Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
A Nuclear Road of No Return
Radioactive Recovery Effort Criticized
India test-fires air-to-air missile again
India Appoints Ambassador to Pakistan
Vajpayee China Trip Could Tip Balance of Power
U.N. Nuclear Agency Lists Iraqi Sites
Japan Political Deal Paves Way for Defense Bills
N. Korea fired laser at troops
S. Korean Leader Seeks to Reassure U.S.
Energy Dept. Faulted Over Potential 'Dirty Bomb' Material
Texan joins panel advising feds on nuclear labs
Navajo Miners Battle a Deadly Legacy of Yellow Dust
Waste Shipments to Wash. Site Blocked
'Wolfowitz's War': Not Over Yet
China hawk settles in neo-cons' nest
Head of Office of Special Counsel Sends Bush Her Resignation
Enron-Like Unreality
MILITARY
No light in the Afghan tunnel
UN Approves Peacekeepers for Ivory Coast
Dogs Take Their Place in Arsenal Against Chemical Attack
Colombia Asks Europe for Military Aid
Iran in secret talks with America post-Saddam
Iranian Leader Visits Beirut in Display of Shiite Solidarity
Baghdad Anarchy Spurs Call For Help
Iraq Civilian Body Count [increases dramatically]
Iraqi Leaders Voice Concerns on U.S. Shuffle
One Faith, One Political Goal, and Set to Collide
Sharon Sets Hard Line on Settlements Policy
Israel Seals Off Gaza After Brief Opening
Powell Asks Arabs to Help Rein in Palestinian Militants
Uprising in the Chechnya Ghetto
52 Die in Suicide Bombing in Chechnya
U.S. to Rely More on Private Companies' Satellite Images
Spy Agencies Faulted
U.S. orders expulsion of seven Cuban diplomats
U.N. Council May Request Foreign Force for Congo
The China Syndrome
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Homeland Security Drill Starts in Seattle
Homeland Security Studies Drone Patrols
Feds Conduct Bioterror Drill in Chicago
Emergency Workers in Two Cities Drill for Disaster
Bosnian Police Smash Human Trafficking Network
Bush Vows to Find 'Killers' of Seven Americans and Many Others
Terror Scenes Follow Script of Never Again
OTHER
Critics of Graduation Exam Threaten Boycott in Florida
Interior Dept. Official's Role as Oil Lobbyist Is Investigated
Russia's Latest Oil and Gas Oasis
ACTIVISTS
Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy
A Cold War Lesson
Democrats Hide to Halt Action on Texas Redistricting
-------- NUCLEAR
A Nuclear Road of No Return
Bush's bid for new kinds of weapons could put the world on a suicidal course.
May 13, 2003
Los Angeles Times,
by Robert Scheer
http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-scheer13may13,0,5142385.column
It turns out the threat is not from Iraq but from us.
On Sunday, the Washington Post wrote the obituary for the United States' effort to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq," read the headline, confirming what has become an embarrassing truth - that the central rationale for the invasion and occupation of oil-rich Iraq was in fact one of history's great frauds.
The arms inspectors "are winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms," reported the Post, putting the lie to Colin Powell's Feb. 6 claim at the United Nations that Iraq possessed a functioning program to build nuclear bombs and had hoarded hundreds of tons of chemical and biological materials.
Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean the world is a safer place. The deadly weapons of mass destruction have proved phantom in Iraq, but the Bush administration is now doing its best to ensure that the world becomes increasingly unstable and armed to the teeth. Although the nuclear threat from Iraq proved to be nonexistent, the United States' threat to use nuclear weapons and make a shambles of nuclear arms control is alarmingly vibrant.
In its latest bid to frighten the planet into a constant state of shock and awe, our government is accelerating its own leading-edge weapons-of-mass-destruction program: President Bush's allies on the Senate Armed Services Committee have approved ending a decade-old ban on developing atomic battlefield weapons and endorsed moving ahead with creating a nuclear "bunker-buster" bomb. They also rubber-stamped the administration's request for funds to prepare for a quick resumption of nuclear weapons testing.
What's going on here? Having failed to stop a gang of marauders armed with nothing more intimidating than box cutters, the U.S. is now using the "war on terror" to pursue a long-held hawkish Republican dream of a "winnable nuclear war," as the president's father memorably described it to me in a 1980 Times interview. In such a scenario, nukes can be preemptively used against a much weaker enemy - millions of dead civilians, widespread environmental devastation and centuries of political blowback be damned.
Building a new generation of battlefield nuclear weapons sets the stage for another round of the most dangerous arms race imaginable. What has been forgotten in all of the patriotic hoopla is that it is our country that pioneered the creation of weapons of mass destruction over the last half-century. And it was our dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, that sparked the arms race of the Cold War.
Faced with the reality that nuclear weapons are useful only for mass international suicide, every U.S. president since World War II has pursued a policy of nuclear arms control. Every administration, that is, until this one, which from its first days has made clear its inveterate hostility to arms control. It attacked the Antiballistic Missile Treaty and resurrected the corpse of the "Star Wars" nuclear defense program, even as Bush's first Nuclear Posture Review telegraphed the development of battlefield nuclear weapons and threatened their use against "rogue" nations.
"We're moving away from more than five decades of efforts to delegitimize the use of nuclear weapons," warned Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a dissenter on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Following our lead, why shouldn't India and Pakistan develop battlefield nuclear weapons? Or Beijing for use against Taiwan and vice versa? After getting China and most nations to accept a testing ban, why would this administration seek to resume testing?
The current preponderance of our military power, combined with our overweening, xenophobic fear of the rest of the world, has corrupted all rational thought. Sadly, no one will listen to the mayor of Hiroshima, who last month wrote Bush to warn that new U.S. nuclear weapons development represented "a frontal attack on the process of nuclear disarmament."
But why listen to someone from Hiroshima? What do those people know about weapons of mass destruction?
-------- accidents and safety
Radioactive Recovery Effort Criticized
May 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radioactive-Devices.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A lack of money and a central storage site has hampered a government effort to recover thousands of sealed radioactive devices held by hospitals, universities and industry, a congressional report said Wednesday, raising security concerns.
The report by the General Accounting Office said that while more than 5,000 of the devices have been recovered since 1999, almost as many have yet to be picked up, although their owners have notified the government that they are no longer being used.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, who requested the study, said he was introducing legislation to spur faster recovery of the radioactive materials.
He said the importance of the program has increased because of the heightened concern that terrorists could use the radioactive material to fashion a ``dirty bomb.''
The radioactive sources include a wide range of radioisotopes -- often in extremely small amounts -- used for medical research by university scientists, in gauges at construction sites and in petroleum exploration.
The GAO said that 4,380 unwanted, sealed radioactive devices are being kept by 328 owners across the country, awaiting pickup by the Energy Department. The devices are used under licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The report said that the Energy Department has made little progress in developing a central facility to keep such radioactive devices, nor has it requested money needed to speed up recovery.
``It is not a priority with the (environmental management) office'' in charge of the program, said the GAO report released Tuesday by the Democratic staff of the Senate Government Affairs Committee.
Jessie Roberson, the DOE's assistant secretary for environmental management, said the department ``takes seriously the new national security aspects'' of the recovery program.
In a letter to the GAO, Roberson said her department would ``focus recovery efforts on those sealed sources which pose the greatest concern.''
Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said that some 6,000 such devices have been collected and that the recovery program is continuing with devices posing the most significant risk given priority.
Another concern, said Akaka, is that no one knows how many of these devices exist, although the NRC licenses their use. NRC officials in the past have noted that most of these devices contain extremely small amounts of radioactive material -- not enough in itself to be of use in a ``dirty'' bomb.
Larger amounts of material, including plutonium, are used generally at university facilities, the officials have said. Those sites have significant security and tracking of the material, they said.
Still, said the GAO report, ``neither DOE or any other government agency has kept track of the number of (these) sealed (radioactive) sources that are no longer wanted.''
-------- india / pakistan
India test-fires air-to-air missile again
May 13 2003,
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/12/1052591732805.html
India has test-fired its first domestically developed air-to-air missile yesterday for the third time in four days from a site in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.
The Astra is powered by solid propellant and can strike targets between 25 and 40 kilometres away, beyond the usual visual range.
The 3.8 metre high prototype was also test fired from a special fixed launcher on Sunday.
The missile was fired from a fixed launcher during its debut test on Friday.
Meanwhile, India's Government has prepared a full road map for talks with nuclear rival Pakistan, Indian External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha said yesterday.
"Every step is clear in our mind. There is no confusion in the Government of India and we will proceed according to that plan," Mr Sinha said in an interview with the New Delhi Television network.
He declined to give details. But his comments indicated that India remains serious about proceeding with talks aimed at resolving decades of animosity with Pakistan.
"As far as we are concerned in India, we have very, very clearly worked out the entire road map," he said.
Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said his Government had prepared plans for the talks.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali "has made his own road map, which will begin from small issues and (move) to the solution of Kashmir", he said yesterday.
The countries have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, the Himalayan territory divided between them, but claimed by both in its entirety. They came close to a fourth conflict last year, sparking international concern that a new war could escalate to involve nuclear weapons.
Mr Ahmed said on Sunday that peace talks between the South Asian neighbours could begin as early as next month.
Both India and Pakistan have expressed the need to approach the talks in stages, with meetings between lower officials leading to eventual summit talks. But neither side has indicated when the talks would begin or whom they would involve.
"The final thing is to be able to reach an understanding on all the identified issues ... so that there is a successful summit and all this understanding could be reduced to whatever document we want to produce," Mr Sinha said.
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who visited Pakistan and India last week, said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the peace process in South Asia.
He encouraged the countries to press ahead on the "long trip" to peace.
In recent weeks, New Delhi and Islamabad have agreed to exchange ambassadors and restore direct flights.
Agencies
--------
India Appoints Ambassador to Pakistan
May 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-southasia-ambassador.html
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India named a new ambassador to Pakistan Tuesday, in the latest sign of a thaw between the nuclear-armed neighbors which came close to war last year.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement the envoy, named after both countries announced plans this month to restore full diplomatic ties, would take up his post soon but gave no date.
``Shivshankar Menon, currently ambassador of India to China, has been appointed as the next High Commissioner of India to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,'' the ministry said.
India and Pakistan scaled back ties after an attack on India's parliament in December 2001 which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Kashmiri rebels. Islamabad denied involvement.
The parliament raid triggered a huge military build-up, which brought the countries to the brink of their fourth war.
Last month Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said he wanted to extend a hand of friendship to Pakistan, prompting a series of reciprocal measures to build trust.
The appointment of Menon, a career diplomat, should pave the way for low-level discussions in an effort to build enough mutual confidence to work toward eventual summit talks.
``It is a political gesture and part of the prime minister's initiative. It shows the seriousness attached to what we have said,'' a ministry official said.
He said Pakistan had not yet given New Delhi any names for its own ambassador to India.
Menon, 53, has served in China, Israel and Sri Lanka, but has not before been posted to Pakistan.
India accuses Pakistan of arming Muslim militants and sending them to join a 13-year revolt in Indian Kashmir, mostly Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state. Pakistan says it gives only moral support to what it calls Kashmir's ``freedom struggle.''
In the latest bloodshed in the state, police said 13 people, including 10 rebels, died on Tuesday in gunbattles.
Officials say more than 38,000 people have died in separatist violence in Kashmir over which the neighbors have fought two of their three wars since their independence in 1947.
--------
Vajpayee China Trip Could Tip Balance of Power
May 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-india-china-diplomacy.html
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - After extending the hand of peace to arch-foe Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's planned follow-up visit to old-enemy China could redraw the diplomatic map of a region that is of acute interest to Washington after the Iraq war.
The major players -- India, China and Pakistan -- bristle with nuclear arms, and Vajpayee's peace plays may be aimed not only at ensuring a place in the history books for the elderly politician but reducing the risk of a nightmare conflict among longtime foes with weapons trained on India from north and west.
The shifts in bilateral ties among the trio as well as in their relationships with the United States since the Cold War, plus a big nudge from the September 11 attacks, are starting to alter dramatically diplomatic patterns unchanged for decades.
``Diplomacy is back in business in South Asia,'' wrote Washington-based South Asia expert Paula Newberg at the weekend.
If Vajpayee goes to China in June it will be the first such visit by an Indian prime minister in a decade and comes after Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji toured India last year.
The visit would unsettle old China friend Pakistan, putting pressure on President Pervez Musharraf as he ponders Vajpayee's surprise offer last month to give peace a chance after the nuclear neighbors narrowly averted war in 2002.
``India is also interested in reducing the number of potential foes during this 'war on terror','' said Sanjay Ganguly, professor of Asian studies and government at the University of Texas in Austin. That is of concern to China, too, as it worries Islamic militants are slipping over the border from Pakistan and stirring resentment in its restive Muslim western region of Xinjiang.
TALL ORDERS
``Simultaneously, Vajpayee may just be interested in seeing if he can, to any degree, wean China away from Pakistan,'' he said.
``This is a tall order given the long-standing relationship between those two states, China's misgivings about Islamic militancy in Xinjiang notwithstanding.''
It may be a tall order, but not as tall as trying to resolve the territorial disputes that triggered a war between India and China in 1962. To this day, the two have failed to agree even on mapping out their border.
Vajpayee will make no progress there when he meets new Chinese leaders President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
``The current pattern is to try to improve trade and political relationships. Territorial problems, nuclear issues are not going to get resolved,'' said Indian defense analyst Uday Bhaskar. ``But symbolism in China acquires a certain substantive dimension.''
One Chinese expert said the visit was more than symbolic. ``Maintaining high-level political contact furthers understanding between these two big countries,'' said Sun Shihai, a South Asia expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.
The two may have agreed to put such intractable disputes on the back burner while they confront issues of the day -- boosting trade, reducing military tensions and the consequent drain on budgets, and altering the balance of power in the region.
A rapidly prospering China and greater attention from the United States are factors affecting that balance.
``I've always argued that it made more sense for India to normalize with Pakistan than China, separating the two by being nice to Pakistan. But it takes two to tango,'' said South Asia expert Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institute in Washington.
Vajpayee may feel that if Musharraf is not ready to take to the dance floor he should be looking to Beijing and Washington.
THE U.S. FACTOR AND MONEY
Signs of closer ties with Washington, underscored by recent limited joint military exercises, could strengthen India's hand in dealing with both Islamabad and Beijing -- and boost trade.
``A closer relationship with the United States makes India a bit more self-confident in dealing with China,'' said Ganguly, adding that Beijing had been rattled when India did not issue a knee-jerk criticism after Washington quit the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty in 2001.
``One of the goals of this visit to China in the context of steadily warming Indo-U.S. relations is to disconcert General Musharraf,'' said Ganguly.
However, Asia expert Sheng Lijun of Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies warned that excessive reliance by either Washington or India on that relationship as a strategic counterpoint to the rapid rise of China could lead to quicksand.
``Each could be manipulated by the other,'' he said.
``China will not hurt relations with one country just because it develops relations with another,'' Sun said of friend Pakistan.
It wouldn't hurt if India could reduce the cost of patrolling its northern border with China while facing Pakistan to the west. ``Defense spending is actually an issue,'' Ganguly said.
And at the very least a Vajpayee trip would stamp a seal on an improvement of ties with Beijing, which took a dive after India's 1998 nuclear tests, and could boost trade that is now a fraction of China's total but more significant for India.
``India is more concerned about the indicators of the Chinese economy than the Chinese military,'' said Bhaskar. ``This is good in terms of the larger relationship direction that India should be charting -- to have a robust relationship with the two major economies of the U.S. and China.''
-------- inspections
U.N. Nuclear Agency Lists Iraqi Sites
May 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Iraq.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has provided U.S. weapons teams a list of radioactive sites in Iraq, even as it pushes for a renewed role in the search for weapons of mass destruction, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Melissa Fleming of the International Atomic Energy Agency said Washington requested the list in mid-April. Drawing on years of inspections seeking evidence of banned nuclear programs, the list includes more than 1,000 radioactive sites, including research and training facilities, and hospitals, she said. Advertisement
While the Vienna-based agency did not have to share its information with Washington, it did so because ``we are concerned that either unknowing people or illicit traffickers could have removed'' radioactive material from these sources, Fleming said.
Relations between the U.N. nuclear agency and the United States are strained over Washington's refusal to admit U.N. weapons teams back in Iraq to continue their searches suspended right before the war that ousted Saddam Hussein.
Washington -- angered by what it saw as the lack of support for U.S.-led military attacks on Iraq by IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei and chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix -- has sent its own weapons teams to Iraq instead.
ElBaradei's agency last week also asked U.S. officials to let it send a mission to the Tuwaitha nuclear research facility, just outside Baghdad, to check up on reports of looting there.
IAEA officials said Tuesday there has been no response to that request, made in a letter by ElBaradei.
Searches by U.N. inspectors for such weapons of mass destruction resumed in November after a four-year suspension and ended in March.
A key argument for attacking Iraq was Washington's claim that Baghdad was hiding weapons of mass destruction or programs to make them. But no firm evidence to support that claim has surfaced, despite intensifying U.S. searches.
IAEA officials dismissed suggestions that by sharing its nuclear inventory it hoped to thaw relations with Washington. Instead, it said it was concerned over looting at the sites.
``We were concerned about making sure that coalition forces knew the location of these potentially dangerous sources, and they could then ensure their security,'' said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Fleming, the IAEA spokeswoman, said she knew of no other ways the agency was helping Washington or its coalition partners in Iraq.
-------- japan
Japan Political Deal Paves Way for Defense Bills
May 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-japan-defense.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's ruling bloc and its largest opposition group agreed on three controversial defense bills on Tuesday, paving the way for passage of legislation strengthening Japan's ability to defend itself.
Such legislation, opposed by peace activists, has been a long-held dream of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), with moves to enact it gaining a boost from the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States as well as the nuclear crisis involving North Korea.
In a deal struck between Koizumi and Naoto Kan, head of the largest opposition Democratic Party, the ruling bloc agreed that the three bills -- known collectively as crisis legislation -- would emphasize the protection of human rights ``to the maximum.''
``It was epoch-making in the history of Japanese politics,'' Kyodo news agency quoted Koizumi as telling reporters. Debate on how to respond to possible foreign attacks ``had been regarded as a taboo for 50 years in the post-war era,'' he added.
The bills are expected to be endorsed by a committee in the powerful Lower House on Wednesday, approved in a plenary session on Thursday, and enacted before the current session of parliament ends in June.
The legislation stipulates the creation of a government task force with authority over government ministries and local government bodies in the event of an attack on Japan, and would also provide for more cooperation with the U.S. military in Japan.
Critics with memories of Japan's repressive regime during World War II are worried that the changes will infringe on human rights and further fray the pacifist constitution.
The government first began looking into crisis legislation a quarter of a century ago, but the public long opposed anything smacking of wartime limits on citizens' rights.
But the September 11 attacks, and incidents involving near neighbor North Korea such as the 1998 launch of a ballistic missile that overflew Japan, helped to convince many Japanese that their defense arrangements were inadequate.
-------- korea
N. Korea fired laser at troops
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 13, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030513-47005.htm
North Korea's military fired a laser in March at two U.S. Army helicopters patrolling the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in what U.S. officials call a provocative action, The Washington Times has learned.
Two Apache attack helicopters were illuminated by lasers in early March by a weapon that had the characteristics of a Chinese laser gun, an indication that North Korea has deployed a new and potentially lethal weapon.
Lasers focus concentrated beams of light on a target and are used in some guidance systems. The Chinese laser gun, however, is a weapon that can cause eye damage at ranges up to three miles.
The incident was kept secret until defense officials disclosed it to The Times. It could not be learned whether the laser incident was discussed in periodic meetings between U.S., South Korean and North Korean military officials at the Panmunjom truce village.
The March laser illumination of the Apache helicopters occurred around the time that four North Korean jets intercepted a U.S. spy plane.
The jets, MiG-29s and MiG-23s, attempted to force the unarmed U.S. RC-135, flying 150 miles from the coast of the Korean Peninsula, to land in North Korea. The jets also threatened the plane with heat-seeking air-to-air missiles.
Both incidents occurred around the time the Pentagon announced it was sending 21 B-1 and B-52 bombers to Guam in response to the growing threat of North Korea and the latest crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear arms program.
Army Col. Samuel T. Taylor, a spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), said the helicopter incident occurred during a routine training mission. "Two USFK pilots were alerted by onboard laser-detecting equipment that laser systems may have illuminated their aircraft," Col. Taylor said in a statement. "Neither pilot was injured, and no equipment was damaged."
Col. Taylor said laser detections occur occasionally along the DMZ.
"North Korea's military employs both laser range-finding equipment and laser-designating equipment throughout its force," he said.
However, U.S. intelligence officials said an internal analysis of the incident suggests North Korea has acquired Chinese-made ZM-87 antipersonnel lasers.
"These are blinding laser weapons," said one official.
According to the officials, the two Apache attack helicopters were airborne about two miles south of the milewide DMZ when laser sensors on both aircraft went off.
The ZM-87 is the world's only laser device designed for use against troops. It can cause injuries to human eyes at a range of just under two miles, and with a special magnification device it can damage eyes at distances of up to three miles, military specialists say.
By contrast, lasers used to guide weapons and in range-finding equipment work at shorter distances than the Chinese laser weapon.
One intelligence official also said the North Koreans may have manufactured their own version of the Chinese laser gun.
North Korean defectors have identified the Mangyo Jewel Processing Factory, near the capital of Pyongyang, as a facility that produces lasers for precision-guided weapons, this official said.
The Apache pilots and crew were not wearing laser eye protection when the incident occurred.
Since the incident, air crews patrolling the DMZ have been required to wear eye protection intended to thwart any laser attacks.
Disclosure of the military incident comes as South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is set to meet President Bush tomorrow. The two leaders are expected to discuss the repositioning of some U.S. forces further south from the DMZ.
North Korea's official radio last week accused the United States of using laser weapons in Iraq, including arms that "blind the enemies' eyes and incapacitate weapons' sights."
U.S. military personnel have been injured in the past by laser attacks. In April 1997, a U.S. Navy intelligence officer, Lt. Jack Daly, and Canadian helicopter pilot Capt. Pat Barnes, suffered permanent eye damage from a laser fired by a Russian merchant ship that had been spying on U.S. nuclear submarines in Washington state's Strait of Juan de Fuca, north of Puget Sound.
Also, two Army helicopter crewmen suffered eye injuries from a laser while they were flying over Bosnia-Herzegovina in October 1998.
A classified report by the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center produced in 1999 warned that Serbia's armed forces might resort to laser warfare against U.S. pilots during the air war over Kosovo.
"The greatest potential threat of lasers being used as range finders, target designators, or even blinding weapons would come from the [Serbian] Special Operations Corps [63rd and 72nd brigades]," the report said.
The report noted that lasers weapons or lasers with weapons capabilities can be purchased from Russia, China and Armenia.
Lasers also can be effective in crippling air operations, the report stated. "The psychological effect of lasers on operational forces represents one of the most unpredictable aspects of the threat to air operations," it said.
In June, the Navy deployed new antilaser goggles that can be worn by pilots and air crew.
Adm. Thomas Fargo, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, told reporters last month that the bomber deployment to Guam is to make sure "we have the proper deterrent posture in place."
On the North Korean aerial intercept, Adm. Fargo said: "We're taking what I would call prudent measures to ensure that those planes can complete their missions safely." He did not elaborate.
"We've seen some MiG activity over water, but I couldn't characterize it as being directed at our surveillance flights," Adm. Fargo said when asked about increased jet activity by the North Koreans.
Adm. Fargo said U.S. military capabilities to deal with North Korea have vastly improved over the past 15 years. As a result, the military is considering an adjustment in the positioning of U.S. forces on the peninsula.
--------
S. Korean Leader Seeks to Reassure U.S.
May 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-SKorea-Rohs-Mission.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun came from a poor farming family and counts Abraham Lincoln as a role model. Yet Roh said during his election campaign that he would not ``kowtow'' to the United States, his country's chief ally.
Now on his first U.S. visit, one of Roh's main goals is to convince Americans that he is their friend, rather than a prickly or even hostile partner. His mission comes amid a crisis over North Korea's suspected development of nuclear weapons, and U.S. skepticism that South Korea's calls for engaging the North are the right way to solve the problem.
The test is on Wednesday, when Roh meets President Bush in Washington to discuss how to peacefully resolve the nuclear standoff. The South Korean has earned a reputation as a skilled debater at home. His blunt style charms some people and infuriates others.
But Roh's powers of persuasion might fall short with Bush, whose tough criticism of North Korea has unsettled South Korea's efforts to reconcile with its northern neighbor. The summit is shaping up as an opportunity for the two men to get to know each other, rather than a forum for bold policy initiatives.
Tension increased on Monday after North Korea nullified a 1992 agreement with South Korea to keep the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons, citing a ``sinister'' U.S. agenda. In January, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a global accord to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
On Monday Roh, inaugurated in February with the support of young anti-American voters, visited two places of economic and emotional significance to Americans: the New York Stock Exchange and the spot where the World Trade Center once stood.
Through an interpreter, Roh said: ``I came here today with the heart of all the Koreans who expressed their condolences ... and I would like to applaud the courage of the American people who overcame the tragedy.''
His government took out full-page ads in several major American newspapers, introducing the 56-year-old leader who rose to prominence as a feisty human rights lawyer under past authoritarian governments.
The ads cite Roh's decision last month to send 700 noncombatant troops to support U.S. forces in Iraq. Many South Koreans opposed the deployment, but Roh said it would strengthen the alliance with the United States, thereby helping to peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.
Years ago, Roh demanded an end to the U.S. military presence in South Korea, but now he seeks to delay U.S. plans to move soldiers further south from the Demilitarized Zone, which separates the two Koreas. He told Korean residents in New York that he wanted the American troops to stay ``so that we feel safe.''
Before becoming president, Roh accused South Korea's past presidents of ``groveling'' before U.S. leaders. But now he is making a concerted effort to tone down such remarks.
Throughout his political career, Roh championed the rights of low-income workers, calling for a ``fair distribution'' of wealth and stricter controls over family-controlled conglomerates that long dominated the economy.
Part of his mission in the United States is to convince skeptical investors that he is committed to pursuing financial reforms stemming from the 1997-98 Asian currency crisis. And getting tough on labor, Roh's government warned Monday that it will send in police if unionized truck drivers do not end a four-day-old strike that has crippled the world's third-busiest port in Busan city.
Roh has no formal education beyond high school. He rose to fame as a lawyer defending students accused of sedition under past military rule. He once was arrested and had his lawyer's license suspended for supporting an outlawed labor protest.
He entered politics in 1988 as an opposition member of the National Assembly representing a district in Busan.
Roh failed in 1992, 1995 and 2000 elections for parliament and mayor in Busan, running on the locally unpopular ticket of President Kim Dae-jung's government. The experiments also brought him respect for challenging regional favoritism, the bane of South Korean politics.
-------- terrorism
Energy Dept. Faulted Over Potential 'Dirty Bomb' Material
May 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-usa-dirtybomb.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Department of Energy is seriously lagging in efforts to secure hundreds of thousands of U.S.-based sources of low-level nuclear material that could be used in ``dirty bombs,'' a congressional report said on Tuesday.
The General Accounting Office report accused the department of dragging its feet in providing for permanent disposal of civilian use radioactive materials, which extremists could combine with conventional explosive to make radiation-spreading bombs.
``The project is not a priority with DOE's Office of Environmental Management,'' the report said, adding that the project had not received full funding even after Washington launched its war on terrorism in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The energy department issued a statement insisting the program was fully funded and saying the GAO ``failed to fully consider DOE's (recent) progress.''
While not as lethal as a nuclear weapon, a dirty bomb could contaminate a wide area with radiation and cause serious economic costs and social disruption.
The GAO, which does research for the U.S. Congress, said it was estimated there could be as many as 500,000 unwanted sources of low-level radioactive material in the United States. The material includes americium-241,cesium-137, plutonium-238, plutonium-239 and strontium-90.
It is used in gauges in commercial manufacturing; gauges for testing the moisture content of soil; medical pacemakers; medical diagnostics and treatments; gauges for oil exploration; and government and private research.
The radioactive material is sealed in metal -- stainless steel, titanium or platinum -- to prevent dispersal.
The small size and portability of the sealed sources make them susceptible to misuse, improper disposal and theft. ``the hands of terrorists, they could be used as simple and crude but potentially dangerous radiological weapons, commonly called dirty bombs,'' the GAO said.
The GAO said that as of February, the department had recovered more than 5,000 sealed sources from about 160 sites and estimated it would recover about 14,300 by the end of fiscal 2010.
The energy department said in its statement the number of recovered sources now stood at 6,000.
Under a 1985 law, the department was mandated by Congress to provide a permanent facility for disposing of the radioactive material, since hospitals, universities and other users could not do so on their own.
The GAO report said that in the 18 years since, the department had not built a facility for permanent disposal and there was no more room at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to temporarily store sources containing plutonium-239.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, the Hawaii Democrat who requested the GAO probe, told the U.S. Senate in a floor speech, ``We don't have an accurate account of unwanted (radioactive) devices in this country and the program for recovering and securing them is proceeding too slowly.''
He introduced legislation that would force the energy department to take action to fix the problem.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Texan joins panel advising feds on nuclear labs
UC backers fear bias on contracts at Los Alamos, Livermore
Zachary Coile,
San Francisco Chronicle Washington Bureau
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/13/MN44663.DTL
Washington -- A former University of Texas administrator who led the school's bid to run a nuclear weapons lab has been named to a new commission that could help determine whether the University of California continues to manage the nation's two top nuclear weapons labs.
Dale Klein, a top Pentagon official who advised President Bush on nuclear issues during his campaign, will serve on a panel helping Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham decide when lab contracts -- such as UC's contract to run the Bay Area's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- should be opened to competitive bidding.
The appointment has raised concerns among California officials. As UT's former vice chancellor for special engineering programs, Klein championed the university's unsuccessful $400,000 bid to manage Sandia National Laboratories. He had earlier urged UT officials to consider competing for the management job at Los Alamos National Laboratory if the contract held by UC became available.
Now that Abraham has decided to open Los Alamos to competition when UC's contract expires in September 2005, UT is seen as a top contender to run the $2 billion-a-year lab. Some California officials believe the commission's recommendations could help shape the bidding process for Los Alamos -- possibly giving an edge to UC's competitors.
Abraham also is expected to decide by next spring whether to put the Livermore contract up for competitive bidding, and department officials say the panel's recommendations will shape his decision. UC's contract at Livermore also expires in September 2005.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, whose district includes the Livermore lab, said the appointment has stirred fear that the commission could give a leg up to those seeking to take over UC's prestigious lab contracts.
"I'm not suggesting that Mr. Klein can't be fair, and I'm not suggesting that he has a predetermined position," Tauscher said. But she added, "If there is someone who is put forward who has a very clear record of advocating for one side or another -- or a close affiliation with someone who is potentially a competitor -- you risk the credibility of the commission."
Klein, in an interview with The Chronicle, said he abandoned his role as a booster for UT when he joined the Defense Department in 2001. Although he remains a tenured professor of mechanical engineering at the school -- and could return after he finishes his leave -- Klein said he would never use his position to help UT.
"I understand my role on the commission is to look at what is best for the Department of Energy," said Klein, who is assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, biological and chemical defense programs.
CLAIMS NO FAVORITISM
"I'm no longer at the university, so while I have a background in the academic world, so do other members of the commission. There would be no more bias on my end toward the private sector or toward an (academic) institution than anyone else."
Klein said he has not been contacted by any UT officials about the lab contracts, and "if I did, I would not be able to comment for a variety of reasons."
UC has managed Los Alamos under a contract with the federal government since the inception of the nuclear weapons labs 60 years ago. But a series of management and financial scandals prompted Abraham to announce late last month that he would open the bidding on the contract. UC has not yet announced whether it will compete to keep its job.
Despite its important role, the panel -- "The Blue Ribbon Commission on the Use of Competitive Procedures for Department of Energy Laboratories" -- was appointed with no public fanfare.
COMPETITION FAVORED
The panel is dominated by former Republican officials and advocates of competition in federal contracting -- reflecting Abraham's view that competitive bidding could boost the performance of the nation's labs.
The commission includes three officials who served in Bush's father's administration, including the panel's chairman, Francis Blake, a former EPA general counsel who briefly served as a deputy to Abraham in 2001. The panel also includes one Clinton administration official, Jacques Gansler, the former Pentagon acquisitions chief, who was a strong backer of competitive bidding in defense contracts.
Another panelist who has raised some concern among UC's backers is John Tuck, a former Energy Department undersecretary and longtime aide to former Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn.
Tuck, now a Washington lobbyist, has represented Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which has been run by the University of Tennessee and Battelle since 2000. Battelle, which also manages three other Energy Department labs, is considering a bid for Los Alamos.
"Our concern is that we would like to see that this panel is fair and open- minded," said Scott Sudduth, UC's top lobbyist in Washington. "On first blush, I'm disappointed that there is no one with great familiarity with the University of California on the panel."
SELECTED FOR EXPERIENCE
An Energy Department spokesman said the panelists were selected for their experience in government, the private sector and academia.
"I don't think it would be appropriate for anyone to question their integrity," said Joe Davis, an agency spokesman.
Klein said the controversy over Los Alamos has led to the misconception that the panel will be evaluating UC and other lab contractors and recommending whether they should keep their contracts. Instead, he said the panel's job is to evaluate Energy Department policies for competing contracts to see if they need refining.
But Klein acknowledged he generally supports competition and favors a model that matches a university with a private sector partner.
"Universities are known for their technical skills," he said. "They are not always known for excellence in day-to-day management." LAB PANEL
Here are the members of Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's blue-ribbon panel studying how to encourage competition for the management of the Department of Energy's 13 laboratories, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, now run by the University of California.
Francis S. Blake: Executive vice president, Home Depot; former deputy energy secretary (2001) and general counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency (1985-88).
William F. Brinkman: President, American Physical Society; former vice president, Lucent Technologies; former vice president of research at Sandia National Laboratories. .
Jacques S. Gansler: Chairman, University of Maryland Center of Public Affairs; former undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology (1997- 2001).
F. Henry Habicht: Former senior vice president, Safety-Kleen Corp.; former deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (1989-1993).
Dale Klein: Assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, biological & chemical defense programs; former vice chancellor for special engineering programs at the University of Texas.
John Tuck: Lobbyist with Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell; former undersecretary of energy (1989-92); longtime aide to former Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn. Source: Energy Department
E-mail Zachary Coile at zcoile@sfchronicle.com.
-------- new mexico
Navajo Miners Battle a Deadly Legacy of Yellow Dust
By BEN DAITZ, M.D.
May 13, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/health/13NAVA.html
CROWNPOINT, N.M. - I drove west across an ocher sagebrush plain, past pinto ponies grazing next to a Pentecostal revival tent, past the ribbed, rutted dirt road that leads north to Chaco Canyon, the sacred, ancestral home of the Anasazi, the ancient ones.
I was on the eastern edge of the vast Navajo Reservation, heading toward Crownpoint, a Navajo community of almost 3,000 people astride the Continental Divide about 100 miles northwest of Albuquerque. It is the administrative and educational hub of the Eastern Navajo Agency and the site of the Indian Health Service Hospital.
The Crownpoint I.H.S. hospital serves more than 20,000 Navajo who live in small communities and isolated traditional hogans across the high desert of northwestern New Mexico. I was driving to the Crownpoint Hospital to meet my good friend John Fogarty, a medical officer in the Indian Health Service. The Navajo in these parts call John the uranium doctor.
The Diné (pronounced dee-NAY) or "the People," as the Navajo call themselves, have many stories about their origins. One says that as they emerged from the fourth world into the fifth and present world, they were given the choice of two yellow powders. One yellow powder was corn pollen, and that was the one they chose.
The other was the color of the dust that seems to give this land its golden hue, dust the color of yellowcake, the uranium oxide that fueled the nuclear age. So much yellowcake lies below the surface that a mining executive called this place the Saudi Arabia of uranium.
The Spirits said it had to be left alone. But from the late 1940's through the mid-80's, yellowcake was picked and shoveled and blasted and hauled in open-bed trucks, and then dried in mountainous piles at multiple sites in the American West. The Navajo, whose lands extend over western New Mexico, eastern Arizona and southern Utah, were at the epicenter of the uranium-mining boom, and thousands of Navajos worked in the mines. More than 1,000 abandoned mine shafts remain on Navajo land.
The consequences are measured today, decades after the mines closed, in continuing health problems and degraded land.
Under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, people exposed to radiation through uranium mining and milling or through weapons testing are eligible for government compensation.
On that recent day, Dr. Fogarty and Dr. Bruce Strumminger were conducting a clinic for former Navajo uranium miners, most in their 70's and 80's. Dr. Strumminger, also a physician for the Indian Health Service, is medical director of the Radiation Exposure Screening Education Program at the health service hospital in Shiprock, N.M., 100 miles northwest of Crownpoint. He told me that four uranium miners' health clinics screened 3,000 to 4,000 miners in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
More than 500 uranium miners died of lung cancer from 1950 to 1990. Hundreds more will die of lung cancer in the coming years, a study by the Public Health Service predicts. A majority of the deaths stemmed from exposure to radiation from the breakdown of uranium products. These so-called radon daughters attach to dust particles, and when workers inhale the dust, the particles lodge in their lungs, where they release high doses of radiation.
Navajo uranium miners run a risk of developing lung cancer that is 28 times as great as those Navajos not exposed to uranium, according to a study in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Thomas Desiderio was the first patient of the day. Mr. Desiderio, 75, handsome with short-cropped gray hair, wore jeans, a Western shirt and a big smile. His wife sat by his side in her wide pleated Navajo skirt, her hair coiled in a bun at her neck.
The Desiderios are accompanied by Trudy James, a caseworker with Dr. Strumminger's clinic, who is a patient's advocate and a translator. Like many Navajos in the Eastern Agency, the Desiderios do not speak English well, and the clinic doctors' questions are interpreted and reinterpreted in their complex sonorous language, which was used as a secret code in World War II.
The miners' compensation is determined by their health status and work histories, how long they worked underground and where. They fill out 22-page applications.
Mr. Desiderio tells us he worked off and on in the mines from 1953 to 1981 in a variety of jobs. Many miners worked in "dog holes," primitive tunnels with no ventilation that men crawled through to dig uranium ore by hand. "Mom-and-pop operations," Dr. Strumminger calls them.
The larger mines were frequently no better, with substandard ventilation, no face masks for workers and little or no information or education about the long-term health risks.
Mr. Desiderio's overall exposure has been calculated at 94 working-level months; 40 is the minimum for compensation. The physicians listened to his heart and lungs, working down his chest with dual stethoscopes. "How far can you walk without getting short of breath?" Dr. Fogarty asked.
Ms. James translated the question and the reply. Mr. Desiderio said he could walk 30 miles in elk hunting season. His wife said he had to stop every 10 feet to catch his breath.
Mr. Desiderio has not yet qualified for the $150,000 compensation. Although his blood oxygen concentration is low, showing some lung damage, his last chest X-ray did not show enough chronic changes in his lungs to support his claim fully.
"Why is this taking so long?" Mr. Desiderio finally asked in broken English. "Why haven't we been paid?"
The doctors will order a special X-ray, to be read by a radiologist trained to interpret the subtle changes of pneumoconiosis, the chronic nonmalignant respiratory disease common to underground miners who inhale rock dust. The death rate among Navajo miners from respiratory diseases like pneumoconiosis and emphysema is also extremely high, about the same as the death rate from lung cancer.
The next patient, John James, 67, started mining underground in 1956 in Moab, Utah. Then he went to Ambrosia Lake, N.M., and on to the Homestake mine in Grants, N.M.
"We brought dust home on our clothes," he told the doctors. "We contaminated our families. I saw the yellowcake there. It looked like it was burning."
"He means glowing," said Ms. James, who is not related.
Mr. James is on home oxygen. He said that two weeks ago he coughed up some blood. Dr. Strumminger ordered a chest X-ray and drew an arterial blood gas to check the oxygen-carrying capacity. He said Mr. James's arterial blood gas result plus the chronic disease changes on his chest X-ray would probably qualify him for compensation.
The doctors saw six patients that morning. Most of the old miners drove at least 100 miles to get there, and they will keep returning for testing, betting that the sad chapter of their past will somehow compensate them for the present, before they die.
No one is mining uranium here now. But Dr. Fogarty and Dr. Strumminger are worried about plans to resume it.
Hydro Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Uranium Resources Inc. of Dallas, wants to begin a new mining effort in Crownpoint and nearby Church Rock using a process called in situ leach mining. In the process, a mixture of water, dissolved oxygen and sodium bicarbonate is pumped deep into underground uranium beds. The mixture dissolves uranium, and when the liquid is pumped back to the surface, the uranium can be removed, dried and processed.
The water for the leaching would come from the Westwater Canyon Aquifer under Crownpoint, the sole source of drinking water for Crownpoint and its surrounding area.
Hydro Resources plans to provide uranium for the nuclear power industry, create jobs and leave the aquifer safe for drinking.
But Dr. Fogarty and Dr. Strumminger are worried. Dr. Fogarty wrote his thesis for his master's in public health on the health risks of uranium mining. Underground mining led to lung disease, he said, but if leach mining pollutes the aquifer, a result may be widespread kidney disease.
"The Navajo are more vulnerable to the toxic kidney effects of uranium," he said, "because they already have three times the national rates of diabetes and kidney disease."
When he heard about the leaching plan, Mitchell Capitan, a former mining technician, became an opponent. Mr. Capitan is president of the Crownpoint chapter of the Eastern Navajo Agency, the Navajo equivalent of a mayor, and he founded Endaum, Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining.
"The aquifer right underneath us provides water for 15,000 people," he said, standing on an outcrop on the western edge of Crownpoint. He pointed to the leaching site and said:
"People come here from all over these parts, from 50 miles away, to truck this water back to their houses, to drink it, because it's the only pure supply. Their own water is bad - contaminated."
Later, Mr. Capitan made his case to a gathering in the cafeteria of the Crownpoint elementary school. The cafeteria walls were painted with scenes of sheepherders and red rock mesas, with hawks floating above.
The occasion was the opening of the Water Is Life conference, sponsored by Endaum. A woman gently waving a sage incense bundle circulated through the audience. Old women in traditional velvet skirts and turquoise pendants and young Navajo men and women, about 100 people from all over the reservation, were there to talk about the future of water in their high desert environment.
The unemployment rate in the area is almost 70 percent, but there is little sentiment that mining jobs are worth the risk. Endaum has the support of all 31 chapters in the Eastern Navajo Agency Council, as well as the new president of the Navajo Nation, Joe Shirley Jr.
In alternating Navajo and English, Mr. Capitan explained how Endaum had obtained a moratorium against leach mining - with the help of the Southwest Research and Information Center, an environmental advocacy group, and the New Mexico Environmental Law Center - until a hearing has been completed before a judge for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The groups expect a decision soon.
Mr. Capitan stood under an Endaum banner. In Navajo and English, it said, "One Mind, One Voice, One Prayer, One People."
"This uranium impacts on our water, our air and our cultural identity," he said. "We've already had enough uranium."
Dr. Fogarty put it another way: "This decision should not come down to which hydrologist the N.R.C. believes. When you think about the history of uranium here, what it did to these people, the N.R.C. should support the people's health, first and foremost."
-------- washington
Waste Shipments to Wash. Site Blocked
May 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Hanford-Cleanup.html
YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) -- A federal judge on Monday temporarily barred the U.S. Department of Energy from sending radioactive trash from other states to the Hanford nuclear reservation.
The order is in effect until there is a resolution of the lawsuit filed in March by the state of Washington against the Energy Department in an ongoing dispute over cleaning up radioactive waste at Hanford.
Gov. Gary Locke said he was pleased with the decision, but a spokesman for the Energy Department in Washington, D.C., said every day spent in court takes away from the Hanford cleanup.
The Energy Department wants to truck transuranic waste -- plutonium-contaminated rags, tools and other discarded items -- from other sites for inspection and repacking at Hanford before shipping the barrels off to New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Transuranic waste is highly radioactive and can take thousands of years or more to decay to safe levels.
The state contends that under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Energy Department is required to do more study and evaluation and have more public involvement before such a decision can be made.
The state sued the Energy Department after talks broke down over setting specific written plans for ensuring that both the transuranic waste already buried at Hanford and the imported waste would move on to New Mexico. The Energy Department voluntarily suspended shipments of out-of-state waste to Hanford when the lawsuit was filed.
Locke fears the Energy Department would turn Hanford into a nuclear waste dump. The 586-square-mile reservation is already the most-contaminated nuclear site in the nation after 40 years of making plutonium for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
On the Net:
http://www.hanford.gov
http://www.ecy.wa.gov
-------- us politics
'Wolfowitz's War': Not Over Yet
By David Ignatius
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Washington Post; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47612-2003May12?language=printer
Even on the day that Saddam Hussein's statue toppled in Baghdad just over a month ago, Paul Wolfowitz says he allowed himself only a "tempered emotion" of victory.
"It was a wonderful sight," the deputy defense secretary recalled last week in what aides said was his first detailed interview since the end of the war. "Symbolically, it was not unlike seeing the Berlin Wall come down. It's one of those images that will stand." But Wolfowitz was wary as he watched the television in his Pentagon office on April 9. "I was very conscious at the time that the country was still far from liberated. There were still thousands of regime thugs. I felt at the time there was still a lot of work to be done . . . and I think that's still the case."
This lack of triumphalism may surprise some observers. After all, as the intellectual architect of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz might be expected to be crowing about the quick military success and about the validation of his prewar predictions that most Iraqis would welcome liberation from Hussein's grip.
So why isn't he celebrating? In part it's probably a matter of personality: Wolfowitz is a man who seems to combine a sunny optimism about human possibility with a deep pessimism about the forces that obstruct it.
Wolfowitz also recognizes that, in a fundamental sense, the United States has yet to accomplish its war goals in Iraq. Despite a brilliant military campaign by U.S. and British forces, Iraq remains a dangerous place where political reconstruction is only beginning. Indeed, frustration with the slow pace of reconstruction may have been a factor in the administration's decision this weekend to revamp the team that had been headed by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner.
As he ponders U.S. policy toward Iraq, Wolfowitz wants to be sure that this time the enemy will be utterly destroyed. "The biggest mistake is to underestimate the resilience of the old regime and people's fear that the Baathists will outlast us," he says. "I think there are people in our government who underestimate the danger posed by the Baathists and the pervasive fear their presence induces."
Iraqis must have confidence, Wolfowitz explains, that the Americans won't disappear again quickly, as they did after the 1991 Gulf War. "It's important to let the general population know this old regime is to going to be eliminated, root and branch," he says.
A model for the coming de-Baathification of Iraq is Romania, where an estimated 20 to 25 percent of the population was working for the secret police under Nicolae Ceausescu. "Most weren't doing it because they wanted to," says Wolfowitz. Similarly, the Iraqi Baath Party had about 1 million ordinary members. "You can't say that anyone who gave in is automatically anathema," he notes.
Those with bloody hands in Iraq were the roughly 30,000 "special members" of the Baath Party -- the same number as the membership of the Iraqi security services. "Those people need to be dealt with pretty severely, so that people are sure they're out of action," says Wolfowitz.
The trick for the United States, he suggests, will be to return Iraq's politics to its people, even as America maintains a continuing, stabilizing military presence. "I think it's possible to withdraw relatively rapidly from Iraqi political life and day-to-day decisions -- but to remain there as the essential security force."
"We want to convey that we'll be there, for emergency use, for a long time," he explains at another point in the telephone interview. To reduce the isolation and potential vulnerability of U.S. military forces, Wolfowitz says "internationalization is right" as a strategy for postwar administration of Iraq. But he insists that this process must not be under United Nations control.
"It should be as many other countries as you can bring in, especially Central Europeans," he argues. The Central Europeans can be especially helpful because they have recently been liberated from communist regimes and can assist the Iraqis in making a transition.
Asked about the status of Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who is often seen as a political favorite of Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives, the Pentagon official said this: "We ought to be supporting everyone who can do something useful. I think the decision has been made to support democracy and a big tent."
If this has been Wolfowitz's war in terms of its strategic goals, then it's clearly far from over. To judge by his comments, the Pentagon's leading planner isn't thinking about future conflicts against adversaries such as Syria and Iran but about making sure that America has truly won this war in Iraq.
----
China hawk settles in neo-cons' nest
By Jim Lobe (Inter Press Service),
May 13, 2003
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/EE13Ad03.html
WASHINGTON - Neo-conservatives have scored a new victory in the administration of US President George W Bush with the hiring by Vice President Richard Cheney of a prominent hawk on China policy.
China specialist and Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg has been named deputy national security advisor and director of policy planning on Cheney's high-powered, foreign-policy staff headed by I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, one of the most influential foreign-policy strategists in the administration.
Both Friedberg and Libby, as well as Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and 21 other prominent right-wingers, signed the 1997 founding charter of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which called for the adoption of a "'Reaganite' policy of military strength and moral clarity".
Friedberg also signed another PNAC letter to Bush on September 20, 2001, which called for the "war on terrorism" to be directed against Iraq and other anti-Israel forces in the Middle East, in addition to al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
And the professor wrote a chapter on the threat posed by China in Present Dangers, a 2000 book edited by PNAC co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan that also included chapters by other leading neo-conservative hawks, including former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey.
The significance of his appointment lies both with Cheney's and Libby's influence in foreign policy-making and the fact that Friedberg will be the only recognized China expert in such a senior position.
"There really haven't been top people under Bush who knew much about China," says John Gershman, an Asia specialist at New York University. "He's the first one."
But according to Gershman, Friedberg "fits clearly into the group that has been dominant in the administration" since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
"He's a China-threat person without being hysterical about it," Gershman continues. "But his appointment is a clear sign that the cooperation that has emerged between the US and China on the war on terrorism and North Korea is entirely tactical, and that Cheney is still inclined to see China as a strategic competitor."
The appointment, which will take effect on June 1, comes at an interesting moment in the evolution of Sino-US ties under Bush, who came into office with a significantly harsher view of Beijing than his predecessor, president Bill Clinton.
An early test came in the spring of 2001 after a collision between a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet that destroyed the latter and forced the US plane to land on Hainan Island, where its crew was detained for several weeks.
The incident turned out to be an early indication of the profound split within the administration between right-wing hawks centered in the offices of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose successful negotiation of the crew's return eventually defused a crisis that was avidly stoked by neo-conservatives, especially Kristol and Kagan, whose Weekly Standard magazine generally reflects the views of the administration's hawks.
Bush himself appeared to mellow on China after the crisis and a subsequent meeting with then-president Jiang Zemin, a process that was furthered after September 11 when Washington actively sought Beijing's cooperation in the "war on terrorism".
But despite the detente, Rumsfeld, presumably with Cheney's backing, held up resumption of military-to-military ties between the United States and China that were cut off for more than one year during the crisis.
In addition, the Pentagon has been trying to persuade a reluctant Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province, to buy a slew of weaponry, including destroyers, submarines and aircraft, which the administration approved for sale to the island almost two years ago.
According to last Friday's Wall Street Journal, Washington is now offering Taiwan its most advanced anti-missile system, the Patriot-3, a sale, that, if consummated, is almost certain to result in a Chinese protest.
The Pentagon has also been eagerly courting the Indian military over the past year in what one recently leaked document revealed by Jane's Foreign Report depicted China as "the most significant threat" to both the US and India, and called for Delhi to become a "vital, component of US strategy" vis-a-vis China, particularly now that Washington is reassessing its military alliances with Japan and South Korea. In this context Friedberg's appointment gains significance.
In his writings over several years, Friedberg has depicted China as a "strategic competitor" to the United States that will almost inevitably challenge Washington's own political and military preeminence in the region.
In a 2000 article titled "The Struggle for Mastery in Asia", in the leading neo-conservative monthly Commentary, Friedberg wrote, "over the course of the next several decades there is a good chance that the United States will find itself engaged in an open and intense geopolitical rivalry with the People's Republic of China (PRC)". While such a situation is not completely inevitable, he says, it is "quite likely".
"The combination of growing Chinese power, China's effort to expand its influence, and the unwillingness of the United States to entirely give way before it are the necessary preconditions of a 'struggle for mastery'," he goes on, adding that actual military confrontation could be either slow to develop or could happen as a result of "single catalytic event, such as a showdown over Taiwan".
One of the major problems that US policymakers will face is balancing the interests of "powerful business lobbies" - which Friedberg calls "pro-PRC lobbying groups" - in the United States determined to expand access to China's market and labor force against strategic concerns caused by Beijing's desire to expand its influence in the region. He also expresses concern that China's growing economic power in Asia will enable it to exert influence on the region's governments as part of its "strategic competition".
Moreover, writes Friedberg, China "will be a very different kind of strategic competitor from the Soviet Union", given its size, dynamism and relative openness, all of which could work against Washington's ability to contain it in the coming years.
"The thrust of what he writes is the inevitability of confrontation with the US or of an attempt to displace the US in Asia," says one former senior State Department Asia specialist. "The problem with this is his automatic presumption of a clash rather than a more careful assumption that confrontation may not be inevitable."
Indeed, Friedberg's assumptions were even questioned by Zalmay Khalilzad, a senior Bush strategist who has handled relations with Afghanistan and Iraq but has supported a policy of both engagement and containment - or "congagement" - toward China.
In a published reply to Friedberg's Commentary article, Khalilzad criticized his assumption "that the current Chinese regime and/or its likely successor will pursue regional hegemony. This is by no means inevitable," Khalilzad said, arguing that it was also possible that the relationship would evolve into "mutual accommodation and partnership", particularly if Beijing made democratic reforms.
But Friedberg thinks this unlikely. "Regimes in transition from strict authoritarianism to greater political openness", he replied, "have historically been prone to bouts of aggressive nationalism".
While Washington should continue to foster trade and investment - though not in key strategic areas - the priority, he wrote, should be placed on "serious, sustained, and unchecked efforts to strengthen our alliances, improve our military capabilities, and maintain a balance of power in Asia that is favorable to our interests. Engagement, yes; but from a position of strength."
----
Head of Office of Special Counsel Sends Bush Her Resignation
By Stephen Barr
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Washington Post; Page B02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47589-2003May12?language=printer
E laine D. Kaplan, the government's chief enforcer of Hatch Act and whistle-blower laws, announced her resignation yesterday.
Kaplan, who has served as head of the Office of Special Counsel since May 1998 after being nominated by then-President Bill Clinton, sent a resignation letter to President Bush, and said she would leave June 2. Her term had expired last month and it seemed unlikely that Bush would keep a Democratic nominee in the post.
During her time as special counsel, Kaplan turned around a small agency that had fallen into disfavor with some whistle-blower advocates. They contended that OSC should be abolished because it did little to protect federal employees who pointed out waste and fraud in their agencies.
Kaplan obtained relief for several whistle-blowers who suffered retaliation, including an Immigration and Naturalization Service manager who, in testimony before Congress, criticized a Clinton administration citizenship program.
Others defended by Kaplan included National Park Service rangers who had warned of unsafe tour boats, a Federal Aviation Administration employee who thought he had a clue to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and two Border Patrol agents who disclosed security risks along the Canadian border after the attacks. She also delved into mismanagement allegations at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In her letter to Bush, Kaplan said OSC's work "is central to the merit-based civil service, particularly through its efforts to protect federal employee whistleblowers against retaliation and to oversee the investigations of their disclosures of wrongdoing."
Because of heightened concerns about national security, Kaplan said, "it is very important that OSC be viewed as a credible, nonpartisan advocate on behalf of whistleblowers." She said she hoped that goal would continue to be a high priority for the administration.
Kaplan's supporters had urged Bush and congressional Republican leaders to keep her on the job for another term.
Six Senate Democrats wrote Bush in March expressing their support. Sens. Daniel K. Akaka (Hawaii), Carl M. Levin (Mich.), Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Mark Dayton (Minn.) said Kaplan "has transformed the OSC into an agency that has earned both the trust of whistleblowers and the confidence of Congress."
Leaders of advocacy groups and two union leaders had previously written to members of Congress to urge Kaplan's reappointment. Among those signing the letter were Reed Irvine, president of Accuracy in Media; Kris J. Kolesnik, executive director of the National Whistleblower Center; Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight and Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project.
Kaplan said she will join Bernabei & Katz, a Washington law firm that specializes in employment law and civil rights, after leaving OSC. She came to the agency after working for more than a decade at the National Treasury Employees Union. New Pick for Homeland Department
President Bush intends to nominate Ronald J. James to serve as the chief human capital officer at the Department of Homeland Security, the White House has announced.
In the position, recently created by Congress, James will play an important role in the consolidation of 22 agencies into the department and the overhaul of its pay and personnel rules, administration officials said.
James is a partner with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, a Cleveland law firm, the White House announcement said. Prior to joining the firm, he served as administrator of the wage and hour division at the Labor Department and as an assistant general counsel for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He also has served as a trial lawyer for the Transportation Department.
In a report on his selection, the Cleveland Plain Dealer said James had worked for Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, when he was a member of Congress, and during the Nixon administration shared a White House office with Dick Cheney, the vice president. James, 66, recently told Rumsfeld he was ready to return to government service and was offered the homeland security job, the Plain Dealer reported.
Stephen Barr's e-mail address is
barrs@washpost.com.
----
Enron-Like Unreality
By Harold Meyerson
Tuesday, May 13, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47622-2003May12?language=printer
So whose books were more cooked -- Enron's accounts of its financial doings or the administration's prewar reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?
Enron's books didn't lack for detail. They were simply and deliberately fictitious. They documented all manner of energy sales and swaps that in fact never transpired but that had to be conjured up retrospectively to explain how Enron's apparent assets and profits were so dazzling.
The administration's accounts of the Iraqi arsenal were also detailed. Descriptions of Saddam Hussein's weapons caches were the centerpiece of the president's State of the Union address and the sum and substance of Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council. The secretary told the council there was convincing evidence that Iraq had hundreds of tons of chemical and biological agents and that it had been buying uranium from Niger to put its nuclear program on fast-forward.
But yesterday's certitude is today's confusion. Task Force 75 -- the armed services unit charged with locating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- is packing up in frustration after repeated efforts to turn up any evidence of Hussein's weapons programs yielded nothing.
Indeed, the administration's antebellum accounts of the Iraqi weapons hoard are looking every bit as dubious as Enron's electricity transactions, and they increasingly seem as phony a casus belli as the destruction of the Maine in Havana Harbor.
This is not to say that the liberation of Iraq from Hussein's Stalinoidal tyranny isn't a blessing for the Iraqi people. But that was never a sufficient reason for the United States to go to war, as Bush and his aides clearly understood. Even under the theory of preemption as they propounded it, the preemptee can't simply be a totalitarian thug; he has to pose a threat to us as well.
And so a threat was found -- though finding it required the creation of a new intelligence office devoted entirely to finding that threat. As reported by Robert Dreyfuss in the American Prospect last December and by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker last week, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the administration's foremost war hawk, established a small operation in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans last year that was eventually to provide most of the "facts" the administration cited as the reason to go to war.
The impetus for starting the new operation was the neoconservatives' frustration with both the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for their inability to document Iraq's illegal weapons and its ties to al Qaeda.
The neos knew with existential certitude that the weapons were there. "Does Saddam now have weapons of mass destruction?" Richard Perle, then the incoming chairman of the Defense Policy Board, testified before Congress in March 2001. "Sure he does. How far he's gone on the nuclear-weapon side I don't think we really know. My guess is it's further than we think. It's always further than we think, because we limit ourselves, as we think about this, to what we're able to prove and demonstrate."
And that was the problem with the CIA and DIA: They were a bunch of vulgar empiricists. What the Bush administration wanted, it turns out, was faith-based intelligence. Thus the operation in the Office of Special Plans, headed by neocon Abram Shulsky, was born. Shulsky's shop didn't have agents in the field; indeed, it had just a handful of analysts. But what set them apart from the intelligence agencies was that they relied heavily on information from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) -- an organization of Iraqi exiles whose raison d'etre was to promote the overthrow of Hussein. As both Hersh and Dreyfuss document, a lot of the INC's information on weapons programs and other matters was considered patently absurd by veteran intelligence analysts. But that was the information that served as the basis of the administration's case for war.
Additionally, the New York Times now reports that the administration was told many months before Powell's Security Council speech that the documents purportedly demonstrating Iraq's purchase of uranium from Niger were forgeries.
Apparently, Bush administration intelligence is to intelligence as Fox news is to news. Facts are fine so long as they bolster the president's case. When they don't, they will be suppressed or forgotten, and other, more congenial facts will be found.
As at Enron, there are leading figures in this administration who think that when the real facts don't look so good, it's fine to substitute your own.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, of course, they simply may have been very credulous in the face of the INC's material (not a hugely comforting thought). And certainly, unlike the Enron gang, they weren't putting out these detailed accounts of unreality in an attempt to cover up crimes or enrich themselves.
They merely wanted to start a war. No big deal.
The writer is editor at large of the American Prospect.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
No light in the Afghan tunnel
May 13, 2003
World Net Daily
David H. Hackworth
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32546
Operation Enduring Freedom - launched in Afghanistan a month after 9-11 - is now officially over. But despite Pentagon spin to the contrary, our casualty count from that war-torn land won't be winding down anytime soon.
Last month, the increasingly bold Taliban forces took and held two district towns along the Pakistan border for a week - right under our commanders' noses - and now a day doesn't pass without terrorists assaulting Afghanis, international aid workers or soldiers. In the past month alone, four American warriors were killed in Afghanistan, bringing our occupation terrorist-inflicted combat losses to 30 deaths.
The dollar tab is mounting, too. The bill for 8,000 U.S. military personnel running what the Pentagon euphemistically calls "Stabilization Operations" is costing the U.S. taxpayer $9 billion a year.
Many of our troops pulling duty over there say their big concern is that the situation might well develop into a long-term running sore. And they see ominous similarities to the pitiful attempts at pacification that turned the Vietnamese people off during that 20-year, guerrilla-driven war.
Then there's the parallel of the same indiscriminate use of the big U.S. firepower hammer that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents in Southeast Asia. A recent U.S. airstrike in eastern Afghanistan that was meant for the terrorist bad guys killed 11 civilians from one family alone. As we keep learning the hard way, these sort of errant explosives are major recruiters for the insurgents.
In Afghanistan, as in Asia, our forces are finding that their vastly superior superpower advantage - firepower, mobility, electronic intelligence gathering and communications - can't do the job against a lightly equipped, hit-and-run guerrilla force with the cunning to attack only when it believes it can win and that knows the ground like Cameron Diaz knows her body.
More bad news is that there's ample evidence that Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden's good buddy, is making a big comeback in southern Afghanistan. The Taliban thugs under Omar might no longer rule the land, but they're still in the terrorism business and have the run of a fair chunk of the countryside, especially along the wild and woolly border Afghanistan shares with Pakistan.
A Special Forces soldier says, "When I first got here five months ago, the attacks were patchy, but today it's a whole new ballgame."
A recent Taliban attack on a U.S. platoon actually occurred during broad daylight. The terrorists boldly killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded five others before scooting across the border to their safe haven in eastern Pakistan.
And while the Taliban are displaying renewed guerrilla prowess, our forces seem to be getting nowhere fast. Six weeks ago, a large and costly short-term exercise in futility - Operation Valiant Strike - was launched to hunt down and destroy the terrorists. At the end of this op, when cost was weighed against return, we were way in the red.
Civilian aid workers have even become targets. A Red Cross representative was shot and killed several months ago after being stopped by a terrorist gunman. A Taliban commander said the terminate-with-extreme-prejudice order came from Omar himself and was aimed at destabilizing the U.S.-supported government. Since the murder, more than a dozen international aid agencies have pulled out because the risk of operating in that area is simply too high. No aid workers means no aid - except what those friendly folks from the Taliban provide.
"What's more disturbing is that our senior commanders will not press attacks against the Taliban out of fear of U.S. casualties," says another Special Forces warrior. "Our forces are under guidance to only attack when there's the least amount of risk to U.S. personnel. For the most part, we sit on our bases and get sniped at and rocketed."
"U.S. cash and food are given to the warlords to keep their allegiance," he says, "but they use it to finance the private armies with which they run this country. And the only way the warlords will give up power is if they're killed."
"War" or "stabilization," Afghanistan is our tar baby, and we're stuck fast. Too bad the policy-makers who put our soldiers at risk didn't brush up on their Brit-Soviet-Afghan History 101 beforehand.
Let's hope Iraq doesn't become Harsh History Lesson II, even though it, too, sure seems to be moving in that direction.
-
Col. David H. Hackworth, author of his new best-selling "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," "Price of Honor" and "About Face," has seen duty or reported as a sailor, soldier and military correspondent in nearly a dozen wars and conflicts - from the end of World War II to the recent fights against international terrorism.
-------- africa
UN Approves Peacekeepers for Ivory Coast
May 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-ivorycoast-un.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a new peacekeeping mission in the Ivory Coast on Tuesday with a maximum of 76 military observers to help enforce a fragile cease-fire in the West African nation's eight-month civil war.
With massacres reported daily, the council's resolution establishes for six months a U.N. Mission in Cote d'Ivoire, known by the French acronym MINUCI. The mission will also include a small number of civilian officials for political, legal, humanitarian and human rights issues.
The military officers are to work with a West African force and the 4,000 French soldiers in the country as well as the Ivory Coast military and rebel militia to give advice and monitor a January cease-fire. The mission would serve for an initial six months, subject to renewal.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had asked for a total of 255 personnel, including 76 military officers, 85 international and 89 local civilian staff plus U.N. volunteers.
But the United States objected to its one-year price tag of $27 million and sent the proposal back to the U.N. peacekeeping department to be trimmed.
The compromise resulted in an initial military liaison group of 26 officers with an option to send 50 more, the resolution says. The number of international civilian staff is not listed but diplomats said they would be cut by about a third from the original proposal.
``I think it will make an immediate difference to have this U.N. instrument on the ground even though it isn't a weapon-wielding force itself,'' British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock told a news conference on Monday.
Greenstock was to lead a Security Council mission to West Africa, beginning on Thursday. But the trip was called off because of intense negotiations on a U.S.-drafted resolution that would lift sanctions against Iraq. It was expected to be rescheduled in June, diplomats said.
A failed coup attempt last September plunged the Ivory Coast into a civil war pitting the government-held south against rebels in the north and west. The situation in the west is the most volatile as fighters from past conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone have become mercenaries for both sides.
Fighting between rebels and loyalists in the west has decreased since a cease-fire signed outside Paris on Jan. 26. But the area bordering Liberia is awash with weapons and atrocities by various armed groups are still being reported.
-------- chemical weapons
Dogs Take Their Place in Arsenal Against Chemical Attack
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/worldspecial/13HOME.html
WASHINGTON, May 12 - In the hunt for terrorists who might try to use unconventional weapons on American soil, the federal government is enlisting an old, and very trusted, ally.
The Department of Homeland Security says that in a research program kept quiet for months, it has determined, apparently for the first time, that ordinary dogs can be trained to sniff out trace amounts of the nonlethal components of chemical weapons, including sarin and cyanide.
As a result, the department's Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has begun to train a corps of so-called chemical detector dogs and is planning to deploy them at airports, seaports, government buildings and other potential terrorist targets, where they will work alongside the police dogs that have long been used to sniff out narcotics, explosives and human remains.
So far, several dogs - the department will not give an exact number, saying that to do so would tip off terrorists to the scope of the program - have been given chemical training at Fort McClellan, Ala. Hundreds more are expected to be added to the program in the next two years.
The department is studying whether dogs may also be effective in the search for biological weapons, although officials are less optimistic about the program's usefulness in this area, since many germ agents have no distinctive odor.
The discovery that dogs can apparently detect components of chemical weapons has implications beyond national security. Officials hope it will also mean budget savings for the federal government, which now spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on research to develop machinery to detect chemical weapons. Given the initial results of the new program, officials say, some of that high-tech detection equipment may prove no more sensitive than a dog's snout.
The work with the dogs is "very promising," said Robert C. Bonner, the commissioner of customs and border protection, who championed the program and helped find $2 million in the budget to get it started.
"After 9/11, and with the continuing terrorist threat, we began asking the question of how we could improve our capability against terrorist weapons, specifically against weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Bonner said. "And there had been some initial research that suggested that canines might be effective with chemicals."
Dogs, he said, provide "portability, and they also allow you to detect chemical weapons before they are released."
Officials say they have kept quiet about the program until now because they did not want to raise hopes about its usefulness prematurely, or alert terrorists that the government might soon have a new defense against chemical attack.
Animal researchers and other scientists say they are not surprised by dogs' ability to detect the components of chemical weapons. The Pentagon has long used dogs for chemical detection, most recently in Iraq, where they helped in the search for traditional weapons and explosives.
"Dogs can detect compounds that the human nose could never pick up at the same concentration: the concentration can be a hundred- or a thousand-fold weaker," said Charles J. Wysocki, a neuroscientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, a research institute in Philadelphia.
"Conceptually, there's no difference between training a dog to find an explosive material that has a residual odor to it and training a dog to detect a chemical weapon that has a residual odor," Dr. Wysocki said.
Jim Watson, a veteran dog trainer who is secretary of the North American Police Work Dog Association, said he knew of no previous research on dogs and chemical weapons. "But when it comes to training dogs to smell something," he said, "the sky's the limit."
Officials with the Homeland Security Department said the training program began last October, after federal laboratories identified a group of chemicals that, though used to make sarin and other chemical weapons, were harmless by themselves and could be detected by dogs in trace amounts. "The idea is this: If I'm looking for a Big Mac and I know that Big Macs are deadly, I'm looking for the special sauce that is not lethal," said Lee T. Titus, director of the canine enforcement program for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.
The dogs in the initial training program were chosen from three breeds especially talented at detection work and easy to train: Labrador retrievers, German shepherds and Belgian Malinois, which resemble shepherds.
All the dogs were new to detection work; the Homeland Security Department said it had decided not to shift over any of its existing narcotics- or explosives-detection dogs because this task was so different. A narcotics dog, for example, is taught to bite and scratch at the source of contraband. But that could be deadly for a chemical-detection dog and its handler if the dog came upon chemical weapons.
So a dog in the chemical-detection program is taught to alert its handler by some signal like snapping its head back or perking up its ears, and then by sitting in place.
Mr. Titus said that while the first dogs used in the program had been bought from breeders, he planned to select most of the animals in the future from public dog pounds, the source of almost 80 percent of the animals his office trains for other detection work. "It's an extra benefit," he said. "I can save some really good dogs from the pound.
-------- colombia
Colombia Asks Europe for Military Aid
May 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-colombia-europe.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - Colombia, already a major recipient of U.S. military aid, is asking Europe to help it fight leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries, President Alvaro Uribe said on Tuesday.
``It sounds strange to ask the European Union for military cooperation, but we have to,'' Uribe told reporters at a meeting with European Union officials.
He specified that requests for aid would be made to individual member countries of the European Union, which has so far been left in the shadow by the United States in its support of the Colombian government in the four-decade-old war.
``We have expressed to all of the member countries of the European Union the need for military and police cooperation in order to successfully defeat terrorism,'' Uribe said.
The United States has provided more than $2 billion in mainly military aid to Colombia in recent years, as it grapples with leftist guerrillas, far-right outlaws and the world's largest cocaine trade.
European aid has concentrated largely on social programs.
In February, Spain offered to give Colombia eight Mirage fighter jets but the offer was withdrawn after the Colombian military expressed doubts over their usefulness in the country's guerrilla conflict.
-------- iran
Iran in secret talks with America post-Saddam
By Alan Philps,
Middle East Correspondent
13/05/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$XDALJ15OCQ2YPQFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2003/05/13/wiran13.xml
President Mohammed Khatami of Iran arrived for a ground-breaking visit to Lebanon yesterday amid strong indications that the clerical regime was ready to improve relations with Washington following the swift removal of Saddam Hussein.
It is the first visit to Lebanon by a serving Iranian head of state since the revolution in 1979 which installed the fiercely anti-American Ayatollah Khomeini. Mr Khatami's arrival coincided with confirmation that Iran and America have been holding secret talks in Geneva.
Iran - declared by President George W Bush to be part of the "axis of evil" - is encircled by pro-American governments after the fall of the Afghan and Iraqi regimes.
Diplomats expect the president to offer some concessions to America by cutting military aid to the Lebanese Shia Muslim Hizbollah guerrillas, who operate along the border with Israel.
Hizbollah was set up by Iran in 1982 to radicalise the Lebanese Shi'ites and fight Israel and America. They drove Israeli forces out of their remaining foothold in Lebanon in 2000, and are blamed by America for killing 241 US marines in 1983.
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, said on Sunday that Washington was in contact with Iran over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq.
--------
Iranian Leader Visits Beirut in Display of Shiite Solidarity
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By DANIEL J. WAKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/middleeast/13LEBA.html
BEIRUT, Lebanon, May 12 - Sprinkled with rose petals and rice, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran arrived here today to a glowing embrace from the Lebanese government and tens of thousands of chanting and cheering Lebanese Shiites.
His visit was the first by an Iranian president since the 1979 Islamic revolution. It represents a major diplomatic reaction in Islam to the United States military action in Iraq.
Washington will be listening closely to what Mr. Khatami says. The United States says it considers Iran the leading state sponsor of terrorism and has recently raised concerns about whether Tehran is developing nuclear weapons. The United States has demanded that Iran stop supporting militant groups like Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon.
Nevertheless, Iran and the United States seem to be moving toward a new phase in their often hostile relationship, with Bush administration officials confirming that the two countries have been having secret contacts.
Mr. Khatami moves on to Syria after his three-day visit here.
Many people in the region see his trip as an effort to bolster ties among Mideast countries that appear to be next in line for American wrath. The visit is also a milestone in Iran's growing closeness to Lebanon. The two signed economic agreements today, including provisions for a $50 million loan from Iran.
The visit was yet another tremor to run through the world of the Shiites, a branch of Islam with longstanding grievances that sees the prospect of Iraq being the first Shiite-run Arab nation.
In Iraq today, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim returned to Najaf, the holy city, after 23 years of exile in Iran. [Page A18.]
Ayatollah Hakim has called for an Islamic system of government. Other clerics favor a nontheocratic government, a division of opinion that also exists among Lebanese Shiites, who may be paying some attention to what Mr. Khatami has to say on the subject.
More immediately, it was a day of joy for the Shiites, who identify closely with the leader of a Shiite nation and who welcome Iranian financial aid and moral support in the fight against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, where many Shiites live.
"I love him," Abbad al-Azim, 31, said in the crowd awaiting Mr. Khatami's motorcade. "My heart beats for him."
Mr. Khatami's visit was a display of power by Hezbollah, which helped force the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. Iran supplies Hezbollah, United States officials say, and Syria allows materials to pass through its territory. Lebanon holds up Hezbollah as a legitimate force to resist Israel, which occupies a scrap of land bordering the Golan Heights that Lebanon claims.
Hezbollah and its related institutions helped ensure that Mr. Khatami received a major turnout in one of the largest welcomes here since Pope John Paul II's visit almost exactly six years ago. Shiites are estimated to number more than a million of the population of 3.5 million, although there are no recent census figures.
"He's not an ordinary president," said Jihan Tarhini, an English teacher who was with third and fourth graders from Al Mustafa school, which is loosely affiliated with Hezbollah. "He's a Shiite president. He supported the Islamic resistance in the south for liberation. This is the main thing that makes us welcome this president."
Another teacher at the school, Samar Akl, said: "We hate the policy of America. She supports Israel, although they are killing innocent people."
Ms. Akl broke off and rushed to the barricade as the motorcade approached. "I have to see him!" she exclaimed.
Later, she added, "If American politicians had the same policies that Iran and Syria had, we would welcome Bush in the same way."
If so, President Bush would have seen the road from the airport lined with Hezbollah, Iranian and Lebanese flags, which were in the minority, along with huge posters of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader; Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution; and Mr. Khatami. Groups of schoolgirls in blue smocks and black scarves pressed against the barricades. Occasional clumps of Hezbollah security forces were in black. Many women wore the full black chador.
The green flag of Amal, the other main Shiite party, also abounded. As the crowd awaited Mr. Khatami, a loudspeaker at the airport emitted chants, including "Death to Israel."
Some people cried in unison, "Oh God, oh God, please preserve Nasrallah!" referring to the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, a prominent figure in Lebanon.
After greeting Lebanon's leaders on the tarmac, Mr. Khatami moved to a Hezbollah delegation in the official reception party, a sign of the party's status. During the motorcade to town, he briefly left his car and waved, smiling and holding his fists up like a victorious boxer. The car of President Émile Lahoud of Lebanon followed and drew little notice.
The crowd, estimated by security officials at 30,000, arrived by special buses or walked from the Shiite neighborhoods that dominate southern Beirut. Officials expect additional tens of thousands at a rally on Tuesday at a stadium.
Mr. Khatami did little to calm fears about Iran's efforts to influence Baghdad. In an article today in the Lebanese newspaper As Safir, he said Washington was wrong "to impose an immoral and alien regime." Such a policy "will come back to harm the American people in the long run," he added.
Officials said the trip was made final two months ago, when the military action in Iraq appeared imminent. Many in the region view the trip as a response to the visit of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who has returned to the region to work on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
-------- iraq
Baghdad Anarchy Spurs Call For Help
Iraqis, U.S. Officials Want More Troops
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 13, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47291-2003May12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 12 -- Baghdad residents and U.S. officials said today that U.S. occupation forces are insufficient to maintain order in the Iraqi capital and called for reinforcements to calm a wave of violence that has unfurled over the city, undermining relief and reconstruction efforts and inspiring anxiety about the future.
Reports of carjackings, assaults and forced evictions grew today, adding to an impression that recent improvements in security were evaporating. Fires burned anew in several Iraqi government buildings and looting resumed at one of former president Saddam Hussein's palaces. The sound of gunfire rattled during the night; many residents said they were keeping their children home from school during the day. Even traffic was affected, as drivers ignored rules in the absence of Iraqi police, only to crash and cause tie-ups.
The calls for more U.S. troops to police the city coincided with the arrival of L. Paul Bremer III, the Bush administration's new civilian administrator assigned to run the Pentagon's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. The U.S. occupation authority, which had previously been headed by retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, has struggled to restore Iraqi institutions since Hussein's government collapsed April 9 in the face of a U.S. military invasion.
Bremer, who met with senior staff members tonight inside the 258-room Republican Palace, pledged that he and Garner would work together for an "efficient and well-organized" transfer of power, with Garner assisting him for an undetermined period. He described his own work as a "wonderful challenge" and said the U.S. task is to "help the Iraqi people regain control of their own destiny."
But the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, expressed disappointment with efforts so far to bring democracy to Iraq. He told the British Parliament that "results in the early weeks have not been as good as we would have hoped." Straw also said the lack of security in Baghdad has been disappointing.
An office and warehouse belonging to the aid group CARE were attacked Sunday night. In two other weekend incidents, two CARE vehicles were seized by armed men, the organization reported today, asking the U.S. occupation forces to "take immediate steps to restore law and order to Baghdad."
"The violence is escalating," said Anne Morris, a senior CARE staff member. "We have restricted staff movement for their own safety. What does it say about the situation when criminals can move freely about the city and humanitarian aid workers cannot?"
Baghdad residents have been increasingly preoccupied by violence and the uncertainty it has produced, slowing relief and rebuilding efforts. One U.S. reconstruction official said tonight, for example, that as the Americans seek to distribute salaries and pensions, 20 bank branches have been unable to open without U.S. protection in the absence of a credible Iraqi police force.
"Security is the biggest problem we have," the official said. "The banks don't feel comfortable opening, and I agree with that."
Another official said foreign companies have showed interest in installing a badly needed cell phone network, but remain unwilling to do so without a safe environment for workers. The security threat has also limited the ability of reconstruction workers to move through the city and interact with Iraqis. Civilian staff members still have instructions to wear body armor and helmets and travel with military escorts.
Food warehouses, hospitals and government offices have reported security problems, with administrators pleading with U.S. forces to do more. A senior staff member with the U.S. reconstruction office said the responsibility for stabilizing the situation lies with the U.S. military, which President Bush assigned to run postwar Iraq. Any order to increase manpower would have to come from Washington.
"Any time you have a security vacuum," the official said, "the only people who are going to be able to fill it are the military."
U.S. commanders have described Baghdad's security as their top priority and have assigned several thousand troops to guard 200 sites and patrol neighborhoods. But they have also said they do not have enough troops to police the sprawling city or guard every facility that could be targeted by looters.
Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of ground troops in Iraq, said the roughly 150,000 soldiers under his command are focusing on many assignments simultaneously, including hunting for weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's missing leaders while also imposing order on a country the size of California.
"Imagine spreading 150,000 soldiers in the state of California and then ask yourself could you secure all of California all the time with 150,000 soldiers," McKiernan told reporters last week. "The answer is no. So we're focused on certain areas, on certain transportation networks we need to make sure are open."
The Pentagon announced early this month that an additional 4,000 soldiers were being dispatched to Baghdad, bringing the total in the city to 16,000. The composition of the force will shift as combat units head home and the number of military police officers grows from 2,000 to about 4,000 by mid-June.
McKiernan emphasized the importance of Iraqis taking charge of their city. So far, perhaps half the city's police force has showed up for vetting and training. But relatively few have returned to active work. All 60 of the city's police stations were looted -- five main buildings are occupied by families of squatters.
There is no working communications system, and only a small number of police cars were not ruined by looters during the postwar rampage. Police officers, prohibited by U.S. forces from carrying anything other than a sidearm, are wary of confronting antagonists who can outgun them. The overall situation is further complicated by a disabled court system and a lack of functioning jails.
Carjackings have become particularly frequent. A furniture salesman, Abdulsalam Hussein, said he watched through the picture window of his store as gunmen chased down a Peugeot sedan on a busy square, ordered the occupants into the street and sped away. "They had weapons," he said. "No one could do anything to help."
On Rashid Street today, a U.S. Army patrol endured a busy day in the section of the city soldiers call Looterville. After chasing down two looters inside a telecommunications building, set alight Sunday night, several soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division returned to their Humvees with sweat running down their dusty faces in rivulets.
"I don't see it getting better. We can't be everywhere, can we?" said Pfc. Jacob Weber, 21. "I feel like a cop, but I'm not a cop."
Across the Tigris River, another 3rd Infantry reconnaissance unit waded into a dispute over a shooting, seized an old pistol and warned the participants to settle their argument by calmer means. The troops headed wearily back to their base, only to stop within several hundred yards of it to investigate reports that gunmen were preventing people from putting out a fire near the gutted Culture Ministry.
"We're like cops in Baghdad now," said one officer in helmet and armored vest.
"Iraqi Vice," deadpanned Sgt. Corey Tondre.
----
Iraq Civilian Body Count [increases dramatically]
Current Total possibly 4771
May 13, 2003
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/bodycount.htm#total
The IRAQ BODY COUNT Database
This is a human security project to establish an independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq resulting directly from military actions by the USA and its allies in 2003. Results and totals are continually updated and made immediately available on this page and on various IBC counters which may be freely displayed on any website, where they will be automatically updated without further intervention. Casualty figures are derived solely from a comprehensive survey of online media reports. Where these sources report differing figures, the range (a minimum and a maximum) are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least three members of the Iraq Body Count project team before publication.
[Note: This doesn't include military deaths or civilian woundings. The casualties are much higher. If anyone finds a more accurate figure, please advise - mailto:editor@nucnews.net]
--------
Iraqi Leaders Voice Concerns on U.S. Shuffle
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/worldspecial/13IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 12 - America's new civilian administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, arrived in Baghdad today as several members of the team of his predecessor, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, and General Garner himself prepared to leave over the coming weeks in a sudden overhaul that has rattled Iraqi political leaders.
Massoud Barzani, who will play a crucial role in the formation of the interim government in Iraq, said in an interview today that the United States risked squandering its victory over Saddam Hussein by allowing chaos and anarchy to run unchecked in the country.
Mr. Barzani said he had been close to General Garner ever since they worked together a decade ago when Iraq's minority Kurds fled by the hundreds of thousands to the Turkish border region to escape the wrath of Mr. Hussein after an unsuccessful uprising following the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
"His departure will have a very negative effect," Mr. Barzani said. "The rapid change of officials is not very helpful because we need focus."
He said he was concerned that the ideological clashes in Washington over the American role in postwar Iraq were hampering policy here. "We are paying the price for the political conflicts in Washington," he said. "Time is of the essence, speed is of the essence - we must get some form of government."
General Garner has yet to inform him of any plans to leave, Mr. Barzani said. He also expressed concern about Mr. Bremer's longtime association with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, whom the Kurds blame for their betrayal in the intelligence wars between Iran and Iraq three decades ago.
Neither General Garner nor Mr. Bremer, in remarks at the airport here, addressed the causes of the personnel changes reported by Bush administration officials over the weekend. One of General Garner's deputies, Barbara K. Bodine, was relieved of her duties on short notice, and the officials said General Garner himself would also depart in a few weeks. Several members of General Garner's staff, detailed to Iraq from diplomatic or other government jobs, are also returning to those posts over the next month.
Mr. Bremer is bringing a large contingent of new administrators, but today he gave no detailed assessment of the situation in Iraq or how he planned to reverse the deterioration in security.
"We will be in the process of discussing with appropriate people in Iraq a transition to an Iraqi government at a timeline that still has to be determined," Mr. Bremer said. Mr. Garner had set a timeline for a new government to emerge by the end of the month.
"We are not here as a colonial power," Mr. Bremer said. "We are here to turn over" power to the Iraqi people "as quickly as possible."
Sounding a frustrated tone, Mr. Barzani said it was "very disappointing" to hear that General Garner was going. Nevertheless, Mr. Barzani said "major mistakes have been made" under General Garner in the military and civilian management of postwar Iraq "and if we continue in this confusion, this wonderful victory we have achieved will turn into a quagmire."
These concerns now radiate far beyond the immediate region. Today in London, the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said, "The situation in Baghdad is not satisfactory," and acknowledged that it was the responsibility of the United States and its partners "to ensure that it becomes satisfactory very quickly."
He spoke after meeting with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saudi al-Faisal, who conveyed an even stronger sense of alarm.
"In the majority of the country there is instability which threatens the territorial integrity and the unity of Iraq, which is of extreme concern to the countries of the region," Prince Saudi said.
He added that the ongoing violence, including almost hourly eruptions of gunfire in Baghdad, would undermine the distribution of aid "and it threatens a breakdown in order altogether."
The aid organization CARE said today that two of its vehicles were hijacked at gunpoint over the weekend. On Sunday night, the group's warehouse in Baghdad was attacked and a security guard was shot in the leg.
"There isn't any security," Margaret Hassan, the group's director in Iraq, said in a statement. "The insecurity is restricting the life of the people in Baghdad and their ability to provide for their families. Even as schools open, most families are not allowing their children to attend classes, especially girls." Anything can happen, she said, "from gunfire, to unexploded ordnance going off."
The group called on the coalition to "meet their obligations under the Geneva Convention to restore order and security to Baghdad."
The United States military reported that it had captured two major figures from Saddam Hussein's government. The first was the British-trained microbiologist Rihab Rashid Taha al-Azzawi al-Tikriti, who was known as "Dr. Germ" for her role in marshaling Iraq's biological warfare program.
American officials said they had also taken into custody the former chief of staff of the Iraqi armed forces, Ibrahim Ahmad Abde al-Sattaf Muhammad al-Tikriti.
No progress has been reported on the hunt for Mr. Hussein and his sons, Uday and Qusay, but Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime exile leader now pressing for the early appointment of an interim government, cited unidentified intelligence sources as saying that they believe Mr. Hussein and his sons are hiding in an arc of territory from Ramadi, west of the capital, to the northern Baghdad suburbs and to Diyala on the eastern side of the city.
"He is not traveling with Uday or Qusay," Mr. Chalabi said in a recent interview. Rather, he said, the former Iraqi leader is traveling with the presidential secretary, Abd Hamid Mahmoud al-Tikriti. An aide to Mr. Chalabi said there were credible intelligence reports that Mr. Hussein has been sighted since the fall of Baghdad.
Like almost every official or political leader, Mr. Barzani cited the breakdown of police authority as the critical issue that precedes all others. Today, Iraqi army officers demonstrated outside the gates of the Republican Palace, demanding salaries, pensions and some role in the new Iraqi army, which does not yet exist.
Mr. Barzani said he believed that it was "urgent" that a strong governor or mayor be appointed to run Baghdad, the largest Iraqi city and the geographical linchpin that unites the Kurdish minority of the north with the Sunni and Shiite Muslim populations of central and southern Iraq.
He also endorsed an offer first made public by Jalal Talabani, the other major Kurdish chief, to send as many as 10,000 city police officers from northern cities to help police the streets of Baghdad. General Garner asserted last week that about 50 percent of Iraqi policemen in Baghdad were reporting to work, but an official in his administration elaborated today by saying that "it would not be accurate to say they are working."
"The confiscation of weapons by the Iraqi police doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless they have secure bases to which to take the weapons, which they don't," one coalition administrator said.
Most policemen do not have weapons, and many are afraid to stay away from home. Others simply feel that the Iraqi people will not have respect for officers who served in Mr. Hussein's police. "The police lack confidence," the official said.
Given the scale of breakdown, he added, "Personally, I don't think blaming Jay Garner makes a lot of sense."
--------
SHIITES
One Faith, One Political Goal, and Set to Collide
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By SUSAN SACHS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/worldspecial/13CLER.html
NAJAF, Iraq, May 12 - Iraq's Shiite Muslims have emerged from years of official repression and slaughter only to face a potentially dangerous new battle between rival clerics competing for political power.
The passions and ambitions were on display today, when one of the aspiring leaders, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, arrived like a triumphant hero in this holy city to take up its political leadership.
Returning from 23 years of exile in Iran, the gray-bearded cleric came in a noisy flag-flying convoy, led by police cars bedecked with his picture and a parade of brand-new Toyota Land Cruisers jammed with guards and followers. As the shops emptied and street peddlers packed up their supplies of cigarettes and plastic toys to watch the spectacle, Ayatollah Hakim was driven to the tiled archway leading into the main Shiite shrine.
"Welcome the eagle who returned to its nest," one of his advance men shouted through the mosque's loudspeakers. "Welcome the lion, welcome the wise leader! The shrine of the prince of believers welcomes one of his greatest heirs."
For all the excitement over Ayatollah Hakim's grand entrance, there were clear signs of discord that could complicate efforts by other Iraqi political forces to form a unity government to deal with Iraq's American overseers.
Just after Ayatollah Hakim left the mosque, an unmistakably hostile demonstration erupted in the courtyard where he had delivered a 40-minute address. Men supporting one of his clerical and political rivals, Moktada al-Sadr, marched and shouted, "Iraq is Sadr's."
Mr. Sadr, like Ayatollah Hakim, is the son of a revered religious scholar who opposed the secular Baath Party government of Saddam Hussein and his predecessors. Although only 30, he thrust himself forward as the champion of downtrodden Shiites in the first weeks after the fall of Baghdad.
The political competition between the clerics, and by extension their emotional constituencies, threatens to revive the old divisions between Iraq's Shiites that were constantly exploited and encouraged over 35 years by the old Iraqi government. At the same time, there are hopeful signs that higher-ranking ayatollahs in the religious schools of Najaf prefer to separate Islam and politics and will discourage the budding competition.
Recent history shows how dangerous such jousting can become. In April, Sheik Abdel Majid al-Khoei, another well-known Shiite cleric, was murdered by a mob just a few days after he was flown into Najaf by the United States from exile in London.
Shiites are believed to constitute at least 60 percent of the population, but under Mr. Hussein their religious celebrations were restricted. Leading clerics were arrested, expelled and murdered. Thousands of people are believed to have been killed when Shiite uprisings in 1991 and 1999 were crushed.
Even now, Najaf, the seat of Shiite learning, remains a traumatized city. Almost every day, Iraqis discover a new mass grave dating from one of the old crackdowns. One was found just today, and the city is filled with black banners listing the names of people whose deaths are only now being confirmed.
The political maneuverings here of the Shiite clerics, who exercise great influence over the faithful, resonate across the country, especially now as Iraq's opposition parties try to work out a formula to share political power until elections can be held.
"Najaf is the key to Baghdad and all of Iraq because the religious authority and most of the clergy are here," said Hassan Juma Inouz, the local representative of the Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella group of former opposition parties that is trying to create a transitional national leadership.
Judging from their public statements, Mr. Sadr and Ayatollah Hakim hold largely similar views. Both have demanded that American forces leave Iraq and have called the United States an enemy. Both support an Islamic government, although neither has suggested it can or should be imposed.
Ayatollah Hakim touched on those themes in an emotional homecoming speech in the courtyard of the Imam Ali mosque, where Sheik Khoei was killed last month. Speaking hoarsely through a loudspeaker and weeping, he proclaimed that Islam was the Iraqis' path to independence from American and British plots to control the country.
"Our enemies are trying to divide us, to weaken us," he said. "They support one against the other, but really they see us all as the same thing. Be cautious. Be cautious."
He also blamed the United States and Britain for supporting Mr. Hussein in the past, suggesting that neither country could be trusted to help Iraqis now. "They helped Saddam kill us, to exterminate us and exterminate Iraq," he said.
The rival clerics appear to differ more in style, experience and resources than in the substance of their beliefs.
Profiting from the veneration still felt for his father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, who was murdered in 1999, Mr. Sadr organized huge demonstrations against the American occupation soon after the war ended. He supported the clerics who commandeered government buildings and took control of hospitals in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other cities.
He has, as a result, become a popular figure. Favor seekers - black-shrouded women begging for money, men appealing for help in land disputes, religious students hoping for an audience - cluster at the door to Mr. Sadr's school in Najaf every morning.
But Ayatollah Hakim has the advantage of an established exile political party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which Iran subsidized, as it did his Badr Brigade militia.
The council also has a seat on the Iraqi National Congress, which has assumed the role of organizing an interim national assembly and dealing with American officials in Iraq.
Ayatollah Hakim's political advisers also say he is a pragmatist who does not want to create rifts with other, more secular, political groups. "What we are looking for now is agreements, not differences," said Adel Abdel Mahdi, a political aide to Ayatollah Hakim. "We had a very, very difficult 35 years, and we don't like to play with fire."
The other established Shiite movement, the Dawa Party, has already taken a more conciliatory approach to participation in a transitional government. Its leaders, who also returned from exile over the past month, said they wanted an immediate public role in order to raise their profile. "We are not at the point yet of being really able to choose by voting," said Abu Riyadh, the party's political director in Baghdad. "But Iraqis want to form a unified government. The main guarantee for Shias, and all Iraqis, is freedom."
With the return of Ayatollah Hakim to the center of action, in Najaf, Mr. Sadr risks looking like a riverboat gambler who overplayed his hand.
In the past week, American troops have muscled his supporters out of some of the hospitals and food warehouses they had taken over after the war. In a religious ruling last month, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sestani, considered the senior religious authority in Najaf, pointedly warned clerics that their role was to provide guidance, not to be administrators.
Ayatollah Hakim's political organizing skills, and perhaps his financial resources, have also overwhelmed, at least temporarily, Mr. Sadr's ability to promote himself beyond the confines of Najaf.
"It's all propaganda and banners," he said of the ayatollah's return, in a brief interview today. "These can be bought with money. Here is my message: I sit here and meet people."
But he was clearly annoyed at being overtaken as the favored newsmaker of the day. "I did an interview with Abu Dhabi television, and they promised to transmit my words at the Friday Prayer," Mr. Sadr said. "All they ran was a five-minute piece late at night."
In the end, the rivalry between Ayatollah Hakim and Mr. Sadr may be dampened by higher authorities. They are both products of the tradition-bound religious schools in Najaf, which together form what is called the Hawza, or religious authority. The two men will almost certainly have to defer to scholars of much higher rank, especially the handful of obscure Iraqi grand ayatollahs, who so far have shown no interest in seeing religious leaders mixed up in political life.
While little is known of the Hawza deliberations, other Shiite clerics said a consensus was building in favor of a limited role for Shiite clergy in a future Iraqi government.
Muhammad al-Mousawi al-Kathami, a popular Baghdad cleric with good connections to the Shiite hierarchy, suggested recently that the Shiite authorities' demands would not tax a new Iraqi leader.
"He'll find that they don't want that much - freedom to visit the shrines, freedom to publish their books and freedom to follow their religious principles," he said. "If Iraqis have a prosperous life and are not persecuted anymore, they won't interfere in the government."
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Sets Hard Line on Settlements Policy
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/middleeast/13CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, May 13 - Ahead of a meeting next week with President Bush, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon set a hard line today on retaining Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Mr. Sharon dismissed as not "on the horizon" any talk of changing Israel's settlement policy, and he dismissed suggestions that the Bush administration was pressing him to dismantle settlements.
During a visit here over the weekend, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that he raised the issue of settlements with Mr. Sharon, and that President Bush would pursue the matter when he sees Mr. Sharon on May 20.
In an interview with Israeli television, Mr. Powell said he told Mr. Sharon that settlements were "a problem," and he said the president would speak to the prime minister "in very open, straightforward, honest, candid terms about settlement activity."
A new American-backed peace plan, known as the road map, calls on Israel to dismantle all settlement outposts built since March 2001, at the same time that the Palestinian Authority cracks down on terrorism. It also calls for a freeze on Israeli settlements. Mr. Sharon insists that the Palestinians must end incitement and dismantle all terrorist organizations before Israel can begin to make concessions.
In the interview, parts of which were published today in The Jerusalem Post, Mr. Sharon suggested that there was nothing new to the American concerns. He noted that no American administration had ever supported settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the Six-Day War, but that every Israeli government built them anyway.
"In my mind this is not an issue on the horizon right now," he was quoted as saying.
Asked about dismantling settlements or outposts, he said, "It is not something today that anyone is dealing with," adding, "there is no pressure from anyone. It is only pressure from the Jews on themselves."
Mr. Sharon has repeatedly said he would make "painful concessions" for peace, while adding that he could not reveal them because they would then become the starting point, rather than the ending point, for negotiations.
In another interview a month ago, Mr. Sharon took an unusual step in listing two settlements, Beit El and Shilo, as well as Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem, before saying: "I know that we will have to part with some of these places. As a Jew, this agonizes me."
But asked by The Jerusalem Post about Bet El, Mr. Sharon said, "Jews will live there." He ridiculed the notion of "Arab sovereignty" in Bet El or Shilo.
Mr. Sharon restated his support for a Palestinian state. "I think it is good for us, and good for the Palestinians," he said. "I don't think we can continue to control another people."
But Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians' chief negotiator, said talk of peace was meaningless without action on settlements. "It's either settlements or peace," he said. "Both cannot go together." He added, "It's the main issue for us in the road map, and Sharon's statement just reflects that he does not accept the road map."
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, assured Mr. Powell that he was ready to move to disarm terrorist groups, provided Israel also takes action on the peace plan, diplomats here said. But Mr. Abbas is demanding a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip "clean" of settlements, while Mr. Sharon envisions a Palestinian state in less than half the West Bank.
The plan calls for a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace and a Palestinian state in three years.
Mr. Sharon told The Jerusalem Post that a new barrier fence Israel is building against West Bank Palestinians would sweep eastward to enclose two settlements, Ariel and Emmanuel. That route would incorporate a large swath of the West Bank on the Israeli side of the fence. The planned route of the fence, which Israel insists will not become a border, already incorporates a significant amount of the West Bank.
Mr. Sharon and Mr. Abbas are to meet Saturday night. Mr. Powell pressed the Palestinians for the meeting, though some officials said they were reluctant to hold it before Israel adopted the new peace plan. Some of Mr. Abbas' advisers warned him that in seeing Mr. Sharon now he would only polish the Israeli prime minister's image before the Bush meeting.
Most of the ministers in Mr. Sharon's government are from parties opposed to dismantling settlements and accepting a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. As a result, the so-called diplomatic Quartet behind the new peace plan - the United States, United Nations, the European Union, and Russia - has not demanded that the Israeli government formally accept it, as the Palestinians have asked.
Instead, Mr. Powell urged both sides to move forward on steps they are prepared to take. The hope appears to be that Mr. Sharon is willing to move more aggressively on the plan than most of his ministers.
In meeting with Mr. Powell on Sunday, Mr. Sharon proposed a package of gestures to ease life for Palestinians, including permitting more of them to reach Israeli jobs. Then, on Monday, Israel sealed off the Gaza Strip, citing security concerns.
Quartet diplomats say they believe Mr. Sharon was withholding his substantive concessions for his meeting with President Bush, a standard diplomatic move.
"In diplomacy, you don't have your envoys cashing in the goods," one Western diplomat here said. "The moment of truth will not be produced by the Secretary's visit, but the moment of truth will be in the White House meeting."
--------
Israel Seals Off Gaza After Brief Opening
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, May 12 - Despite a pledge to ease Palestinian hardships, Israel sealed off the Gaza Strip today after partly opening the border to workers from there on Sunday. Israeli soldiers today killed three Palestinians in the southern part of the strip, Palestinians said.
The weekend visit by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Palestinian officials said, failed to generate any real momentum for the new Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, which envisions the creation of a Palestinian state within three years.
"The general impression among Palestinians is one of disappointment," said Ziad Abu Amr, a cabinet minister. "The hope was that both the Israelis and Palestinians would make a public declaration accepting the road map."
Mr. Powell said he would be satisfied for now if the two sides could begin taking some of the smaller steps outlined in the plan while discussing their differences on larger issues.
Even that limited goal immediately ran into problems.
After the meeting between Mr. Powell and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday, Israel spelled out measures it would take to improve Palestinian living conditions.
The most immediate was to allow several thousand workers from Gaza into Israel on Sunday. But early today, before Mr. Powell's plane took off for Egypt, Israel again closed the crossing. Israeli military officials cited intelligence information warning of a possible Palestinian attack.
Israel has closed off the Palestinian areas for much of the 31 months of violence in an effort to prevent attacks by militants. But the closings have also contributed to an economic collapse in Palestinian communities. Before the current conflict began in September 2000, up to 150,000 Palestinians commuted daily from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to work in Israel.
The current closing, which is open-ended, also bars foreigners from entering or leaving Gaza. Only diplomats and journalists who receive advance permission will be allowed through the Erez crossing at the territory's northern end, the Israeli Army said.
The Palestinians said the Israeli measures, even if carried out, were minor gestures that fell far short of the government's obligations under the peace plan, which calls for pulling back troops and halting the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel's decision to let 25,000 Palestinian workers into Israel was made months ago. The number who have made the trip is much smaller, because of Israeli security restrictions. The Gaza crossing was closed to Palestinians for almost a month before its brief reopening on Sunday.
"The reason we continue with these security measures is not just to protect our citizens," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Mr. Sharon, "but to protect this embryonic process that could be destroyed by one or two suicide bombings."
Israel also says it is releasing up to 200 detained Palestinians. About 100 were freed on Sunday and today, the Defense Ministry said. But Palestinians said most were already within days of their release, and nearly all had been picked up for entering Israel illegally to look for work and were not involved in violence.
Palestinian militants fired one mortar shell at a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza tonight, but it caused no injuries or damage, the Israeli military said. Earlier, an army patrol found and safely detonated a 90-pound roadside bomb outside another settlement in the same area.
On the political front, Mr. Sharon and the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, may meet this week, possibly on Friday, both sides said. Mr. Sharon, who has boycotted the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, has not met openly with such a senior Palestinian figure since taking office more than two years ago.
Palestinians questioned the intentions of Mr. Sharon, who is to meet President Bush in Washington next week.
"I think Sharon wants to use this meeting to his advantage as he heads to the White House," said Mr. Abu Amr, the Palestinian cabinet minister. "Sharon wants to show he is talking to the Palestinians, when in reality nothing is moving forward."
Gerald Steinberg, an Israeli political science professor at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said the current peace plan, like many before it, was producing inflated expectations of a swift solution.
"The belief that the road map is going to go smoothly enough to create a Palestinian state in three years is very unrealistic in my view," Mr. Steinberg said. "The Israeli and Palestinian publics are still very far apart on core issues."
In the Gaza violence, the Israeli Army said troops had found two tunnels used by weapons smugglers in the town of Rafah, on the border with Egypt. Soldiers in the area spotted two Palestinians trying to plant a an explosive device and shot them, the army said. Palestinians said both were killed.
Israeli troops also shot a Palestinian farmer dead in his fields outside the nearby town of Khan Yunis, according to the Palestinians. The army said it was checking the report.
Israeli troops were also active in the West Bank, seizing seven suspected militants in the town of Qalqilya, the army said. Soldiers also searched Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus for three hours, but left without making arrests, hospital officials said.
-------- mideast
Powell Asks Arabs to Help Rein in Palestinian Militants
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/middleeast/13DIPL.html
AMMAN, Jordan, May 13 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell opened a drive today to line up Arab backing for a crackdown on Hamas and other militant groups by the new Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas. But he ran into sharp criticism in Egypt of Israel's continuing military presence and restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza. Advertisement
The criticism of Egyptian officials, echoed through much of the Arab world, focused on what officials and commentators said was the disappointingly small steps taken by Israel, coinciding with Mr. Powell's visit over the weekend and the new sealing of the Gaza border today.
Arriving in Cairo from Jerusalem this morning, Mr. Powell conferred with President Hosni Mubarak and said he expected Egypt to help the Abbas government improve the Palestinian security forces, which are under at least the partial control of Muhammad Dahlan.
The secretary then flew to Jordan for dinner with King Abdullah II, and he was to visit Saudi Arabia on Tuesday. But that leg of his journey was thrown into doubt today after reports of at least four explosions in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, including car-bomb attacks at an apartment compound favored by Westerners.
Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are considered by Washington to be the Arab states most receptive to pleas to bolster Mr. Abbas in his rivalry with Yasir Arafat, whom the United States is trying to sideline.
Last month the Egyptian intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, flew to the West Bank to help broker the deal in which Mr. Arafat yielded some power to Mr. Abbas, enabling the United States to resume contacts with the Palestinian Authority for the first time in a year. Now the Bush administration expects Mr. Suleiman and Egyptian security to help Mr. Dahlan fulfill Mr. Abbas's pledge to get tough with the groups responsible for attacks in Israel.
But the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Maher, dampened any American hopes for a positive response to steps that Israel had taken the day before to ease the conditions of Palestinians, which mainly consisted of a partial easing of restrictions on work permits and the release of a small number of Palestinian detainees.
Such steps, Mr. Maher said, "maybe would have been a good indication, had they not been accompanied by actions on the ground that certainly go contrary to a desire to solve the problem, to ease the tensions." Israeli soldiers in Gaza today killed three men, one of them a farmer in his fields, Palestinians said.
Mr. Maher also said that Egypt would continue to recognize Mr. Arafat as the Palestinian president, even though the United States has appealed to other countries to deal only with Mr. Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen.
After Mr. Powell left the Egyptian presidential palace, Mr. Maher told Arab reporters that the secretary of state had told him that he was trying to persuade Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take further steps before Mr. Sharon meets with President Bush next Tuesday in Washington.
This evening a senior State Department official went further, saying that Mr. Powell had privately told the Egyptians of further steps that Israel had agreed to take.
Mr. Powell brought the same message to Egypt and Jordan that he has repeated since he left on Friday: it is time, he has said, for Israel and the Palestinians to take concrete steps to ease tensions between them and not get bogged down arguing over the three-year peace plan, known as the road map, that was negotiated by the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
Palestinians are being called on to disarm militant groups while Israel is being asked to ease its checkpoints, roadblocks and overwhelming military presence in the West Bank and Gaza. Mr. Sharon, Mr. Powell said, "has announced a variety of steps and measures he will be taking in the near future that in effect constitute the beginning of the road map process."
But once again today the peace proposal was the focus more of dispute than agreement, because Prime Minister Sharon has refused to endorse it outright. Israel argues that the plan - a series of reciprocal steps aimed at creating a Palestinian state within three years and an Israel free of violence - needs to stipulate that Israel does not need to make concessions in the absence of real steps to end Palestinian violence.
Asked today by Egyptian journalists whether Israel had matched the Palestinians and accepted the peace plan, Mr. Powell said, "The Israeli side did not use the word `accept.' " But he added that this did not matter because Israel and the Palestinians could still act to ease the situation without agreeing on all the details of the proposal.
"It makes no difference whether you have a word `accept' or not have the word `accept,' " Mr. Powell added. "What makes the difference is whether or not both sides find enough in common with the road map that they can begin the process of moving down this road."
The secretary's comments reflected a new but subtle change that could make it harder for the United States to wring concessions from Mr. Sharon. For months, Israel has quietly but insistently said that it had many objections to the plan, each time getting assurances that President Bush would be the ultimate arbiter and Israel could trust him.
Now, however, the Arabs, the United States and its partners in drafting the document all endorse the plan and only Israel is holding out. Israelis say this is precisely what Mr. Sharon fears, being seen by the international community as the obstacle to peace just when he feels he has been successful in curbing Palestinian attacks with a show of force.
-------- russia / chechnya
Uprising in the Chechnya Ghetto
by Nadezhda Banchik, with John Zmirak
May 13, 2003
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/banchik1.html
Bandits, thieves, terrorists by nature, a whole nation of criminals who must be suppressed by any means, however ruthless: That's the Russian government's official line on Chechnya, and most international media repeat it as if by rote. It suits the Russian government to have Americans and Europeans believe that Russia is fighting alongside them in the war on terrorism, that Vladimir Putin's repression of Chechen independence is of one piece with the attempt to keep suicide bombers off American airliners. Beguiled by this false equation, Westerners forget their principles and fall into lockstep. When Human Rights Watch appealed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the massive abuses committed in Chechnya, that good liberal ignored them, and shook Vladimir Putin's bloody hand without a contrary word - he later referred to "Russia's right to self-defense."
It's comforting for Western democrats to rely on Russian government press releases about dubious Chechen connections with international terrorists.
It's soothing for Americans to forget how intimately their own government was intertwined with Islamic extremists during the Cold War - especially in Afghanistan, where the CIA helped lay the infrastructure for the groups that would form Al Qaeda.
And it's convenient for world leaders eager to maintain their Russian alliance to ignore the radical difference in kind between terror attacks (such as Sept. 11 and the Moscow theater tragedy) and a guerilla war waged against an army of occupation. Remember the American War of Independence? Imagine if it had dragged on for 300 years, and you will know a little about how the Chechens feel.
The Chechen Thirst for Independence
It has been that long since the Tsars invaded Chechnya, and since Chechens have been fighting back, resisting every pacification campaign - even surviving Stalin's attempt at genocide through exile to barren steppes in winter time. Centuries under Tsars and then Soviets created quite a thirst for independence, and for the protection of international law. So in 1991, it should have surprised no one when the autonomous Soviet Republic of Checheno-Ingushetia, as the region then was called, tried to follow the other 15 Soviet republics and declare independence. Sadly for Chechnya, the old Soviet Constitution only offered this right to so-called "Union" republics, such as Ukraine. (This legalistic distinction would give the leadership in Russia the pretext they needed to keep Chechnya by force.)
A new Soviet Union treaty projected equal rights of self-determination for all entities of the Union - and was scheduled to take effect on August 20, 1991. It failed because of August 19-21 coup, which effectively ended the Soviet state, and left the Chechens orphaned stepchildren in the Russian Federation - a people with as good a moral claim to independence as Armenia or Estonia, but without the legal standing to demand it.
Boris Yeltsin's new regime wrapped itself in the slogans of democracy, human rights, and a renewed civil society. It claimed to reject the Soviet legacy in the region - which was ugly indeed. In attempting to play ethnic groups against each other, the Soviets inspired the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh with cruel massacres of Armenians in Azerbaijan in 1988-1990. Soviet troops also shed blood in Tbilisi (1989) and Baku (1990), and in faraway Vilnius in January, 1991. But Yeltsin renounced this heritage, at least in public.
Chechen leaders tried to take Yeltsin at his word. In 1992, Chechen members of parliament held repeated meetings with Russian delegations, seeking a peaceful route to independence, and a meeting between Yeltsin and the first Chechen President, former Soviet Army General Djokhar Dudayev. Dudayev was no Islamist; he considered himself part of the post-Soviet democratic order, in which he struggled to find a place for a free Chechnya. The new Chechen Constitution, which he adopted in 1992, proclaimed Chechnya a secular rather than an Islamic state.
But Great Russian chauvinism was not content to see even more territory peel away from Moscow's orbit. In the conflict between Russian democrats and militaristic, ex-KGB elements, the latter won. In Chechnya itself, the economy began to collapse, and dissident forces - with help from Moscow - rebelled against Dudayev. He responded with repression.
In Moscow, the Russian parliament dissolved as a result of another coup on October 3-4, 1993. It was replaced by a far more chauvinistic State Duma, which would never again consider Chechen independence. Its new leaders, loyal to Yeltsin, began more and more aggressively condemning Chechen "separatism," and referring to Chechnya itself as a vast "criminal zone." The Russian "war party" grew in influence, and soon included major figures in the inner circle of President Yeltsin, including generals Korzhakov and Barsukov, Minister of Nationalities Yegorov, First Vice-Premier Soskovets, and other high-ranking officials.
The Chechen president refused to sign the new Federation Treaty in 1992, as well as new a Russian Constitution in 1993. By mid-July 1994, it became apparent that the Yeltsin leadership had decided to overthrow Dudayev in a "black" operation, by supporting handpicked "opposition" figures such as the old Communist Avturkhanov. After several failed operations, these rebel forces made a last-ditch assault on Grozny on November 26, supported covertly by Russian troops. They failed, and most were captured. Dudayev offered clemency to the rebels, if Russia would admit its role in the affair. Instead, on December 11, 1994, the Russian army openly invaded Chechnya.
The Russian authorities were still unskilled at media management, and foreign reporters freely covered the brutal war that ensued. Russian and foreign audiences alike saw the virtual destruction of Grozny by heavy bombardment, the mass killing of civilians as the Russians stormed the capital, and the imprisonment of non-combatants in so-called "filtration" camps. Strong antiwar sentiment developed in Russia, along with sympathy for the courageous Chechen Resistance, and a cease-fire was negotiated. In April 1996 Russian agents assassinated the Chechen president, but by August a peace settlement was secured.
Chechnya held new presidential elections, which were widely considered the most free and democratic campaigns in any post-Soviet nation. Chechens elected Aslan Maskhadov, a moderate politician, rejecting more extreme nationalists such Shamil Basayev and Zelimkhan Yandarbiev. A peace agreement on May 12, 1997, signed in Moscow by Presidents Yeltsin and Maskhadov seemed to put an end to the whole Russian-Chechen conflict.
But it was not to be. Russian officials refused to clarify Chechnya's status, treating it neither as as an independent state (a subject of the international law) nor as part of the Russian Federation. This left the devastated republic acutely isolated, blocked from most Western aid, uncompensated for the enormous damage inflicted by the Russian attacks. Chechens had nowhere to turn for help but to the Islamic world. They did not look to Iran, Syria, Iraq or Libya, but to moderate, pro-Western regimes such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab emirates. However, the social chaos and misery caused by the war did provide a breeding ground for extremists who looked to the Taliban for help and example. Aslan Maskhadov did his best to resist these radicals, but without outside support. Russia even refused to provide the aid it had offered as part of the peace agreement.
How Russia Created a 'Criminal Zone'
There is evidence that some of these Islamic extremists, such as Arbi Barayev, received support from the Russian secret service - which fiercely resented Chechen independence as a threat to Russian integrity. Former KGB agents with long-standing ties to Syria and Iraq, and radical anti-Israeli organizations would not find it hard to reactivate such connections. (For more on this see Blowing-Up Russia: Terror from Within, a profound, systematic investigation into the links between the Russian security services, the Russian mafia, and international terrorists.) In case you haven't heard his name, Barayev was one of the leading "kidnappers for profit" to emerge from Chechnya. In 1997, Aslan Maskhadov asked Russian officials to arrest and extradite Barayev, but they refused. Only in 2001 was Barayev finally stopped - killed by a young Chechen in a blood feud.
Since 1992, high-ranking Russian officials, both in the military and secret police, have been engaged in illegal business activities on a vast scale. Even as their military and political control collapsed with the old totalitarian system, they feathered their nests financially, and jockeyed for covert control of the new institutions. They mostly succeeded, and blocked important reforms, seized state assets for pennies on the ruble, and came to dominate the black market, the oil industry, and the drug trade. "Military mafia" figures, led by former Defense Minister P. Grachev, became major salesmen in the illegal arms trade.
It suited the interests of all these conspirators to create a lawless region in which they could operate with impunity, without fear of prosecution - with their activities covered by the fog of war. At the same time, Russian nationalists reached blindly for a target to vent their frustrations at an empire gone astray. Long-suffering Chechnya served both groups and their needs. Now it is also scapegoat in the Western war on terror, as the punishing force of a former superpower rains down on a small nation.
If Chechens are indeed Russian citizens, as Russia's President Putin insists, then why is his military slaughtering them, leveling their cities, and making no effort to impose civil order on the mutilated region?
Are Chechens Human?
Russians have never considered Chechens their countrymen. Too many of them, in fact, see Chechens as something less than human. Labeling the entire population of a region "criminals" and "terrorists" makes it easy to justify the use of brutal, disproportionate military force against them, without compunction or regard for the laws of war. So Stalin used propaganda to portray the land-owning "kulaks" as subhuman, then slaughtered or starved them by the millions. False accusations that most Chechens are affiliated with "terrorism" has made them outcasts throughout Russia - even as in Chechnya they are being killed like wild animals. In Russia itself, refugees from Chechnya are being deprived of passport registrations, prevented from working, denied medical care, and routinely beaten and tortured by police. After Sept. 11, even the US rejected Chechen appeals for refugee status.
I will never forget the words of a Chechen refugee woman in Moscow, who cried out desperately to me, "Do you really consider us humans?" Indeed, the Russian forces' conduct in Chechnya has begun to equal their behavior there during Stalin's Great Terror: They routinely employ torture, forced confessions, and mass killing. Concentration camps honeycomb the entire republic. The whole region is virtually closed to the outside world, and even to the Russian population - so that the genocide can proceed without much protest.
Courageous and honest Russian journalists and human rights activists (among them are Sergei Kovavyov, Elena Bonner, Anna Politkovskaya, Andrei Babitskii, and others) recently appealed to journalists to employ more careful, evenhanded language in describing the Chechen War. As they wrote:
"By describing explosions, bombardments, and any resistance shown against federal forces as 'terrorist acts' and the Chechen Resistance fighters as 'bandits,' 'terrorists,' or 'gunmen, ' you simply parrot the official line, which tries to present the Chechnya War as a struggle against terrorism and banditry. You mislead millions of your spectators, listeners, and readers. When you use such names willy-nilly, you actually encourage the bloodshed to continue. Indeed, if only bandits, terrorists, and gunmen fight against the federal forces in Chechnya, this war is justified - because one does not negotiate with terrorists. It is true that many commanders and Chechen Resistance fighters are not at all innocent before God, people and the law. But that cannot justify calling them simply 'bandits' or 'terrorists' - especially when the Russian federal forces commit their own, quite numerous war crimes against 'terrorists' and non-combatants alike."
Trapped by the notion that Chechens and their resistance movement are simply terrorists, Russians don't press their government to negotiate an end to the conflict. So Chechens are forced to fight, and deprived even of the opportunity to surrender with dignity. They are not simply the "enemy" - they are "terrorists." This means they need not be treated as human beings at all. They are deprived of the protection of law. They may be killed covertly, and buried like animals. Meanwhile, the last Chechen fighters continue with their unequal, exhausting war like the last Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto - forgotten by the world, fighting to the last bullet without hope, and with no other choice.
--------
52 Die in Suicide Bombing in Chechnya
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/europe/13CHEC.html
MOSCOW, May 12 - A truck loaded with explosives blew up near a government complex in northern Chechnya today in what officials said was a suicidal terrorist attack. The blast killed at least 52 people and wounded scores more, many of them gravely, in a region that had until now escaped the worst of Russia's war against Chechen separatists.
The attack today was the worst convulsion of violence in Chechnya since Russia held a constitutional referendum there in March as part of the Kremlin's efforts to hasten a peaceful end to the war after 44 months of violent conflict. Officials said the death toll - already among the worst single attacks in the war - could rise still higher.
None of Chechnya's known separatist groups claimed responsibility for the attack, but President Vladimir V. Putin, meeting with his cabinet at the Kremlin shortly afterward, said the attack was intended to disrupt efforts to foster some sort of stability in Chechnya under a loose political federation with Russia.
"All similar actions are aimed at only one thing: to stop the process of settlement in Chechnya, to stop the process of a political settlement," Mr. Putin told cabinet members in remarks broadcast on television. "We cannot allow anything like that, and we shall not allow it."
The attack occurred just after 10 a.m. when the truck - with one and perhaps two or three apparent suicide bombers - approached a compound of government buildings in the town of Znamenskoye, along the Terek River near Chechnya's border with the Stavropol region. It exploded, perhaps prematurely, after ramming a steel barricade outside the compound, witnesses told Russian news agencies.
The force of the blast, estimated to come from the equivalent of a ton of TNT, gouged a gaping crater more than 30 feet wide and some 20 feet deep in the road and damaged the headquarters of the regional government, as well as offices of the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., which oversees the campaign against Chechnya's separatists.
Although the attack appeared directed at the government buildings, the truck exploded in a residential neighborhood nearby, obliterating several kiosks and homes. Video broadcast on Russian television showed shattered hulks of buildings, broken beams and masonry and mangled mounds of earth, debris and bloodied cloth.
In an interview on NTV, Ruslan Daurov, who was inside one of the government buildings, described a hail of shattered glass. "Everything was flowing around us," he said, his head wrapped in a bloodied bandage. "Shouts and moans - very many women were injured."
Sultan M. Akhmetkhanov, the head of the administrative district, said in a telephone interview that at least four homes were completely destroyed and others were badly damaged. He said rescuers were searching through the rubble for those who might have been trapped inside.
A spokesman for Mr. Akhmetkhanov, reached by telephone tonight, said that 41 people had been confirmed dead, including at least 6 children. In all, 269 people were reported injured; 111 were hospitalized, 57 of them in critical condition.
Nikolai P. Patrushev, the director of the F.S.B., the K.G.B.'s successor, said the truck exploded after stopping at a checkpoint, about 100 feet from a concrete wall surrounding the compound. Some news reports said security forces opened fire on the truck, but Sultan S. Makhtiyev, the deputy head of the district administration, said in a telephone interview that no one had time to try to stop it before it exploded.
Mr. Patrushev, speaking in the meeting with Mr. Putin, said that police and security officers were among those killed, but that most of those killed or wounded were civilians. Interfax reported that the local F.S.B. director, Col. Mairbek Khusiyev, had suffered a concussion.
The attack today was the latest to undercut the Kremlin's claims to have largely restored order to the republic, where separatists have struggled to establish an independent republic ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Russian forces invaded in 1994 to crush the separatist movement, withdrew in 1996 in humiliating defeat and invaded again in 1999.
Unable anymore to confront the Russians, the separatists, many of them Islamic fundamentalists, are waging a campaign using increasingly audacious terrorist tactics that have been seen as a sign of the rebels' desperation.
In October, Chechen guerrillas seized a Moscow theater and held nearly 800 people hostage for 57 hours. At least 41 guerrillas died, as well as at least 129 hostages, most of them from nerve gas used by Russian commandos in the raid that ended the crisis.
In December, suicide bombers detonated two truck bombs outside the headquarters of Chechnya's pro-Moscow administration in Grozny, the Chechen capital, in circumstances strikingly similar to the attack today, killing more than 70.
Last month, an explosion killed at least 16 people aboard a bus in an attack that was videotaped and shown on a rebel Web site. The Web site claimed 17 Russian and Chechen police officers had been killed, but Russian officials said the victims were civilians.
Just last Friday, a bomb evidently fashioned from an artillery shell exploded outside Grozny's stadium before a military parade commemorating Victory Day, the anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. One policeman died and two others were wounded.
The head of the pro-Moscow government in Chechnya, Akhmad Kadyrov, blamed the attack today on rebels under Aslan Maskhadov, the separatist leader - a claim that a spokesman for Mr. Maskhadov denied in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio.
Mr. Kadyrov, who often clashes with Russian officials, also pointedly questioned the ability of Russian forces to provide sufficient security.
"Where did this car with explosives come from?" he said to Interfax. "How did it get to Znamenskoye? I have many questions.
-------- space
U.S. to Rely More on Private Companies' Satellite Images
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/national/13SATE.html
WASHINGTON, May 12 - President Bush is ordering federal agencies to rely much more heavily on private satellite companies to provide images from space, a significant shift from current policy, administration officials said today.
The new policy seeks to limit the government's own network of satellites to the most sensitive, high-priority assignments and use private vendors to meet relatively routine tasks "to the maximum practical extent," officials said. The shift is seen as an effort both to bolster the position of American satellite companies in the global marketplace and, in the long term, to save money.
The White House is expected to announce the new policy on Tuesday after a review that began late last year.
The White House's new policy will replace a nine-year-old presidential directive signed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, which Bush administration officials said had become largely outdated because of advances in private satellite technology.
"This is a very significant change," a senior administration official said today. "We're essentially saying that where the commercial industry can provide what we need, have at it."
But the shift carries security risks.
"The potential bad news," the senior official said, is that the images collected by private vendors "are also available to our adversaries." The government will reserve the right to restrict the sale of commercial data by American companies to anyone deemed to pose a national security risk, the official said.
The government currently has more than a half-dozen high-resolution satellites in orbit to provide imagery and photos for uses as varied as military and intelligence operations, map-making and climate control, officials said. Two private American companies operate high-resolution satellites, and a third is expected to launch one later this year, competing with other companies overseas.
As the quality of private satellite resolution has improved in recent years, the government has come to rely more heavily on them, but with that trend has come bureaucratic resistance and occasional in-fighting.
Last year, the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, ordered American intelligence agencies to expand their use of private satellites after Air Force officials complained that bureaucratic tangles prevented them from using commercial images of Afghanistan to aid in bombing missions in the war against the Taliban. As a result, Air Force pilots had to use outdated Russian maps during the early stages of the war.
President Bush's new policy directive moves the federal government even further in the direction of commercial satellites, expanding Mr. Tenet's order to the federal government as a whole. More than a dozen departments and agencies, including the Pentagon, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Department, and the C.I.A., fall under the new order, officials said.
"A year ago, we had Tenet saying this is what we want to do, and now we have the president saying this is national policy," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org and a specialist in satellite technology.
"This is basically long overdue," Mr. Pike said in an interview. "The benefits of buying commercial when it is possible have been evident for a long time."
While budget figures on satellite intelligence-gathering are tightly held, the government is believed to spend several billion dollars a year to operate its own high-resolution satellites, dwarfing what it spends to buy from private vendors, Mr. Pike said. He and government officials said they could not predict just how much those numbers would change under the new policy.
Officials from the private satellite industry have been meeting with administration officials in recent months about the issue and are eagerly awaiting the new policy directive, said Mark Brender, vice president for Space Imaging, a private company near Denver that maintains a satellite 423 miles in orbit.
"We anticipate a breakthrough policy that is pro-business, that is positive and that enables commercial industry to build and launch the best technology in order to meet the government's appetite for high-resolution commercial satellites," Mr. Brender said in an interview.
-------- spies
Spy Agencies Faulted
Senate Cites Lack Of Coordination
By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 13, 2003; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47272-2003May12?language=printer
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence wants more cooperation and less competition between the Defense Department's intelligence agencies and the rest of the intelligence community, including the CIA, according to the panel's report on next year's intelligence spending authorization bill.
In attempting to force the Pentagon and the CIA to increase cooperation, the committee pointed out that the Pentagon's key budgetary documents, the national military strategy as well as the defense planning guidance, "have been developed in recent years without the participation of the Director of Central Intelligence or his staff." It said this occurred "notwithstanding the growing importance of intelligence to military operations and the need to build forces commensurate to validated threats."
Instead, the panel said, steps should be taken "to better coordinate [Defense Department] and intelligence community strategic and budgetary planning."
At a time of unprecedented spending increases on intelligence, the major intelligence agencies are unable to account for where their money is spent, the committee found. "They don't know where the money is," said one Senate committee staffer. "They can't even be audited."
Although the total for intelligence spending in fiscal 2004 is classified, the best estimate is about $38 billion, of which more than $30 billion goes to Pentagon agencies, which include the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. An estimated $4.7 billion will go to the CIA, and the rest to the FBI and the State, Treasury and Homeland Security departments.
As one example of the laxity in accounting, the committee noted that the Defense Department inspector general found that the 2002 financial statements submitted by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency "were still unreliable" and that "neither agency dedicated the proper resources to the financial management" requirements.
Congress, with little success, has put pressure on intelligence agencies for years to produce reliable, accurate financial statements, but few have complied.
The Senate committee wants all intelligence agencies to be able to submit reliable audits that meet federal standards by March 1, 2005.
"We are aware of Congress's concerns and are working to address them," said Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman. "The CIA is working to produce financial statements that meet federal government financial accounting requirements and OMB [Office of Management and Budget] requirements."
The Senate panel also took aim at controlling the increasing costs of high-tech intelligence collection systems, whether satellites, aircraft, or ground- or sea-based operations, the costs of which range from hundreds of millions of dollars for some single aircraft to billions for space systems. It called on the Pentagon and other intelligence agencies to figure out how to combine different programs.
"Given the vast sums involved in these programs, even modest increases in the efficiency of resource allocation could lead to substantial benefits," the report said.
The panel also called on the National Security Agency, which intercepts electronic messages around the world, to end resistance to sharing raw data, much of which it has no time to process, with analysts from other intelligence agencies. The National Security Agency, the report said, "is an analytical organization that is far too small to handle the volumes of data that it collects."
The agency's acquisition of large, expensive signals intelligence systems was described as needing oversight. "The lack of a fundamentally sound acquisition process . . . raises concerns with respect to the efficiency and execution of major acquisitions," the report said.
--------
U.S. orders expulsion of seven Cuban diplomats
5/13/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-05-13-un-cuba_x.htm
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United States has ordered seven Cuban diplomats at the country's U.N. Mission to leave the country for engaging in "activities deemed harmful to the United States" - the usual diplomatic language for spying, an American official said Tuesday.
A letter ordering the seven diplomats to leave was delivered to the Cuban Mission on Monday evening, the official said.
The U.S. official said the Cubans were being expelled "for engaging in activities deemed harmful to the United States outside their official capacity as members of the permanent mission of Cuba to the United Nations."
"These activities constitute an abuse of their privileges of residence," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The latest U.N. directory lists 37 accredited Cuban diplomats, led by Ambassador Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla. The names of those ordered expelled were not released.
The Bush administration and Cuban authorities have engaged in an escalating diplomatic tit-for-tat reminiscent of the Cold War days in U.S.-Cuban relations. Until Tuesday, this involved more mundane issues like fixing embassy plumbing.
Last month, the United States walked out of a U.N. meeting to protest Cuba's re-election to the Human Rights Commission, calling it "an outrage" that undermined the group's credibility.
-------- un
U.N. Council May Request Foreign Force for Congo
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/africa/13CONG.html
UNITED NATIONS, May 12 - With memories of unheeded warnings about Rwanda clearly on their minds, Security Council ambassadors today discussed the possibility of inviting a foreign military force to help avert any increase in violence in the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has called on Council members to develop "a coalition of the willing" to provide troops to end the power vacuum. Diplomats from several delegations said they hoped France would lead the effort. The French mission's spokeswoman, emphasizing that the request went to all Council members, said the French government was studying the question.
After the meeting, one United States diplomat said, "We support a member state that is willing to consider this task quickly" - an implicit nudge to the French to take on the responsibility.
"Regarding troops, every member of the Security Council is considering the request made by the secretary general," a spokeswoman for the French mission said today. "We perfectly well understand the security situation on the ground is not secure," and that the United Nations forces present are not equipped to deal with a mounting conflict.
In Ituri, a diamond-rich region in the northeast, a power vacuum recently emerged when troops from neighboring Uganda withdrew. As a result, two ethnic groups have squared off in violent conflicts, and the number of displaced people has reached nearly 8,000, United Nations spokesmen say.
On Friday, militia groups attacked the United Nations compound housing peacekeeping forces in the town of Bunia, and an area commander for the United Nations was stabbed, a United Nations spokeswoman said. Militias also attacked local United Nations offices and, according to a United Nations spokesman, have fired into crowds seeking shelter near the airport in Bunia.
On Saturday, Mr. Annan called on Uganda to pressure the militias to maintain calm.
"This is very, very serious," one Council diplomat said today. There are currently about 700 Uruguayan peacekeeping forces in Bunia, to be joined soon by Bangladeshi troops, another diplomat said.
These forces are part of a growing United Nations group of more than 5,500 troops and observers in the Congo. The troops in Ituri, a United Nations spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said yesterday, are there to monitor the peacekeeping agreement, not to restrain warring militias from the Hema and Lendu ethnic groups.
Asked if the 1994 killing frenzy in Rwanda was on the minds of Council members, Richard S. Williamson, a senior diplomat of the United States mission, said: "There is no question that that dynamic lies heavy on us. And that's a good thing. It's a good thing we are all conscious of it."
-------- propaganda wars
The China Syndrome
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/opinion/13KRUG.html
A funny thing happened during the Iraq war: many Americans turned to the BBC for their TV news. They were looking for an alternative point of view - something they couldn't find on domestic networks, which, in the words of the BBC's director general, "wrapped themselves in the American flag and substituted patriotism for impartiality."
Leave aside the rights and wrongs of the war itself, and consider the paradox. The BBC is owned by the British government, and one might have expected it to support that government's policies. In fact, however, it tried hard - too hard, its critics say - to stay impartial. America's TV networks are privately owned, yet they behaved like state-run media.
What explains this paradox? It may have something to do with the China syndrome. No, not the one involving nuclear reactors - the one exhibited by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation when dealing with the government of the People's Republic.
In the United States, Mr. Murdoch's media empire - which includes Fox News and The New York Post - is known for its flag-waving patriotism. But all that patriotism didn't stop him from, as a Fortune article put it, "pandering to China's repressive regime to get his programming into that vast market." The pandering included dropping the BBC's World Service - which reports news China's government doesn't want disseminated - from his satellite programming, and having his publishing company cancel the publication of a book critical of the Chinese regime.
Can something like that happen in this country? Of course it can. Through its policy decisions - especially, though not only, decisions involving media regulation - the U.S. government can reward media companies that please it, punish those that don't. This gives private networks an incentive to curry favor with those in power. Yet because the networks aren't government-owned, they aren't subject to the kind of scrutiny faced by the BBC, which must take care not to seem like a tool of the ruling party. So we shouldn't be surprised if America's "independent" television is far more deferential to those in power than the state-run systems in Britain or - for another example - Israel.
A recent report by Stephen Labaton of The Times contained a nice illustration of the U.S. government's ability to reward media companies that do what it wants. The issue was a proposal by Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to relax regulations on media ownership. The proposal, formally presented yesterday, may be summarized as a plan to let the bigger fish eat more of the smaller fish. Big media companies will be allowed to have a larger share of the national market and own more TV stations in any given local market, and many restrictions on "cross-ownership" - owning radio stations, TV stations and newspapers in the same local market - will be lifted.
The plan's defects aside - it will further reduce the diversity of news available to most people - what struck me was the horse-trading involved. One media group wrote to Mr. Powell, dropping its opposition to part of his plan "in return for favorable commission action" on another matter. That was indiscreet, but you'd have to be very naïve not to imagine that there are a lot of implicit quid pro quos out there.
And the implicit trading surely extends to news content. Imagine a TV news executive considering whether to run a major story that might damage the Bush administration - say, a follow-up on Senator Bob Graham's charge that a Congressional report on Sept. 11 has been kept classified because it would raise embarrassing questions about the administration's performance. Surely it would occur to that executive that the administration could punish any network running that story.
Meanwhile, both the formal rules and the codes of ethics that formerly prevented blatant partisanship are gone or ignored. Neil Cavuto of Fox News is an anchor, not a commentator. Yet after Baghdad's fall he told "those who opposed the liberation of Iraq" - a large minority - that "you were sickening then; you are sickening now." Fair and balanced.
We don't have censorship in this country; it's still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media companies have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- homeland security
Homeland Security Drill Starts in Seattle
By GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
May 13, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BIOTERRORISM_DRILL?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SEATTLE (AP) -- Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims faced some tough hypothetical decisions after the mock explosion of a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a car in an industrial lot.
As events unfolded Monday in the first day of a five-day national bioterrorism exercise for hundreds of emergency workers, officials were faced with such questions as whether to declare a state of emergency and how to determine the range of the radioactive plume and alert those who could be affected.
The drill, combining the Seattle disaster with a mock bioterror attack in Chicago, is aimed at testing the readiness of local, state and federal authorities. It is the nation's first large-scale counterterrorism exercise since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The idea, Nickels said, is for regional and national agencies to see where strengths and weaknesses lie.
"When a disaster occurs, people do not call the White House," Nickels said. "They call 911."
The mayor said he spoke twice Monday with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and once with Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.
"Our first responders, I think, did an outstanding job today," Nickels said. "Things went about the way we thought they would."
Once all the data are analyzed and the decisions have been reviewed, the Seattle leaders said, they'll determine what they learned.
The exercises, which are being headed by the Homeland Security Department, will cost an estimated $16 million and involve more than 8,500 people from 100 federal, state and local agencies, the American Red Cross and the Canadian government.
The drill was being run by about 80 federal workers from a hotel ballroom in Washington. Computers projected maps of Seattle and Chicago onto large screens.
Over the next few days, a number of "patients" are to show up at hospitals in the Chicago area, suffering from flu-like symptoms. In the script, a terrorist group releases a deadly plague in aerosol form.
In Seattle's scenario, 150 people were "injured" in the explosion, and 92 were taken to area hospitals. Twenty people were being sought in the rubble and two were reported killed.
About 200 firefighters and 60 police officers participated in the Seattle drill. Ten police and 20 fire personnel, among the first on scene, had to be decontaminated for imaginary exposure to radioactivity.
There were two real minor injuries. One emergency responder suffered smoke inhalation and another strained his back, Deputy Police Chief Clark Kimerer said. Both were treated at the scene.
Meanwhile, 40 miles south, students and others at Pacific Lutheran University near Tacoma acted out a second, simultaneous attack on campus, where a smoke bomb also was detonated to simulate a car bomb. About 170 volunteers, including members of the university's drama club, pretended to be injured.
The script also called for a terrorist to run into a campus building and take hostages.
"The time to test is before such a threat arises," Washington Gov. Gary Locke said. "Prudent preparation is not a sign that we face any new or credible threat of terrorism. We expect to learn a lot and we expect to apply what we learn."
About 68,000 notices were mailed out earlier to advise Seattle residents of the operation, and media coverage has been extensive. Emergency agencies reported no calls from people worried they might be witnessing the real thing.
Within a month, a two-day conference for all participants is planned to review the exercise. By September, a full report will be submitted outlining strengths and vulnerabilities.
On the Net:
Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/index.jsp
--------
Homeland Security Studies Drone Patrols
May 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Border-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Homeland Security Department is considering the use of unmanned aircraft to track drug smugglers, illegal immigrants and terrorists along the porous U.S. border with Mexico, a top official told a Senate panel Tuesday.
``There's a lot of interest in this,'' Robert Bonner, commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, told the homeland security subcommittee. ``I think there's potential there.''
With no human on board, Predators and other remote-controlled aircraft can watch over a potential target for 24 hours or more and fly for hundreds of miles. They can carry cameras, sensors, communications equipment or missiles.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge endorsed the use of drones last month before members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
``We need to equip (Border Patrol agents) with this kind of technology if our expectations legitimately are for them to combat terrorism,'' Ridge said.
Support is growing for unmanned aircraft since their success during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Spy cameras aboard a drone allowed U.S. commanders to watch the capture of Palestinian hijacking suspect Abul Abbas and oversee the rescue of Army prisoner-of-war Pfc. Jessica Lynch. On another day, they foiled an Iraqi ambush on U.S. and British troops. In November, an unmanned Predator drone killed suspected al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.
The Senate Armed Services Committee last week approved a big jump in the 2004 defense budget for unmanned systems, including land-based and underwater systems. The committee approved $135 million more than the White House proposed, which was 25 percent higher than last year's appropriation.
Armed Services Committee chairman John Warner, R-Va., wrote a letter to President Bush on April 9 saying that unmanned aircraft could monitor long stretches of border, nuclear power plants, pipelines and dams. They could also be used to augment Coast Guard patrols of the U.S. coastline.
``I believe that the potential applications for this technology in the area of homeland defense are quite compelling,'' wrote Warner.
Jay Stanley, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union, cautioned that aerial surveillance is limited now by the cost and difficulty of flying a plane over a target. The use of drones could significantly expand the amount of surveillance on Americans, he said.
``It definitely evokes the most paranoid visions of Big Brother's eye in the sky,'' Stanley said.
William Shumann, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, said drones flying along the border wouldn't interfere with commercial flights if they flew low enough. He said interest in the aircraft is growing for civilian use as well as among law enforcement and the military.
Separately, congressional investigators told a House Judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday that they were able to easily get inside America's borders with falsified driver's licenses and birth certificates made with off-the-shelf software and home computers.
The false documents were not challenged once by border officials when they tried to get in from Mexico, Jamaica, Barbados or Canada, said Robert Cramer, the director of special investigations for the General Accounting Office. Sometimes, he said, the agents were not even asked for identification.
``The results of our work indicate that Bureau of Customs and Border Protection inspectors are not readily capable of detecting counterfeit identification documents and that people who enter the United States are not always asked to present identification,'' Cramer said. ``This does provide an opportunity for individuals to enter the country illegally.''
On the Net:
Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov
--------
Feds Conduct Bioterror Drill in Chicago
May 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioterrorism-Drill.html
CHICAGO (AP) -- A national bioterrorism drill mirrored real life Tuesday as coughing, sneezing patients trooped into Chicago-area emergency rooms acting out symptoms of a mystery SARS-like illness.
Mock patients were fitted with surgical masks and whisked away on gurneys and in wheelchairs as part of the five-day drill that began Monday in Seattle with the simulated detonation of a radioactive ``dirty bomb.''
``We've never experienced a bioterrorism attack here in Chicago, and I really wouldn't know what to do without having some sort of practice,'' said Teresa Chou, manager of infection control at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center.
The drill, aimed at testing the readiness of local, state and federal authorities, is the nation's first large-scale counterterrorism exercise since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
The exercises are being headed by the Homeland Security Department. They will cost about $16 million and involve more than 8,500 people from 100 federal, state and local agencies, the Red Cross and the Canadian government.
According to the drill's script, the same mock terrorist group responsible for the Seattle explosion also release a deadly plague in Chicago. Patients showing up at area hospitals Tuesday gave health officials their first clue that terrorism might be behind the outbreak.
About 160 hospitals in Illinois participated in the drill. Some received live ``patients''; others were informed by fax of mock patients and their symptoms.
Illinois Masonic enacted its emergency plan about an hour after the first live patients arrived, with nurses and doctors scurrying to turn the lobby into a triage area. The hospital called in extra staff this week to ensure that real patients would not be affected by the drill.
``No matter how much you plan ahead, how much you do on paper, until you really put (an emergency plan) to the test and stress the system with a large number of victims, you're not going to be able to find the weaknesses,'' said Dr. Richard Fantus, director of trauma services.
By late afternoon, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was reporting that 14 of the fictional patients had died and another 145 to 160 were exhibiting the flu-like symptoms associated with the outbreak.
According to the script, authorities will need a few days to connect the events in Chicago and Seattle. By week's end, officials are supposed to have traced the Chicago illnesses to the release of pneumonic plague.
As the drill unfolded Tuesday, representatives of various agencies -- including Homeland Security, the FBI and federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- manned phones at a regional operations center and reacted to new information.
In Seattle's scenario, 150 people were ``injured'' by the explosion Monday, and 92 were taken to hospitals. Rescuers sought 20 people believed to have been buried in the rubble created by the blast and two were reported killed.
On the Net:
Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/index.jsp
--------
Emergency Workers in Two Cities Drill for Disaster
May 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-simulation.html
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Against the backdrop of a deadly attack on Americans in Saudi Arabia, emergency workers in two U.S. cities combated simulated bomb and biological terrorism on Tuesday as the government mounted the largest security exercise of its kind.
In contrast to the bombast marking the $16 million drill's beginning in Seattle on Monday, where a supposed radioactive ``dirty bomb'' was set off with pyrotechnics, Chicago's simulated attack was a silent germ warfare invasion that sent the first of hundreds of ``patients'' to hospitals.
The exercise was largely played out on paper. Some of the Chicago ``victims'' were no more than names on faxes sent to hospitals to test their ability to cope.
While the exercises may be useful for understanding what can go wrong in the event of catastrophe, they cannot duplicate the panic accompanying the real thing, experts said.
``They know what's going to generally happen, and what kind of test is that? But it really is an effective test'' of officials' capabilities, said Phillip Coogan of the crisis management firm Bernstein Communications.
Hundreds of volunteer victims were deployed to test 10,000 people in official roles, said Edward Buikema, Midwest regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Seattle officials praised emergency teams for their overall smooth response and said the lessons learned were invaluable.
``... I feel much more confident in Seattle's ability to deal with either a natural or man-made catastrophe,'' Mayor Greg Nickels said. ``Our systems work.''
MANY DECISIONS
Seattle officials seemed satisfied with two decisions from Monday. A prison with 1,800 inmates was not evacuated because it was far enough from the bomb site, and a hospital flushed mock radioactive waste water directly into the sewage system to bypass the city's water treatment facility.
Officials staffing a center outside of Chicago showed off a mobile decontamination unit to reporters, one who donned a disposable anti-contamination suit to deliver his report.
The drills, which end on Friday, took on added weight with a suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed at least 29, including up to 10 Americans. Those attacks appeared to use standard explosives, not the mass-attack weapons simulated in the U.S. drill.
``That attack in Saudi Arabia underscores the reason why we need to continue to be vigilant, why we need the exercise,'' simulation co-director Thomas Hastings said in Washington.
Experts have said the United States is vulnerable to all types of attack in view of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The new federal Department of Homeland Security, which is conducting the exercise, said it was designed to simulate the stress and time demands on top officials who would be in the center of the storm in a real emergency.
How well the exercise goes may not be known for some time. The true report card being written by observers at key points was be an internal matter, at least initially.
The supposed agent in the Chicago exercise was pneumonic plague, which can be easily produced and disseminated. It can be treated with a seven-day course of antibiotics and causes initial influenza-like symptoms.
The main biohazard threat the United States has faced since Sept. 11, 2001, involved the still unexplained mailings of anthrax, a far deadlier agent.
-------- human rights
Bosnian Police Smash Human Trafficking Network
May 13, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-crime-bosnia.html
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Police in Bosnia's Serb Republic have smashed part of a major human trafficking ring which may have involved up to 200 ``traumatized victims'' across Europe, the European Union police mission said on Tuesday.
The mission, whose 500 officers monitor the work of Bosnian police, said alleged ring leader Milorad Milakovic and three of his associates were arrested last week in the western town of Prijedor.
``The scope of the evidence gathered strongly indicates that here we have witnessed the most decisive blow against this appalling criminal activity yet seen in Bosnia,'' mission spokesman Jon Oscar Solnes told a news conference.
``Furthermore, it may arguably turn out to be the starting point for unraveling one of the biggest human trafficking rings of Europe,'' Solnes said.
Bosnia has been a major transit point for thousands of women trafficked from poor ex-communist states into the Balkans region and western Europe, where they are mostly forced into prostitution.
Solnes said the four men arrested were part of the ring which ``may have involved up to 200 traumatized and damaged victims in numerous countries in Europe.''
He said a nightclub-cum-brothel was raided after the arrests.
``There the police found six girls from Moldova and Romania locked up in a room with metal bars on the windows,'' he said.
Special operations for fighting human trafficking stopped when the EU mission took over police monitoring from the United Nations in January as it wants Bosnian authorities to assume greater responsibility in tackling the problem itself.
-------- terrorism
Bush Vows to Find 'Killers' of Seven Americans and Many Others
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN with NEIL MACFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/middleeast/13BOMB.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 13 - The death toll rose to at least 90 today in the three suicide attacks against residential compounds and a business in the Saudi capital, according to news reports quoting the State Department.
Earlier reports, which put the toll at 20, listed seven Americans, seven Saudis, two Jordanians, two Filipinos, one Lebanese and one Swiss. In addition, nine charred bodies believed to be those of the suicide attackers were found, a Saudi official said.
There was no immediate accounting of the nationalities in the new death count.
"We have counted more than 90 dead," a State Department official in Washington was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse.
"These are very preliminary numbers," he added, as a second official said the death toll stood at 91 and was expected to rise. At least 30 and possibly as many as 44 American citizens were reported wounded.
Similar accounts of the higher death toll, also attributed to a State Department official, were reported by The Associated Press.
A Saudi Interior Ministry statement, read out on state television, said 194 people were wounded in the car bomb blasts.
President Bush reacted with anger and resolve.
"Today's attacks in Saudi Arabia, the ruthless murder of American citizens and other citizens, remind us that the war on terror continues," he said at an appearance in Indianapolis.
Mr. Bush called the bombings "despicable acts committed by killers whose only faith is hate." The crowd of 7,000 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds roared its approval when he said, "The United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice."
This morning, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, on a scheduled visit to Riyadh for talks with Saudi officials, said at least 10 Americans were among the dead.
Later, in an impromptu visit to one of the bombed compounds, Mr. Powell said his comments about the American death toll had been based on earlier information and that he would leave firmer figures to the American Embassy.
He also said that American "experts," whom he did not identify, would be leaving the United States for Riyadh immediately to help in the investigation.
Mr. Powell and the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, condemned what they said were terrorist attacks, and they resolved to increase their efforts to crush those who carry out such acts. The secretary said the attacks had the earmarks of the terrorist network Al Qaeda.
"The attacks have all the fingerprints of Al Qaeda," Mr. Powell said during his visit to the bombed site.
The explosions occurred at private compounds for some of the thousands of foreign business personnel who work in Saudi Arabia.
At least three sites were the scenes of the explosions, and officials said some areas were reduced to rubble.
The Saudi foreign minister called the explosions tragic events of the kind that can happen despite best efforts to stop terrorism. "It should increase our efforts," he said. "It should make us not hesitate to take whatever measures that are needed to oppose these people who only hate, only killing, for no purpose whatsoever."
Mr. Powell said that terrorism remained "a threat to the entire civilized world, and even in this moment of sadness, we will commit ourselves again to redouble our efforts."
Al Qaeda has been weakened but not been destroyed, Mr. Powell said, noting that he could not yet confirm completely that Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks. He said the United States and other nations must increase their efforts to fight terrorism.
Live pictures from the scene attested to the power of the blasts. The walls and buildings of one apartment building, once apparently four stories high, were completely blown out, and the blackened exterior walls were blasted completely from their foundation. The twisted and burned wreckage of cars littered the streets.
The compounds are home to American, British, Italian and other Westerners, as well as to Saudis and citizens of other Middle Eastern countries. Some of those attacked were the upscale enclaves that house the high-paid Western executives who run joint ventures and other large businesses in the kingdom.
Three blasts came almost simultaneously, just before midnight on Monday local time, and a fourth followed shortly afterward, Saudi officials said.
"The three explosions that occurred in eastern Riyadh were suicide bombings," the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, told Al Riyadh daily, the newspaper's Web site reported.
"They were set off by cars stuffed with explosives that were driven into the targeted compounds," he said.
The United States Embassy said that at two of the compounds the booby-trapped vehicles came to the rear gate and detonated there, prompting a gunfire with security guards, but in some cases the explosives-laden vehicles breached the walls and exploded within the compounds. At the third compound, vehicles crashed through the gates, killing the armed guards on duty.
"The bombs seem to have been very big and there is some kind of structural damage to houses and apartments," said John Burgess, the counselor for public affairs at the American Embassy in Riyadh. "There are still quite a number of people unaccounted for."
The Saudi ruling family has warned repeatedly that the failure to promote peace in the region would inflame extremist sentiment and that the occupation of Iraq would only serve to fuel such attacks.
The attackers struck after the State Department issued an extraordinarily specific warning on May 1 that terrorists "may be in the final phases of planning attacks" on American targets in Saudi Arabia.
"We didn't have anything particular in mind, except there were clearly plans for something to happen or that someone was planning to do something," Mr. Burgess said. "There was no specificity in the warnings that the U.S. got about attacks in Saudi Arabia."
The attacks followed a botched attempt by the Saudi security services to seize a cell that the Interior Ministry accused of being linked to Al Qaeda.
A senior Saudi official said that 19 suspected militants, 17 of whom are Saudis, sought in the raid had escaped. The suspects, the official said, had served in Afghanistan or Chechnya and had links to radical clerics.
A huge arms cache including 800 pounds of advanced explosives along with hand grenades, assault rifles, ammunition, disguises and tens of thousands of dollars in cash were seized, a Saudi official said.
United States officials said the nearly simultaneous explosions were reminiscent of Al Qaeda attacks on American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
A senior government official who spoke on the condition that neither his identity nor his nationality be disclosed said on Monday night, "There's been a lot of chatter in the last six weeks involving possible attacks by Al Qaeda, and it looks like this time they succeeded."
According to Saudi officials, the main attack was at the Hamra compound, whose residents comprise roughly equal numbers of Westerners and Arabs.
Diplomats said the wounded foreigners were reportedly from the Hamra compound. The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya satellite news channel reported that a number of charred victims were transferred to an area hospital.
Smoke lingered over the Hamra compound as police cars and ambulances rushed in.
Hundreds of antiriot policemen and members of the National Guard converged on the scene, evacuating compound residents and sealing off the area. Another attack was at a compound known as Granada, whose residents included employees of a British aerospace company and, possibly, a British school, the Saudi official said.
The third attack, the Saudi official said, was at the premises of the Vinnell Corporation, an American consulting group for the Saudi National Guard.
Officials at the Vinnell Corporation, which is based in Fairfax, Va., did not respond to a request for comment late Monday. Frank Moore, a spokesman for the corporation's parent company, Northrop Grumman, declined to comment.
News agency reports from Riyadh quoted witnesses as saying the explosions caused extensive property damage, leveling entire houses. The witnesses said the force of the blasts shook buildings and rattled windows.
American officials with access to early reports suggested there was an element of precision in the attacks. In each case, they said, the attackers appeared to have shot their way into and out of the compound, and possibly used car bombs to set off large explosions.
According to The A.P., the fourth blast went off early this morning at the headquarters of the Saudi Maintenance Company, also known as Siyanco. The company is a joint-owned venture between Frank E. Basil Inc. of Washington, and local Saudi partners, The A.P. said.
The attacks appear to be the third major strike in the country by suspected militant Islamists since the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
In 1995 a car bomb exploded at an American-run military training facility in Riyadh run by Vinnell. Seven people died, including five American advisers to the Saudi National Guard. In 1996 a truck bombing killed 19 Americans at the Khobar Towers barracks in Dhahran. Iran was initially blamed for that attack, but it is increasingly believed to have been the work of Al Qaeda.
Most foreigners in Saudi Arabia live in walled, gated communities that allow them to escape the strict legal codes of the Wahhabi sect of Islam prevalent in the kingdom.
Liquor is readily available and men and women can mix freely at the swimming pools on most compounds, liberties unthinkable elsewhere in Saudi Arabia. There are some 40,000 American residents in Saudi Arabia, according to the American Embassy, with 12,000 of them in Riyadh.
The kingdom is dependent on Western technical expertise for its oil industry and has long imported foreign specialists for its hospitals and other services. But the presence of such enclaves grates on the fundamentalists, especially the presence of American military forces.
One of the stated goals of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of Al Qaeda, was to drive Western military forces out of the kingdom, the birthplace Islam and home to its two holiest cites, Mecca and Medina.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced last week that most of the 5,000 American troops who have been stationed in Saudi Arabia since the gulf war would leave by the end of the summer, and they have already begun withdrawing.
--------
Terror Scenes Follow Script of Never Again
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By SARAH KERSHAW
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/international/worldspecial/13DRIL.html
SEATTLE, May 12 - The plot went like this: A sinister terrorist organization called Glodo, working from a safe house in Washington State, hatches a scheme to detonate a dirty bomb packed with radioactive agents in an industrial corner of South Seattle. At least 150 people are killed or critically injured. Plumes of toxic smoke fill the air for miles.
The plot was put into action today as a carefully scripted terrorism drill turned a vacant lot next to a coffee roasting plant into what looked like the set of a low-budget action film. It was part of the most extensive terrorism response training exercise in the nation's history.
The drill, which began about noon with an explosion that was quickly followed by sirens and the piercing screams of actors playing victims, is part of a weeklong exercise involving simulated chemical and biological attacks on Seattle and Chicago.
Organized by the Department of Homeland Security at a cost of $16 million, the events are part of the first such drill since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and follow a similar but much smaller-scale exercise in 2000. The Seattle scene today, which began with what sounded like a loud display of fireworks, was complete with a fake news crew, running around frantically in the debris in search of wrenching rescue dramas as emergency workers in gas masks and protective biochemical suits rushed into the wreckage and onto overturned city buses.
According to the script, the attack would be followed only a day later by the location of the terrorist safe house in Washington. That same day, Tuesday, the script called for Glodo to set off a covert biological attack on Chicago, sending residents to hospitals with flulike symptoms consistent with pneumonic plague.
Both Chicago and Seattle volunteered for the drills, and federal officials said today that the government had decided to pick one West Coast city and one city in the middle of the country, both vulnerable to terrorist attacks because they are major urban centers. "Seattle and Chicago are among the top urban areas we're concerned about," said Michael F. Byrne, director of the Office of National Capital Region Coordination for the Department of Homeland Security, a retired New York City Fire Department captain with experience in the World Trade Center attacks of 1993 and 2001.
Seattle, with a population of about 563,000, major ports, large companies like Microsoft and the landmark Space Needle, and its proximity to oil refineries and hydroelectric plants in the state, is an alluring terrorist target, officials said. But law enforcement officials emphasized there were no credible terrorist threats to the area.
"This is an important day for Seattle and for our country," said Mayor Greg Nickels, saying he expected other cities, even much larger ones like New York, to learn from the drill. "We are working hard toward achieving the goal of being the most prepared city in the country." Adding that "homeland security begins at home," he said, "When a disaster occurs, people do not call the White House, they call 911."
The dozens of federal, state and local agencies involved in the drill spent 18 months preparing for this week's exercises, which will involve 8,500 medical, police, fire, rescue and other personnel across the country, officials said. As soon as the bomb was to detonate, Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia were to activate their response systems and go into a Code Red emergency alert.
In the nation's capital, a group of senior administration officials - led by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, playing himself - organized the response to the fake attack in Seattle. Mr. Ridge, who spent most of the day participating in the exercise from his offices in Washington, oversaw meetings to discuss intelligence suggesting that the fictional terrorist group was behind the attack in Seattle and might have smuggled other weapons of mass destruction into the United States.
He telephoned Seattle's mayor and the state's governor, and he organized a classified videoconference with other members of the Homeland Security Council. Officials said that Mr. Ridge was the highest-ranking member of the administration to take part in the exercise. Stand-ins portrayed other senior officials, including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Simultaneously, Chicago area hospitals began receiving faxes about a patient who had checked into one of the hospitals with a mysterious ailment. The next day, "a growing number of patients show up at hospitals in the Chicago region suffering from flulike symptoms, including cough and fever," according to the script, and federal health officials soon determine that the city has been attacked with a biological agent.
"You want to stress your system," said Linda Sacia, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Chicago. "You don't want to react to just one disaster." In Seattle, law enforcement officials on the scene of the fake explosion said the response by firefighters and other rescue workers wearing gas masks was going smoothly. As they spoke, firefighters in protective chemical suits milled through the scene, a supposed street corner, where overturned buses, police cars and fire engines could be seen, fake victims wandered in a daze, car fires smoldered and a few news helicopters flew overhead. The "casualties" were taken to a nearby hospital. Federal officials said the exercise in 2000 pointed to breakdowns in communication among agencies. And examinations of the response to the real terrorist attack of Sept. 11 in New York City have revealed serious communication problems between police and fire officials.
Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer of the Seattle police spoke to reporters at the scene about two hours into the exercise and rated the overall response as a "solid B." "It's my estimation that we're very much on target," he said.
But he added that even with all the preparation for the exercise there were still weaknesses, although officials said at a post-drill briefing tonight that they were still analyzing the exercise and could not say specifically what went wrong. "The communication capacity is always limited," he said. "And that's a national problem."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- education
Critics of Graduation Exam Threaten Boycott in Florida
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By DANA CANEDY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/education/13EXAM.html
MIAMI, May 12 - A small group of minority politicians and prominent religious leaders in Florida is threatening a boycott of some of the state's largest industries in the hope of forcing the suspension of an achievement test that thousands of high school seniors recently failed.
State education officials announced last week that about 13,000 seniors in Florida public schools had failed the exam, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, leaving them ineligible to graduate. The state said that it did not immediately have the number of students who took the test but that it would release more information on Thursday.
Opponents of the exam are asking Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Department of Education to consider a moratorium on the exam to assess the need for it and determine how to raise test scores.
"The F.C.A.T. carries too much weight," said Victor Curry, bishop of New Birth Baptist Church in Miami and a prominent black religious leader in South Florida. "It's too much pressure for a test to determine whether or not you can march with your classmates. The assessment test should be factored in with everything else the child does in school."
Mr. Curry and other critics say that black and Hispanic students fail the test in disproportionate numbers.
"He listens to big money," Mr. Curry said of Governor Bush. "We figured we'd just deal with the industries that put money in his pocket."
"We are asking the people of Florida to not buy sugar from the state of Florida, to not go to theme parks, to not buy orange or grapefruit juice," Mr. Curry said. "Our objective is for them to in turn call on Jeb Bush and ask him to call for a moratorium on this F.C.A.T. We're hoping that in putting pressure on these industries, we'd be putting pressure on him."
The assessment test is part of what Governor Bush calls his A-plus education plan to improve public education in Florida. The state began using the exam in 1999 as a tool to determine whether students were learning reading, math, writing and science skills. Students begin taking the assessment test in third grade, and seniors must pass it to graduate. Students who fail the exam can retake it as often as they want.
"The F.C.A.T. is a standardized test developed by Florida teachers to measure whether children are learning the skills they should at each grade level," Frances Marine, press secretary for the Florida Department of Education, said in an e-mail response to an interview request. "It helps us assess student and teacher achievement in a uniform way and allows us to determine whether improvement is needed."
Representatives of the industries facing the boycott threat said critics' efforts were misdirected and doubted they would gain much support.
"Our response is it's not a tourism issue," said Tom Flanigan, a spokesman for Visit Florida, the state's tourism agency.
Mr. Flanigan said the critics' efforts "might be more productively directed toward the part of state government that can actually do what they want concerning F.C.A.T."
"Anything that would discourage people from coming to the state is a matter of concern," he said.
Governor Bush has said the achievement test is an appropriate measure of the academic progress of students and teachers.
Jill Bratina, a spokeswoman for the governor, said: "Accountability is extremely important. We have put programs in place to help students who did not pass the F.C.A.T. to be able to receive the G.E.D. through the community college system. That puts them on the path to receiving a college degree. The state is committed to helping these students receive the skills they need to be successful in the long term."
Critics say that students who pass required courses should not have to settle for a general educational development degree, or G.E.D., simply for failing a test.
"The fact that the test is the sole determining factor of whether a child has mastered the curriculum is unfair," said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association, the state's teachers union. "Some students just don't test well. To have a test that might be a deterrent on their future is just not fair."
Seniors who fail the test, even those who have passed all their required classes, will not receive a diploma. Instead, the state will provide them with training for a G.E.D., assistance in gaining admission to vocational schools or remedial courses designed to help them pass the test and receive a diploma.
"We are not allowing our children to leave high school equipped with the one thing we all agree will help them be successful in life, a high school diploma," said State Senator Frederica S. Wilson, a Miami Democrat and former elementary school principal who opposes the test.
"It doesn't speak well for the state of Florida to have schools administer a test where thousands of children fail," Ms. Wilson said. "It shows that Florida is failing its children."
-------- energy
Interior Dept. Official's Role as Oil Lobbyist Is Investigated
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/politics/13INQU.html
WASHINGTON, May 12 - Responding to a request from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut and a candidate for president, the inspector general of the Interior Department is investigating possible conflicts of interest involving a top Interior official who used to be a lobbyist for the oil, gas and mining interests he now regulates.
Mr. Lieberman, citing news accounts, said the official, J. Steven Griles, deputy secretary of the interior, had "met with oil and gas industry officials whom he once represented and who have financial stakes in department decisions."
David Montoya, assistant inspector general with the Office of Inspector General, confirmed that his office was investigating the Interior Department's enforcement of Mr. Griles's recusal agreements, as Mr. Lieberman raised in a letter on April 7 to his office.
In that letter, Mr. Lieberman wrote that the news accounts of Mr. Griles's activities "raise numerous questions about Mr. Griles's compliance with agreements he signed to recuse himself from department issues involving his previous clients." As a condition of his confirmation by the Senate, Mr. Griles signed two letters saying that for six years he would refrain from participating in matters involving his former clients.
On behalf of Mr. Griles, Eric Ruff, a spokesman for the Interior Department, said Mr. Lieberman's request for an investigation was politically motivated.
"Given the nature of the partisan season we're about to enter, we're not at all surprised to receive a letter like this," Mr. Ruff said, adding that he expected the inspector general's review to be "thorough and professional."
Mr. Montoya said that he did not know how long the investigation would take but that he hoped to proceed quickly. "It is as important to prove something as to disprove it, so we're moving quickly," he said. "It won't be a matter of months."
Mr. Lieberman's request was based on articles by several news organizations, including The Washington Post and The Associated Press, over the last year that suggested that Mr. Griles had extensive contact with his former clients.
For example, The A.P., using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain Mr. Griles's appointment calendars, reported last month that while Mr. Griles's nomination was pending before the Senate in 2001, Chevron was paying his firm $80,000 to lobby the Interior Department. Two months after his confirmation, Mr. Griles began meeting with other department officials to discuss Chevron's proposed projects. The A.P. said those meetings ended with the Bush administration's paying Chevron $46 million to abandon plans for oil wells off the Florida coast, a decision that enhanced the re-election prospects of President Bush's brother Jeb as governor of Florida.
Mr. Griles told The A.P. that he had not personally done any lobbying for Chevron even though he was registered as lobbying the Interior Department on "oil and gas exploration and production issues" on its behalf.
--------
Russia's Latest Oil and Gas Oasis
May 13, 2003
The New York Times
By JAMES BROOKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/business/worldbusiness/13SAKH.html
CHAYVO BAY, Russia - On this desolate shore of Sakhalin Island, where sea ice blurs into treeless tundra, stands a bright blue drilling rig, 22 stories high and fresh from Louisiana.
The rig, here since early 2003, is now the tallest structure on the island, once a Czarist penal colony, and it is the lance point of a $12 billion oil and gas development project. It is scheduled to begin drilling the first of 10 wells deep below the Sea of Okhotsk on June 11 for a consortium led by Exxon Mobil.
A few minutes away by helicopter, pipeline routes are being cleared to serve Russia's first offshore oil production platform, part of another oil and gas development, a $9 billion project led by Shell. Later this year, construction is expected to start on Russia's first plant for liquefying natural gas for export, which will ship gas from the project to light up the neon of the Ginza district in Tokyo.
A few miles away, BP is prospecting for more oil and gas as the leader of a third consortium, spending three years and $150 million to prepare the way for what it hopes will be a multibillion-dollar project like those of Royal Dutch/Shell and Exxon Mobil.
Aggressive investments by the world's three largest oil producers illustrate how this isolated island north of Japan has become a world hot spot for energy development. Sakhalin, roughly equal in area to Maine but with fewer than half as many residents as Maine's 1.2 million people, is on a track to surpass Moscow this year as the top destination for foreign investment in Russia.
"We expect the volume of foreign investments to double this year and to reach $1.3 billion," Igor P. Farkhutdinov, Sakhalin's governor, said in an interview.
Much of the oil giants' work here is concentrated on modernizing the infrastructure of a poor and backward corner of the country, building bridges and piers, paving roads and airport runways, and repairing the narrow-gauge railway that runs north and south on Sakhalin's spine, to make it easier to support the oil field development to follow.
"If you are in oil and gas, this is the place to be," said Jeffrey Valkar, director of the American Business Center of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, a United States-financed investment assistance office in the island's capital. "This is the biggest oil and gas development happening around the world today."
Russia has already made great strides in revamping its oil industry in recent years, stepping up production by 25 percent and becoming the world's No. 2 oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. But that production revival has taken place in the already extensively developed fields of central and western Russia. For the future, Russia's big growth area may be its Far East, especially in the waters around Sakhalin.
It is a hard place to work. "Take Alaska and the North Sea, combine the worst of both and you have Sakhalin - drifting ice, snow, fog, earthquakes, tsunamis, you name it," said William Dinty Miller, executive vice president of BP Sakhalin. But the rewards are on the same heroic scale as the obstacles, Mr. Miller said, with offshore reserves estimated at 200 trillion cubic feet of gas and 60.5 billion barrels of oil. "The north slope of North Alaska - that is the Sakhalin shelf," he said.
Russia formally took possession of the island in 1855 and has produced oil onshore since the 1920's, but Moscow has tended to see Sakhalin as far, far away. From the perspective of resource-poor economies like those of Japan and South Korea, though, Sakhalin's energy wealth is conveniently close - just three days away by tanker, much closer than the Middle East or even Southeast Asia.
But tapping it requires the latest technology and plenty of capital, and to get it done, Russia has turned to foreign companies in a way that it has not elsewhere, and made special legal provisions to attract them.
On May 15, the Russian Parliament is scheduled to give final approval to a law intended to assure that the Sakhalin operations of the consortiums led by Shell and Exxon Mobil will have stable and consistent tax and royalty treatment. The law is expected to open the way for a cascade of gas purchase agreements by companies in Japan, the world's largest importer and consumer of liquefied natural gas.
"We will supply 15 percent of gas going into Tokyo," said Andy C. Calitz, commercial director of Sakhalin Energy Investment, as the Shell-led consortium is called. "Half of what we produce will flow into Japan."
[The consortium said on Monday that it had reached its first major supply agreement, selling up to 1.1 million tons of liquefied natural gas a year to Tokyo Gas for a period of 24 years, starting in 2007.]
Competing gas projects are expected to come online in the next few years in Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia and East Timor. But Northeast Asia increasingly views the Russian Far East as its filling station of the future.
"It is quite obvious that the countries of the Pacific Rim want to diversify their energy sources," Galina N. Pavlova, the Sakhalin regional government's oil and gas director, said in her office, littered with trinkets from visiting energy company delegations. "The political instability of the Middle East and Indonesia has worked for us in selling gas."
In Japan, officials have taken note of the country's growing reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf - up to 86 percent of imports in 2003 from about 70 percent in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. In April, Japan mounted a lobbying campaign to persuade Russia to build a 2,500-mile pipeline to carry a million barrels of oil a day from eastern Siberia to Nakhodka, a Russian port facing Japan. Tokyo offered to finance the entire $5 billion pipeline, which could meet nearly one-quarter of Japan's oil needs.
The Russian government decided to back a shorter and cheaper rival pipeline proposal instead, to supply northeastern China. The decision effectively gave China first crack at the oil, but it left open the possibility of building a branch later to serve Japan. With oil consumption in China expected to double in this decade, the country will soon overtake Japan as the world's No. 2 consumer after the United States, and could easily swallow all of Russia's East Siberian oil exports, leaving little need to extend the pipeline.
"We lose," Kotaru Tamura, a member of Japan's upper house of Parliament, said in Tokyo about Russia's pipeline decision. Mr. Tamura favors a gas pipeline from Sakhalin to Japan instead, which would be far from any risk of diversion to China.
Japan needs the gas. Rolling power shortages are expected in Tokyo this summer because 16 of Tokyo Electric Power's 17 nuclear power plants have been shut for safety checks and repairs since mid-April.
"If the nuclear plant situation continues, you will see growth in gas," said Larry G. Smith, vice president of Exxon Neftegas, the Sakhalin subsidiary.
Japanese investors are also helping finance development. In the case of Sakhalin Energy, Shell's partners are the Mitsui Corporation with 25 percent and the Mitsubishi Corporation with 20 percent; Shell has the remaining 55 percent.
The consortium's project, known as Sakhalin-2, calls for twin 500-mile oil and gas pipelines from near here to Prigorodnye, a bay near the island's southern tip where ships can call year-round. The gas processing plant to be built there would be able to liquefy up to 9.6 million tons a year, equal to about one-sixth of Japan's total needs.
Some of the gas may go to South Korea or Taiwan as well as Japan; together, the three countries account for 70 percent of the world trade in liquefied natural gas. China buys little now, though analysts expect its needs to rise to 10 million to 15 million tons by the end of the decade.
The Exxon Mobil consortium, which is spending $1.2 billion in Sakhalin this year, hopes to start oil production from Chayvo in 18 months, followed by gas production for export to Japan in 2008. Exxon Mobil has 30 percent of the consortium, which also includes a Japanese group of 13 companies; two Russian partners, RN-Astra and SMNG-Shelf; and ONGC Videsh Ltd. of India.
Unlike Shell, Exxon Mobil hopes to skip the sea transportation and build a 1,450-mile, $900 million gas pipeline all the way to Tokyo.
Such a pipeline could yield benefits beyond reliable energy. Japan and Russia have never signed a peace treaty formally ending World War II because of a lingering dispute over four small islands near Sakhalin. Building a gas pipeline could bring about the kind of interdependency between Russia and Japan that a gas line to Western Europe fostered between the Soviet Union and West Germany in the 1980's.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy
(Buy One, Get One Free)
by Arundhati Roy - http://www.cesr.org/roy/
Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church May 13, 2003
Sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights www.cesr.org
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/15/1615215&mode=thread&tid=25
In these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the speed at which our freedoms are being snatched from us, and when few can afford the luxury of retreating from the streets for a while in order to return with an exquisite, fully formed political thesis replete with footnotes and references, what profound gift can I offer you tonight?
As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our brains by satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the move. We enter histories through the rubble of war. Ruined cities, parched fields, shrinking forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Craters left by daisy cutters, our libraries.
So what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit around my brain like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake at night.
Some of you will think it bad manners for a person like me, officially entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an "Indian citizen," to come here and criticize the U.S. government. Speaking for myself, I'm no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king.
Since lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free).
Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize for the United States. I don't care what the facts are."
I don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the New American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more apposite: The facts can be whatever we want them to be.
When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported Al Qaida. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there isn't any). All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion, and outright lies circulated by the U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the "Free Press," that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests.
Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.
Apart from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaida, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent of saying it would be "suicidal" for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. (Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries - earlier there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, and Panama.) But this time it wasn't just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was Frenzy with a Purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike, a.k.a. The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's Official.
The war against Iraq has been fought and won and no Weapons of Mass Destruction have been found. Not even a little one. Perhaps they'll have to be planted before they're discovered. And then, the more troublesome amongst us will need an explanation for why Saddam Hussein didn't use them when his country was being invaded.
Of course, there'll be no answers. True Believers will make do with those fuzzy TV reports about the discovery of a few barrels of banned chemicals in an old shed. There seems to be no consensus yet about whether they're really chemicals, whether they're actually banned and whether the vessels they're contained in can technically be called barrels. (There were unconfirmed rumours that a teaspoonful of potassium permanganate and an old harmonica were found there too.)
Meanwhile, in passing, an ancient civilization has been casually decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation.
Then there are those who say, so what if Iraq had no chemical and nuclear weapons? So what if there is no Al Qaida connection? So what if Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein as much as he hates the United States? Bush the Lesser has said Saddam Hussein was a "Homicidal Dictator." And so, the reasoning goes, Iraq needed a "regime change."
Never mind that forty years ago, the CIA, under President John F. Kennedy, orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad. In 1963, after a successful coup, the Ba'ath party came to power in Iraq. Using lists provided by the CIA, the new Ba'ath regime systematically eliminated hundreds of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and political figures known to be leftists. An entire intellectual community was slaughtered. (The same technique was used to massacre hundreds of thousands of people in Indonesia and East Timor.) The young Saddam Hussein was said to have had a hand in supervising the bloodbath. In 1979, after factional infighting within the Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein became the President of Iraq. In April 1980, while he was massacring Shias, the U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi declared, "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq." Washington and London overtly and covertly supported Saddam Hussein. They financed him, equipped him, armed him, and provided him with dual-use materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. They supported his worst excesses financially, materially, and morally. They supported the eight-year war against Iran and the 1988 gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which 14 years later were re-heated and served up as reasons to justify invading Iraq. After the first Gulf War, the "Allies" fomented an uprising of Shias in Basra and then looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and slaughtered thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal.
The point is, if Saddam Hussein was evil enough to merit the most elaborate, openly declared assassination attempt in history (the opening move of Operation Shock and Awe), then surely those who supported him ought at least to be tried for war crimes? Why aren't the faces of U.S. and U.K. government officials on the infamous pack of cards of wanted men and women?
Because when it comes to Empire, facts don't matter.
Yes, but all that's in the past we're told. Saddam Hussein is a monster who must be stopped now. And only the U.S. can stop him. It's an effective technique, this use of the urgent morality of the present to obscure the diabolical sins of the past and the malevolent plans for the future. Indonesia, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan - the list goes on and on. Right now there are brutal regimes being groomed for the future - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, the Central Asian Republics.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently declared that U.S. freedoms are "not the grant of any government or document, but....our endowment from God." (Why bother with the United Nations when God himself is on hand?)
So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators, sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add oil, then bomb).
But then perhaps chinks, negroes, dinks, gooks, and wogs don't really qualify as real people. Perhaps our deaths don't qualify as real deaths. Our histories don't qualify as history. They never have.
Speaking of history, in these past months, while the world watched, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was broadcast on live TV. Like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the regime of Saddam Hussein simply disappeared. This was followed by what analysts called a "power vacuum." Cities that had been under siege, without food, water, and electricity for days, cities that had been bombed relentlessly, people who had been starved and systematically impoverished by the UN sanctions regime for more than a decade, were suddenly left with no semblance of urban administration. A seven-thousand-year-old civilization slid into anarchy. On live TV.
Vandals plundered shops, offices, hotels, and hospitals. American and British soldiers stood by and watched. They said they had no orders to act. In effect, they had orders to kill people, but not to protect them. Their priorities were clear. The safety and security of Iraqi people was not their business. The security of whatever little remained of Iraq's infrastructure was not their business. But the security and safety of Iraq's oil fields were. Of course they were. The oil fields were "secured" almost before the invasion began.
On CNN and BBC the scenes of the rampage were played and replayed. TV commentators, army and government spokespersons portrayed it as a "liberated people" venting their rage at a despotic regime. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "It's untidy. Freedom's untidy and free people are free to commit crimes and make mistakes and do bad things." Did anybody know that Donald Rumsfeld was an anarchist? I wonder - did he hold the same view during the riots in Los Angeles following the beating of Rodney King? Would he care to share his thesis about the Untidiness of Freedom with the two million people being held in U.S. prisons right now? (The world's "freest" country has the highest number of prisoners in the world.) Would he discuss its merits with young African American men, 28 percent of whom will spend some part of their adult lives in jail? Could he explain why he serves under a president who oversaw 152 executions when he was governor of Texas?
Before the war on Iraq began, the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent the Pentagon a list of 16 crucial sites to protect. The National Museum was second on that list. Yet the Museum was not just looted, it was desecrated. It was a repository of an ancient cultural heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of the river valley of Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates produced the world's first writing, first calendar, first library, first city, and, yes, the world's first democracy. King Hammurabi of Babylon was the first to codify laws governing the social life of citizens. It was a code in which abandoned women, prostitutes, slaves, and even animals had rights. The Hammurabi code is acknowledged not just as the birth of legality, but the beginning of an understanding of the concept of social justice. The U.S. government could not have chosen a more inappropriate land in which to stage its illegal war and display its grotesque disregard for justice.
At a Pentagon briefing during the days of looting, Secretary Rumsfeld, Prince of Darkness, turned on his media cohorts who had served him so loyally through the war. "The images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture, of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty times and you say, 'My god, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?'"
Laughter rippled through the press room. Would it be alright for the poor of Harlem to loot the Metropolitan Museum? Would it be greeted with similar mirth?
The last building on the ORHA list of 16 sites to be protected was the Ministry of Oil. It was the only one that was given protection. Perhaps the occupying army thought that in Muslim countries lists are read upside down?
Television tells us that Iraq has been "liberated" and that Afghanistan is well on its way to becoming a paradise for women-thanks to Bush and Blair, the 21st century's leading feminists. In reality, Iraq's infrastructure has been destroyed. Its people brought to the brink of starvation. Its food stocks depleted. And its cities devastated by a complete administrative breakdown. Iraq is being ushered in the direction of a civil war between Shias and Sunnis. Meanwhile, Afghanistan has lapsed back into the pre-Taliban era of anarchy, and its territory has been carved up into fiefdoms by hostile warlords.
Undaunted by all this, on the 2nd of May Bush the Lesser launched his 2004 campaign hoping to be finally elected U.S. President. In what probably constitutes the shortest flight in history, a military jet landed on an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which was so close to shore that, according to the Associated Press, administration officials acknowledged "positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline." President Bush, who never served his term in the military, emerged from the cockpit in fancy dress - a U.S. military bomber jacket, combat boots, flying goggles, helmet. Waving to his cheering troops, he officially proclaimed victory over Iraq. He was careful to say that it was "just one victory in a war on terror ... [which] still goes on."
It was important to avoid making a straightforward victory announcement, because under the Geneva Convention a victorious army is bound by the legal obligations of an occupying force, a responsibility that the Bush administration does not want to burden itself with. Also, closer to the 2004 elections, in order to woo wavering voters, another victory in the "War on Terror" might become necessary. Syria is being fattened for the kill.
It was Herman Goering, that old Nazi, who said, "People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.... All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
He's right. It's dead easy. That's what the Bush regime banks on. The distinction between election campaigns and war, between democracy and oligarchy, seems to be closing fast.
The only caveat in these campaign wars is that U.S. lives must not be lost. It shakes voter confidence. But the problem of U.S. soldiers being killed in combat has been licked. More or less.
At a media briefing before Operation Shock and Awe was unleashed, General Tommy Franks announced, "This campaign will be like no other in history." Maybe he's right.
I'm no military historian, but when was the last time a war was fought like this?
After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million children dead, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons had been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the "Coalition of the Willing" (better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army!
Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It was more like Operation Let's Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees.
As soon as the war began, the governments of France, Germany, and Russia, which refused to allow a final resolution legitimizing the war to be passed in the UN Security Council, fell over each other to say how much they wanted the United States to win. President Jacques Chirac offered French airspace to the Anglo-American air force. U.S. military bases in Germany were open for business. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer publicly hoped for the "rapid collapse" of the Saddam Hussein regime. Vladimir Putin publicly hoped for the same. These are governments that colluded in the enforced disarming of Iraq before their dastardly rush to take the side of those who attacked it. Apart from hoping to share the spoils, they hoped Empire would honor their pre-war oil contracts with Iraq. Only the very naïve could expect old Imperialists to behave otherwise.
Leaving aside the cheap thrills and the lofty moral speeches made in the UN during the run up to the war, eventually, at the moment of crisis, the unity of Western governments - despite the opposition from the majority of their people - was overwhelming.
When the Turkish government temporarily bowed to the views of 90 percent of its population, and turned down the U.S. government's offer of billions of dollars of blood money for the use of Turkish soil, it was accused of lacking "democratic principles." According to a Gallup International poll, in no European country was support for a war carried out "unilaterally by America and its allies" higher than 11 percent. But the governments of England, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and other countries of Eastern Europe were praised for disregarding the views of the majority of their people and supporting the illegal invasion. That, presumably, was fully in keeping with democratic principles. What's it called? New Democracy? (Like Britain's New Labour?)
In stark contrast to the venality displayed by their governments, on the 15th of February, weeks before the invasion, in the most spectacular display of public morality the world has ever seen, more than 10 million people marched against the war on 5 continents. Many of you, I'm sure, were among them. They - we - were disregarded with utter disdain. When asked to react to the anti-war demonstrations, President Bush said, "It's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security, in this case the security of the people."
Democracy, the modern world's holy cow, is in crisis. And the crisis is a profound one. Every kind of outrage is being committed in the name of democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a pretty shell, emptied of all content or meaning. It can be whatever you want it to be. Democracy is the Free World's whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of taste, available to be used and abused at will.
Until quite recently, right up to the 1980's, democracy did seem as though it might actually succeed in delivering a degree of real social justice.
But modern democracies have been around for long enough for neo-liberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments of democracy - the "independent" judiciary, the "free" press, the parliament - and molding them to their purpose. The project of corporate globalization has cracked the code. Free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities on sale to the highest bidder.
To fully comprehend the extent to which Democracy is under siege, it might be an idea to look at what goes on in some of our contemporary democracies. The World's Largest: India, (which I have written about at some length and therefore will not speak about tonight). The World's Most Interesting: South Africa. The world's most powerful: the U.S.A. And, most instructive of all, the plans that are being made to usher in the world's newest: Iraq.
In South Africa, after 300 years of brutal domination of the black majority by a white minority through colonialism and apartheid, a non-racial, multi-party democracy came to power in 1994. It was a phenomenal achievement. Within two years of coming to power, the African National Congress had genuflected with no caveats to the Market God. Its massive program of structural adjustment, privatization, and liberalization has only increased the hideous disparities between the rich and the poor. More than a million people have lost their jobs. The corporatization of basic services - electricity, water, and housing-has meant that 10 million South Africans, almost a quarter of the population, have been disconnected from water and electricity. 2 million have been evicted from their homes.
Meanwhile, a small white minority that has been historically privileged by centuries of brutal exploitation is more secure than ever before. They continue to control the land, the farms, the factories, and the abundant natural resources of that country. For them the transition from apartheid to neo-liberalism barely disturbed the grass. It's apartheid with a clean conscience. And it goes by the name of Democracy.
Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism.
In countries of the first world, too, the machinery of democracy has been effectively subverted. Politicians, media barons, judges, powerful corporate lobbies, and government officials are imbricated in an elaborate underhand configuration that completely undermines the lateral arrangement of checks and balances between the constitution, courts of law, parliament, the administration and, perhaps most important of all, the independent media that form the structural basis of a parliamentary democracy. Increasingly, the imbrication is neither subtle nor elaborate.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for instance, has a controlling interest in major Italian newspapers, magazines, television channels, and publishing houses. The Financial Times reported that he controls about 90 percent of Italy's TV viewership. Recently, during a trial on bribery charges, while insisting he was the only person who could save Italy from the left, he said, "How much longer do I have to keep living this life of sacrifices?" That bodes ill for the remaining 10 percent of Italy's TV viewership. What price Free Speech? Free Speech for whom?
In the United States, the arrangement is more complex. Clear Channel Worldwide Incorporated is the largest radio station owner in the country. It runs more than 1,200 channels, which together account for 9 percent of the market. Its CEO contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bush's election campaign. When hundreds of thousands of American citizens took to the streets to protest against the war on Iraq, Clear Channel organized pro-war patriotic "Rallies for America" across the country. It used its radio stations to advertise the events and then sent correspondents to cover them as though they were breaking news. The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretense, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists.
As America's show business gets more and more violent and war-like, and America's wars get more and more like show business, some interesting cross-overs are taking place. The designer who built the 250,000 dollar set in Qatar from which General Tommy Franks stage-managed news coverage of Operation Shock and Awe also built sets for Disney, MGM, and "Good Morning America."
It is a cruel irony that the U.S., which has the most ardent, vociferous defenders of the idea of Free Speech, and (until recently) the most elaborate legislation to protect it, has so circumscribed the space in which that freedom can be expressed. In a strange, convoluted way, the sound and fury that accompanies the legal and conceptual defense of Free Speech in America serves to mask the process of the rapid erosion of the possibilities of actually exercising that freedom.
The news and entertainment industry in the U.S. is for the most part controlled by a few major corporations - AOL-Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation. Each of these corporations owns and controls TV stations, film studios, record companies, and publishing ventures. Effectively, the exits are sealed.
America's media empire is controlled by a tiny coterie of people. Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Michael Powell, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, has proposed even further deregulation of the communication industry, which will lead to even greater consolidation.
So here it is - the World's Greatest Democracy, led by a man who was not legally elected. America's Supreme Court gifted him his job. What price have American people paid for this spurious presidency?
In the three years of George Bush the Lesser's term, the American economy has lost more than two million jobs. Outlandish military expenses, corporate welfare, and tax giveaways to the rich have created a financial crisis for the U.S. educational system. According to a survey by the National Council of State Legislatures, U.S. states cut 49 billion dollars in public services, health, welfare benefits, and education in 2002. They plan to cut another 25.7 billion dollars this year. That makes a total of 75 billion dollars. Bush's initial budget request to Congress to finance the war in Iraq was 80 billion dollars.
So who's paying for the war? America's poor. Its students, its unemployed, its single mothers, its hospital and home-care patients, its teachers, and health workers.
And who's actually fighting the war?
Once again, America's poor. The soldiers who are baking in Iraq's desert sun are not the children of the rich. Only one of all the representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate has a child fighting in Iraq. America's "volunteer" army in fact depends on a poverty draft of poor whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians looking for a way to earn a living and get an education. Federal statistics show that African Americans make up 21 percent of the total armed forces and 29 percent of the U.S. army. They count for only 12 percent of the general population. It's ironic, isn't it - the disproportionately high representation of African Americans in the army and prison? Perhaps we should take a positive view, and look at this as affirmative action at its most effective. Nearly 4 million Americans (2 percent of the population) have lost the right to vote because of felony convictions. Of that number, 1.4 million are African Americans, which means that 13 percent of all voting-age Black people have been disenfranchised.
For African Americans there's also affirmative action in death. A study by the economist Amartya Sen shows that African Americans as a group have a lower life expectancy than people born in China, in the Indian State of Kerala (where I come from), Sri Lanka, or Costa Rica. Bangladeshi men have a better chance of making it to the age of forty than African American men from here in Harlem.
This year, on what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 74th birthday, President Bush denounced the University of Michigan's affirmative action program favouring Blacks and Latinos. He called it "divisive," "unfair," and "unconstitutional." The successful effort to keep Blacks off the voting rolls in the State of Florida in order that George Bush be elected was of course neither unfair nor unconstitutional. I don't suppose affirmative action for White Boys From Yale ever is.
So we know who's paying for the war. We know who's fighting it. But who will benefit from it? Who is homing in on the reconstruction contracts estimated to be worth up to one hundred billon dollars? Could it be America's poor and unemployed and sick? Could it be America's single mothers? Or America's Black and Latino minorities?
Operation Iraqi Freedom, George Bush assures us, is about returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people via Corporate Multinationals. Like Bechtel, like Chevron, like Halliburton. Once again, it is a small, tight circle that connects corporate, military, and government leadership to one another. The promiscuousness, the cross-pollination is outrageous.
Consider this: the Defense Policy Board is a government-appointed group that advises the Pentagon. Its members are appointed by the under secretary of defense and approved by Donald Rumsfeld. Its meetings are classified. No information is available for public scrutiny.
The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity found that 9 out of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board are connected to companies that were awarded defense contracts worth 76 billion dollars between the years 2001 and 2002. One of them, Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel, the giant international engineering outfit. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman, is on the President's Export Council. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is also on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group, is the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. When asked by the New York Times whether he was concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it."
Bechtel has been awarded a 680 million dollar reconstruction contract in Iraq. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaign efforts.
Arcing across this subterfuge, dwarfing it by the sheer magnitude of its malevolence, is America's anti-terrorism legislation. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, has become the blueprint for similar anti-terrorism bills in countries across the world. It was passed in the House of Representatives by a majority vote of 337 to 79. According to the New York Times, "Many lawmakers said it had been impossible to truly debate or even read the legislation."
The Patriot Act ushers in an era of systemic automated surveillance. It gives the government the authority to monitor phones and computers and spy on people in ways that would have seemed completely unacceptable a few years ago. It gives the FBI the power to seize all of the circulation, purchasing, and other records of library users and bookstore customers on the suspicion that they are part of a terrorist network. It blurs the boundaries between speech and criminal activity creating the space to construe acts of civil disobedience as violating the law.
Already hundreds of people are being held indefinitely as "unlawful combatants." (In India, the number is in the thousands. In Israel, 5,000 Palestinians are now being detained.) Non-citizens, of course, have no rights at all. They can simply be "disappeared" like the people of Chile under Washington's old ally, General Pinochet. More than 1,000 people, many of them Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin, have been detained, some without access to legal representatives.
Apart from paying the actual economic costs of war, American people are paying for these wars of "liberation" with their own freedoms. For the ordinary American, the price of "New Democracy" in other countries is the death of real democracy at home.
Meanwhile, Iraq is being groomed for "liberation." (Or did they mean "liberalization" all along?) The Wall Street Journal reports that "the Bush administration has drafted sweeping plans to remake Iraq's economy in the U.S. image."
Iraq's constitution is being redrafted. Its trade laws, tax laws, and intellectual property laws rewritten in order to turn it into an American-style capitalist economy.
The United States Agency for International Development has invited U.S. companies to bid for contracts that range between road building, water systems, text book distribution, and cell phone networks.
Soon after Bush the Second announced that he wanted American farmers to feed the world, Dan Amstutz, a former senior executive of Cargill, the biggest grain exporter in the world, was put in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said, "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission."
The two men who have been short-listed to run operations for managing Iraqi oil have worked with Shell, BP, and Fluor. Fluor is embroiled in a lawsuit by black South African workers who have accused the company of exploiting and brutalizing them during the apartheid era. Shell, of course, is well known for its devastation of the Ogoni tribal lands in Nigeria.
Tom Brokaw (one of America's best-known TV anchors) was inadvertently succinct about the process. "One of the things we don't want to do," he said, "is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we're going to own that country."
Now that the ownership deeds are being settled, Iraq is ready for New Democracy.
So, as Lenin used to ask: What Is To Be Done?
Well...
We might as well accept the fact that there is no conventional military force that can successfully challenge the American war machine. Terrorist strikes only give the U.S. Government an opportunity that it is eagerly awaiting to further tighten its stranglehold. Within days of an attack you can bet that Patriot II would be passed. To argue against U.S. military aggression by saying that it will increase the possibilities of terrorist strikes is futile. It's like threatening Brer Rabbit that you'll throw him into the bramble bush. Any one who has read the documents written by The Project for the New American Century can attest to that. The government's suppression of the Congressional committee report on September 11th, which found that there was intelligence warning of the strikes that was ignored, also attests to the fact that, for all their posturing, the terrorists and the Bush regime might as well be working as a team. They both hold people responsible for the actions of their governments. They both believe in the doctrine of collective guilt and collective punishment. Their actions benefit each other greatly.
The U.S. government has already displayed in no uncertain terms the range and extent of its capability for paranoid aggression. In human psychology, paranoid aggression is usually an indicator of nervous insecurity. It could be argued that it's no different in the case of the psychology of nations. Empire is paranoid because it has a soft underbelly.
Its "homeland" may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Already the Internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets - Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds - government agencies like USAID, the British DFID, British and American banks, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, and American Express could find themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and refined by activists across the world. They could become a practical guide that directs the amorphous but growing fury in the world. Suddenly, the "inevitability" of the project of Corporate Globalization is beginning to seem more than a little evitable.
It would be naïve to imagine that we can directly confront Empire. Our strategy must be to isolate Empire's working parts and disable them one by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant. We could reverse the idea of the economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of Peoples' Sanctions on every corporate house that has been awarded with a contract in postwar Iraq, just as activists in this country and around the world targeted institutions of apartheid. Each one of them should be named, exposed, and boycotted. Forced out of business. That could be our response to the Shock and Awe campaign. It would be a great beginning.
Another urgent challenge is to expose the corporate media for the boardroom bulletin that it really is. We need to create a universe of alternative information. We need to support independent media like Democracy Now!, Alternative Radio, and South End Press.
The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one. Our freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve them is called a revolution. It is a battle that must range across continents and countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries but, if it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse. You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade.
You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to remind yourself of this.
Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland.
If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated.
I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great people.
History is giving you the chance.
Seize the time.
ARUNDHATI ROY
Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church
May 13, 2003
Sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights
www.cesr.org
Center for Economic & Social Rights 162 Montague St., 2nd Floor¨Brooklyn, NY 11201 Tel: 718-237-9145¨Fax: 718-237-9147 E-mail: rights@cesr.org
--
Forwarded from http://www.cesr.org
Dear Friends,
This past Tuesday evening, the Center for Economic and Social Rights had the rare honor to host Arundhati Roy for an original talk at The Riverside Church in New York City.
Before a sold-out audience of 3,000 people, Arundhati delivered a historic address, Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free), in which she offered us some much-needed uncomfortable thoughts about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. This was followed by a public conversation with historian Howard Zinn, one of this country's most important progressive voices.
Due to overwhelming public demand, tickets to the event sold out in a matter of hours, and we realize that many of you may have been unable to attend. We are pleased to let you know that the text of Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free) is now available on our website at http://www.cesr.org/roy/.
Also on the website is the text of my own introductory remarks, in which I highlight some of CESR's recent work and discuss our plans to return to Iraq in the near future to document the human costs of war and occupation. The event is the cover story of the new issue of Outlook India magazine, available at http://www.outlookindia.com.
The entire event was recorded by C-SPAN and will be broadcast nationwide beginning this Sunday, May 18 at 12:00 AM EST and then again at 8:00 AM EST.
C-SPAN will continue these broadcasts over the next several weekends in different time slots. The broadcast schedule is available at http://www.booktv.org/schedule/.
For those wishing to obtain a copy of the audio or video of the event, these will soon be available from CESR. For further information, and to be notified of other CESR events and projects, please visit our website where you can sign up to join our low-volume e-mail announcements list.
Finally, now, more than ever, CESR needs your financial support. From reporting on the right to education in New York City public schools, to documenting the struggle for access to water in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, to launching a major new initiative to advocate for the rights of Iraqis under U.S. military occupation?
CESR continues its work to reframe the struggle for the human rights to health, education, housing, food, work, and social security as a matter of justice rather than charity. We know that you share our concerns and hope that you will consider supporting our commitment to this work. For more information on how to help, please visit http://www.cesr.org/INVOLVED/involved.htm.
In solidarity,
Roger Normand
This message was sent from the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) email list. For more information on CESR, see our website:
http://www.cesr.org]
--------
A Cold War Lesson
News By Jan Barry,
May 13, 2003
VAIW: Veterans Against The Iraq War
http://www.vaiw.org/vet/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=91
Citizen diplomacy played a key role in ending the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. To end the current crisis, let's mobilize America's most potent force: community civic groups.
For most of my life, including air raid drills in school, military service during the Cuban Missile Crisis and with an Army unit in Vietnam, the greatest national security threat to the United States was the doomsday possibility of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. That threat ultimately was dissolved through a combination of military containment and dead serious diplomacy.
How that outcome came about offers an invaluable lesson that can be applied to the current threat to our country's security.
As a veteran of military actions and peace movement actions, I was as astounded as anyone when the Cold War suddenly began to melt. In 1986, I went to the Soviet Union with a group of ordinary Americans on a citizen exchange mission, at a time when the U.S. and USSR were expelling each other's diplomats and once again rattling nuclear weapons. Everywhere we traveled in Russia, Estonia and Soviet Georgia, we ran into other Americans from communities across our nation working to make peace with Soviet citizens at the grassroots level. Back in our hometowns, our neighbors helped us to host an influx of Soviet visitors invited to see how Americans live.
What was called citizen diplomacy-and, in Washington, "track two" diplomacy-was embraced by the Reagan administration as a major element in a new approach to the Soviet government. The result of this change in policy was the end of the Cold War within a very short time. The end of the decades-long threat of nuclear war was followed, amazingly, by the virtually peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union into a number of smaller, less hostile nations.
The Cold War has now been succeeded, tragically, by an escalating clash between militant Muslims and a military-mobilized America. One general at the Pentagon predicted that the U.S. "war on terrorism" could go on for 30 years. This deadly dispute could effectively be resolved in a much shorter time, I believe.
To do that would mean mobilizing American civic groups to do what they do very well. Utilizing people-to-people outreach projects fostered by President Eisenhower, Americans in small towns and city neighborhoods have organized sister-city ties with people around the world, hosted on-going exchanges of students and adults of all sorts, assisted families and communities ravaged by war or natural disasters, and demonstrated the benefits of democracy in action.
Why not mobilize Americans to reach out to Islamic communities around the world and undertake the kinds of effective actions that ended the Cold War threat of nuclear catastrophe?
Jan Barry is a journalist in New Jersey and author of A Citizen's Guide to Grassroots Campaigns, which focuses on the community and international work of civic groups.
--------
Democrats Hide to Halt Action on Texas Redistricting
May 13, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/13/politics/13TEXA.html
AUSTIN, Tex., May 12 - Democratic lawmakers brought the Texas House to a standstill today by going into hiding, and state troopers and the elite Texas Rangers were ordered to track them down.
The boycott by 58 Democrats, which prevented a quorum, capped months of tension with the Republicans who gained control of the House after last year's elections. It occurred as the chamber was scheduled to debate a Congressional redistricting plan the Democrats opposed.
The parties have also clashed over a bill to limit lawsuits and a Republican budget that would avoid new taxes but make deep spending cuts.
Speaker Tom Craddick, a Republican, locked down the chamber so lawmakers who attended this morning could not leave. After a roll call, Mr. Craddick ordered the missing lawmakers arrested and returned to the chamber. "It is a disgrace to run and hide," he said.
In another walkout 24 years ago, a dozen state senators defied then-Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby by refusing to show up at the Capitol. The Killer Bees, as the 12 became known, hid out in an Austin apartment while troopers, Rangers and legislative sergeants-at-arms unsuccessfully combed the state for them.
This time around, most of the missing lawmakers had said they planned to leave the state.
If the Democrats stay away through Thursday, the deadline for preliminary passage of House bills, they could derail major Republican legislative priorities.
The Texas House cannot convene without at least 100 of the 150 members present, and 59 of the 62 Democrats were absent as the session began. A fourth Democrat showed up late in the afternoon. There are 88 Republicans.
Fifty-three Democrats had sent the House leadership letters saying they would be absent. House rules allow for the arrest of members who intentionally thwart a quorum.
House Democrats said they were taking a stand for fair treatment of the minority party.
"We refuse to participate in an inherently unfair process that slams the door of opportunity in the face of Texas voters," said a statement read by Senator Rodney Ellis.
-------
------- 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.