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NUCLEAR
China's missile buildup
Local filmmaker previews upcoming Gulf War probe
U.S. to assess Iraqi nuke site
Iran denies links to al-Qaida, nukes
Weapons search could take years
U.S. Army Team to Probe Looted Iraqi Nuclear Site
Japan ponders an end to pacifism
Powell and Putin Say Iraq Rift Is Mended, and Then Disagree
Bill would tighten cloak of NSA secrecy, critics say
Kosovo Déjà Vu
MILITARY
Rift Between U.S., France Escalates
Defense industry may shun Bush
Bombings Bring U.S. 'Executive Mercenaries' Into the Light
Boeing Wins Contract for Army Modernization
US accuses Iran of stockpiling chemical arms
Congressman Seeks Review of U.S. Effort to Aid Iraq
Iraqis Say Anarchy Could Lead to Anti - US Violence
On Nighttime Tank Charge Into Gaza Powder Keg
Saudis Are Shaken as Jihad Erupts at Their Front Door
Coalition 'tortured Iraqi POWs'
Legal limbo of Guantanamo's prisoners
RUSSIA - Putin calls for amnesty for Chechen rebels
Intelligence failures
Nat'l Guard to Ax Number of Headquarters
Subscriber Buys FTW Full Page Ad in The Washington Post
France Says It Was Victim of Lies Fed by White House
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Bosnia Signs Deal for International Court
Supreme Court Justice Backs Drug Testing
Washington Turns Up Heat on Canada Over Marijuana Plans
Federal Judge Denies Pot Guru a New Trial
Heroin - Smuggling Ring Is Dismantled
Homeland Security Department Used to Track Texas Democrats
U.S. plans missile protection for jets
U.S. Agents Arrive to Join Saudi Bombing Investigation
Ex-Top Cop Gets Iraq Post
Saddam's Amnesty Blamed for Iraq's Crime
Paths of Glory
Five Requests to Saudis Went Unheeded, U.S. Says
ENERGY AND OTHER
GE's move into wind power business seen as significant
Choose wisely for heart-healthy fats
Study Warns of Health Risk From Nonstick Cookware
Toxic Substances Put One in Five EU Workers at Risk
ACTIVISTS
No to More Nukes
Venice Gondoliers Stage Floating Protest
3-day march against U.S. bases begins in Okinawa
Attorneys, cops inform students of legal rights
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- china
China's missile buildup
May 16, 2003
Washington Times
Inside the Ring Notes from the Pentagon.
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030516-27171353.htm
China's military is stepping up the buildup of short-range missiles opposite Taiwan.
Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Stokes stated in a recent briefing that China's military now has 450 missiles opposite Taiwan and that the number is expected to reach 600 by 2005.
Col. Stokes said the Chinese are adding 75 new missiles a year. Several years ago, the Pentagon estimated that Beijing was adding 50 new missiles a year.
Col. Stokes, one of the Pentagon's top specialists on the Chinese military, also said the Chinese missiles, primarily CSS-6 and CSS-7s, are getting more accurate. The missiles use U.S. Global Positioning System satellites for midcourse guidance correction.
Col. Stokes also said the Chinese are expected to deploy a new land attack cruise missile before 2005.
China's "growing arsenal of conventional and land attack cruise missiles pose [the] most significant [Chinese] coercive threat to Taiwan," he said. A copy of his briefing slides to the U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference, held in Texas, was obtained by us.
"Taiwan has limited ability to defense against [Chinese] ballistic missiles today," Col. Stokes said in an appeal to Taiwanese military officials to buy and field missile defenses. "Taiwan's senior political and military leadership must commit to defending against ballistic and land attack cruise missiles."
Taipei is under pressure from the United States to purchase U.S. Patriot PAC-3 antimissile systems, and defense officials say a purchase is expected this year.
-------- depleted uranium
Local filmmaker previews upcoming Gulf War probe
by Justin McCaughan
May 16, 2003
http://www.westernfrontonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/05/16/3ec544a7af93e
Researcher and film producer Mindy Newby said she is on a mission to educate people about depleted uranium poisoning. Her weapon is a video camera.
Bellingham resident Newby spoke to a group of Fairhaven students May 15 in the Fairhaven Auditorium about a film she is making that investigates illnesses and deaths of Gulf War veterans caused by the use of depleted uranium in U.S. weapons.
"I've made a lot of films, but this is the first feature-length film made for theater distribution," Newby said. "I hope by raising consciousness that people will convince Washington, D.C., to stop using depleted-uranium munitions."
Newby began her film career in the early 1980s and decided that she wanted to make a feature-length documentary to expose the dangers of the harmful effects of radioactive and toxic substances such as depleted uranium after she learned about them herself.
The event was sponsored by Fairhaven College and was part of the ongoing World Issues Forum.
Newby started filming her documentary in 1996 and has been working on it ever since.
"It made me very angry and sad to think that the military would take these people who are so patriotic and expose them to these toxins," Newby said.
She said she hopes the documentary will eventually play at film festivals and other theaters across the country.
Newby interviewed approximately 20 victims of depleted-uranium poisoning and their families during the course of filming.
"All of their lives have been wrecked," Newby said. "Only a few have been able to hold jobs."
Newby said the people with depleted-uranium poisoning often have symptoms such as mental illness and cancer. Their children are sometimes born with birth defects such as faulty hearts or malformed limbs.
A March 14 Associated Press article by Matt Kelly asked Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, a top Pentagon health official, about the dangers of depleted uranium.
Kilpatrick said military doctors studied approximately 90 American soldiers who were injured by depleted uranium rounds during friendly-fire accidents in the Gulf War.
Doctors involved in the study found no uranium-related health effects, even among the 20 who still have depleted-uranium shrapnel embedded in their bodies.
Adjunct Fairhaven College faculty member Shirley Osterhaus attended the lecture and said she believes Newby's message is important.
"There's so much that's hidden from us about what our military is doing," Osterhaus said. "People who are being recruited by the military need to be told the truth about the exposure that they will have to depleted uranium. Recruiters are required to tell people about depleted uranium, but they're not doing it."
Captain Robert Mikesh, a Bellingham army-recruiter said the military does use depleted uranium in the tips of some munitions, but said recruiters do not have to say anything about depleted uranium to recruitement prospects.
----
U.S. to assess Iraqi nuke site
By DAFNA LINZER
Associated Press,
May 16, 2003
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/05/16/89066-ap.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A team of Americans is preparing to assess damage at Iraq's largest nuclear facility, the U.S. military announced Friday, weeks after the site was plundered by looters.
The U.S. handling of the dormant Tuwaitha plant, once considered the heart of Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions, has drawn criticism from international experts angered that scavengers and villagers have been able to enter the complex and tamper with radioactive materials stored there.
Military planners overseeing the U.S.-led weapons search in Iraq have said they didn't anticipate the looting and are unable to tell what is missing from Tuwaitha or many other suspected weapons sites.
The United States chose to conduct its weapons hunt alone, without help from U.N. inspectors who, in the run up to the war, did not find evidence that Iraq had the kind of unconventional weapons Washington says it went to war to destroy.
Saddam's regime maintained for years that it no longer had weapons of mass destruction. So far, U.S. weapons hunters also have not found any chemical or biological weapons or conclusive evidence that such programs existed in recent years.
Since the war began March 20, U.S. teams have been scouring Iraq for any sign of such weapons, visiting more than 70 suspected sites.
A survey team from the U.S. military has visited Tuwaitha, 30 miles outside Baghdad, but it didn't enter the site. A treaty signed by the United States gives the International Atomic Energy Agency exclusive legal authority to inspect the facility.
Tuwaitha hasn't been operational for years. The Iraqis used it to store declared nuclear materials that were sealed by the U.N. nuclear agency.
According to a statement issued Friday by U.S. Central Command, a nuclear team operating under the U.S. Army's V Corps "will soon begin a detailed assessment of the former Iraqi nuclear facility at Tuwaitha."
The statement did not specify when the assessment, which will review "the quantity and condition of the nuclear material stored there," would take place. But it said the Army's nuclear disablement team, which includes 11 soldiers trained in nuclear physics, engineering and radiation safety, "will not compromise any IAEA seals that remain in place."
Disturbing the silver-dollar-sized seals -- which carry a unique, fingerprint-like code that reveals tampering -- could be a violation of the atomic energy treaty the IAEA enforces.
David Albright, an U.S. nuclear expert who worked as a weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s, welcomed the assessment but said it should be conducted by the IAEA.
"Assessing the status of nuclear material at Tuwaitha is urgent to determining what nuclear material is missing and to ensure that remaining material is safely stored and adequately protected against theft or diversion," he said.
But he said the IAEA was the best choice for the job because its experts are "long familiar with Tuwaitha and the nuclear material at this site."
Mark Gwozdecky, a spokesman for the Vienna-based IAEA, said the agency was not consulted about the U.S. assessment.
IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei, whose teams had been monitoring 2 tons of enriched uranium and several tons of natural and depleted uranium stored there, has been sharply critical of the U.S. handling of Tuwaitha.
In the early days of the war, he urged the U.S. military to secure the area; earlier this month he asked to let him send a mission to the facility. He hasn't received a response, officials said.
Aside from posing a health risk, the missing materials could be valuable to terrorists or scientists willing to work for rogue states or militant groups targeting the United States and its allies.
By the time U.S. troops began guarding the entrance to the facility, villagers had already removed storage barrels and dumped out contents matching the description of uranium oxide. They filled the barrels with drinking water, and some have since reported health problems.
Iraq has about 1,000 sites where radioactive materials are used in industry or medicine, but Tuwaitha, where Iraqis worked on the final design of a nuclear bomb before the 1991 Gulf War, has drawn the most concern.
The Central Command statement said U.S. forces were continuing efforts "to improve security at the site and are working with former facility employees to communicate the hazard the site poses to unwary trespassers."
Also at: [included to show that this is a VERY HOT issue]
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/5878075.htm
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/breaking_news/5878075.htm
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/136/world/U_S_weapons_teams_plan_damage_:.shtml
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030516/API/305160850&cachetime=5
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/5878075.htm
http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/ap05-16-105149.asp?reg=MIDEAST
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-iraq-nuclear-site,0,4757021.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/breaking_news/5878075.htm
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/5878075.htm
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/news/local/5878075.htm
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030516/API/305160850&cachetime=5
http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030516/API/305160850
http://www.nola.com/iraq/index.ssf?/newsflash/get_story.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?a0622_BC_Iraq-NuclearSite&&news&emergency
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/05/16/international1351EDT0622.DTL
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2683729,00.html
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/ap/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V0794.AP-Iraq-Nuclear-Si.html
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/coxnet/iraq/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V0794.AP-Iraq-Nuclear-Si.html
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/news/content/news/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V0794.AP-Iraq-Nuclear-Si.html
http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/news/ap_story.html/Intl/AP.V0794.AP-Iraq-Nuclear-Si.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-iraqinukes0516,0,5163899.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
http://www.adn.com/24hour/iraq/story/889954p-6200282c.html
-------- iran
Iran denies links to al-Qaida, nukes
By Modher Amin,
May 16, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030516-093701-4973r.htm
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran rejected Friday allegations by the Bush administration that Tehran sheltered leaders of the al-Qaida terror group and that Iran was on track to produce weapons of mass destruction, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi was quoted by IRNA as saying: "The repetition of such baseless claims cannot be depicted as valid and credible."
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday al-Qaida leaders were operating from havens like Iran. Tehran has repeatedly rejected claims that it shelters members of the Islamist terror network. It has claimed to have arrested and expelled several hundred members of the group since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.
But Western analysts believe Iran has both given sanctuary to some al-Qaida members fleeing the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and enabled others to move on to third countries, notably Ansar al-Islam, a Taliban-like group that seized a number of villages in northern Iraq until suppressed by U.S. forces during the Iraq war.
In March, Secretary of State Colin Powell, accusing Iran of supporting terrorism, said it was time for the international community to put pressure on Tehran to end its support of terrorist groups, including those that "are violently against Israel and the Middle East peace process."
He was understood to be referring to the militant Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which Iran claims to give only political support.
Western analysts point out that whatever the degree of support may be for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Iran, together with Syria, is the patron of the militant Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah. Hezbollah is widely credited with causing Israel in 2000 to pull out of a buffer zone it had created in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah did so by inflicting a politically unacceptable number of casualties on Israeli forces.
On Wednesday, White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice accused Iran of supporting terrorism and seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. She said Iran's conduct was detrimental to U.S. interests and included a clandestine nuclear program.
According to Asefi: "The Islamic Republic of Iran, in keeping with its principles, is very serious and firm about the fight against terrorism and its nuclear activities," which he said "are very transparent and intended for peaceful intentions.
"America's selective and double standard policies in addition to its support for terrorism do not put it in a position to judge others," he said.
Asefi was apparently referring to what Iranian officials call "the U.S. unwavering support of Israel's state terrorism" as well as a recent cease-fire agreement between the American troops in Iraq and the Iranian armed opposition group, the Mujahedin-i-Khalq Organization.
The MKO has been outlawed in Iran since the early months after the Islamic Republic was set up in 1979. It is held responsible for a series of assassinations and bomb attacks. In 1986, Saddam Hussein gave it sanctuary in Iraq, from where it mounted cross-border attacks on the Iranian regime.
The group claims it has lost more than 100,000 of its members and supporters in attempts to topple Iran's clerical regime.
U.S. forces in Iraq have allowed the MKO there to keep its arms on condition that it desist from using them against Iran or to destabilize the situation in Iraq. Iran has demanded the extradition of MKO leaders.
The U.S. diplomatic attack on Iran's nuclear program came ahead of a report expected to be delivered in June by International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei. There are reports that Washington was pressing the IAEA, as nuclear watchdog, to say Iran has committed violations of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In February, Iran officially announced it had achieved the technology to process uranium needed for future nuclear power plants. Uranium is being mined in Saghand area, 120 miles from the central city of Yazd.
Moreover, Iran says its target is to reach a 6,000- to 7,000-megawatt capacity of nuclear-generated electricity in 20 years.
Critics of Iran say that with its abundance of oil and natural gas resources, it has no credible reason to turn to nuclear energy. Iran counters by saying it has a rising demand for energy and its hydrocarbon reserves are becoming overstretched.
With the help of Russia, Iran is building its first nuclear reactor near the southern port of Bushehr, which is expected to be commissioned by either late 2003 or early 2004.
The U.S. has repeatedly objected to Russia supplying Iran with sophisticated nuclear technology.
ElBaradei and a team of IAEA inspectors visited Iran in February and urged the Islamic republic to sign up to the so-called "Additional Protocol," which would oblige Iran to open its nuclear facilities to more intrusive U.N. inspections.
Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi responded to ElBaradei recently, when he announced in Geneva that Tehran was ready to sign the protocol but under certain conditions. Kharazzi would not say what the conditions were.
(Derk Kinnane Roelofsma contributed to this article from Washington)
-------- iraq
Weapons search could take years
5/15/2003
By Bill Nichols,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-05-15-bottomstrip_x.htm
WASHINGTON - The search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could take years to complete, a senior Pentagon official told Congress Thursday.
The testimony by Douglas Feith, under secretary of Defense for policy, was the most pessimistic appraisal yet by a top Bush administration official of one of the White House's key justifications for the invasion of Iraq.
"I am confident that we will eventually be able to piece together a fairly complete account of Iraq's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programs - but the process will take months and perhaps years," Feith told the House International Relations Committee.
Feith's comments are the latest and most striking example of a rhetorical shift by the Bush administration on the subject of banned Iraqi weapons, none of which has been found.
"Day by day, the administration is trying to lower the expectation of what they will find, as opposed to before the war, when they were trying to raise expectations day by day," said Jon Wolfsthal, a weapons expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a non-profit organization in Washington.
In the months before the war, administration officials alleged that President Saddam Hussein's regime needed to be removed from power because Iraq had thousands of chemical and biological munitions, many of which could be ready to use within 45 minutes of an order being given.
Some U.S. officials privately criticized chief United Nations arms inspector Hans Blix and his inspection teams for failing to be sufficiently aggressive and failing to find traces of Iraqi weapons. The administration has said U.N. inspectors will have no role in postwar Iraq for the foreseeable future.
But senior officials, including President Bush, now say that though they are confident prewar intelligence estimates will be proven correct, the weapons have been destroyed, moved to another country or are so well concealed by members of Saddam's regime that it will take much longer to find them than originally expected. Feith called the U.S. weapons hunt "a huge undertaking. ... We are in the early stages of this effort. We have found evidence of WMD programs, but we have a long way to go before we can gain a complete understanding of them."
No chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq, according to Feith and Lt. Gen. Norman Schwartz, director of operations for the Pentagon's joint staff, who also testified before the committee Thursday.
Tests continue on two trailers that U.S. officials suspect were being used as mobile weapons labs by the Iraqi regime. Feith and Schwartz said no conclusions have been reached about the trailers.
In his appearance before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Iraq had as many as 18 of the labs, any one of which could produce enough biological weapons in a month to kill "thousands upon thousands."
Feith said U.S. forces have searched about 20% of roughly 600 suspected weapons sites.
Pentagon officials say that 110 of 616 suspected sites had been searched, and that the number of people conducting the searches will more than double in coming weeks, to 1,300.
----
U.S. Army Team to Probe Looted Iraqi Nuclear Site
May 16, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-nuclear-usa.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. military experts will soon visit a looted Iraqi nuclear facility, the U.S. Central Command said Friday, following reports that people living near the site were showing signs of radiation sickness.
The U.S. Central Command, which coordinates the U.S. military in the Gulf, said a specially trained Army team of 11 experts would assess the quantity and the condition of the nuclear material at the facility in Tuwaitha, south of the capital Baghdad. It gave no specific date for the visit.
``Initial indications show that several containers were disturbed when local Iraqis pilfered the facility prior to the arrival of coalition forces into the area,'' it said in a statement on its Web site.
U.S.-led forces were trying to secure the site with the help of former Iraqi employees.
It said the site was used for storage of declared nuclear material sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency before the war that toppled president Saddam Hussein.
``The team will not compromise any IAEA seals that remain in place,'' Central Command said.
The IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, said Monday it wanted to investigate reports that Iraqis living near the facility were showing signs of radiation sickness after villagers looted uranium-tainted barrels from there.
The United States, which launched its war on Iraq in March to rid Baghdad of alleged weapons of mass destruction, has been resisting demands to allow U.N. arms inspectors and experts from the IAEA to return to Iraq to search for banned weapons.
Tuwaitha was bombed first by Israel in 1981 and then by a U.S.-led coalition in 1991.
-------- japan
Japan ponders an end to pacifism
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
May 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030516-80814255.htm
President Bush hosts Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at his Texas ranch next week, and for good reason. Japan is both a potential victim and source of a solution to the nuclear-weapons crisis with North Korea.
Long after this crisis with North Korea has passed, history may record that Japan was able to use the occasion to break out of its postwar pacifism and strengthen its military posture.
Even during the crisis, a nation that well remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki has talked openly of a need to possess nuclear weapons and eventually rely less on the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
The May 22-23 ranch summit, while serving as a show of gratitude for Japan's support in the Iraq war, also will focus on ways to keep a united diplomatic front against North Korea's wedge tactics.
So far, however, the only progress in resolving the crisis has come from Chinese pressure on its albatross of an ally, North Korea. China might have acted in order to prevent a military revival in Japan.
Some Japanese officials have talked of a need to purchase cruise missiles and launch a pre-emptive strike if North Korea threatens to fire missiles at Japan. Such talk goes against strong pacifist feelings among the Japanese, and a constitution that forbids the use of force to settle international disputes. But Pyongyang's 1998 test of a missile that flew over Japan helped break the taboo of talking about military responses.
Japan is working with the United States to study a missile-defense system. It used its own rocket to launch spy satellites this year and sent ships to help support the U.S. war in Afghanistan, its first dispatch of forces to assist a military action since World War II.
[Last month, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces dispatched the 7,250-ton Aegis guided-missile destroyer Kongo, the 4,550-ton destroyer Ariake and the 8,150-ton fuel ship Hamana to relieve three other Japanese naval vessels that had been on station in the Arabian Sea for four months supporting U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.
[The initial Japanese deployment to the northern Indian Ocean was considered a watershed event in Tokyo. It was seen as proving that Japan was willing to contribute more than cash to a world problem and as a chance for the country to reassure Asian neighbors still sensitive to Japan's militaristic might in the first half of the 20th century.]
Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung warns: "If North Korea gets nuclear weapons, the stance of Japan and our country toward nuclear weapons would change."
Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, says the United States should allow Japan to develop nuclear weapons.
Unless diplomacy works soon to stop North Korea's nuclear program, such talk may only increase, both in Japan and abroad. Mr. Bush must decide whether it is in U.S. and Japanese interests to use this implied threat to China as a diplomatic tool.
A rebalancing of power in Asia could start in Crawford, Texas.
-------- russia
DIPLOMACY
Powell and Putin Say Iraq Rift Is Mended, and Then Disagree
May 15, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/15/international/worldspecial/15DIPL.html
MOSCOW, May 14 - After weeks of pointed Russian protests over the war in Iraq, President Vladimir V. Putin and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared today that Russia and the United States had overcome their recent differences. They then met in the Kremlin and failed to resolve some of the most contentious of those, involving the future of Iraq. Advertisement
Mr. Powell, emerging from the meeting tonight with the Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, said the two countries still had "outstanding issues" over Iraq. Those included the return of international weapons inspectors and the terms of a new United Nations resolution giving the United States and its allies broad control to govern postwar Iraq.
But the tone of Mr. Putin's remarks - if not the results of his meeting with Mr. Powell - nevertheless underscored the dramatic shift in Russia's public position in the wake of the American-led overthrow of President Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq.
"We talked and argued a lot on the problem of Iraq," Mr. Putin told Mr. Powell at the start of their meeting, referring to the prewar debate, "but I think that we managed to preserve the basic foundation of our bilateral relations."
In an indication of Mr. Putin's intent to improve those relations, the lower house of Parliament voted to approve the treaty in which the United States and Russia pledged to reduce their arsenals of strategic nuclear weapons by two-thirds - to fewer than 2,200 each - during the next decade.
Mr. Putin had met with parliamentary leaders on the eve of Mr. Powell's trip to urge them to approve the treaty, signed last year during Mr. Bush's visit to Moscow a year ago.
In their meeting, Mr. Putin and Mr. Powell singled out the ratification vote as an indication of the areas where their two countries could cooperate on important global security issues. Mr. Ivanov disputed assertions that the vote had been "a present for Colin Powell for his visit to Moscow." Rather, he said, "I believe it is above all a present for both our peoples, as this document should serve their security."
Mr. Powell, in a striking display of diplomatic jocularity that would have been unthinkable while tensions were flaring only weeks ago, replied, "This present is better than getting a new tie."
The United States Senate approved the treaty in March, but the Russian Parliament had delayed a vote for nearly two months in the midst of an eruption of Russian anger over the war in Iraq. Some of that anger lingered today.
In a measure of the resentment over American policies regarding Iraq - and, perhaps, the political sensitivity of Mr. Putin's relations with the United States as parliamentary elections approach - the deputies debated the treaty in a closed session.
"Blood on the streets of Baghdad hasn't drained yet and we are ratifying this treaty," the leader of the Communist Party, Gennadi A. Zyuganov, told reporters before the vote, The Associated Press reported.
In the end, however, 294 deputies voted in favor of the treaty with only 134 against, ratifying it by a comfortable margin, if not an overwhelming one.
The treaty, only three pages long, is largely symbolic since the two countries pledge only to remove the strategic nuclear weapons from their missiles and not to destroy them. It also allows either side, on three months' notice, to opt out of the reductions, which anyway do not have to come into force until the treaty expires.
Mr. Powell's visit here was his first since December 2001. It is clearly intended to repair the diplomatic damage caused by the war in Iraq, which Mr. Ivanov and other Russian officials vociferously denounced as unjustified and illegal. On the surface, at least, it seemed to accomplish that.
In contrast to its coolness toward France and, to a lesser extent, Germany, which also strongly opposed the war, the Bush administration has been eager to revive the ever-closer relationship between the United States and Russia that had characterized Mr. Bush's first months in office - one that was badly strained by the war in Iraq.
With the war now over, the Russians have indicated a willingness to move on, despite deep differences over the future of Iraq and its oil, as well as relations with Iran and North Korea, both of which the Bush administration accuses of developing nuclear weapons.
The tone today could hardly be further removed from the reception given to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain only two weeks ago. Mr. Putin rebuffed the British leader's entreaties for support at the United Nations and bitingly mocked the failure to find either Mr. Hussein or nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Mr. Powell's visit also laid the groundwork for President Bush's coming meetings with Mr. Putin at the meeting of Group of 8 leaders in Evian, France, later this month and in St. Petersburg on June 1, during celebrations of that city's 300th anniversary. Mr. Putin said he hoped his meetings with Mr. Bush "would give new impulse" to relations.
The two countries, however, remain divided on many issues, including American concerns over North Korea's and Iran's development of nuclear weapons. In the case of Iran, the Bush administration has repeatedly pressed the Russians to end construction of a commercial nuclear-power reactor in Iran, saying Russian expertise was being channeled into an illicit weapons program.
It was also clear today that sharp disputes remain over Iraq. Russia has said it would support a lifting of the sanctions only after United Nations weapons inspectors certify that Iraq no longer possesses nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Mr. Powell made it clear that the United States did not support the return of the inspectors.
Mr. Ivanov said the draft resolution on the postwar governing of Iraq included complicated technical provisions that had raised concerns, presumably including the fate of existing contracts to develop Iraq's oil fields, now held by Russian companies. But he declined to specify the Russian objections.
In his public remarks, at least, Mr. Powell stressed the administration's eagerness to cooperate with Russia on an array of topics, particularly in the fight against terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons.
-------- us politics
Bill would tighten cloak of NSA secrecy, critics say
Spy agency says proposal would be labor-saver on requests routinely denied
By Ariel Sabar
Baltimore Sun
May 16, 2003
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/bal-te.nsa16may16,0,629061.story?coll=bal-news-nation
The National Security Agency, one of the country's most clandestine agencies, is seeking to cloak its activities in what critics say is another layer of secrecy.
Legislation headed for the Senate floor would let the global eavesdropping agency automatically turn down requests by citizens for files on how the NSA collects intelligence.
NSA officials say that they routinely deny requests for so-called "operational files" and that the legislation would simply free the agency's staff from the time-consuming task of searching for and reviewing those files before sending out rejection letters.
But historians, researchers and watchdog groups say the broadly worded measure threatens to close one of the few windows into an enormously powerful agency. The provision, tucked deep within Senate defense and intelligence authorization bills, has drawn little notice on Capitol Hill.
"The danger is the NSA is reverting to the old Soviet Union here, where everything is per se secret and you don't have any means to get around it," said James Bamford, who used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain thousands of NSA documents to write two books on the agency. "Besides the score on the local golf course there, they can say pretty much anything is operational because everything has to do with NSA's operations."
The Fort Meade-based agency says that it is seeking nothing so sweeping. The measure aims only to exempt files describing the "nuts and bolts" of intelligence collection, a spokeswoman said.
On Capitol Hill, most lawmakers have been satisfied with the agency's explanation.
"There's always a question of how much of this you do" in limiting access to government files, said West Virginia Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the senior Democrat on the Select Committee on Intelligence. "It's a fine line, but it was felt to be OK."
Bill Duhnke, a senior aide to the GOP-led committee, said: "There's a better use of [the agency's] time and effort - the war on terrorism and so forth - than searching for records that are going to be denied anyway."
But critics of the proposal say the exempt files could include everything from properly classified data, such as the cell phone frequencies used by al-Qaida operatives, to harmless information on the radio gear American spies used in the 1960s to eavesdrop in the Soviet Union.
Opponents are only now organizing to fight the bill. Among them are the Federation of American Scientists, the American Library Association, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
In 1984, Congress gave a similar exemption to the CIA, freeing it from aspects of the Freedom of Information Act.
But critics note that the CIA measure was enacted after extensive public hearings. There have been no public hearings on the NSA proposal.
The NSA houses millions of documents from decades of espionage. Though most remain classified, those released have added significantly to the historical understanding of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Kennedy assassination.
The NSA proposal "will not affect how much information FOIA requesters get or how much information will be reviewed and released under the historical review program," an agency spokeswoman said this week in a written response to questions from The Sun. "NSA remains committed to declassifying and releasing as much material as possible."
Because the NSA can invoke national security to deny requests, its proposal is largely put forth as a labor-saver. The agency would not say how many requests for operational files it receives annually or how much time it spends handling them.
Annual Defense Department reports to Congress show that the NSA receives far fewer Freedom of Information Act requests than the CIA. Moreover, the NSA is far less likely to grant such requests, the reports show.
Loch K. Johnson, a University of Georgia intelligence expert, is skeptical of the NSA claim that such requests steal resources from the war on terrorism: "I think that's an excuse. It's already hard enough to find out what's going on in this agency. Further retrenchment will only make it harder."
The bill troubles A. Jay Cristol, an author and federal judge who says the NSA has a tendency to err on the side of secrecy.
Cristol sent an FOIA request to the agency two years ago while writing a book on Israel's 1967 attack on the spy ship USS Liberty. He wanted copies of radio messages intercepted by U.S. planes near the attack.
"The fact of the existence or nonexistence of such information is a properly classified matter," an NSA official responded in a letter last year.
Only after Cristol appealed to a federal court did the agency say it would release some material, court documents show.
Sun staff writer Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed to this article.
--------
Kosovo Déjà Vu
by James Bovard,
May 16, 2003
Freedom Daily
Future of Freedom Foundation
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0307d.asp
As the world looks on at the growing mess in postwar Iraq, it is time to recall the U.S. government's bombing campaign against Serbia. There are many similarities to the recent campaign in Iraq. President Bill Clinton's war against Serbia epitomized his moralism, his arrogance, his refusal to respect law, and his fixation on proving his virtue by using deadly force, regardless of how many innocent people died in the process.
Ethnic conflicts exploded throughout the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. The casualty toll was highest in Bosnia. In 1995, the Clinton administration backed a sweep by the U.S.-trained Croatian army to recapture Serb-held territory in Croatia. More than a quarter-million Serb civilians were turned into refugees by this attack; much of Croatia was ethnically cleansed in the process, as journalist Doug Bandow reported at the time. The U.S. government made no protest and refused to recognize the plight of Serb refugees.
By 1998, full-scale civil war was raging in Kosovo, a province of Serbia the size of Connecticut. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) controlled about 40 percent of the territory of the province. Both sides used brutal tactics. For instance, at the State Department daily press briefing for March 4, 1998, department spokesman James Rubin announced that the U.S. government "called on the leaders of the Kosovar-Albanians to condemn terrorist action by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army." The KLA was known to be heavily involved in drug trafficking and had close ties to Osama bin Laden, allegedly the worst terrorist mastermind in the world.
A cease-fire was negotiated between the Serbian government and the KLA in late 1998, but it did not stop the fighting. According to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 80 percent of the cease-fire violations in the months before the NATO bombing campaign began were committed by the KLA.
The United States and its NATO partners pressured the Serbian government to agree to a set of demands that purported to end the ethnic violence in Kosovo. When Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic refused, NATO bombed. In a speech on March 24, 1999, the day the bombing began, Clinton denounced Milosevic for rejecting "the balanced and fair peace accords that our allies and partners, including Russia, proposed last month, a peace agreement that Kosovo's ethnic Albanians courageously accepted."
However, at negotiations in Rambouillet, France, NATO effectively demanded the equivalent of unconditional surrender from the Yugoslavian government. As John Pilger reported in the British New Statesman, Anyone scrutinizing the Rambouillet document is left in little doubt that the excuses given for the subsequent bombing were fabricated. The peace negotiations were stage-managed, and the Serbs were told: Surrender and be occupied, or don't surrender and be destroyed. The impossible terms, published in full in Le Monde Diplomatique, but not in Britain, show that NATO's aim was the occupation not only of Kosovo, but effectively all of Yugoslavia. A moral imperative to kill
Launching the bombing of Serbia was a family affair in the Clinton White House. Hillary Clinton revealed to an interviewer in the summer of 1999, "I urged him to bomb. You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?"
There was no fact that could not be brushed aside or twisted to sanctify the bombing. In a March 27, 1999, radio address, Clinton announced, Through two world wars and a long cold war we saw that it was a short step from a small brush fire to an inferno, especially in the tinderbox of the Balkans. The time to put out a fire is before it spreads and burns down the neighborhood.
The implication that World War II started in the Balkans would surprise Poles who recalled the Nazi invasion of September 1, 1939.
In a special videotape address to the Serbian people on March 25, 1999, Clinton declared that the Serbian attack "was not simply a war against armed Kosovar forces but also a campaign of violence in which tanks and artillery were unleashed against unarmed civilians." But a campaign against unarmed civilians from planes far overhead was different because NATO had a "moral imperative."
The longer the bombing went on, the more brazenly NATO ignored the limits it had initially imposed on its targets. The Los Angeles Times detailed many of the "mistakes" made by U.S. and British war planes: April 5 - An attack on a residential area in the mining town of Aleksinac kills 17 people.
April 12 - NATO missiles striking a railroad bridge near the Serbian town of Grdelica hit a passenger train, killing 17.
April 14 - 75 ethnic Albanian refugees die in an attack on a convoy near Djakovica.
April 27 - A missile strike in the Serbian town of Surdulica kills at least 20 civilians.
May 1 - A missile hits a bus crossing a bridge north of Pristina, killing 47.
May 7 - A cluster bomb attack damages a marketplace and the grounds of a hospital in Nis, killing at least 15.
May 8 - Fighter pilots using outdated maps attack the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing 3 journalists and injuring 20 other people.
May 13 - 87 ethnic Albanian refugees are killed and more than 100 injured in a late-night NATO bombing of a Kosovo village, Korisa.
May 20 - At least 3 people are killed when NATO missiles hit a hospital in Belgrade.
May 21 - NATO bombs a Kosovo jail, killing at least 19 people and injuring scores.
May 31 - NATO missiles slam into a bridge crowded with market-goers and cars in central Serbia, killing at least 9 people and wounding 28.
NATO spokesmen responded to each new fiasco by bragging even louder about how smart the bombs were that they were dropping - like defending some mass murderer by talking about his high SAT scores. If Serbian terrorists had blown up hospitals, bridges, neighborhoods, and old folks' homes in the United States at the same rate that NATO hit such targets in Serbia, Americans would have viewed the war differently.
NATO repeatedly dropped cluster bombs into marketplaces, hospitals, and other civilian areas. Cluster bombs are anti-personnel devices designed to be scattered across enemy troop formations. NATO dropped more than 1,300 cluster bombs on Serbia and Kosovo and each bomb contained 208 separate bomblets that floated to earth by parachute. Bomb experts estimated that more than 10,000 unexploded bomblets were scattered around the landscape when the bombing ended.
NATO worked overtime to explain away its "mistakes." On April 12, a NATO pilot sent a missile into a passenger train on a railway bridge, killing 14 people. Gen. Wesley Clark, supreme commander of NATO, took to the press podium to show the video from the nose of the missile, stressing that the pilot was focused on the bridge "when all of a sudden, at the very last instant, with less than a second to go, he caught a flash of movement that came into a screen and it was the train coming in. Unfortunately, he couldn't dump the bomb at that point. It was locked, it was going into the target and it was an unfortunate incident which he and the crew and all of us very much regret."
The video was endlessly replayed on Western television stations, driving home the point that, with the speed of modern missiles, there was sometimes nothing pilots could do to avoid catastrophe.
However, in January 2000, the Frankfurter Rundschau revealed that the video was shown at the NATO press conference at triple the actual speed, thus making the attack on civilians look far more inevitable than it actually was. NATO officials had become aware of the deceptive nature of the video several months earlier but saw "no reason" to publicly admit the error, according to a U.S. Air Force spokesman.
On April 14, 1999, NATO bombs repeatedly hit a column of ethnic Albanian refugees a few miles from the Albanian border, killing 75 people. NATO spokesmen initially claimed that Serb planes carried out the attack and used the incident to further inflame anti-Serbian opinion. Five days later, NATO spokesmen admitted that the deaths had been caused by NATO forces. NATO then released the audio tape from the debriefing of a pilot identified as involved in the attack.
As Newsday reported, According to officials, the American pilot was selected because he gave a graphic account of Milosevic's forces torching a series of ethnic Albanian villages near the Kosovo town of Dakojvica Wednesday. The pilot told how he selected a three-truck military convoy for a laser-guided bomb strike when he saw it pulling away from a village where fires were just starting.
However, this gambit backfired when high-ranking military officers protested that NATO, at General Clark's urging, had released the tape of a pilot who had nothing to do with bombing the refugee column. The pilot's words were a red herring to distract attention from the carnage inflicted on the refugees.
The main achievement of the war was that, instead of Serbs terrorizing ethnic Albanians, ethnic Albanians terrorized Serbs; instead of refugees fleeing south and west, refugees headed north. This result may not have been entirely unwelcome to NATO. British Defense Minister George Robertson declared in March 1999 that the goal of the operation was "Serbs out, NATO in, refugees back."
Unfortunately, few Americans paid close enough attention to the Kosovo war to recognize the danger of permitting the U.S. government to go crusading with bombs dropped from 15,000 feet.
President George W. Bush used similar rhetoric to justify the war against Iraq. As White House senior advisor Karl Rove told Washington Post editor Bob Woodward last year regarding the war on terrorism: "Everything will be measured by results. The victor is always right. History ascribes to the victor qualities that may or may not actually have been there. And similarly to the defeated."
At some point, "history" is going to catch up with the U.S. government.
James Bovard is author of Lost Rights (1994) and the forthcoming Terrorism and Tyranny: How Bush's Crusade is Sabotaging Peace, Justice, and Freedom (St. Martin's Press, September 2003) and serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms sales
Rift Between U.S., France Escalates
By PAULINE JELINEK
Associated Press Writer
May 16, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FRANCE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WASHINGTON (AP) -- New cracks are showing in the damaged French-American relationship with the disclosure that the Pentagon will snub the upcoming Paris Air Show and France's allegation that the Bush administration is planting false stories about it with U.S. media.
Senior State Department official Richard N. Haass said the two countries will soon have good opportunities at upcoming meetings to resolve their differences.
And French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte said in a letter that the nations must continue to work together.
But Thursday's developments made it clear that it won't be easy to overcome the rancor between the historical allies over France's opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
In a move critics said was aimed at punishing France, the Defense Department is cutting the number of people and aircraft it's sending to the Paris Air Show, a premier international event for the aerospace industry beginning June 15. An industry official criticized the Pentagon move as bad for business.
And Levitte sent a letter to administration officials and lawmakers complaining that "some members of the American media have issued false accusations against France" and "they all rely on information from 'anonymous administration officials'."
Among the stories cited were alleged French weapons sales to Iraq and a report last week that French officials provided passports to Iraqis trying to escape the U.S.-led invasion. Levitte called these "denigration and lies."
White House spokesman Sean McCormack denied the accusation. "There is no such organized effort," he said.
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he couldn't say whether miltary-to-military relations between the two had changed.
"There's so many linkages and connections between the United States and NATO allies that I wouldn't want to say yes or no," he told a Pentagon news conference.
Regarding the Paris Air Show, Rumsfeld said: "It's not as though people won't be going from the United States. It may be at a certain level."
A limit of 150 lower-ranking officials will be allowed to go - no one above the rank of colonel, a defense official said later on condition of anonymity.
Only six planes will be sent, compared with 13 sent last time. All will be for stationary exhibits rather that the usual flying demonstrations, the official said.
Critics said staying away out of spite only hurts the United States.
"I understand there are those in the Pentagon who are annoyed with the French, to put it mildly," said Joel Johnson, a vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association of America. "But a quasi-boycott of the Paris Air Show will undercut the U.S. industry and discourage current and future customers."
Meanwhile Thursday, Levitte sent a letter to members of Congress, administration officials and media, including with it a list of what he said were eight false stories run by American print and broadcast media since last fall.
"In this dangerous world, we must continue to work side by side against the scourge of terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and for the promotion of peace and our common values," the Levitte wrote.
"We should not let bitterness between two staunch allies distract us," he added.
Haass, the State Department's director of policy planning, said debates next week in the U.N. Security Council on postwar Iraq, as well as coming summits of leading industrial nations, would present chances for reconciliation.
The reconstruction of Iraq will top the agenda when Treasury Secretary John Snow meets in Deauville, France, this weekend for meetings of his counterparts from the world's seven richest industrial countries and Russia.
The United States is hoping to use those talks on Friday and Saturday to resolve differences with France, Germany and Russia - three countries who opposed the war with Iraq - over how reconstruction will proceed.
France, Germany and Russia are owed a large portion of huge debts run up during Saddam Hussein's rule. They have rejected U.S. proposals for debt forgiveness but have said they would be open to relief in the form of delayed and stretched out payments.
However, Haass acknowledged that the rift over Iraq had caused serious damage to U.S.-French relations and said the healing process would take time.
On the Net:
Letter from French ambassador:
http://www.ambafrance-us.org/news/statmnts/2003/levitte-us051503
-------- business
Defense industry may shun Bush
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 16, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030516-15032344.htm
The Washington defense establishment is less likely to vigorously support President Bush's election next year than it did in 2000 because of the turmoil caused by the Pentagon's aggressive transformation project.
Interviews with defense-industry executives in Washington and senior retired officers reveal discontent among this inside-the-Beltway, Republican-leaning constituency.
They complain of an ongoing military-transformation effort that has the Pentagon in constant upheaval, making it more difficult to stick to a business plan. They also complain that access to senior aides to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is limited during the yearly budget process, or program objective memorandum (POM).
"The word used in the Pentagon is 'churn,' " said a senior executive with a top-10 defense contractor. "It's Rumsfeld's churn."
Officers complain of the sharp edges they encounter when dealing with Mr. Rumsfeld's senior staff. They point to Mr. Rumsfeld's firing earlier this month of Army Secretary Thomas White, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran, as one example of the difficulty in working with the Rumsfeld crowd.
A retired Army four-star general said he and other retired Army officers to whom he speaks regret backing Mr. Bush in 2000. Some Army officers, in particular, believe the Rumsfeld Pentagon is determined to shrink their service's troop strength and deny them the weapons they need.
"I don't know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, but I will probably support him," said this retired general.
The ranks of defense contractors and retired officers are important to Mr. Bush. They are the type of well-educated suburbanites who write the $2,000 checks for his re-election campaign. Some took leave to work on the Republican get-out-the-vote effort so crucial to the party's 2002 election victories.
"I firmly believe Rumsfeld is probably doing what needs to be done inside the Pentagon," said the senior executive, a Republican sympathizer. "But outside the Pentagon, he's a liability for the administration with our group. He's doing the right thing. But it's the manner in which we're getting it done and maybe that's the only way to do it."
Said a nonpolitical worker at the Pentagon, "Rummy appears invincible, and it looks like he has been emboldened to advance his agenda with even less consideration of the perspectives of those in uniform.
"Many of the green suiters" - Pentagon slang for military rather than civilian personnel - "suspect that the next secretary of the Army and chief of staff will be lapdogs. The most startling observation by many is that they refer to the times of the Clinton Administration as 'the good old days.' "
Indeed, senior Bush administration officials told The Washington Times after Mr. Bush's inauguration they believed the Clintonites had let the generals and admirals run the Pentagon. One of the president's first goals, they said, was to reassert civilian control.
Mr. Rumsfeld himself underscored that philosophy in a prewar press conference at the Pentagon, after a reporter questioned him on his and his staff's direct management style.
"The Constitution calls for civilian control of this department. And I'm a civilian," he said.
The new Bush team also had problems in the way officers reached two-, three- and four-star rank. Before the 2000 election, Richard Armitage, now the deputy secretary of state, appeared at an military forum in Washington and complained about the quality of officers achieving senior ranks.
Those remarks proved prophetic. Mr. Rumsfeld and his staff have taken a hands-on approach to screening and selecting senior officers. The secretive process used to be largely in the hands of Joint Chiefs of Staff and the service secretaries.
"I can tell you morale is low among uniformed personnel," said the senior defense contractor, who visits the Pentagon almost daily.
Loren B. Thompson, who runs the pro-defense Lexington Institute, said unhappiness among Washington defense lobbyists and executives is to be expected when a revolution is going on inside the Pentagon.
"Corporations like predictability," Mr. Thompson said. "They like to be able to plan. They like to know what the future will be so they can forecast it to Wall Street. Rumsfeld is trying to transform the Pentagon. It's a haphazard, open-ended process. So what he is trying to accomplish creates a lot of discomfort in the defense industry.
"It's not Rumsfeld's fault that the industry is uncomfortable. He's really a pretty strong supporter of industry programs. But Rumsfeld has embarked on an enterprise that is often unpredictable. It's hard to know where transformation is going to lead."
----
Bombings Bring U.S. 'Executive Mercenaries' Into the Light
The shrouded history of Vinnell Corp. raises questions about its role in privatization of U.S. foreign policy.
By William D. Hartung
May 16, 2003
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-hartung16may16,0,4765349.story
You had probably never heard of the Vinnell Corp. before the brutal bombing that killed at least nine of its employees in Saudi Arabia this week, but you should have.
This is the second time Vinnell's Saudi operations have been targeted. The first attack, in November 1995, hit the headquarters of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, or SANG, and a nearby office complex that housed Vinnell employees. Though both attacks were decried by U.S. officials as senseless violence, they actually had a chillingly clear, brutal logic.
Vinnell's job in Saudi Arabia is to train the national guard, which Jane's Defence Weekly has described as "a kind of Praetorian Guard for the House of Saud, the royal family's defence of last resort against internal opposition." That is why company employees were targeted in 1995 and again last week. The story of how an obscure American firm ended up becoming an integral part of the Saudi monarchy's handpicked internal security force is a case study in how unaccountable private companies have become a central tool of U.S. foreign policy.
Vinnell was founded in 1931 as a small Los Angeles-area construction firm. According to a 1975 profile of the company in the New York Times, the firm's early growth was tied to the building of the L.A. freeway system, work on the Grand Coulee Dam and the construction of Dodger Stadium.
But by the end of World War II, the company was already dabbling in military work, funneling guns to Chiang Kai-shek to fuel his efforts to displace the communist regime in Beijing. In a memoir, former CIA operative Wilbur Crane Eveland described using his title as Vinnell vice president as a cover while working in Africa and the Middle East in the early 1960s.
Vinnell's military contracts took off after that. The Times' article reported that the company landed work building military airfields in Okinawa, Taiwan, Thailand, South Vietnam and Pakistan. At the height of the Vietnam conflict, Vinnell had 5,000 personnel in country. According to a March 1975 article in the Village Voice that quoted an anonymous Pentagon source, the company did everything from base construction to military operations. The source described Vinnell as "our own little mercenary army in Vietnam."
Also in 1975, the company received a $77-million contract to train the Saudi National Guard. The deal raised eyebrows at the time both among Senate hawks like Henry Jackson and John C. Stennis - who questioned the propriety of a private company undertaking such a sensitive military training mission - and reformers like then-Wisconsin Rep. Les Aspin, who found evidence suggesting Vinnell had used a middleman to bribe Saudi officials for the contract. When Peter Arnett, then an Associated Press reporter, asked one of Vinnell's "men in Riyadh" whether he viewed himself as a mercenary he was told: "[W]e are not pulling the triggers. We train people to pull the triggers. Perhaps that makes us executive mercenaries."
There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that at times Vinnell employees went beyond "training people to pull the triggers." In 1979, when a rebellion rocked the Saudi regime and opposition forces occupied the Grand Mosque at Mecca, Vinnell "trainers" were reportedly on the scene, helping to coordinate the Saudi military response. By 1981, when Ronald Reagan declared that he would not let Saudi Arabia become "another Iran," Vinnell's role in propping up the regime had become even more critical.
The question now is what to do about companies like Vinnell, which is currently a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, and which received a new $831-million, five-year contract in 1998.
There have been recriminations in recent days about whether Saudi officials did enough to protect the Vinnell compound, but these criticisms miss the larger point: Why is it necessary for a U.S. company to play such a central role in training the Saudi regime's Praetorian Guard? And if the hired "protectors" of the Saudi regime can't even protect their own employees in the kingdom, has the time come to rethink the U.S. commercial/military presence in Riyadh?
Just as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has suggested decreasing the U.S. troop presence in Saudi Arabia, it may be time to look at reducing the role of private military companies there as well.
As the second attack on Vinnell in eight years suggests, in the context of Saudi society, the presence of "executive mercenaries" is apparently no less provocative than the presence of uniformed personnel.
While we're looking at the Saudi situation, let's also review the wisdom of using private military companies like Vinnell, DynCorps and Halliburton to do everything from bombing drug labs in Colombia to rebuilding Iraq. If we are going to rely more heavily on these firms to carry out U.S. policies, let's at least set some clear ground rules for their operations that ensure a higher level of transparency and accountability.
Curbing the privatization of our foreign policy would be good for our democracy, good for America's global reputation and good for the employees of companies like Vinnell, who have all too often been put in harm's way.
William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute and a co-author of the forthcoming "Power Trip: U.S. Foreign Policy After September 11th" (Seven Stories Press).
----
Boeing Wins Contract for Army Modernization
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 16, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61455-2003May15?language=printer
Boeing Co. has won a $14.92 billion contract to design and test the tanks and weapons of a futuristic armed force as part of the Pentagon's modernization of the Army, sources said yesterday.
While some have expressed concern about the technical complexity of the project, the Defense Acquisition Board headed by Undersecretary of Defense Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge approved moving into the second phase of the Future Combat System late Wednesday, according to a source close to the program.
"Boeing and the Army must be breathing much easier today," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute. "This is by far the most complicated development program that the Army has ever" tackled.
The Pentagon declined to comment, saying an acquisition decision memorandum would be issued next week. Boeing is developing the system with Science Applications International Corp. A spokesman for the team also declined to comment. The Pentagon panel's decision ends the $154 million concept development phase.
Now Boeing begins the complicated task of turning its ideas, most of which have been confined to charts and issue papers, into reality. At the center of the Future Combat System will be the creation of a networked system in which every piece of equipment on the battlefield, from tank to drone, is connected by about 33 million lines of software code.
Even the tank, the most recognizable component of an Army unit, is getting a makeover. While the M1 Abrams tank weighs 80 tons, the new armored vehicle will weigh only 20 tons. Some traditional tanks will be replaced with "unmanned ground vehicles" that will do the grunt work now assigned to soldiers -- carrying supplies, venturing into caves and searching for minefields. The plan also calls for unmanned tanks capable of firing on the enemy, but there is still some debate about that, an industry source close to the program said. "How do we develop rules of engagement" for an unmanned vehicle? the source wondered.
Boeing must also avoid the pitfalls that have bedeviled other complicated weapons program. The Air Force has faced software problems with one of its key projects, the F/A-22, the next-generation fighter jet. Before the panel meeting, Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche raised concerns about the software integration challenges of the Boeing program, according to an industry source. Already, the Army has delayed deployment of the first brigade of FCS to 2012 from 2010, citing cost concerns.
"The Army has had difficulties in major programs of far less complexity," the House Armed Services Committee noted in a report released this week related to the 2004 defense authorization bill.
The committee also questioned whether the program is too broad and difficult for Congress to monitor, the report said. "The committee has numerous concerns about the current structure of the FCS program," the report said. "The Army needs to provide additional detail and descriptive material to justify its $1.7 billion" fiscal 2004 budget request for the program.
The program could face additional challenges after the Pentagon completes an analysis of the performance of the Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom, said Robbin Laird, a defense industry analyst. Some have argued that the war illustrated the importance of "heavy" tanks, compared with the light-armored vehicles that will make up the Future Combat System, he said. "There will be an FCS, but the configuration could change dramatically," Laird said.
A source close to the program dismissed such concerns, saying new technology would make the light armored vehicles more likely than the current fleet to survive in combat.
The total value of the contract could eventually exceed $100 billion, though Boeing and SAIC will share that with hundreds of subcontractors, including Falls Church-based General Dynamics Corp., which will help design the armored vehicles, industry officials said.
The Future Combat System is part of the overall effort to modernize the Army under a plan called Objective Force. Another facet of the plan is a "Warrior" program that would overhaul a soldier's uniform, adding lightweight body armor and a helmet with a camera capable of sending streaming video of the battlefield back to command centers.
-------- chemical weapons
US accuses Iran of stockpiling chemical arms
Dan De Luce in Tehran and Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Friday May 16, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,957167,00.html
Iran, already accused by the Bush administration of hiding attempts to build a nuclear bomb, faces fresh allegations about its chemical and biological weapons programmes.
Washington is now accusing Tehran of stockpiling nerve agents and pursuing a chemical weapons programme, while an Iranian resistance group yesterday alleged that Iran has an aggressive bio-weapons effort under way.
"We are most troubled by the activities of Iran, which we believe continues to seek chemicals, production technology, training, and expertise from abroad," a US representative recently told the international chemical weapons watchdog agency in the Hague.
Washington also accused Iran of stockpiling blister, blood and choking agents and some nerve agents, US diplomat Stephen Rademaker said in a statement obtained by the Guardian. The statement was read out to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) at a meeting in the Hague last month.
Iran has vehemently denied the allegations, which are sure to have been raised in recent talks between the two governments in Geneva.
An Iranian resistance group, the Mojahedin Khalq Organisation (MKO), made more drastic accusations about Iran's biological programme, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
Theorganisation, which is listed as a terrorist group by Washington but has allies in the US Congress, alleged that Tehran had started producing weaponised anthrax and was actively working with at least five other pathogens, including smallpox, in a drive to build an arsenal of biological weapons.
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told reporters he had not read the allegations. He said that he would have to "go back and refresh" himself on "the latest assessments" before responding to any claims on Iran's chemical and biological weapons capabilities.
Kenneth Katzman, an expert on Iran and terrorism at the Congressional Research Service in Washington, told the Guardian: "The US government intelligence assessments do say there is an assumption that they have an ability to weaponise basic biological agents like anthrax.
"But I see [the MKO report] as going further in saying that Iran is actively making a stockpile of these weapons."
Analysts say hardline elements of the Iranian leadership may see nuclear or other weapons programmes as a possible deterrent against increasing pressure from the US, which now has troops and bases in countries surrounding Iran from every direction.
-------- iraq
SCRUTINY
Congressman Seeks Review of U.S. Effort to Aid Iraq
May 16, 2003
The New York Times
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/worldspecial/16POST.html
WASHINGTON, May 15 - The chairman of the House International Relations Committee said today that he would ask the General Accounting Office to conduct a detailed review of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq, saying that a "lack of transparency" had made Congressional oversight difficult.
The chairman, Representative Henry J. Hyde, the Illinois Republican, complained during a committee hearing today that the Bush administration had not done enough to assist the accounting office, authorizing only one investigator to travel to Iraq for just four weeks.
"We hope for more robust cooperation," Mr. Hyde told senior administration officials during the hearing.
The comments by Mr. Hyde, an otherwise staunch ally of the administration and its Iraq policies, underscored a growing concern among Republicans as well as Democrats with the slow pace and rising cost of the reconstruction effort. Today lawmakers cited reports of widespread violence, looting, power failures and political chaos to raise questions about the administration's policies.
"The sum total impression from these press accounts is that while the war plan was very well planned and executed, the peace plan was either not as well developed or not as well executed," said Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California.
Senior State and Defense Department officials acknowledged that violence and looting continued in some places, mainly in Baghdad. But they described most of the country as relatively secure and asserted that progress had been made toward restoring clean water, electricity, government services and private commerce in many municipalities.
"Only eight weeks have passed since the commencement of military operations," said Alan Larson, the under secretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs, "and there's much good news to report. There is no famine, no shortage of food, no refugee crisis."
Mr. Hyde's office said the congressman would ask the General Accounting Office, Congress's investigative unit, to send a team to Iraq for an extended stay to monitor the delivery of aid, peacekeeping operations, economic reconstruction, political reforms and the search for prohibited weapons.
Representative Tom Lantos of California, the committee's ranking Democrat, said he planned to introduce legislation asking NATO to send an international peacekeeping force to Iraq. "I believe we must have more military boots on the ground if we are to secure and rebuild Iraq," Mr. Lantos said. "These need not be, nor should they be, the boots of the American military."
One concern repeated by several lawmakers today was whether American military commanders were allowing officials of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party to return to power.
Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy, said the administration's intention was "de-Baathification," which he said would involve removing 20,000 to 30,000 high-ranking party members from positions of authority.
But Mr. Feith said that not all of the party's one million to two million members would be stripped of power or punished, since many had joined under pressure. He acknowledged that the military's information on members was not extensive and that mistakes had been made in restoring some senior party officials to power.
Asked about progress in the hunt for Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, Mr. Feith said evidence of those programs had been found, but offered no details. He added that only 20 percent of 600 possible sites had been scoured and that the search could go on for years.
Mr. Feith and Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the director for operations of the Joint Staff, also said investigators had not found conclusive evidence that two trailers containing sophisticated equipment were mobile biological weapons labs, as some military officials had contended.
"The inspection we have done to date has not produced any definitive evidence," General Schwartz said. He said "intrusive" examinations of both trailers were continuing.
In his opening statement, Representative Hyde accused the Defense Department of trying to install a favored opposition leader, Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress. Without naming Mr. Chalabi, Mr. Hyde said the Pentagon had flown him and 700 of his fighters to the city of Nasiriya without coordinating its efforts with the State Department.
"The United States should not put a thumb on the scales of Iraqi politics," Mr. Hyde said, quoting Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage. "That's a pretty heavy thumb."
--------
Iraqis Say Anarchy Could Lead to Anti - US Violence
May 16, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-disorder.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis said on Friday their patience with U.S. pledges to restore law and order in Baghdad and to improve the economy was running thin and fear of lawlessness could lead to anti-American violence.
Iraqis, many hiding in their homes for fear of being robbed, are now calling for the establishment of any interim government that would end what many see as growing anarchy. Some Iraqis who had celebrated the downfall of Saddam Hussein last month in a U.S.-led invasion now say insecurity outweighs any feeling of political freedom and liberation.
``Under Saddam we lived in fear, now we live in terror from crime and we live in poverty,'' said Othman, a taxi driver queuing to fill up his car with petrol.
The absence of law and order was also disrupting the delivery of humanitarian aid.
``We are concerned about the security situation,'' senior U.N. aid official Kenzo Oshima told a news conference in Baghdad. ``Without adequate security, the delivery of humanitarian assistance will be hampered.''
Iraqis complain that the cost of living has more than doubled in weeks. While the Iraqi dinar's exchange rate to the dollar has appreciated, prices of food and petrol have risen.
Suha Abdel-Hamid, a wealthy housewife, disappointed with the turn of events in Iraq, said she is now thinking of leaving the country in search of a safer and better life.
``Saddam was brutal and cruel. He suffocated us but at least he restored electricity and normality after the 1991 war. What are the Americans waiting for?'' she told Reuters.
LIVING IN FEAR
Grievances against the Americans for moving slowly to curb crime and establish a government were widely growing.
Wamidh Nazmi, an Iraqi political analyst questioned the logic behind keeping Baghdad almost in complete darkness and without services more than three weeks after the war ended.
``This is the worst situation in Iraq's modern history. On top of this there is no sense of security whatsoever. People also want wages,'' Nazmi told Reuters.
He stood up and pulled a pistol from his pocket and said: ``I simply went to the pharmacy next door to buy medicine, but I needed this to protect myself.''
U.S. civil administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer told reporters on Thursday the security situation was very serious but U.S. troops were addressing it and conditions were improving.
Retired Christian teacher Sabah Yusef said security at the moment was more important than freedom.
``If this anarchy and unemployment continues for another month, people will rise against the Americans and bring about a more chaotic situation,'' he said.
Many Iraqis echoed his sentiments.
In Baghdad, many women live in fear. Everybody has a story to tell about the abduction of women from the streets by violent criminals Saddam freed from jails in an amnesty in October.
``I don't allow my sisters outside the house. When I leave home, I'm worried the criminals will come for my sisters, and when I'm at home I'm worried they will steal my car, it's impossible to live like this,'' said Sa'ad Kathem, an unemployed young man sitting on the street outside his home.
-------- israel / palestine
On Nighttime Tank Charge Into Gaza Powder Keg
May 16, 2003
The New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/middleeast/16MIDE.html
BEIT HANUN, Gaza Strip, May 15 - Under a brilliant full moon, the Israeli Army commander took a final drag on his cigarette, then wriggled into a cramped armored personnel carrier and ordered his men on a nighttime charge into one of the Gaza Strip's most combustible neighborhoods.
The commander, a lieutenant colonel named Ron who insisted that his last name be withheld, predicted that shooting would erupt, and it did. In several sharp exchanges of fire, five Palestinians were killed, including two militants and three youths aged 12, 14 and 18, according to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. More than a dozen Palestinians were wounded as part of an operation Israel said was aimed at preventing Palestinian rocket fire.
The colonel, a slim, energetic man with a day's worth of stubble, permitted a reporter to join him in his armored vehicle for an inside look at the fighting that persists despite a new Middle East peace plan.
As commander of a special forces battalion who also received training at Fort Benning, Ga., the colonel leads some of the army's more delicate missions in Gaza. Preparing for this one, he discussed the often-conflicting demands of tracking down militants and avoiding civilian casualties.
"It's important just to hit the terrorists, not the civilians," he said before the raid. "Most of the time we succeed. But the terrorists sometimes use the women and children as human shields, and it makes our job very difficult."
The raid, among the most sustained of the conflict into Gaza, came as the Bush administration was pushing a new peace plan here, and as the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, said he was trying to marshal Palestinian security in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians accuse Israel of trying to undermine the plan with assassinations of militant leaders and almost daily raids into Palestinian towns.
But Israeli officials say that with Mr. Abbas still failing to act to stop the violence, they have no choice but to carry out raids like this one. The diplomatic signals may be mixed, but for Ron, the mission had a straightforward message.
"We want the people to understand that if they let the terrorists operate from their neighborhoods, we will be there," he said.
Israel said it had selected Beit Hanun, in the northeast corner of Gaza, as a target because the militant Hamas movement used the lush orange groves there for cover when launching homemade rockets at the Israeli town of Sederot, just outside Gaza's boundary fence.
The Israeli commander directed more than two dozen tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and Humvees as they traversed rutted, winding roads and entered Beit Hanun in single file, with their lights out, navigating by moonlight and night-vision goggles.
The commander, who was relaxed and chatty before the operation began, became intensely focused once it started. With a 360-degree view through bulletproof-glass panels, he was constantly checking the positions of other vehicles. The radio between him and his offices rarely went silent, and he often flipped on a small flashlight to check a map book with aerial photos of Beit Hanun on a detailed grid.
After an hour of driving on deserted roads, the forces staked out positions at 3 a.m. in the dirt streets, many just wide enough to accommodate tanks. Spreading out over several blocks, they encircled two houses they said belonged to Hamas members accused of involvement in the rocket fire, and prepared to blow them up.
Speaking in Arabic, a soldier on a megaphone told residents to get out of the two houses, as well as those nearby. But Beit Hanun, like many Palestinian communities, is awash in weapons, and the call was greeted almost immediately with bursts of gunfire from elsewhere in the neighborhood, prompting shooting exchanges that lasted 15 minutes. Palestinians also hurled grenades and set off two roadside bombs, the Israelis said.
Despite the gunfights, Palestinian families emerged on the streets as ordered, with parents toting small children in their arms. The Israelis shined spotlights on them to make sure that they were unarmed, startling some children.
As the shooting died down, small bands of soldiers slipped into the two homes and the neighboring ones to confirm that they had been evacuated and to plant explosives.
A pair of blasts only minutes apart brought the two-story structures crashing down amid bright orange flashes, a shower of sparks and a gust of wind through the gun portals of the armored vehicle, bringing dust as fine as talcum powder.
A short distance away, the scenario was repeated, with another bout of shooting preceding the demolitions of two more houses the soldiers said belonged to Hamas men.
The Israeli practice of tearing down the homes of militants has been criticized by Palestinians, who call it collective punishment. The Israelis see it as deterrence.
Israeli troops made no arrests, but remained in the area, and periodic clashes continued throughout the day. Young men set up burning tire barricades in the streets and threw stones at the Israeli armor; unseen gunmen occasionally opened fire.
"Until this moment, we feel like we are in jail," Sufian Hamad, a Beit Hanun resident, said tonight. "We are surrounded by tanks."
He told his seven children to resist the temptation to peek out the window, saying the 12-year-old boy who died was shot while looking at the troops.
Palestinians said that the army had blocked ambulances for several hours, and that the boy, Muhammad Zaneen, who was hit in the head, had had to be carried from the combat zone. Israel denied the charge.
The Israeli colonel was remorseful about the youths who were killed. "It's a terrible feeling," he said. "It's the last thing I want to happen. I can only hope that we have made it difficult for the Palestinians to fire rockets from this area."
These up-close confrontations, which are commonplace, are inherently jittery. When troops turn a dark corner, as they did today, they may be greeted by a family of 10 in pajamas, or a barrage of gunfire from militants laying an ambush.
At dawn, the army's hulking D-9 bulldozers systematically flattened the large orange groves that the military says Hamas has been using as a launching pad.
Five bulldozers took down hundreds of mature orange trees like huge lawn mowers trimming an overgrown yard. The bulldozers were so powerful, oranges were flung from their branches as the trees were pressed to the ground.
"With these trees gone, we now have a clear line of sight from our positions, and the terrorists can't hide," the colonel said.
But Marwan al-Shawa, whose family owns the land, was furious at the destruction. "The Israelis are just doing this for revenge," he said.
Over the last year, Israeli forces have maintained an almost permanent presence in and around Palestinian cities in the West Bank. But quick in-and-out raids have been the norm in Gaza, where the army is wary of getting bogged down in the congested towns.
Nevertheless, Maj. Gen. Doron Almog said the troops would remain in Beit Hanun, because of the recent increase in rocket and mortar fire. Israel says it will not tolerate the attacks, which have caused injuries but no deaths so far.
-------- mideast
Saudis Are Shaken as Jihad Erupts at Their Front Door
May 16, 2003
The New York Times
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/middleeast/16RIYA.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 15 - The mourners came pouring in to the wealthy Khozama neighborhood by the hundreds over the last three nights, the younger men kissing the deputy governor of Riyadh on the forehead as a Bedouin mark of respect, his peers bussing him on the cheeks. "May God extend his condolences," they murmur. Advertisement
The deputy governor's son, Muhammad, was killed in the bombing of an upscale residential compound, struck down on Monday with such force, his father Abdullah al-Blehed said, that the first time he touched his son's mangled corpse lying on the sidewalk, he did not recognize his own firstborn.
"Those people who say they want to make jihad against the United States or Israel, what they did is pointless," said Mr. Blehed, a part owner of Al Hamra, the compound where his son died. "Jihad is not like this."
Many Saudis are reeling from the deadly explosions in the eastern suburbs of this sprawling capital, in part because at least seven of the victims were natives, and the 15 attackers probably were too. In recent years, terror attacks around the world, although carried out in the name of Islam, the faith born here, seemed distant. Jihad was something that happened elsewhere.
"This time it was different: it was an attack against your own people," said Khaled M. Batarfi, the managing editor of Al Madina, a daily newspaper."It's huge; it's organized. It's like what happened on Sept. 11 in America but on a smaller scale - these things happen to others."
The gory scenes of charred bodies spread across their newspapers and on television are disturbing in a way other recent terrorist attacks were not.
"If this was not the Saudis' Sept. 11, it was certainly the Saudis' Pearl Harbor," said the United States ambassador, Robert W. Jordan.
Of course there had been attacks here before. At least a half dozen bombs planted under cars in recent years killed three expatriates and maimed several others. Americans were the main victims of both the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers and a 1995 attack on a Saudi National Guard center.
Saudis, however, felt secure in their own country. Now they are not so sure.
"We're moving," said Fahd al-Blehed, 27, Muhammad's brother and his neighbor in the compound. "Those people can do anything."
It was only in recent years that Saudis started living on compounds, long a preserve of Westerners. Muhammad, 29, was a typical local resident. After spending five years in the United States, graduating from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo with a master's degree in public administration, he came home. He followed his father into both the Riyadh government and the family real estate and transportation business.
Life in the compounds is not unlike any California community college. Some of the tennis courts are air-conditioned. Swimming pools abound. Al Hamra boasted some 15 among its 428 villas, town houses and apartments. The five most expensive mansionettes, which rented for $10,000 per month, each had its own.
The Saudis who lived there - and 70 percent of the residents were Saudi - tended to be married to foreign women or have spent some years abroad. The compound was out of bounds to the religious police, sniffing for moral turpitude. Women could move around unveiled. Men could wear their soccer shorts.
When he was out walking with his wife, Fahd said, "Nobody would ask me, "Who is she? What is she doing with you?' "
Some expect the attack on Saudis who had adopted a Western lifestyle was done on purpose. "In their belief, there is no difference, because those people are befriending the infidels," Mr. Batarfi, the editor, said.
On the night of the attack, Muhammad was eating dinner with four friends, his family said. One was the son of another shareholder in the compound, another a lawyer. When they heard gunfire at the nearby gate, Muhammad ran for home, where his 2-month-old twin daughters had been left with a nanny. He never made it. His body was found some 10 yards from where a Chevrolet pickup truck packed with explosives was detonated.
The explosion also killed all his dinner companions, Muhammad's relatives said. It leveled some 25 houses. A total of 100 will need to be rebuilt. It tore the roof off the gym of the British School in the compound and wrenched doors off their hinges in another compound a few hundred yards away.
As their father describes the attack, Fahd and his younger brother Faisal, 25, tear up. With the sadness comes anger about security lapses. Fahd said the owners asked for more security for the front gate but the government only provided one armed man in a jeep - the government holding a monopoly on carrying guns.
"That won't do much against a bunch of guys trained in Afghanistan," Fahd said, making a sudden fist. "The government has to be harder on them, especially the religious people who are even brainwashing young children in mosques."
The need for a crackdown has been a common theme here this week. The country's newspapers, especially Al Watan, have been waging a campaign pointing out that it is not that great a leap from criticizing women as infidels for opening sports clubs to declaring open season on anyone fitting that description.
The newspaper used to only get hate mail for such sentiments, said its editor, Jamal Khashoggi, but it has now started receiving supportive missives, demanding a crackdown on the radicals.
Before this week, many Saudis, and especially those in government, tended to paint fanaticism as something foreign. This week, the usual statements about events "strange to our society" were absent.
The creeping recognition that it is something homegrown has made Saudis more jittery, not least because the Web sites beloved of the radical fringe are predicting more to come.
When a helpful Saudi took an undeniably Western reporter on a drive through Riyadh, the man's elderly father called to make sure the visitor had not provoked an assault.
"The thinking is, `If I go to school tomorrow, will anything happen to me? If I drive by this compound will it explode? If I go someplace with a Western friend will I be attacked?' " Mr. Batarfi said.
-------- prisoners of war
Coalition 'tortured Iraqi POWs'
Troops are accused of beatings and using electric shocks
BBC
Friday, 16 May, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3034031.stm
Amnesty International is investigating claims that Iraqi prisoners of war were tortured by US and British troops.
A "substantial proportion" of 20 former Iraqi POWs interviewed by the human rights group said they had been maltreated by coalition forces in central and southern Iraq.
Some were civilians who were held on suspicion of being Iraqi militia, Amnesty said. One Saudi Arabian national claimed he was subjected to electric shocks.
The UK's Ministry of Defence said it had not seen any of the details of the allegations.
"All the prisoners held by the British were held under the terms of the Geneva Convention, and they were frequently visited by members of the International Red Cross," a spokesman said. In one case we are talking about electric shocks being used against a man and in others people are being beaten for the whole night Amnesty International
The alleged mistreatment included "beatings with fists, with feet, also with weapons," Amnesty researcher Said Boumedouha said.
"In one case we are talking about electric shocks being used against a man and in others people are being beaten for the whole night and are still being kicked and their teeth broken. I think you would call that torture," he said.
The man claiming to have received electric shocks was believed to have been a Saudi man who had entered the country from Syria during the war and was suspected of being a volunteer for Saddam Hussein.
The findings follow Amnesty's first fact-finding mission in Iraq since 1993.
The human rights group said about 6,900 people were detained in Iraq while they were being assessed for POW status. Of these, about 1-2,000 remain in custody.
An Amnesty spokeswoman told BBC News Online the investigations into the treatment of PoWs were "at a very early stage".
Amnesty workers would be in Iraq for a number of months investigating a number of areas - including human rights abuses under Saddam Hussein - she added.
----
Legal limbo of Guantanamo's prisoners
BBC
Monica Whitlock in Kabul
Friday, 16 May, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3034697.stm
With the arrival of 30 new detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the United States is now holding more prisoners there than ever before. Prisoners in cages More prisoners have recently arrived from Afghanistan
Most of the new intake are Afghans, captured during the US campaign against the Taleban in 2001 and 2002, and held in Afghanistan ever since without charge.
Said Abaseen is a taxi driver from the Afghan capital, Kabul.
He set out on an ordinary day's work last July - and ended up in Cuba, 15,000 kilometres (9,300 miles) from home.
He was held at Guantanamo Bay for nine months, before being classified as of low intelligence value and sent back to Kabul in March - part of the first substantial group to be set free.
He was never charged and still does not know why he was arrested.
Nobody knows exactly who is being held, but the US Government says there are roughly 660 people currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, from over 40 countries.
Two weeks ago, US defence department officials announced that they had three children between the ages of 13 and 15 detained at Guantanamo.
'Unlawful combatants'
A hunger strike, last year, and a string of suicide attempts drew attention to conditions in Guantanamo.
Since those early months, much has changed at the camp.
Prisoners have been moved out of the steel-mesh cages of the first makeshift camp - called Camp X-ray - into solid buildings.
Wendy Patten of Human Rights Watch says that the prisoners are now living in "Camp Delta", a facility which has plumbing and ventilation. "It's apparently being used for those who are beginning to prepare to complete their detention and move them on to release. As I understand it, technically unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld
" We understand they're allowed out a couple of times a week for exercise."
The Red Cross ensures that prisoners are allowed to write to their families, and the children in the camp are given some lessons.
But Human Rights Watch is continuing to insist the US Government respects the human rights of their prisoners.
Yet US officials insist that there is nothing inhumane or degrading in the prisoners' treatment.
Donald Rumsfeld, uses the term "unlawful combatants" to describe the detainees at Guantanamo:
"As I understand it, technically unlawful combatants do not have any rights under the Geneva Conventions."
This means that the prisoners do not need to be released at the end of hostilities - as prisoners of war are.
Under this classification, the prisoners are not charged, but nor are they allowed access to any legal process.
Military tribunals
British lawyers, such as Louise Christian, are doing what they can to help some of the prisoners.
But as they cannot meet with their clients, they have to represent their families, with whom the inmates communicate by letter.
Like other lawyers, she has found her work thwarted by a legal maze within a maze.
Guantanamo Bay is on a perpetual lease, granted in 1901, from the Cuban Government.
And because these are non-US citizens on non-sovereign US territory, that means that the US courts do not have jurisdiction.
The conundrum of Guantanamo may, however, be opening up a little.
Last month, the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, wrote a strongly worded letter to Donald Rumsfeld, deploring the imprisonment of children and old people, and saying that eight governments friendly to the US had complained about the holding of their citizens.
Guantanamo, he said, could undermine US efforts to sustain international approval for its foreign policy.
Nothing definite has been announced, but the word in Washington is that some prisoners will go before military tribunals in the months to come.
And these tribunals will have the power to impose the death penalty.
It will, it is said, be up to President Bush to decide on any executions.
-------- russia / chechnya
RUSSIA - Putin calls for amnesty for Chechen rebels
World Scene
May 16, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030516-48433570.htm
VLADIKAVKAZ - Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced legislation yesterday to grant sweeping amnesty to Chechen rebels, despite two deadly suicide bombings this week in the restive southern republic.
Mr. Putin said the measure was an act of humanism "aimed first of all at creating additional conditions for the establishment of peaceful life in Chechnya." He urged lawmakers to consider it as a priority matter, the Kremlin said.
Mr. Putin said the amnesty would apply to those rebels who had laid down their weapons over the decade ending on Aug. 1, 2003. It does not apply to foreigners. Many foreign fighters, some of them Arabs trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, are believed to have joined the Chechen rebellion.
-------- spies
Intelligence failures
May 16, 2003
Washington Times
Inside the Ring Notes from the Pentagon.
Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030516-27171353.htm
Richard Haver, until recently the special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for intelligence, said there have been "dozens" of U.S. intelligence failures.
Such comments from a U.S. official, made during a speech to the Institute for World Politics on Tuesday, are rare. U.S. government intelligence officials are loath to talk about intelligence failures and lapses are rarely, if ever, acknowledged, or played down if they are.
Mr. Haver spoke to a group of intelligence specialists about the problem of avoiding intelligence surprise, like what happened at Pearl Harbor and on September 11. "Our job related to surprise [is] to either eliminate it, or to mitigate it; to reduce the probability of surprise and, in particular, when surprise would have strategic effect.
"Intelligence failures are rarely caused by immediate problems," Mr. Haver said. "If there are difficulties in intelligence, they probably stem back five to 10 years."
Mr. Haver said the Bush administration is "paying the price for decisions made in the middle 1990s," when intelligence funding and resources were cut sharply during the Clinton administration.
"I've been asked to go back and review dozens, literally dozens, of major intelligence failures, and when you get down to the nubbins, you always find the same problem: A lack of analytic rigor that didn't understand what were the missing pieces.
"Well, they understood what all the pieces that they actually had were, but they didn't array the puzzle correctly; they didn't understand what was missing. That's the problem. Whether it's in the readiness of the Iraqis, or the degree to which the Saddam Fedayeen were going to put up resistance, we could go on and on and I think we'll find the same root cause."
Mr. Haver, a veteran intelligence official, lost his position as a result of the administrative shake-up that created the new undersecretariat of defense for intelligence. "I am presently ambassador without portfolio" within the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. Other defense sources said he likely will leave the Pentagon in the near future.
-------- us
Nat'l Guard to Ax Number of Headquarters
May 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-National-Guard.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air National Guard and Army National Guard will reduce the number of their headquarters in 54 states and territories by two-thirds, the chief of the National Guard system said Friday.
Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum told a Pentagon news conference that the consolidation plan will be presented Sunday at the spring conference of the Adjutants General Association of the United States in Columbus, Ohio.
The plan will apply to Air National Guard and Army National Guard headquarters in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.
``The National Guard cannot remain the way it is,'' Blum said.
Like the active-duty force, the reserve force must transform from Cold War-era practices to the reality of today's defense needs, he said. That includes organizing itself in ways that bring the Air and Army elements closer together.
Blum said that in each of the 54 states and territories the National Guard has three separate headquarters -- one for the Air Guard, one for the Army Guard and one for the ``area command'' run by the state's adjutant general. By Oct. 1, the three will be consolidated into one, Blum said.
He said he had no estimate of how much money the consolidation would save. The savings will be used to make the Guard units more combat ready, he said.
Blum, who became chief of the National Guard Bureau in April, said he had not briefed the adjutants general on his plan but was confident they would accept it.
``I'm leaving them enough room'' to determine how their states or territories will execute the consolidation, he said, ``which takes lots and lots of the angst out of it.''
Maj. Gen. Robert Lee, the adjutant general of Hawaii, said in an e-mail exchange Friday that he likes Blum's plan.
``I was planning to do the same at the Hawaii National Guard state headquarters prior to Lt. Gen. Blum coming on board,'' Lee said. ``Looks like we are thinking alike.''
Brig. Gen. David Greer, Tennessee's deputy adjutant general, said in a telephone interview that he had not seen details of Blum's plan and would withhold comment until he had studied it. He said he favors streamlining communication between the Army Guard and Air Guard.
Blum said other elements of his plan for transforming the National Guard include expanding its role in national missile defense and creating 10 National Guard groups capable of responding to chemical and biological incidents with decontamination and other capabilities.
There are about 350,000 members of the Army National Guard and about 105,000 people in the Air National Guard.
The Army Reserve and Air Force Reserve are not affected by the plan. They do not have the same state-based structure as the National Guard.
On the Net:
Adjutants General Association of the United States: http://www.agaus.org
National Guard Bureau: http://www.ngb.army.mil
-------- propaganda wars
Subscriber Buys FTW Full Page Ad in The Washington Post
Leaked Copy May Have Forced Resignation of Army Secretary
From The Wilderness Publications,
www.copvcia.com.
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051603_wash_post_ad.html
May 16, 2003, 0500 PDT (FTW) - From The Wilderness today ran a full-page ad in the front section of The Washington Post intended to educate the American people, support heroic leaders and promote a number of independent media outlets which have made important contributions since 9/11. The ad was the direct result of a donation from a subscriber who had recently viewed FTW Publisher Mike Ruppert's video "The Truth and Lies of 9-11". The ad that ran today was actually a second version, the text of which had to be changed after the first version apparently caused some nervousness in Washington.
It's an interesting story.
The text of the first ad, which reached the Post on April 23rd, contained two sections of well-supported text that were sharply critical of Army Secretary Thomas White. White was suddenly fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld three days after the ad reached the Post. FTW has not been able to confirm that the ad was leaked but publisher Michael Ruppert strongly suspects it.
"It started when we got a call from a retired business executive who was so incensed by what he had seen in the 9/11 tape that he decided he wanted to do something with his own good fortune to make a difference. He specifically said that he wanted to buy us a full-page in the Post and that we could write anything we wanted," said Ruppert. "His only condition was that he remain anonymous. FTW never handled any of the fee - in excess of $20,000 -- to purchase the space and not once did our subscriber try to influence its content. I wrote the ad and three wonderful human beings contributed to it."
The three contributors who wrote special statements for the ad were former Assistant Secretary of Housing and past managing Director of Dillon Read, Catherine Austin Fitts, University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle, and former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia.
Ruppert continued, "We knew that if FTW were to try to book the ad alone we would likely be turned down. Because the ad and its cartoon, conceived by FTW's General Manager Mike Leon and drawn for us by Canadian artist Blaine Machan, was critical of the major media and the US economy's corruption and reliance on drug money, we needed an edge," Ruppert continued. "So we turned to the L.A.-based More Than News agency and its owner Ken Levine for assistance. We had worked with Ken - a former L.A. area TV news director -- before and we trusted him."
Levine, working in concert with the FTW subscriber purchased the ad space through a major New York ad brokerage firm, with which Levine has had good relations. That firm actually books most of the Post's ad space and that provided the necessary clout to get the ad to the next stage.
The text of the ad was submitted to New York on April 15, well before White's firing. According to Levine, there was quite a reaction. "They had never seen anything like this. They liked it but they thought the Post would never approve it even though the Post has a decent history of running political ads."
In two places the ad featured statements highly critical of now-former Secretary White. In her statement Fitts criticized White for his inability to balance the Army's books at a time when the Department of Defense has admittedly "misplaced" more that $3 trillion of taxpayer money. Ruppert observed, "White's claim that residual damage from the attacks of September 11th was the cause for unbalanced books in the Army was ludicrous. The attack of 9/11 hit the Navy Wing of the Pentagon. How could that affect the Army?"
In the text of the ad itself White was also criticized for his role as an Enron executive which provided him with millions of dollars in income while stockholders were being defrauded. White was subsequently investigated for insider trading of Enron stock.
Boyle, a professor of international law has been the leader in a growing movement to impeach President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors related to his prosecution of the Iraqi invasion. Recently, articles of impeachment drafted by Boyle were reviewed by several members of congress. McKinney, widely criticized in the press for asking important questions about Bush administration foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and the possibility of excessive profiteering by corporations allied with the Bush administration, has since been vindicated by congressional intelligence hearings and recent major media stories concerning the Carlyle Group. She lost her 2002 primary election to a newcomer in what is now being labeled in a Georgia lawsuit as a demonstrably-illegal Republican crossover vote.
"I asked these three heroes to participate in the ad because they have all shown great courage in acting as responsible public servants and citizens and they have all suffered punishment as a result. Yet they are still standing, still in the ring and they deserve recognition for their perseverance," said Ruppert.
But there was to be more drama before the ad was printed.
The Washington Post advertising department approved the text of the first ad just a day after White's firing. According to Ruppert and Levine it was not possible after that to change the text of the ad without reopening the entire approval process and risking a rejection after the ad had apparently been leaked to government circles in Washington.
"And all we had was a window of about two weeks when the ad was supposed to run under the contract. We had no control over the exact day. So we decided to let the first ad run without trying to update it in the wake of White's firing," Ruppert observed. "It was just too risky otherwise. The only thing that could have blocked the ad -- which was purchased at a discount rate through the ad brokerage -- would have been if there was a sudden flurry of late advertisers who suddenly decided to purchase full-price ads."
"We were told that this was highly unlikely but, as it turns out, that's exactly what happened," said Ruppert with a chuckle. "One of our subscribers in the Washington area told us that he had never seen so many full-page ads in his life."
When the two week contract period was not met by the Post, FTW then had the opportunity to change the text to what ran today without risking a rejection. On Levine's advice the ad was rebooked for another week and the second version was published today.
From the start Ruppert was skeptical that the ad would be allowed to run under any circumstances. He views it's publication today as something of a much needed miracle.
"When people see the kind of reaction this ad produces and the power that they have to stir the public and get real responses out of government, I think we're going to see a lot more efforts like this. It's one thing when one individual in a position to do it pays for an ad like this. But twenty thousand dollars isn't an unreachable amount for a hundred or a thousand people. Pretty soon you might see people forming coalitions to purchase commercials on television or blocks of ads in major newspapers. That's how you reach the people and keep good and accurate information from being marginalized.
"It was also extremely important that we recognized and gave energy to a number of independent media sources that have made great contributions since 9/11. While much of America may not know how much these organizations have influenced events, they should. Independent media is filling a huge vacuum left by the needlessly obedient mainstream press.
"It's called taking full advantage of those aspects of free speech that the government hasn't taken away yet. It's learning how the money works and using it to your advantage. As Fitts always says, 'Vote with your money.'"
All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.
--------
France Says It Was Victim of Lies Fed by White House
May 16, 2003
The New York Times
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/worldspecial/16DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, May 15 - French officials today took the highly unusual step of complaining formally that their country was the victim of a campaign of "repeated disinformation" they say is being fed by Bush administration officials, accusing France of having provided military and diplomatic aid to Saddam Hussein's government.
Though it has made no secret of its displeasure at the French for opposing the war against Iraq, the White House denied the assertion.
"There is, I don't think, any basis in fact to it." said Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman. "France is an ally; they're still friends."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, whose department and supporters are most often mentioned as a possible source of the news reports cited by the French, told reporters today that he knew of no such campaign.
"Certainly, there's no such campaign out of this building," he said.
Nonetheless, the forceful and public French complaint - in the form of a letter sent by Ambassador Jean-David Levitte to the White House, State Department and Congress - underlined the depth of ill feelings that still divide the longtime allies weeks after the end of the Iraq war.
In addition to the letter, which was first reported by The Washington Post today, the French Foreign Ministry said it was instructing its diplomats in the United States to monitor the American news media for signs of any orchestrated anti-French campaign. "We have decided to count the untrue accusations which have appeared in the U.S. press and which have deeply shocked the French," Marie Masdupuy, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told reporters in Paris.
Among other things, the challenged reports assert that France and Germany supplied Iraq with precision switches that could be used in nuclear weapons; that French companies sold Iraq spare parts for warplanes and military helicopters; that France possessed prohibited strains of human smallpox; and that France, most recently, helped Iraqi leaders escape to Europe by providing them with travel papers.
The charges have rankled French diplomats for months. They say such reports are hurtful to American-French relations, noting that several of them have been seized on by members of Congress to call for investigations or punishment of the French. The diplomats also say such accounts may spawn anti-French actions, some potentially violent. While suggesting no direct link, they said, for example, that a man was attacked and severely beaten in a Los Angeles restaurant because he was speaking French.
The disputed reports are "all untrue, and all serious," and "not acceptable," said Nathalie Loiseau, a spokeswoman at the French Embassy in Washington.
Ms. Loiseau did not specifically point to anyone within the administration as the source of the articles, but she said that France could only assume that journalists were being truthful when they cited unnamed officials in the administration.
"We don't know who talked to journalists," she said, "but we would like it to stop, because it's inaccurate and it discredits our country."
The administration, while denying the French allegation, has been frank in expressing its deep unhappiness with the French opposition during the Iraq debates at the United Nations, and later when it sought to block NATO assistance to Turkey during the Iraq war.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, asked on "The Charlie Rose Show" on PBS last month whether France would be punished, replied simply, "Yes." A midlevel meeting in the White House was called to discuss ways to do so.
Still, some experts have been surprised by the anti-French virulence that has come, if not directly from the administration, then from some of its supporters or sympathizers in the news media.
Jeremy Shapiro, associate director of the Center on the United States and France at the Brookings Institution, said the French sincerely believed that "there is a campaign, if not by the U.S. government, then at least within the U.S. government, to discredit them."
While "they don't believe this is actually presidential policy," he continued, "they do believe the president or the White House has not been active enough in counteracting it."
Mr. Shapiro said, however, that the French complaint might not serve Paris well. It might be seen, he said, as "a kind of petulance."
The following news reports are among those France has challenged:
¶In September The New York Times reported that Iraq in 1998 had ordered or purchased from France or Germany precision switches that could be used to detonate nuclear bombs. A French response noted that the switches had been presented as spare parts for medical equipment (as the Times noted), and that French authorities had immediately barred the sale.
¶A March report in The Washington Times reporting that during the previous several months two French companies had sold Iraq spare parts for fighter jets and Gazelle attack helicopters. The account cited American intelligence officials. The companies the French Foreign Ministry denied the charge.
¶A Washington Post article in November that said a Bush administration intelligence review had concluded that France was one of four countries, along with Iraq, North Korea and Russia, with covert stocks of the smallpox pathogen. The French government denied that it had human smallpox strains in any laboratories.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- courts
Bosnia Signs Deal for International Court
May 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bosnia-US-Court.html
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- Bosnia signed an agreement with the United States on Friday that exempts Americans from prosecution by a new international criminal court.
In a ceremony attended by U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Bosnia promised not to extradite U.S. troops and other Americans charged with genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. Advertisement
More than two dozen other nations have signed similar agreements, accepting Washington's arguments that U.S. troops could be subjected to politically motivated trials.
``We simply don't believe the ICC (International Criminal Court) -- which has no political supervision over it -- is a fair and appropriate mechanism to submit American soldiers to,'' Wolfowitz said.
The court, inaugurated on March 12, is charged with intervening only when a country is unable or lacks the political will to carry out a trial. It was signed by 78 nations and is charged with prosecuting crimes committed after July 1, 2002.
-------- drug war
Supreme Court Justice Backs Drug Testing
May 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Breyer.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told students Friday that school drug testing is a reasonable way to stop children from experimenting with narcotics.
Breyer explained his deciding vote in a case last June that gave school leaders nationwide a free hand to randomly test students who participate in competitive after-school activities or teams.
The court ruled 5-4 that schools' interest in ridding their campuses of drugs outweighs students' right to privacy.
A student at Bell Multicultural Sr. High School in Washington asked the justice what he thought about students who don't want to be forced to take drug tests.
``There are a lot of people who are under pressure from their peers to try the drugs. Sometimes that's hard to resist,'' said Breyer, a father of three.
He said drug testing for participation in extracurricular activities helps people who don't want to use drugs. A student ``can say to his friends `Well I want to go out for sports next year, well I want to join the debate team, well I want to be on the newspaper, so you see I can't.'''
Breyer, who frequently votes with the court liberals, joined conservatives in the drug testing case from Oklahoma. The other justices who supported the challenged policy were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
``That was a reasonable thing for the school system to try,'' Breyer said. ``I've seen enough people really ruined by this stuff that I can easily understand how the schools would want to try something like that.''
The ruling did not authorize random tests for any student, but justices could deal with that issue later.
Breyer was fielding questions as part of an educational series televised by C-SPAN. He also talked about threats to civil liberties in the government's war on terrorism. He told students that everyone should be involved in making sure constitutional rights are not eroded.
``You are part of this democratic process,'' he said.
On the Net:
C-SPAN: http://www.studentsandleaders.org/video/justice--breyer.asp
--------
Washington Turns Up Heat on Canada Over Marijuana Plans
May 16, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-canada-usa-marijuana.html
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The head of U.S. drug policy launched one of his strongest attacks on Friday on Canada's plans to relax penalties for marijuana possession, and dismissed as ``ridiculous'' one of Ottawa's main reasons for pushing ahead with the idea.
The Canadian government will introduce draft legislation later this month that would replace jail terms and criminal records with fines of perhaps C$100 ($73) for possession of 15 grams (half an ounce) or less of pot. Advertisement
John Walters, director of the White House office of National Drug Control Policy, said he feared this would hamper U.S. efforts to cut the amount of powerful Canadian-grown marijuana from being smuggled across the border.
``The problem now is that the high-potency marijuana business is growing uncontrollably in Canada... You're sending us the crack equivalent of marijuana and that's bad for both countries,'' he told CBC television.
``What we've been trying to do with Canadian officials (is learn) 'What's the plan to make this smaller as a harm to the United States?' And there isn't one now, that's the problem,'' he said.
Canadian Justice Minister Martin Cauchon, who will introduce the legislation at the end of May, criticizes existing marijuana laws for being largely ineffective and enforced unevenly.
Supporters of the legislation say it would allow police to focus on catching organized crime gangs dealing in drugs rather than arresting and charging small-time pot users.
But Walters strongly questioned this argument, saying there was no evidence Canadian law enforcement officials were cracking down on marijuana users.
``It's completely ridiculous to suggest that Canada is locking up users in significant numbers. That's not happening. In fact, to claim they're even being arrested in large numbers is a distortion. That's what Canadian law enforcement tells me,'' he said.
Walters complained that penalties for drug users were not harsh enough in Canada and suggested -- as he has done in the past -- that border security might have to be tightened if the law were passed. This could have a crushing effect on Canadian exporters, which are heavily reliant on the U.S. market.
Canadian Solicitor-General Wayne Easter, in overall charge of law enforcement, said Walters should wait to see the details of the legislation.
``When the entire strategy comes out, as will happen in the last two or three days of the month, I think Mr. Walters as well as others in the United States will see that we are in fact making fairly major moves forward,'' he told reporters.
``Our objective is to make those borders secure and to do what we have to do to eliminate the movement of high quality (marijuana)... anyone caught smuggling the product across the border will face very severe penalties.''
Cauchon says an estimated 100,000 of Canada's 30 million people are using pot daily and the numbers are increasing. He has said that marijuana would remain illegal, even if no longer criminal, and that penalties would be toughened substantially for marijuana-growing operations.
Several U.S. states, including New York, California, Oregon and Ohio, have already relaxed laws on simple possession and issue fines to those found with small amounts of marijuana.
--------
Federal Judge Denies Pot Guru a New Trial
May 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pot-King.html
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal judge rejected a bid for a new trial from convicted marijuana grower Ed Rosenthal on Friday, finding no basis for his claims of jury bias.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer upheld Rosenthal's highly publicized conviction in February. He now faces spending the rest of his life in prison when he's sentenced June 4. The maximum sentence is 85 years.
Rosenthal said he would appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and would ask Breyer to stay his sentence pending a decision.
Rosenthal, 58, was portrayed as a major drug manufacturer at trial. The jury concluded that he was growing more than 100 pot plants, conspired to cultivate marijuana and maintained an Oakland warehouse for a growing operation.
Rosenthal says he was growing medical marijuana under a 1996 law approved by California voters, and was deputized by the city of Oakland to carry out the task. But Breyer prohibited Rosenthal's jury from hearing evidence of that sort, and he explained his reasoning Friday.
``Since the Civil War this country has recognized that whatever the views of local governments, such views do not control the enforcement of federal law,'' Breyer wrote.
Rosenthal also claimed at least two jurors incorrectly believed they had no choice but to convict him. One juror informed the judge after the trial that she had consulted with an attorney during the trial on whether she could vote for acquittal even though the evidence clearly established Rosenthal violated federal drug manufacturing laws.
Breyer wrote it was ``rank speculation'' that two jurors voted to convict on the advice of the attorney.
--------
Heroin - Smuggling Ring Is Dismantled
May 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-BRF-Heroin-Arrests.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. and Chinese authorities have broken up a China-based ring that smuggled more than $100 million worth of the heroin into the United States over a three-year period, U.S. officials said Friday. Twenty people were arrested.
Agents from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, China and Hong Kong dismantled the China-based organization, DEA Acting Administrator William Simpkins said. Advertisement
The organization smuggled heroin into the United States from Southeast Asia using distribution groups in New York, North Carolina and Florida, Simpkins said.
He said it was the first time the United States and China have joined forces to dismantle a narcotics trafficking group.
-------- homeland security
Homeland Security Department Used to Track Texas Democrats
by Glenn W. Smith
May 14, 2003
by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0514-07.htm
Republicans in Washington and Austin, Texas apparently used a Homeland Security Department agency to track Texas Democratic legislators who left the state to block passage of a GOP-backed Congressional redistricting bill.
This is the same Homeland Security Department that is supposed to be making America safe from foreign terrorists. It's the agency we were told would never be used for domestic political purposes.
But today's edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that the Air and Marine Interdiction and Coordination Center, in Riverside, California, became involved in the Republican search for 51 Democratic state representatives who went to Ardmore, Oklahoma to break a quorum of the House and block action on the redistricting bill.
Here's what the Star-Telegram reported: "The agency received a call to locate a specific Piper turboprop aircraft. It was determined that the plane belonged to former House Speaker Pete Laney." Laney is one of the Democrats who is fighting against the redistricting bill.
The newspaper said, "Laney's plane proved to be a key piece of information because, (Republican House Speaker) Craddick said, it's how he determined that the Democrats were in Ardmore. 'We called someone, and they said they were going to track it. I have no idea how they tracked it down,' Craddick said. 'That's how we found them.'"
The Interdiction and Coordination center "falls under the auspices of the Homeland Security Department," the Star-Telegram reported.
Republican Craddick, at the request of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, is pushing a redistricting plan that would eliminate five Democrats from the U.S. Congress. Currently, the Texas delegation contains 17 Democrats and 15 Republicans.
While saying they "called someone," Craddick denied making calls to any federal agency, but DeLay confirmed that Republicans sought the assistance of federal law enforcement.
The action by the House Democrats, dubbed the "Heroes of the House" and the "Killer D's" (a reference to a similar quorum-busting action by Texas Senate Democrats in the late 1970s), has gained national attention. Their action has also received a surprising amount of support from Texas newspapers, which have criticized the deeply partisan actions of Texas Republicans.
Republican leaders in Texas and Washington are furious. They have called the Democrats, holed up in a Holiday Inn in Ardmore, "cowards" and "terrorists."
State troopers have followed the Democrats wives, parents and children. Troopers even staked out a hospital where one lawmaker's premature twins are being cared for. Staffers have been harassed. All this has happened after the location of the Democrats was known.
Now, in a chilling revelation, we discover the Homeland Security Department was apparently used to try and track the Democrats' whereabouts.
It was no doubt a ham-fisted, incautious and bungled attempt (like the Watergate burglary) by Republicans to use all the law enforcement they could find to overcome the Democrats' temporary advantage.
But the use of the Homeland Security Department for partisan political purposes should alarm all Americans. It deserves a full, complete and independent investigation.
The warnings of civil libertarians appear to have been justified. Even if it turns out that some half-crazed Republican staffer or independent investigator called the Air and Marine Interdiction and Coordination Center, it raises disturbing questions about the operations of Homeland Security and the lengths Republicans will go enforce their will.
Americans deserve to know the details of this scandal. And they deserve to know them now.
Glenn W. Smith is managing director/consultant to the progressive Rockridge Institute of Oakland, California. Smith lives in Austin, Texas. His email is glenns@affinitydynamics.com.
----
U.S. plans missile protection for jets
Boxer's proposal to protect airliners to be unveiled today
Edward Epstein,
Chronicle Washington Bureau
Friday, May 16, 2003
E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/05/16/MN280819.DTL
Washington -- The federal government will announce today that it is taking the first steps toward outfitting the nation's commercial airliners with electronic protection against shoulder-fired missiles, Sen. Barbara Boxer disclosed Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to award two companies contracts to build prototypes of anti-missile systems that will be tested for effectiveness and durability. It will also issue a general call to other companies to offer their ideas for deflecting heat-seeking missiles, thousands of which are believed to be in the hands of terrorist groups around the world.
Boxer -- who started calling last November for outfitting all of the nation's 6,800 commercial jets with anti-missile technology after two Soviet- made SAM-7 missiles were fired at an Israeli charter Boeing 757 in Mombasa, Kenya -- said the department's actions are "very good news for all people who fly on commercial airliners."
She said the threat from the light and portable missiles, which generally have a 3-mile range, is quite real. In May 2002, the FBI warned that "terrorists may have smuggled surface-to-air missiles into the United States of America."
Many U.S. military planes are equipped with such technology, although the exact nature of their protection is classified. It's also thought that Israeli military planes and the country's El Al airline civilian planes are equipped with technology that can deflect the missiles.
Apparently the Arkia airline charter flight with 270 people aboard didn't carry such equipment when it took off from Kenya. The heat-seeking missiles missed the plane, passing about a yard above the left wing.
"The department is going to go with what's available now and then look for new ideas," said Boxer, who with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Steven Israel, D-N.Y., announced today's action with the Bush administration's permission.
The action by the Department of Homeland Security, which will be part of a classified report, was ordered by Congress last month on an expedited timetable.
"When the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence agencies look at our greatest dangers, this comes up very high," Schumer said.
PROGRAM WILL COST BILLIONS
Outfitting all jetliners with a workable system would cost an estimated $7 billion to $10 billion. Congressional supporters want the federal government to pay for retrofitting all existing planes. The cost of the technology in new planes, which could hit $1 million to $1.5 million per plane, would be included in a jet's purchase price, Schumer suggested.
The airline industry has lobbied repeatedly and successfully for federal money to help pay the costs of security measures imposed since Sept. 11, 2001. Sixty-six airlines today will receive a total of $2.3 billion for security efforts as part of a spending bill Congress passed last month, the Transportation Security Administration announced.
As for the anti-missile system, the department wouldn't say which companies would get the prototype contract, but at least five firms already are working on the technology, according to Boxer's aides. These are defense giants Raytheon Co., Northrop Grumman Corp., and BAE Systems North America, the Israeli firm Elta Electronic Industries Ltd., and Rafael, a research branch of the Israeli Defense Ministry.
Rafael, for one, publicly says it has a missile defense system ready to go for commercial planes.
Boxer said she didn't care if the initial work went to an American or an Israeli contractor. "We want to get the companies who can produce this with the best quality and quickly," she said.
Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse was less optimistic about the magnitude of today's announcement than the members of Congress. "We've developed a plan from which to determine if a viable technology exists to be deployed on civilian aircraft, and we will issue two contracts to help provide technological understanding," he said.
TESTING MUST BE DONE
Before the government proceeds with full deployment, it will want to know how reliable the systems are at different altitudes and temperatures and how durable the equipment is, if it works initially.
"The administration has taken an aggressive approach on this matter," Roehrkasse said.
The technology generally consists of a sensor system on a plane's underside,
sometimes with a mounted pod that contains a guidance system or a heat source.
Some of the existing systems jam missiles' guidance systems, while others send out a heat source to deflect the missile.
A low-tech version, which could be pilot-initiated, involves launching flares to attract the missile. However, those systems depend on advance warning to the cockpit.
Before the government embarks on the huge financial commitment of outfitting all commercial planes, experts suggest it will want to gauge the development costs and see if it's worth waiting for the next generation of technology to emerge rather than using whatever could be available soon.
TIME LINE MAY BE UNREALISTIC
While Schumer said he hopes to see the first planes outfitted within a year,
that could be optimistic.
The Air Transport Association, the airlines' trade group, said it is eager to work with the government.
"The airline industry, having been made aware by appropriate government authorities of concerns with the potential use of shoulder-fired missiles, is doing everything within its power to assist the government in its decision- making as to the proper response to these and all terrorist threats," the ATA said in a statement.
But the financially pressed airlines, which probably aren't in a position to pay for the new technology, added, "While the airlines perform a consultative role in the government's deliberations, they do not make, nor are they equipped to make, decisions as to correct government response or the application of government resources."
-------- police
RIYADH ATTACKS
U.S. Agents Arrive to Join Saudi Bombing Investigation
May 16, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN and NEIL MacFARQUHAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/middleeast/16SAUD.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, May 15 - As a team of American investigators landed here, United States officials said today that warnings to foreigners to leave Saudi Arabia were based on intelligence suggesting that Monday night's bombing attacks could be the first in a series of such assaults in this country and the region. Advertisement
The officials said that they were hopeful of getting positive cooperation with Saudi authorities in pursuing the attackers, at least in part because of what they said was the widespread revulsion here over the deaths of Saudi citizens and others from the Middle East who perished along with Americans and other Westerners.
Officials continued to say that there was no proof that the attacks were the work of Al Qaeda, but that they bore all of that group's earmarks. The newly arrived team of agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join the Saudi investigators in the hunt for the attackers, a cooperation that has sometimes proved weak in the past but that the Americans hope will now be successful.
"I think there are sincere and earnest efforts to root out Al Qaeda, with occasional episodes of success," an American official said, adding that the Saudis "are burdened by the difficulty of having a relative few number of very senior people tasked with an overwhelming number of responsibilities." He said chasing down Al Qaeda, its finances and its allies was taxing the Saudi Interior Ministry's abilities "to the limit."
This week, Saudi and American officials have repeatedly proclaimed a new solidarity in getting to the bottom of an attack that killed 34 persons, including eight Americans, at three residential compounds in Riyadh. Seven Saudis were killed, along with others from the Philippines, Jordan, Australia, Britain, Ireland, Lebanon and Switzerland.
Diplomats said that an estimated nine corpses have yet to be identified, although four of those may be attackers.
Scores of injured were treated at hospitals after the attacks, but an American official said today that only 13 Americans remained admitted, one of them a mother who was nursing her uninjured baby. Another patient was so badly injured that it has been impossible to determine his identity or citizenship, an American official said.
While the investigation was getting under way, new details emerged about the attacks themselves and their links with a series of events over the last several weeks.
Much of the new information centered on the complex run by Jadawel International, a luxury community of employees of businesses like Boeing with contracts with the Saudi Air Force.
Officials had earlier reported that the attackers had gotten past the front gates of all three sites - Vinnell, Al Hamra and Jadawel - blowing up well inside each.
Today, it was clear from the damage and the testimony of witnesses that the truck bomb at Jadawel never made it inside the compound, instead exploding at the gate itself after its occupants shot their way past an outer checkpoint. Guards provided by the Saudi Air Force managed to raise an inner barrier in time to prevent the booby-trapped truck from entering.
The Jadawel complex was the only one that got a specific warning of a possible threat before the bombing, as opposed to the general warnings to foreign citizens around May 1, knowledgeable officials said today.
The warning had been prompted by the fact that Saudi security forces had on May 6 raided a house only a half mile away, finding a huge cache of explosives, ammunition and machine guns. A couple of men in the house burst out shooting and managed to elude police. A window of that house had an unimpeded view of the southeastern corner of the Jadawel.
That raid prompted the United States Embassy to make the third request in several weeks for more protection from the Saudi government of the foreigners' compounds in Riyadh and elsewhere, according to knowledgeable officials.
Jadawel security officials, since they were provided by the air force, were allowed to bear arms, something not allowed to the regular guards at the other complexes.
After the May 6 raid, the Saudi police announced that they were hunting for 19 suspected militants, almost all Saudis, believed to be hiding in Riyadh. Documents found in the raid revealed the names. Subsequently, the Saudi Interior Ministry announced that one of these 19 turned himself in.
It is unclear whether any of the suspects were involved in this week's bombings, although the interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, has indicated it might be the same cell.
The security manager at Jadawel, Mohammed al-Ahmed, said the attack began when an air force sentry usually stationed in a tower on the southeast corner of the complex took a break for tea with others at the checkpoint. A car drove up and killed everyone at the checkpoint with gunfire and hand grenades.
While the shooting erupted, guards at the gate itself, about 50 feet past the checkpoint, secured the gate and the truck got hung up on the barrier.
"By the grace of God, no one inside was killed," said Mr. Ahmed, adding, however, that five of the attackers died.
American officials said a striking aspect of the attacks was that they all appeared pick as targets places that served as symbolic or commercial links between the Saudi royal family and the United States government. Also the trucks drove deliberately to specific areas within the compounds, exploding in places that would cause maximum damage to particular buildings.
"There is a very clear suggestion at least that this attack was aimed at undermining the regime as much as it was aimed at American interests," the American ambassador, Robert W. Jordan, said, adding that certain "fault lines" were exposed by the attacks, which appeared intended to demonstrate the view of critics of the Saudi royal family that they are propped up by the United States.
Not only was the Jadawel complex a place for Americans connected to the Saudi Air Force, but the Vinnell compound was occupied by Americans, many of them retired military officers, here to train the Saudi National Guard.
At Al Hamra complex, about a third of the residents were Americans or other Westerners, and the rest were Saudis or nationals from other Arab countries. Meanwhile, knowledgeable officials described an e-mail message, sent before the bombings this week, from a Qaeda suspect saying that a series of bomb attacks would take place throughout the Persian Gulf region. This e-mail message was one of factors that led the United States to start warning, two weeks ago, that Americans not needing to be in Saudi Arabia should leave as quickly as they can.
----
Ex-Top Cop Gets Iraq Post
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
May 16, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/worldspecial/16PENT.html
WASHINGTON, May 15 - Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, has agreed to become a senior policy adviser in Iraq's reorganized Interior Ministry, Pentagon officials said today.
Mr. Kerik, 47, was tapped by the White House to work with L. Paul Bremer III, who arrived in Iraq this week to take charge of the reconstruction and administration.
During his 15-month tenure as New York's top cop, Mr. Kerik was praised for his role in reducing crime rates and improving the Police Department's relationship with minority groups.
He ran afoul of the city's Conflict of Interests Board, however, and was fined for using police personnel to conduct research on his mother's death for a book he was writing.
Mr. Kerik brings a wide array of experience to the new job, and a familiarity with the culture and political realities of the Middle East. Beginning in the 1970's, he worked in the region as a security expert, including four years in the employ of the Saudi royal family.
He will be leaving a position at Giuliani Partners, a consulting firm run by former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, with whom he has longstanding professional ties.
A former undercover narcotics detective, Mr. Kerik first worked for Mr. Giuliani as a campaign bodyguard in 1993. Under the mayor's tutelage, he moved to the Department of Corrections and eventually served as commissioner. There he was credited with reducing jail violence, and in August 2000 he was tapped to become police commissioner, replacing Howard Safir.
He left the Police Department in the end of 2001, after having led the department through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Saddam's Amnesty Blamed for Iraq's Crime
May 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Criminals-at-Large.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A few months before the war, Saddam Hussein freed some 100,000 prisoners, most of them hardened criminals. Now, with security tenuous across Iraq and Baghdad plagued by crime and fear, U.S. officials are blaming that general amnesty for much of the chaos.
In interviews across the capital Friday with more than 30 Iraqis, many agreed.
``Security will not return to the country until all the prisoners return to jail,'' said Khalil al-Baaj, a police lieutenant who said he was stalked by a freed killer.
Even though Baghdad police have begun returning to work -- and the U.S. Army sent in 2,000 military policemen -- many of the 5 million residents of the capital are afraid to venture out at night. Reports stream in of kidnappings, rapes and carjackings.
``I've stopped looters, run political parties out of abandoned buildings, caught people with large amounts of cash and weapons,'' said U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Cody Williams. The work, he said, is aimed at ``trying to keep the bad guys off the streets so the good guys can have normal lives.''
Williams said many of the people he had arrested were former prisoners who ``are making their way back to prison.''
Yet he also said most of the ex-convicts were not looting but carrying out violent crimes -- armed robbery, murder, kidnapping.
In Baghdad, many people say they resent the Americans for not stopping the chaos. Others are asking different questions. How much of the unrest, they wonder, is related to that amnesty and the criminals it set free?
``Saddam probably felt he would gain popularity with the people and win their support in the war ... He probably hoped the armed gangs would confront the Americans,'' said Capt. Hadi al-Dilaymi, a Baghdad police officer.
``It was wrong to free the criminals,'' said Barakat al-Shumari, 40, who keeps her daughters inside because she fears kidnapping. Since Saddam's fall, police say, at least eight women have been reported raped in Baghdad, a city where rape reports are rare.
Recent comments by U.S. officials as high as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggest the American occupying force has decided to make the amnesty an issue -- in part to stanch criticism that American forces aren't doing enough to keep the peace.
On Wednesday, speaking to members of Congress, Rumsfeld explicitly blamed ex-prisoners for the lootings and other crimes. ``They have to be rounded up and put back in,'' he said. ``That takes a little time. You don't do that in five minutes.''
L. Paul Bremer, the new top American in Iraq, is echoing that notion in his initial days of overseeing the country. He has promised to round up thousands of criminals and has said aggressive police patrols had made 300 arrests in two days.
Bremer didn't say whether the arrests were of ex-convicts, but he pointed out that occupation authorities had resumed jail operations, and two courts are hearing cases.
Still, figuring out which of last week's arrests were last year's inmates is not easy in a country with no government and no organized way to track down rap sheets.
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, said it is difficult to determine if crimes are being carried out by former prisoners.
Al-Dilaymi, director of criminal investigation with the newly reconstituted Baghdad police, blames what he says is an average of 10 reported murders each day on ex-convicts.
Only this week did the Americans give Iraqi police permission to carry sidearms, and they feel crippled. ``We only investigate,'' al-Dilaymi said. ``We do not arrest.''
As criminals come off the streets, and as the United States struggles to restore order, the worry among Baghdad residents is this: A new government will be installed, but they will still feel scared in their own city.
For al-Dilaymi, armed with only a handgun, any solution remains part of a distant future.
``If I come face to face with a criminal with a Kalashnikov,'' he said, ``all I can do is say ``Good day,' and run.''
-------- terrorism
Paths of Glory
May 16, 2003
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/opinion/16KRUG.html
The central dogma of American politics right now is that George W. Bush, whatever his other failings, has been an effective leader in the fight against terrorism. But the more you know about the state of the world, the less you believe that dogma. The Iraq war, in particular, did nothing to make America safer - in fact, it did the terrorists a favor.
How is the war on terror going? You know about the Riyadh bombings. But something else happened this week: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected British think tank with no discernible anti-Bush animus, declared that Al Qaeda is "more insidious and just as dangerous" as it was before Sept. 11. So much for claims that we had terrorists on the run.
Still, isn't the Bush administration doing its best to fight terrorism? No.
The administration's antiterror campaign makes me think of the way television studios really look. The fancy set usually sits in the middle of a shabby room, full of cardboard and duct tape. Networks take great care with what viewers see on their TV screens; they spend as little as possible on anything off camera.
And so it has been with the campaign against terrorism. Mr. Bush strikes heroic poses on TV, but his administration neglects anything that isn't photogenic.
I've written before about the Bush administration's amazing refusal to pay for even minimal measures to protect the nation against future attacks - measures that would secure ports, chemical plants, nuclear facilities and so on. (But the Department of Homeland Security isn't completely ineffectual: this week it helped Texas Republicans track down their Democratic colleagues, who had staged a walkout.)
The neglect of homeland security is mirrored by the Bush administration's failure to follow through on overseas efforts once the TV-friendly part of the operation has come to an end. The overthrow of the Taliban was a real victory - arguably our only important victory against terrorism. But as soon as Kabul fell, the administration lost interest. Now most of Afghanistan is under the control of warlords, the Karzai government is barely hanging on, and the Taliban are making a comeback.
Senator Bob Graham has made an even stronger charge: that Al Qaeda was "on the ropes" a year ago, but was able to recover because the administration diverted military and intelligence resources to Iraq. As former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he's in a position to know. And before you dismiss him as a partisan Democrat, bear in mind that when he began raising this alarm last fall his Republican colleagues supported him: "He's absolutely right to be concerned," said Senator Richard Shelby, who has seen the same information.
Senator Graham also claims that a classified Congressional report reveals that "the lessons of Sept. 11 are not being applied today," and accuses the administration of a cover-up.
Still, we defeated Saddam. Doesn't that make us safer? Well, no.
Saddam wasn't a threat to America - he had no important links to terrorism, and the main U.S. team searching for weapons of mass destruction has packed up and gone home. Meanwhile, true to form, the Bush team lost focus as soon as the TV coverage slackened off. The first result was an orgy of looting - including looting of nuclear waste dumps that, incredibly, we failed to secure. Dirty bombs, anyone? Now, according to an article in The New Republic, armed Iraqi factions are preparing for civil war.
That leaves us facing exactly the dilemma war skeptics feared. If we leave Iraq quickly it may well turn into a bigger, more dangerous version of Afghanistan. But if we stay for an extended period we risk becoming, as one commentator put it, "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land" - just the recruiting tool Al Qaeda needs. Who said that? President George H. W. Bush, explaining his decision not to go on to Baghdad back in 1991.
Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish leader, isn't afraid to use the "Q" word, worrying that because of America's failure to follow up, "this wonderful victory we have achieved will turn into a quagmire."
The truth is that the pursuit of televised glory - which led the Bush administration to turn its attention away from Al Qaeda, and to pick a fight with a regime that, however nasty, posed no threat - has made us much less safe than we should be.
--------
Five Requests to Saudis Went Unheeded, U.S. Says
May 16, 2003
The New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/international/middleeast/16TERR.html
WASHINGTON, May 15 - In the month before Monday's bombings in Riyadh, the United States asked Saudi Arabia on at least five separate occasions to deploy armed uniformed government guards around all Western targets of a possible terrorist attack, Bush administration officials said today.
Among those requests, the officials said, was one by Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser who was diverted to Saudi Arabia during a trip to Moscow and Israel and was instructed by the White House to meet directly with Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's day-to-day leader.
"We needed to underscore the seriousness of the message that they had to wake up," said one senior official. Yet neither that request, delivered on Saturday, May 3, nor any other was fully heeded by the Riyadh government, the officials said. The Saudi authorities did nothing to augment security at any of the sites, including the three housing compounds struck on Monday night, the administration officials said.
The Saudi ambassador to the United States said today that his government "did what was needed" in response to American requests.
Referring to one site in particular, the ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, said in a television interview from Saudi Arabia that the Saudi security agencies "came to the conclusion that they had adequate measures there."
"There is no 100 percent security when a determined, crazy, evil person is determined to die," Prince Bandar said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "But what we can do, however, is to pursue them vigorously, and when we get them, we bring them to justice, try them, and punish them swiftly and harshly."
At no time did the United States specify which sites it wanted guarded, American officials acknowledged.
The Bush administration officials who offered the detailed account today said they wanted to make clear that a request to the Saudis that was disclosed on Wednesday by Ambassador Robert W. Jordan had not been isolated. American envoys, who also included J. Cofer Black, the State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, had repeatedly urged action and shared with the Saudis specific intelligence pointing to the danger of an imminent attack.
The Saudi officials told the Americans they would do what they could, but also pointed out that there were hundreds of such potential Western targets in the kingdom and asked for more information. In the end, an American official said, "it doesn't appear they did anything to augment security."
Several officials said today that the administration was constantly debating whether the Saudi government would respond better to quiet pressure - like Mr. Hadley's unannounced visit, first reported on Wednesday night by ABC News - or the prospect of public criticism.
The administration officials said they were speaking today out of a conviction that disclosure of the details might prompt the Saudis to cooperate more closely in the investigation into the attack and other possible terrorist plots. The officials and others said that American concerns about other attacks, possibly in the Middle East, Africa or Asia, had surged in recent days.
Tonight, for example, the State Department warned that it had received an unconfirmed report of a possible terrorist attack in the Al Hamra district of Jidda, Saudi Arabia. While it said it could not "certify the credibility of the threat," it was advising American citizens to be vigilant. It also said that some members of the American Consulate and their families had relocated to quarters outside the district.
More broadly, the United States concerns have focused on what officials called specific and credible information that terrorists with shoulder-fired weapons might try to attack a Western airliner in Kenya, the site of a similar attempt earlier this year. The warnings today persuaded British Airways to announce the cancellation of its flights to Kenya.
There are also renewed concerns about the Philippines, whose president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is due in Washington for a state dinner on Monday to celebrate cooperation with the United States in counterterrorism.
American officials said the precise nature of the attacks in Riyadh, at a time when American officials believed they were succeeding in reining in that organization, have raised questions about terrorist threats today.
"We had done a pretty good job on Al Qaeda; we'd dismantled a lot of their infrastructure," one American official said. "So what's happening here? Did we only dismantle a portion of their infrastructure? Are new people emerging to fill in the ranks? Or are ne'er-do-wells stepping in the name of Al Qaeda, but who are not really Al Qaeda?"
The last American request was delivered to the Saudis on May 7, the day after the Saudis discovered a weapons cache that included hundreds of pounds of explosives at a site in Riyadh just 400 yards away from a compound called Jedawal that was home to many Westerners.
Mr. Black, the top counterterrorism official at the State Department, made his first trip to Saudi Arabia in that role in early January. A second trip followed on April 15, when he warned Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, the third-ranking official of the Interior Ministry, that a terrorist strike in the kingdom "was now just a matter of time," an administration official said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
GE's move into wind power business seen as significant
16 May 2003
By John Christoffersen,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-05-16/s_4482.asp
FAIRFIELD, Conn. - General Electric Co. is injecting some pinstriped corporate muscle into the still-evolving world of wind power. A year after its purchase of Enron Corp.'s wind turbine business, GE expects the operation to generate more than $1 billion in revenue during 2003 and expand about 20 percent annually.
GE Wind Energy has landed several major orders, including turbines for a project that would be the first offshore wind farm in the United States. As a major supplier to the electric power industry, GE's lead is closely watched.
"The purchase of the wind manufacturing company by GE is really a historic move that symbolizes the maturation of the wind industry," said Randall Swisher, executive director of the American Wind Energy Association.
The company's foray into wind energy comes as its Power Systems Division, which makes traditional gas turbines for power plants, is on the down side of a very long business cycle. GE has laid off hundreds of workers at its turbine plants, shipments are down, and the near-term outlook is weak.
At the same time, wind power - which in the past often involved smaller companies - has become one of the fastest growing segments of the global energy industry. Wind turbine sales represents a $7 billion business globally and should grow to about $20 billion in the next five to 10 years, Swisher said. "The market has been doubling about every three years," Swisher said.
Government incentives and advances in technology have made wind power more economical, while utilities are under pressure to develop alternative sources of energy, Swisher and GE officials said. Thirteen states now require utilities to include renewable energy such as wind and solar power as a portion of their business, Swisher said.
GE chief executive Jeffrey Immelt said at the company's annual meeting last month that the wind energy business has taken in more than $2 billion in orders in the past year. The revenue it produces is a small fraction of GE's total revenue of $131.7 billion last year and won't be enough to totally offset a sharp decline in gas turbine sales. But wind energy is one of several new growth areas targeted by GE; others include Hispanic media, security, and water treatment.
John Rice, president and chief executive of Power Systems, which operates the wind business, said of the operation, "It's met or exceeded our expectations in the year we've operated it."
GE studied the wind power business for at least three years and saw an opportunity to make the acquisition when bankrupt Enron began shedding its assets, Rice said. He cited three main reasons for entering the industry: The cost of electricity generated from wind power dropped to the point where it was competitive with other sources; the business could benefit from technology from other GE businesses; and GE customers were increasingly interested in renewable energy sources.
The company said it's using its expertise from other businesses, such as rotating machinery parts, grid technologies, and gearbox advancements, to expand the business and introduce new models with the latest technology.
GE also could benefit in terms of public image. It has been battered for years because of PCB pollution in the Hudson River and GE's opposition to a dredging project to clean the river. GE argues that dredging could make the problem worse.
Chris Ballantyne, director of the Hudson River campaign for the Sierra Club, said he was encouraged that GE was recognizing the value of wind energy. "If they weren't so scurrilous on other environmental matters, they'd probably get much higher marks," Ballantyne said. "All you have to do is look at the Hudson to see the whole other side of the story."
GE officials deny buying the wind business for image reasons and defend the company's environmental record, saying many of its products are more energy efficient than those of other manufacturers. They also cite GE's move into other clean forms of energy.
Swisher said he is convinced GE is a serious player and not just looking for a public relations coup. "They are positioning themselves to be one of the leading companies in the industry," he said.
But the company faces competition, mostly from companies in Europe, where wind power is more widely employed. And more than a dozen U.S. wind turbine manufacturers have come and gone in the past two decades, with many first-generation commercial turbines unable to handle the fatigue of continuous, powerful winds, Swisher said.
"I think it's an extraordinarily challenging business," Swisher said. "It requires a special combination of technical capability and business acumen."
GE has landed several significant orders since its entry into the business. GE Wind Energy was selected to supply 130 wind turbines for a proposed project off the coast of Cape Cod. The project would be the first offshore wind farm in the United States and could provide enough clean electricity to meet about three-quarters of the annual requirements of the cape and nearby islands, GE said.
The company announced in April that it supplied 10 wind turbines for one of the largest wind farms in Japan, and in February said it will supply 80 wind turbines for the first wind project of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation's largest municipally owned utility. GE Wind Energy also supplied 20 wind turbines for the largest operating wind farm in New York, located in Fenner.
Depending on their size and location, wind farms can be controversial. Opponents of the project off Cape Cod said the 420-foot towers would be an eyesore and would interfere with navigation and the environment.
But the project's supporters say it would produce no polluting greenhouse gases. "This is a technology whose time has come," said Dennis Murphy, a spokesman for GE Power.
-------- health
Choose wisely for heart-healthy fats
16 May 2003
By Orna Izakson,
E/The Environmental Magazine
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-05-16/s_3522.asp
emagazine.comSome environmentally savvy dieticians say that if you can afford to buy only one organic food item, it should be culinary oils. They base their assertions on several things, but at the top of the list is the fact that heavy metals (which can show up in sewage sludge used to treat some nonorganic farms) and industrial chemicals such as pesticides tend to stick to fats.
Many common cooking oils - canola, soy, and cottonseed chief among them - are genetically engineered to withstand more pesticide spraying than their common counterparts. Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finds them safe for human consumption, environmentalists are increasingly concerned about the effects on the ecosystem and on their bodies. One way to make sure GE plants are not in your food is to buy organic.
Further, noncertified oils and those not labeled "cold" or "expeller" pressed may be extracted using the solvent n-hexane, a nervous system toxin. N-hexane, made from crude oil, primarily raises health concerns for workers exposed to it as it evaporates. The FDA does approve chemically extracted oils, but people who choose to buy organic may find such assurances inadequate.
Critical Building Blocks
Despite the real concerns about too much fat in modern diets, the right amounts of the right kind of high-quality oils are critical for health. Fats make up the building blocks of hormones and are especially critical for babies as they develop their nervous systems, since the oils help coat growing nerve cells.
"Oil is very important," explained Dr. Chris Meletis, a naturopathic physician and dean of the National College of Naturopathic Medicine. "Without oil, there's increased inflammation, altered immunity, and increased menstrual cramps." He said fats "are critical for the creation of every cell."
Fats have gotten a bad rap because two kinds - saturated and transfatty acids - feed heart disease. Saturated fats come from both animal and plant sources. Oils with high saturated content are generally solid at room temperature: Think of coconut and palm oils, or butter and lard.
Transfatty acids occur when oils are modified to make them solid at room temperature, as in the case of margarine. That process, known as hydrogenation, also reduces or eliminates many of the healthy components of the oil.
Dietician Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University, says transfatty acids and saturated fats cause the same kinds of heart-health problems. She recommends using oils in lieu of hardened fat whenever possible. That might make for a denser cake, she says, but the health benefits are worth it.
But other types of fats are critical to good health. Monounsaturated fats actually help undo the heart-blocking effects of saturated fats. Olive, canola, peanut, sesame, almond, apricot, avocado, and high-oleic safflower and sunflower oils each have more than 50 percent monounsaturated fats, according to Spectrum Naturals, a leading oil distributor.
Polyunsaturated fats, composed of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, also have some cholesterol-lowering properties. They are also the most important oils nutritionally, because the body can't synthesize them. But getting the right balance isn't always easy. Most dieticians say the body needs two or three times as much Omega-3 as Omega-6. (This is bad news for hemp advocates, since their oil has the reverse ratio.) Common culinary oils such as canola, corn, safflower, sunflower, walnut, sesame, and soy are rich sources of Omega-6 but offer little if any Omega-3. Canola and hemp both have better ratios but remain relatively heavy on plentiful Omega-6.
Flax seed oil is the best vegetable source for righting the Omega-6 to Omega-3 imbalance, with a ratio reverse that of hemp. Fish such as cod, salmon, and mackerel are also excellent sources of Omega-3s. Their oil is available in supplements but also survives cooking in the meat. Plant-based sources should not be heated. Care and Handling
All oils need to be protected from heat and light, which oxidize them and make them rancid. Oils high in Omega-3 are particularly sensitive and should be refrigerated.
Aside from smelling and tasting bad, rancid oils are high in free radicals, said Jim Gallagher, a professor of nutrition at Bastyr University. Free radicals bond to protein layers in the body and break them down, leading to a host of health problems.
Oils can go rancid over time simply by exposure to air, so Gallagher recommends buying oils in small quantities so they are used quickly. Bulk bins often leave oils exposed to oxygen, but if the oil sells quickly it will have little time to develop problems. Clean containers well so you're not adding good oil to rancid remnants.
Heating oils speeds the oxidation process, which is one reason fried food is bad for you. Burned oils - those that start to smoke - can be downright dangerous: "A lot of oils when they get superheated turn into cancer-causing agents," Meletis said. That's true of burned popcorn oil and the smoking oil that comes up from the coals during a barbecue.
To avoid such problems, choose the right oil for the job. For high-heat frying, searing, and browning at temperatures up to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, Spectrum Naturals recommends super canola oil, almond, apricot kernel, high-oleic safflower or sunflower, peanut, or soybean oils. For stir frying and baking below 375 degrees, try canola, walnut, sunflower, or sesame. Use olive, corn, or any of the higher-heat oils for sauces, baking, or light sautéing under 320 degrees. Save flax, hemp, wheat germ, borage, and black currant oils for salads or for drizzling on foods after cooking.
The Canola Controversy
Canola oil - made from the seed of a broccoli relative unfortunately named "rape" - has become controversial among health food advocates in recent years. The debate began with an article in Perceptions magazine, which describes itself as "dedicated to the wholeness of life and sovereignty of the human being." The article made several claims, including that canola is an industrial lubricant and a carcinogen.
According to the FDA, rape plants (also known as wild mustard) were grown for centuries in Central Europe, and oil extracted from the seed was used extensively in Canada during World War II as a substitute for scarce petroleum lubricants. But animal studies of long-term consumption of rapeseed oil linked one of its constituents, erucic acid, to heart lesions. Canadians began cross-pollinating the rape plants and, by the 1970s, developed a variety that contains less than 2 percent erucic acid. That oil, known as Canadian oil or canola, is what appears on supermarket shelves today.
No one contacted for this story could link canola to cancer beyond the concerns associated with overheating. Some of the concern appears to be a misunderstanding of the difference between hybridization (the kind of cross-pollination that developed corn larger than a finger or wheat that doesn't shatter until it's ready for harvest) and genetic engineering, which uses laboratory procedures to add genes that were never naturally present in the plant. Canola has been the subject of both kinds of modification, first to lower erucic acid levels and then to increase pesticide resistance. And while pesticide-heavy, genetically engineered canola is a concern for many people, organic varieties are free from both.
Cindy Moore, director of nutrition therapy at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, recommends canola oil because it has low saturated fat levels, a good balance of mono- and polyunsaturated fats, and even contains up to 10 percent Omega-3. It takes the heat of baking and mid-range stir frying.
Meletis of the National College of Naturopathic Medicine won't weigh in on the controversy himself but said he opts for olive over canola. He said, "I never suggested canola even before the controversy because the Mediterranean diet has been proven to be heart friendly and generally promotes overall good health."
Orna Izakson uses natural oils in Portland, Ore.
----
Study Warns of Health Risk From Nonstick Cookware
By J.R. Pegg,
May 16, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2003/2003-05-16-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC - An environmental research organization is urging the federal government to put warning labels on cookware coated with Teflon and similar nonstick coatings.
A new study released Thursday by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) finds that this cookware more quickly reaches temperatures that produce toxic particles and fumes than chemical giant and Teflon manufacturer DuPont has previously admitted.
EWG tested coated pans and determined that in two to five minutes on a typical household stove, the pans reach temperatures that produce toxins that Dupont has acknowledged kill hundreds of pet birds each year and cause the flu like "polymer fever" in humans.
"Our simple test showed DuPont is wrong when they tell customers the pans won't degrade except under extreme misuse," said Dr. Jennifer Klein, a chemist with EWG. "Actually, the pans started emitting toxic particles and chemicals quite quickly at temperatures within normal use on a typical stovetop."
The study's findings prompted EWG to send a petition Thursday to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)asking the federal safety board to label the coated cookware with a warning about dangers to pet birds and possible human health effects.
The petition calls on CPSC to "require that all cookware and heated appliances bearing polytetrafluoroethylene nonstick coatings, including Teflon coatings, cary a label warning of the acute hazard the coating poses to pet birds and the potential health risks to humans." The study by Environmental Working Group warns of health risks from common use of nonstick pans. (Photo by Ian Britton courtesy FreeFoto.com) There have been no studies on the long term effects of Teflon and similar coatings to humans, but DuPont has acknowledged that pans heated to some 460 degrees Fahrenheit release toxic particles that can kill birds.
There is ample evidence that this is the case in EWG's report "Canaries in the Kitchen," which details how birds can die from inhaling fumes and particles emitted from Teflon coated products.
Studies by DuPont show that humans may experience "polymer fume fever" when Teflon is heated to 662 degrees Fahrenheit.
The company contends that pans heated under 500 degrees have no risks to humans because the coating stays intact at this temperature and company officials say they do not believe consumers often heat pans above this temperature.
EWG's findings strongly dispute this as its tests show that cookware exceeds these temperatures and turns toxic through the common act of preheating a pan, on a burner set on high.
"Not only did we reach normal cooking temperatures in very short times, but what American adult with a kitchen has not left a pan on once or twice and forgotten about it?," asked Jane Houlihan, EWG's vice president for research. "It is hard to follow what DuPont is thinking when they say the pans don't off-gas toxic chemicals under 'normal' use."
In its tests, EWG found that a generic nonstick frying pan preheated on a conventional, electric stovetop burner reached 736 degrees Fahrenheit in three minutes and 20 seconds - a Teflon pan reached 721 degrees Fahrenheit in five minutes under the same conditions.
EWG's study determined that at 680 degrees Fahrenheit, Teflon pans release at least six toxic gases, including two carcinogens, two global pollutants, and MFA, a chemical lethal to humans at low doses.
The long term human health effects from these toxins have not been studied, but there is increasing concern about chemical ingredients in Teflon, in particular ammonium perfluorooctane (PFOA), a chemical currently being reviewed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In one year, a Chicago veterinarian documented 296 bird deaths in 105 cases involving non stick cookware. (Photo courtesy Stanford University) A draft risk assessment on PFOA found evidence of high developmental and reproductive health risks to humans, in particular to children and women of childbearing age.
DuPont's public statements about the possible health risks from PFOA - referred to by the company as "C8" - have been questioned. The company is under federal investigation for the possibly illegal withholding of key health studies regarding C8 and was sanctioned by a West Virginia court three weeks ago because a company scientist destroyed evidence from health research on the chemical.
The government has not assessed the safety of nonstick cookware, most of which does not carry a warning label.
EWG recommends that bird owners completely avoid cookware and heated appliances with nonstick coatings, opting instead to use stainless steel or cast iron. The organization says neither of these materials offgas persistent pollutants that kill birds.
The EWG report on the health risks to birds and humans from nonstick pans can be found here.
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Toxic Substances Put One in Five EU Workers at Risk
May 16, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/may2003/2003-05-16-02.asp
STRASBOURG, France - Twenty percent of employees in European Union member states, some 32 million people, are exposed to carcinogenic agents at work, and even more inhale fumes and vapors for at least a quarter of their working time. To address these risks, the first pan-European campaign to raise awareness of dangerous substances in the workplace was launched on Tuesday at the European Parliament.
Campaign organizer, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, aims to educate companies about the risks and regulatory duties regarding employee exposure to chemicals, biological agents, and other dangerous substances at work.
The agency says that for substances with known toxicological risks, as few as 12 percent of firms that use them comply with risk prevention regulations. In addition, 20 percent of Safety Data Sheets supplied by manufacturers of hazardous substances contained errors.
The campaign will take place in the 15 current EU member states as well as the 10 future member states that will join the EU next April. It will culminate in the European Week for Safety and Health at Work in October 2003, whose motto is "Dangerous Substances - Handle with Care." Safety and health institutions, trade unions, company managers and employees will all take part.
Agency Director Hans-Horst Konkolewsky says the European Week for Safety and Health at Work has developed into "the largest safety and health event in our region, including not only the 15 EU member states but also all candidate countries and all EFTA [European Free Trade Association] countries."
Konkolewsky said that in many cases safe substitutes for dangerous substances exist, such as replacements for organic solvents. If this is not possible, exposure can be eliminated or reduced through efficient control measures, he said. "We hope to communicate these messages along with a lot of good practice information to workplaces all across Europe where dangerous substances are handled."
For the purposes of the campaign, a dangerous substance is defined as any liquid, gas or solid, chemical or biological, that poses a toxicological risk to employees' health, excluding radioactive, inflammable and explosive substances. These risks can occur through either direct or indirect contact with the toxic, for example through touching contaminated surfaces.
Cancers, asthma and neuro-psychiatric problems are some of the illnesses that can be caused by the 100,000 chemicals and biological agents marketed in the European Union, according to the safety agency.
Two-thirds of the 30,000 most commonly used chemicals in the EU have not been subjected to full and systematic toxicological tests, the agency said. Only new chemicals notified since 1981 must undergo these tests, although the EU is developing a strategy to systematically assess chemicals that were in existence before then.
"Dangerous substances contribute significantly to the 350 million days lost through occupational ill health in the EU and to the seven million people suffering from occupational illnesses," says Anna Diamantopoulou, European commissioner for employment and social affairs. "The Agency's campaign, together with EU initiatives, including our recent White Paper on a Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy, are important steps in dealing with this severe, but often hidden, problem."
Citing research that shows four percent of all cancers are work related and that 10 percent of employees contract eczema, the agency said one-fifth of EU employees are exposed to known or suspected carcinogens, such as benzene in fuel and crystalline silica in construction materials.
Twenty-two percent of workers inhale fumes and vapors for at a least a quarter of their working time, including organic solvents, wood dust and welding fumes, the agency says.
Sectors most at risk range from construction and agriculture to printing, cleaning, health care and automotive mechanics.
Dangers extend even to the funeral industry. A research team based in Essex, UK announced findings on Monday which show that glutaraldehyde, formaldehyde and its aqueous solution Formalin, used worldwide for embalming, pose greater problems to health and to the environment than is generally thought.
Workers exposed to formaldehyde, a colorless and invisible gas, face a significantly greater risk of cancers of the nose, pharynx and lung than average, and those working in some areas of hospitals, mortuaries and funeral services have as much as 30 percent greater risk of developing these cancers.
"The extraordinary thing is that nobody seems to be taking these risks very seriously," said team leader Dr. Kit Barrow. "While there are health and safety regulations which apply where formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde or Formalin are used, even where they are properly enforced, they leave workers perilously close to the threshold of serious harm."
President of the European Parliament Pat Cox said, "The use of dangerous substances in the workplace is commonplace for millions of EU workers. It is important that campaigns such as these convey the message to both workers and citizens that dangerous substances need to be handled with care both in the workplace and at home."
During October 2003, events will be organized across Europe to bring the campaign to life in all organizations, large and small, public and private.
Information packs will be offered in all official EU languages, there will be posters, leaflets and a multilingual website at: http://osha.eu.int/ew2003/.
In November, at the closing event of the European Week for Safety and Health at Work, the agency will recognize the winners of its European Good Practice awards for organizations that have most successfully tackled the problem of dangerous substances through preventive measures, risk awareness, and substitution.
-------- ACTIVISTS
No to More Nukes
May 16, 2003
Voice4Change.org
http://www.voice4change.org/stories/showstory.asp?file=030516~tm.asp
Pres. Bush and Congress are working to create a whole new generation of "usable" nukes. They are trying to repeal the Spratt-Furse provision which bans the construction of mini-nukes. They also want to spend millions to create a new high yield nuclear weapon to put on top of our conventional bunker busters, a weapon that already works fine.
Do the world a favor, send Congress faxes telling them you think there is no such thing as a "usable" nuke and they shouldn't try to build any.
To send the Fax: http://www.truemajority.com/index.asp?action=10013&ms=mnnks1&ref=152829
Note from Ben Cohen: For this alert I asked Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan to tell you what is going on. Here is his amazing insight:
When I was on active duty in the Navy back in the 60's and 70's we had nuclear weapons on our ships that were designed to be used in battle. The idea was that if we ever got into real trouble we could wipe out Soviet submarines and bombers with a few nuclear depth charges and nuclear surface to air missiles - hopefully without igniting a full scale nuclear holocaust.
The only problem was we all knew that was hogwash. I actually simulated firing off a bunch of these during military exercises and the results were so devastating I knew 3 things: First, these things were so powerful we could never really use them in battle without damaging ourselves. One nuclear depth charge would blind our submarine detection instruments in an entire ocean, for example. Second, once we went nuclear there was no way the Soviets wouldn't. And third, nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction and it would always be immoral to use them. Pres. Bush the elder eventually removed these nukes from our ships and out of the hands of at sea operational commanders. Congress finally made it illegal to create new "mini-nukes" in 1993 when they passed the Spratt-Furse provision.
Now Pres. Bush the younger and Congress are working to create a whole new generation of "usable" nukes. They are trying to repeal the Spratt-Furse provision so they can build a bunch of mini-nukes. They also want to spend millions to create a new high yield nuclear weapon to put on top of our conventional bunker busters, a weapon that already works fine.
The thought of this keeps me up at night for two reasons. First, America signed the global Non-Proliferation Treaty with over a hundred other nations. The deal was simple: If you don't have nuclear weapons, you can't build them; in exchange, those of us who do will work to get rid of ours. How can we complain that countries like North Korea shouldn't build new nuclear weapons in violation of the treaty when the Bush Administration proposes doing the very same thing? Second, with a trigger-happy White House that believes our country can win "pre-emptive wars" on the cheap, those folks might actually use these things if they ever got their hands on them.
Do the world a favor, send Congress faxes telling them you think there is no such thing as a "usable" nuke and they shouldn't try to build any.
----
Venice Gondoliers Stage Floating Protest
May 16, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Italy-Gondola-Protest.html
ROME (AP) -- About 150 gondoliers parked their gondolas in front of Venice's municipal offices Friday, staging a strike to demand better representation in city matters.
The gondoliers briefly blocked the Grand Canal during the protest, and also hoisted a gondola up onto the Rialto Bridge, one of the landmark crossings over the lagoon city's main waterway, the ANSA news agency reported. Advertisement
Gondolier leader Fluvio Scarpa said the workers were striking to press the head of the gondolier's association to resign because he wasn't representing their interests, ANSA said.
They demanded -- and received -- a meeting with Mayor Paolo Costa, who promised more in-depth discussions about their concerns next week, ANSA said.
Venice's striped-shirted gondoliers, who charge hefty sums to ferry honeymooners and other tourists around the city's waterfront palazzi, have staged water-borne protests in the past. Last May, hundreds blocked the Grand Canal to protest street hawkers who the gondoliers said were driving away customers.
In that round, Costa praised the gondoliers for staging a demonstration that drew attention to a problem he had been trying to publicize for some time.
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3-day march against U.S. bases begins in Okinawa
Japn Today,
Friday, May 16, 2003
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=259948
NAHA - A three-day march marking the 31st anniversary of Okinawa's reversion to Japanese control and seeking to have the U.S. military bases in the prefecture removed began in Okinawa on Thursday.
The "5.15 Peace March" is expected to draw around 6,000 people from civic groups and labor unions nationwide, according to the organizer, the Okinawa Peace Action Center, a body of local citizens' groups. (Kyodo News)
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Attorneys, cops inform students of legal rights
by Lee Fehrenbacher
May 16, 2003
Western Front Online
http://www.westernfrontonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/05/16/3ec5443f332d8
The next time Western students know they will be partying, they should consider their legal rights as well, Western graduate and attorney Jeffrey A. Lustick said.
Two lawyers, a police officer and 10 to 15 students gathered in the Viking Union on Tuesday to discuss underage drinking and student privacy.
The group congregated for the question and answer forum "Your Rights and the Police," a fall and spring program sponsored by Western's Legal Information Center.
"What I found fascinating is that you have all these different spectrums of the law," said Michelanne Calhoun, Western senior and Legal Information Center coordinator. "You have the police officer's opinion, the county prosecutor's perspective and the local attorney's outlook."
Lustick said Western students need to know their rights in order to properly protect them when police knock at the door of a rowdy party.
"You may be the most intelligent, quick-minded person around, but if police knock on your door at 2 a.m., it's going to be difficult to think fast enough and clear enough to make good decisions," he said. "It's very helpful to know your rights."
One issue filtering through the local defense community concerns student privacy rights, Lustick said.
"Students do have the right to exclude police from their dorm rooms, but there could be consequences," Lustick said. "One of which is the possibility of being removed from the dorms, and the issue as to whether this is a fair trade-off is unanswered."
Lustick said only a limited number of exceptions exist that allow authorities to enter a house without consent. For instance, if police are pursuing someone, they may follow them into a house, Lustick said. Another instance is if police hear gunshots or other evidence that someone inside the house is in imminent danger, he said. "Just saying no, that you don't want a police officer to sweep your area, in our opinion, is not justification adequately to administratively remove you," Lustick said, "because it causes you to make that choice between giving up your privacy and giving up your home."
Students should also be careful to cover their windows or other openings police might be able to observe parties through, Lustick said. While underage drinking is not a felony, it may provide police with adequate reason to seek a warrant, Lustick said.
Bellingham police officer Nick Letourneau said all that is required to obtain a warrant is a phone call and approximately 20 minutes. He added, however, that he must wake judges and lawyers up in order to obtain the warrant. "(Students) face a lot of challenges," Lustick said. "I don't want to say that you're targeted, but you're part of a very large group in your community. And even though this has been a college town for over 100 years, here in Bellingham, I think there are a lot of residents who have lived here their whole life who appreciate the fact that you are heavily policed."
Western graduate Peter R. Dworkin, deputy prosecuting attorney for Whatcom County, offered his view of the relationship between Western students and police.
"There is a perception sometimes that Western students, perhaps, are targeted by police," Dworkin said. "What I think that this perception arises from, is the fact that there are 12,000 Western students on campus in a small area, and that a lot of them commit crimes."
Dworkin said students are not targeted, they are just cited for similar offenses, such as MIPs.
While both attorneys advocated that students should speak with an attorney before going to court, Dworkin said that prosecutors and officers use discretion in dealing with individuals.
Bellingham is a good place to receive legal help, Lustick said.
"When you came to Western, maybe you never intended to be charged with a crime or arrested," Lustick said. "But I will tell you, if you do get arrested, at least here in Whatcom County or Bellingham, my humble opinion is that you have some tremendous benefits because we are a smaller community."
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