger murder 10 years ago had been more widely publicised than before, leading to heightened public anxiety over an apparent epidemic of juvenile offending.
The report said politicians "seeking to establish themselves as guardians of law and order" had responded with "draconian legislation, harsher sentencing and tough interventions".
The number of juveniles locked up in England and Wales had risen from 4,000 a year in 1992 to 7,600 10 years later, while the remanded population rose by 142 per cent. Over the same period, the total of under-15s in custody increased from 100 to 800.
At any one time, more than 3,000 under-18s are in custody, a higher proportion than any western European country except Germany.
The Nacro report, A failure of justice - reducing child imprisonment, said the levels of child imprisonment constitute a continued breach of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. It said the figures were "all the more shocking" because rates of youth offending were falling over the period.
The report tells of ethnic and regional variations in the numbers of children imprisoned. About 18 per cent of children in custody were classified as black or black British.
Nacro said it acknowledged the need to protect the community from dangerous and persistent offenders, but warned that incarceration was likely to lead to more crime, rather than less.
Lord Carlile of Berriew, chairman of its committee on children and crime and a recorder since 1986, said: "It is a national disgrace that incarcerating children is viewed as anything but a last resort in response to the problem of juvenile crime. The UK continues to flout international conventions on children's rights by locking up increasingly young children for considerably less serious crimes than was the case a decade ago."
He said the position could deteriorate further because the Government recently helped courts to sentence offenders aged 12 to 15 to lengthy periods in custody for relatively minor crimes.
The only prison unit in England and Wales exclusively for elderly criminals provides "unacceptable" conditions for its inmates, Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, will say today. HMP Kingston, at Portsmouth, had "serious deficiencies" that needed urgent attention. "Cells were effectively cubicles, divided by partitions." Movement was severely restricted and there was insufficient privacy.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
EPA Encourages Hazardous Waste Site Reuse
April 10, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/apr2003/2003-04-10-09.asp#anchor2
BALTIMORE, Maryland, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced a new national initiative developed to incorporate land reuse in the agency's Superfund, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), Brownfields and underground storage tank hazardous waste cleanup programs.
EPA Administrator Christie Whitman announced the "Land Revitalization Agenda" today at a former RCRA site at Harbor Point in Baltimore, Maryland. The site was successfully cleaned up in February 2000 under RCRA's Corrective Action Program and plans for its redevelopment call for 1.8 million square feet of mixed-used space, representing up to $400 million in new investment and creating as many as 5,000 jobs.
"President Bush and the Congress are working together to strengthen our federal commitment to cleanup Brownfields and it is working," Whitman said. "But cleanup, in and of itself, is not enough. To get the most benefit from these programs, we have to help communities take the next step - making good use of the now-clean land."
The voluntary initiative is a comprehensive plan to build partnerships that can fuel redevelopment, Whitman explained.
It outlines 60 items that the EPA can use to integrate land reuse into its cleanup program, including review of policies and practices concerning liability issues and the leveraging of grant resources across multiple federal cleanup programs to facilitate area wide cleanup.
The agency will also consider the use of written determinations of site reuse safety. What teeth this initiative have remains unclear, but Whitman said that through the program the EPA will "work with community and business leaders, entrepreneurs and visionaries to make dreams become realities."
Environmentalists have said the Bush administration has underfunded clean up efforts at the nation's hazardous waste sites and its decision not to ask polluters to pay for clean up has outraged some. A legislative move to revive the "polluter pays" fees failed in Congress earlier this month.
-------- ACTIVISTS
20,000 stage demo outside US embassy in Moscow
The News International, Pakistan,
April 10, 2003
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2003-daily/10-04-2003/world/w6.htm
MOSCOW: Thousands of people marched through Moscow on Wednesday to protest the US-led war in Iraq, marking the first major demonstration against a war, opposed by the Russian administration and most of the population. Police said between 15,000 and 20,000 people gathered in front of the US embassy, which has been the site of several small-scale protests since war broke out on March 20.
Protesters carried banners reading: "Stop American aggression", "No to World War III", and "Bush must respect Russia." Many classes were cancelled so that students could join the anti-war march, which was the first organised by pro-Kremlin party Russia Unity. "They let us out of class, so I came along to see why," said Ana Kodyaeva, who admitted she tagged along mostly out of curiosity. Other protesters said they joined the march to protest US aggression against Russian interests, after a convoy carrying Russian diplomats and journalists was caught in a crossfire between US and Iraqi troops on Sunday.
"It's arbitrary and total disorder," said Dmitry Barinov. "Our diplomats were the target of shooting, one of our journalists was killed. We must do something." A Ukrainian cameraman for British news agency Reuters was killed on Tuesday, along with a Spanish cameraman, when a US tank shot at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad, where most foreign journalists are staying. Some 2,300 police and soldiers were deployed to monitor the protest and all traffic in front of the embassy -- on a major thoroughfare in central Moscow -- was halted for several hours.
"Americans you belong to international courts and it's time to judge those who gave the order to kill diplomats and journalists," said Alexander Isayev, deputy chief of Moscow's main union federation. "Septeber 11 was a tragedy for the American people, but President Bush drew no conclusions from it. America presents itself as a 'scarecrow' to scare of terrorism, but it is developing in the world and becoming a means for small countries to defend their right to exist," Russia Unity's deputy chief Andrei Metelsky said.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.