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NUCLEAR
India monitoring China's nuclear base for 30 years
The fallout of war
U.N.: Iran Must Reassure World on Nukes
US TV stirs up Iran's young rebels
Iran Says ElBaradei Trip Shows Desire to Cooperate
Saddam 'destroyed weapons in 1990s'
Ex-Envoy: Nuclear Report Ignored
Japan PM May Visit N.Korea in September - Report
Bush pushes for next generation of nukes
Decision kills plans to dispose of waste
Environmental agency to spray radioactive wastewater into Gulf
Decision kills plans to dispose of waste
Quizzing Them on 9/11
Leading Senators Clash on Iraq Probe
Using one war to distract from another
MILITARY
'What Every Person Should Know About War'
At least three killed, five wounded in latest northern Afghan skirmishes
Bush plans bases to gird Africa
Ghosts of Somalia haunt Bush
Bush Wants Warplanes To Fuel Here
U.S., Indonesian jets in standoff
China, Russia, India aim to counter growing US muscle in SE Asia
Army admits units were starved of kit during Iraq war
Leader Presses Security Bill in Hong Kong After Changes
Grounding Planes the Wrong Way
Top General Says Iraqi Resistance Is Far From 'Monolithic'
In Iraq's Disorder, the Ayatollahs May Save the Day
Israeli Cabinet Agrees to Release Some Palestinian Prisoners
US to renew pressure on Israel to stop building security fence
U.S. raid: angry Turkey closes border with Iraq
Confess or die, US tells jailed Britons
The C.I.A.'s Cover Has Been Blown? Just Make Up Something About U.F.O.'s
Ex - Envoy: U.S. Twisted Iraq Intelligence
Riddle As U.S. Spy Chief Quits
Rumsfeld lauds CentCom work toward Iraq freedom
MI6 chief briefed BBC over Iraq arms fears
The BBC has merely done its duty - that's the problem
U.S. envoy says Bush "twisted" intelligence
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
Report Calls U.S. Agencies Understaffed for Bioterror
In the Fight for Privacy, States Set Off Sparks
ACTIVISTS
Leaders in Hong Kong Agree to Delay Security Law After Protests
Hung Jury, Re-Trial Possible in October
An act of peace
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- asia
India monitoring China's nuclear base for 30 years
Sunday, July 06, 2003
Pakistan Daily Times
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_15-6-2003_pg4_18
BEIJING: A Chinese scholar Zhang Shile expressed his anger and dismay over India's attempt of monitoring China's nuclear base.
Talking to APP here on Saturday, Zhang, a member of China Institute for International Strategic Studies expressed his displeasure over press report that India in collaboration with the United States had been monitoring China's nuclear installations for 30 years.
The report was published by the People's Daily today, quoting Indian Express. He said China reserves the right to protest against it with US and Indian governments.
The press report says that although there had been many contradictions in US-Indian relations in 1966, both sides easily come to a consensus on this issue keeping check on China's nuclear capability. India also closely watched China's nuclear tests.
According to the report, just as the whole world was celebrating the 50th anniversary of humans' successful scaling Mt. Qomolangma, the Indian Express recently opened a special column to give detailed introduction to the new work titled "Spy on the Roof of the World" by Sydney Wignall, a well-known Indian mountaineer and former navy lieutenant commander.
This hero, who successfully scaled the Qomolangma peak for the first time on behalf of India, joined hands with a US policy analyst in unraveling to the world the little-known historical secrets under the snow mountain covered with dust.
Wignall disclosed in the book that when he led the Indian mountaineering team in a victorious return from Qomolangma Mountains in May 1965, as soon as they got down from the plane in Palam Airport, New Delhi, they were brought to a secluded place by Balbir Singh, director of Indian intelligence bureau.
Singh told Wignall that R N Kao (called the first ancestor of Indian intelligence circle), director of the Indian Aviation Research Center, was waiting behind the airplane to see him. R N Kao informed Wignall and seven other persons that they would go to the United States to carry out a task two weeks later.
On June 19, 1965, Wignall and his party secretly flew to New York to contact an official in charge of CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) affairs. Afterwards, they were sent by the American side to Alaska to conduct three-week secret training.
It was only then they came to know that the CIA of the United States asked them to help install a secret nuclear test monitoring instrument on the 8,598-meter high Kanchanjunga Peak on the Chinese border, so as to come to know the situation in China's nuclear test base.
After Wignall and his party returned to India, they began, with the help of the US side, making preparations for the mountaineering expedition. The movement proceeded in a very covert manner, so even the then Indian chief of staff of the three services was not in the know.
As to the reason why the Qomolangma was not chosen for the mountaineering event, Wignall explained in the book that because the equipment provided by the US side was very heavy which, according to experts, was simply impossible to be carried up to the Qomolangma peak, leaving them no alternative but to take the second best.
After having made a trial, they discovered that even Kanchanjunga was too high to climb, so the two sides could not but once again change their plan, setting the target at the 7,817-meter Nanda Devi, India's first peak along the Sino-Indian border.
The US policy analyst disclosed in the book that the idea of keeping watch on China through the Himalayas came from the then US air force chief of staff. In 1964, this US air force officer had a chat with a photographer for the book "Geography of the Country" who once climbed the Qomolangma.
The photographer never for a moment forgot the height of Qomolangma as he exclaimed: Standing on the Qomolangma, one can command the whole view of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
These words brought the following sudden idea on this officer: Why not install a monitoring equipment on top of the snow mountain so as to keep persistent watch on China's nuclear base and its missile tests? The surveillance effect may be better than the reconnaissance satellite. At that time, China had succeeded in the test of its first atom bomb. US intelligence departments, after feeling astonished, were actively seeking counter-measures, therefore this US officer's idea was welcomed by CIA. The US side accepted a Wignall's proposal, gave up the idea of installing equipment on the mountain top and decided to put the equipment at a place 7,300 meters above sea level on the Nanda Devi peak. Later their actions proceeded fairly successfully.
According to Wignall's reminiscences, a signal sent out from the equipment was received by the department concerned soon after it was successfully installed. These pieces of monitoring equipment did not suspend work until October 1997, several repairs were made during the intervening period. -APP
-------- depleted uranium
The fallout of war
Iraq blames U.S. uranium shells for rampant cancer, but Pentagon says claims are exaggerated
By Moni Basu - mbasu@ajc.com
ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Sunday, July 6, 2003
http://www.statesman.com/insight/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/insight_f3709caf6081008900b0.html
BASRA, Iraq -- In her hospital cot, Nadeema Rahimi watched day turn to night from the same uncomfortable position. The frail 20-year-old was forced to lie on her stomach 24 hours a day. It was a blessing she could no longer see the basketball-size tumor on her lower back.
After her bone cancer was discovered several months ago, Rahimi's husband abandoned her. Only her mother stayed by her bedside at Basra General Hospital.
Dr. Jawad Ali, head of the hospital's oncology unit, said cancer cases such as Rahimi's skyrocketed in southern Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The most recent conflict has raised fears that yet another wave of illness could be caused by radioactive contamination.
"DU," Ali said simply.
DU is depleted uranium, the dense metal used by U.S. tanks, fighting vehicles and aircraft to pierce and destroy armor. U.S. forces used 320 tons of DU munitions in the Gulf War and more in the spring invasion. DU is radioactive, and Iraqis blame it for their mysteriously soaring rates of cancer and birth defects.
"Take a look around," the doctor said, standing in one of the many sixth-floor cancer wards. "All these people are dying."
Rahimi's kidney stopped functioning because of the severe pressure the giant tumor put on her nerves. She is paralyzed from the waist down.
Rahimi did not know modern medicine had failed her, that her cancer was too far gone for chemotherapy. But she, too, was sure she knew the cause of her suffering.
"Contamination," she said, using all her energy to lift her head off her crisscrossed arms.
Supertough weapons made with DU helped the United States and its allies score a swift victory over Saddam Hussein, but their radioactive remains continue to generate controversy.
"Low radiation is more dangerous than an atom bomb," Ali said. "This will kill us for thousands of years."
The DU debate has been going on since the first Gulf War ended. The Pentagon's take on the issue is the opposite of the Iraqis'.
U.S. officials have repeatedly insisted that exposure to DU weaponry, often called the Army's "silver bullet," poses no health risks. They say Saddam's regime exaggerated claims and manipulated data on DU effects for political gain.
Without definitive epidemiological studies, no one can point to proof that DU is responsible for the illnesses of Rahimi and thousands of other Iraqis.
"The debate has become so politicized," said Charles Sheehan-Miles, executive director of a Washington watchdog group, the Nuclear Research Policy Institute. "You've got the Pentagon on one side saying it's not harmful at all and people on the other side equating it to a nuclear holocaust. We can't necessarily trust Pentagon data any more than we can trust Iraqi data."
Wards of suffering
DU-related or not, the evidence of human suffering was plentiful at Basra's Ibn Khazwan Children's Hospital, where Dr. Jenan Hassan led a tour of wards teeming with children suffering from leukemia.
In her office, she pulled out two photo albums thick with pictures of babies born without heads or with other gross deformities. Downstairs in the neonatal ward, 2-day-old Bint Zainab Hussein lay dying in an incubator; she was born with her brain outside her head.
In 1988, 11 out of every 100,000 people in the Basra region suffered from cancer, according to Hassan's research. In 2002, she said, 123 out of every 100,000 are cancer patients. Birth defects have risen from 11 per 100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 births in 2002.
"I am not exaggerating anything. What you see is true," she said. "We did not have cancer or birth defects like this in Iraq before. And all this will go up by 2008 or so, when we will begin to see the impact of the latest war. The incubation period for DU is five years."
After the '91 war, U.S. veterans complained of Gulf War syndrome. The Pentagon monitors a small group, though Navy veteran and DU expert Dan Fahey said the study size is too small to draw any conclusions.
But the most complaints surfaced in Basra, where allied forces pounded Saddam's retreating military with armor-piercing shells made from DU, the first time such weapons were known to have been used in warfare.
Iraq's second-largest city swirls with rumors about DU. The slightest pimple conjures images of terminal cancer. Pregnant women undergo ultrasound testing to make sure their fetuses are free from abnormalities.
The latest war has only heightened those fears, though not everyone is convinced DU is the culprit.
Dr. Mohammed Nasir, director of Ibn Khazwan hospital, said Baath Party loyalists used the DU issue to attract international sympathy.
"Yes, there is an increase of cancer here, but we have had a lot of medical problems in Iraq for a long time," Nasir said. "We have no proof that it is related to DU, even though there are doctors in my own hospital who will tell you otherwise. There could be other reasons for what is happening here. The only way to settle this is to prove it scientifically."
Therein lies the problem, said Fahey.
Little research has been done on how DU affects humans, though tests on mice suggest exposure can cause cancer, reproductive disorders and other maladies, Fahey said.
A few years ago, the World Health Organization proposed an investigation of Iraq's DU claims, but Saddam killed the effort by imposing too many conditions.
"Even though I am skeptical of the Iraqi data, clearly there is something going on, particularly in Iraq," Fahey said. "All possible causes for cancer and birth defects should be studied -- including the possible effects of DU."
Weapon has long life
Depleted uranium is a relatively cost-effective way for the military to provide armor-piercing munitions and foolproof shields for U.S. tanks and fighting vehicles. It is cheap because it is essentially unusable waste material created in the enrichment of uranium for nuclear reactors and weapons. It also is sturdy because of its extremely high density.
But DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The United Nations Environmental Program says DU munitions can pollute the environment and create a 100 percent increase in uranium levels in groundwater.
A U.S. Army training manual acknowledges DU's danger, stating that "contamination will make food and water unsafe for consumption."
In addition to the 320 tons of DU rounds fired in the '91 war, the Pentagon also has acknowledged using DU in the attacks in March and April of this year. But no official assessment of the amount has been released. Independent analysts say anywhere between 200 and 2,000 tons could have been used this time.
At a recent symposium in New York, scientists offered various interpretations of DU's effects. But they all agreed soldiers returning from Iraq should be tested, that the Iraqi people must be warned of potential contamination, and that coalition forces should clean up the potentially hazardous mess they left behind.
The U.N. environmental agency's conflict assessment team announced in April it intended to survey Iraq's most recent battlegrounds, many around Baghdad and other heavily populated urban centers between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
Fahey said such a U.N. study could put to rest unfounded fears or confirm potential risks. Until then, DU remains an unknown.
"It appears a lot of DU was shot in urban areas this time, where people are living, selling food," Fahey said. "Obviously there is great concern."
Doctors in Basra said they hoped a comprehensive study was coming. For now, they curse the "dirty bombs" and treat their patients with the few drugs available to them.
"He will be my friend till the last day of his life," said Ali, holding the hand of Mohammed Abdul Saleh, 10, a leukemia patient. "I will lose all my friends this way. How can the Americans say they have nothing to do with this?"
-------- iran
U.N.: Iran Must Reassure World on Nukes
Saturday July 5, 2003
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2872591,00.html
ROME (AP) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Saturday he was hopeful Iran would give his inspectors greater access to its nuclear facilities because Tehran has to reassure the world it is not building atomic bombs.
Mohamed ElBaradei travels to Tehran on Wednesday seeking clarification from the Iranian government about U.S.-led suspicions it has a clandestine weapons program.
He also will try to persuade Iran to sign an agreement allowing unfettered inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
``I am going there to make sure that we hopefully get clarification on all outstanding issues surrounding Iran's program,'' ElBaradei said on the sidelines of a weapons conference. ``And I will be urging Iran to sign that protocol.''
Eighty countries currently abide by that additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
ElBaradei also has urged Tehran to let monitors take environmental samples at a location where it allegedly has enriched uranium - a possible step in producing nuclear weapons.
``That protocol is important because it allows us more comprehensive verification,'' ElBaradei said. ``In a country like Iran, with an extensive nuclear program, it is important that we are able to provide comprehensive assurances, in-depth verification to the international community.''
ElBaradei also will seek answers on Iran's heavy water program, which has possible applications in weapons-making, a diplomat familiar with agency operations said earlier this week on condition of anonymity.
The United States has been at the forefront of accusations that Iran is running a clandestine nuclear weapons program.
The main concern is the nuclear plant Russia is helping Iran build in the southern port city of Bushehr - a plant the Iranians say is for generating electricity.
President Bush recently warned that Iran must keep its promise not to develop nuclear weapons or ``we will deal with that.''
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told visiting British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw this past week his country had no intention of developing nuclear weapons and the IAEA already had Iran's ``full cooperation.''
The country's state-run news agency has said Tehran invited ElBaradei for talks ``to remove technical problems.''
Concerning Iraq, ElBaradei said he planned to release a report in the next week or two about a visit by IAEA inspectors to nuclear facilities looted during and after the recent war.
He said ``very little'' was missing from materials under U.N. safeguard, and the natural uranium that was missing was not sensitive in terms of proliferation terms.
``Overall it is not a matter of serious concern,'' he said.
----
US TV stirs up Iran's young rebels
Dan De Luce in Tehran
Sunday July 6, 2003
The Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,992328,00.html
The United States will beam a Farsi-language television news programme into Iran tonight, the latest in the propaganda war to create discontent among an alienated younger generation.
US officials say News and Views will air nightly for a half-hour via satellite to provide an alternative to the country's state television, which answers to the all-powerful Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The hardline clerical leadership will see the project as further evidence that recent unrest has been orchestrated from Washington.
The launch of the programme comes three days before the anniversary of a violent crackdown against student protests on 9 July, 1999. Fearful of another round of demonstrations, conservative authorities have banned rallies on Wednesday, postponed university examinations, closed dormitories and detained most of the student leadership.
A senior cleric warned on Friday that young people contemplating protests against the theocracy would face severe punishment.
Citing the 'evil objectives' of foreign powers, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani said any actions by students that 'jeopardise national security and peace would be an action of treason today'.
Student leaders and democracy activists say recent statements of support from President Bush and Tony Blair are counter-productive, providing ammunition to their opponents, who say that Iran has come under psychological attack by the Bush administration.
The establishment is struggling to placate a generation immersed in Western influences and unmoved by the ideological appeal of a revolution they do not remember.
Attempting to tap into Iran's vast youth population, the US has already launched a new radio service, called Radio Farda (Radio Tomorrow), that broadcasts Western pop music with brief news bulletins.
In Iraq, Tehran beat the US at its own game with an Arabic channel broadcast on terrestrial transmitters from Iran. Al-Alam proved a popular source of information with its 24-hour news programming during the war, before coalition media projects had got off the ground.
Radio Farda can be heard on short wave, although it is often jammed, and on satellite broadcasts. Satellite dishes are illegal in Iran, but many flout the ban and hide dishes on rooftops or behind balcony walls.
Clerics are contemptuous of satellite broadcasts from stations run by Iranian exiles in Los Angeles, which run low-budget pop music videos and crude denunciations of the theocracy from sympathisers of the former monarchy.
'People feel powerless, but when they hear someone swearing against the regime, it's a kind of ventilation,' said one Tehran journalist.
--------
Iran Says ElBaradei Trip Shows Desire to Cooperate
July 6, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday a visit by the U.N.'s nuclear inspection agency this week showed Tehran's desire to cooperate over its nuclear program, which Washington says may be a covert bid to build atomic weapons.
International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei is due on Wednesday and will push for greater openness on Iran's nuclear plans, including more intrusive checks of facilities.
``Our invitation to ElBaradei to visit Iran is a sign of our serious desire for cooperation with the IAEA,'' government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told a news conference.
ElBaradei reiterated on Saturday that Iran should agree to tougher inspections of its facilities to create confidence its peaceful intentions.
Tehran says its nuclear program is intended to provide electricity for some of its 65 million people and says it will agree to tougher inspections only if restrictions on its access to nuclear technology are lifted.
``The road for confidence building is a two-way street,'' Ramazanzadeh said.
-------- iraq / inspections
Saddam 'destroyed weapons in 1990s'
By Paul Lashmar
06 July 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=422099
A compelling explanation for why substantive evidence of weapons of mass destruction has not yet been discovered in Iraq has been given by intelligence experts who believe that Iraq dismantled its weapons in the mid-1990s.
Professor Richard Shultz, one of the United States' top intelligence experts, contends that at some point before 2000 the Iraqis changed their strategy. "I think US intelligence misunderstood the WMD issue. But then so did everyone else," he said.
Prof Shultz, of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston, says that American intelligence was convinced that Saddam Hussein had hidden actual weaponised WMD.
"It is almost certain that Saddam ordered the weapons dismantled or destroyed some time in the 1990s. Sanctions had seriously impeded the Iraqi efforts to obtain materials and equipment for their WMD programmes.
"The Iraqi strategy was to get sanctions lifted and they mounted a deception ... But then [Osama] bin Laden got in the way. After September 11 the Bush administration turned its attention firmly to Iraq," says Prof Shultz, who believes that the World Trade Centre attacks disrupted the Iraqi strategy.
Dr Magnus Ranstorp of St Andrews University says Prof Shultz's explanation is "very valid": "I think they will eventually find evidence of a WMD programme but I think we have already had indications that it was dispersed."
Evidence given in the US this week suggests that US intelligence analysts lacked new, hard information about Saddam's weapons after United Nations inspectors left Iraq in 1998. The CIA had to rely on data from the early and mid-1990s, from which it concluded in months leading up to the war that those programmes continued into 2003. These are the leaked preliminary findings of a CIA internal review panel.
The man in charge of the review, Richard J Kerr, said: "It would be very hard to conclude those programmes were not continuing, based on the reports being gathered in recent years about Iraqi ... activities before the war."
----
Ex-Envoy: Nuclear Report Ignored
Iraqi Purchases Were Doubted by CIA
By Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 6, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13536-2003Jul5?language=printer
Joseph C. Wilson, the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons, has said for the first time publicly that U.S. and British officials ignored his findings and exaggerated the public case for invading Iraq.
Wilson, whose 23-year career included senior positions in Africa and Iraq, where he was acting ambassador in 1991, said the false allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger about three years ago were used by President Bush and senior administration officials as a central piece of evidence to support their assertions that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.
"It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war," Wilson said yesterday. "It begs the question, what else are they lying about?"
The Niger story -- one piece of the administration's larger argument that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat -- was not debunked until shortly before the war began, when the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector told the Security Council the documents were forgeries. The White House has acknowledged that some documents were bogus, but a spokesman has said there was "a larger body of evidence suggesting Iraq attempted to purchase uranium in Africa," indicating it may have involved a country other than Niger.
For the past year, Wilson has spoken out against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but until he was interviewed by The Post and wrote an op-ed article published in today's New York Times, he had never disclosed his key role in the Niger controversy.
The CIA turned to Wilson in February 2002 because of his extensive experience with intelligence and his relationship with senior officials in Niger.
Wilson's account of his eight-day mission to Niger, including a statement he was told Vice President Cheney's staff was interested in the truth of the allegations, has not been contradicted by administration officials, but they have played down his importance and denied his accusations.
A senior administration official said yesterday that Wilson's mission originated within the CIA's clandestine service after Cheney aides raised questions during a briefing. "It was not orchestrated by the vice president," the official said. He added that it was reported in a routine way, did not mention Wilson's name and did not say anything about forgeries.
Wilson has been interviewed recently by the House and Senate intelligence committees, which are expected to focus on who in the National Security Council and the vice president's office had access to a CIA cable, sent March 9, 2002, that did not name Wilson but said Niger officials had denied the allegations.
Wilson said he went to Niger skeptical, knowing that the structure of the uranium industry -- controlled by a consortium of French, Spanish, German and Japanese firms -- made it highly unlikely that anyone would officially deal with Iraq because of U.N. sanctions. Wilson never saw the disputed documents but talked with officials whose signatures would have been required and concluded the allegations were almost certainly false. Back in Washington, he briefed CIA officers but did not draft his own report.
In September 2002, the story of Iraq purchasing uranium in Africa made its way into a published British dossier on Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that got wide coverage. Wilson was perplexed.
""[I]t was unfathomable to me that this information would not have been shared" with the British, he said.
In late September, CIA Director George J. Tenet and top aides made two presentations in closed session on Capitol Hill. They said there was information that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium but that there was some doubt the information was credible. But on Dec. 19, 2002, a State Department fact sheet listed attempts to purchase uranium, specifically from Niger, as an item omitted from Iraq's supposedly full disclosure of its weapons of mass destruction program.
Bush, in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 23, declared that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
After Bush's speech, Wilson said he contacted the State Department, noted that the Niger story had been debunked and said, "You might want to make sure the facts are straight."
In early February, the CIA received a translation of the Niger documents and in early March, copies of the documents, which it turned over to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
After IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei announced they were bogus, Wilson read a March 8 front-page story in The Washington Post that quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying, "We fell for it."
The quote provided "a wake-up call . . . that somebody was not being candid about this Niger business," he said. Interviewed that day on CNN, Wilson said: "I think it's safe to say that the U.S. government should have or did know that this report was a fake before Dr. ElBaradei mentioned it in his report at the U.N. yesterday."
In June, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that top administration officials were unaware of the faked documents at the time of the State of the Union. "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."
But Wilson said he considers that "inconceivable." Based on his experience at the NSC, Wilson does not believe his report would have been buried. Having been told the vice president's office was interested, he said, "If you are senior enough to ask this question, you are well above the bowels of the bureaucracy. You are in that circle."
Last week, Wilson said of Hussein: "I'm glad the tyrant is gone." But he does not believe the war was ever about eliminating Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It was, he said, a political push to "redraw the map of the Middle East."
While his family prepared for a Fourth of July dinner, he proudly showed a reporter photos of himself with Bush's parents. On a den wall was a framed cable to him in Baghdad, from the first President Bush, dated Nov. 20, 1990:
"What you are doing day in and day out under the most trying conditions is truly inspiring," the cable states. "Keep fighting the good fight. You and your stalwart colleagues are always in our thoughts and prayers."
Wilson observed: "I guess he didn't realize that one of these days I would carry that fight against his son's administration."
-------- korea
Japan PM May Visit N.Korea in September - Report
July 6, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-japan-korea-north.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is exploring the possibility of a visit to North Korea in September, a major Japanese daily reported on Sunday.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) said talks were going on behind the scenes to arrange what would be Koizumi's second visit to the reclusive communist state, after a trip in September 2002.
A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman said he was unaware of such a possibility.
``There is no such plan whatsoever, as far as I know,'' ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima said.
``However, we have had communications through various channels with an eye to re-opening normalisation talks and also resolving the abduction and the nuclear issues.''
He declined to give further details or say how recently the last talks had been.
The Nikkei said Koizumi's visit would aim to break the stalemate in international negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program as well as resolve issues over its abduction of Japanese.
Japan would have to coordinate its actions with the United States and consider a number of domestic and international issues before any such visit could take place, it added, however.
Any pre-visit negotiations with the reclusive communist state would prove difficult, it said.
Koizumi made a historic visit to North Korea last September and met with its leader Kim Jong-il, who apologized and admitted that Pyongyang did kidnap Japanese in the 1960s and 1970s to help train spies.
His admission led to talks on resuming ties, but negotiations have since stalled, largely over the handling of five abductees who returned to Japan in October and remain separated from their North Korean-born children.
The crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions has also hampered progress.
China, communist Pyongyang's nearest friend, hosted an initial round of talks on the nuclear issue that included China, North Korea and the United States in April, but the meeting ended with no evident agreement and no date set for another round.
Washington has pressed for Pyongyang to agree to expand future talks to include South Korea and Japan, but the North wants direct two-way talks with the United States.
Some Japanese analysts, though, have said it was possible that, if the situation became completely deadlocked, Koizumi could attempt to break this through ``bold diplomatic moves'' such as visiting North Korea.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bush pushes for next generation of nukes
7/6/2003
By Tom Squitieri,
USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-07-06-nuclear-usat_x.htm
MERCURY, Nev. - If the Bush administration succeeds in its determined but little-noticed push to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, this sun-baked desert flatland 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas could once again reverberate with the ground-shaking thumps of nuclear explosions that used to be common here.
The nuclear-weapons test areas are now a wasteland that is home mostly to lizards and coyotes. Throughout the Nevada Test Site, the ground is strewn with mangled buildings and pockmarked with craters, the ghostly evidence of the 928 nuclear tests the government conducted here from 1951 to 1992.
A concrete tower designed to hold the bomb for what would have been the 929th test still looms over the desert floor.
But "Icecap," the test of a bomb 10 times the size of the one that devastated the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, was halted when the first President Bush placed a moratorium on U.S. nuclear tests in October 1992. The voluntary test ban came two years after Russia stopped its nuclear tests.
In the 11 years since, the United States has worked to halt the spread of nuclear weapons around the world and has often touted its own self-imposed restraint as a model for other nations.
But the Bush administration has now taken a decidedly different approach, one that has touched off a passionate debate in Washington. Last year the White House released, to little publicity, the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. That policy paper embraces the use of nuclear weapons in a first strike and on the battlefield; it also says a return to nuclear testing may soon be necessary. It was coupled with a request for $70 million to study and develop new types of nuclear weapons and to shorten the time it would take to test them.
Last November, months before the invasion of Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld casually told reporters during a flight to Chile that military strategists were examining ways to neutralize Iraq's chemical and biological weapons. Among options studied were bunker-busting bombs that might have nuclear payloads.
Bunker-busters are heavy, missile-like bombs with hardened noses that penetrate the ground before exploding. No nuclear bunker-busters were employed in Iraq, although their use was considered there and in Afghanistan.
But the matter-of-fact way in which Rumsfeld suggested their possible role was a rare public sign of a growing effort by the administration to end the decade-long ban on developing and testing new nuclear bombs.
The main reason offered by the Pentagon is that "rogue" nations such as North Korea, Iran and Libya have gone deep, building elaborate bunkers hundreds of feet underground where their leaders and weapons could ride out an attack by the biggest conventional weapons U.S. forces could throw at them. U.S. officials also theorize that the vaporizing blast of a nuclear bomb might be the only way to safely destroy an enemy's chemical or biological weapons.
The Pentagon says developing new nuclear weapons makes sense in a dangerous world. "Without having the ability to hold those targets at risk, we essentially provide sanctuary," J.D. Crouch, an assistant secretary of Defense, told reporters earlier this year.
But others argue that moving toward a new generation of nuclear weapons, instead of improving conventional and non-nuclear ways to attack deep targets or chemical weapons sites, is fraught with danger.
"They are opening the door to a new era of a global nuclear arms competition," says Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. "As we try to turn the tide of nuclear proliferation, the last thing we should suggest is that nuclear weapons have a role in the battlefield, and these weapons are battlefield weapons. This is a serious step in the wrong direction."
Kimball and others say research would eventually lead to testing. If Congress approves the White House requests, the first live tests of any new nuclear weapon could come as early as 2005.
Since 1992, weapons have been tested only in non-nuclear experiments 963 feet below the ground at the test site and in computer simulations here and in labs. Congress has mostly gone along with the new approach and has green-lighted most of the Bush administration proposals. This spring, the House of Representatives and the Senate agreed to spend $15.5 million to develop a nuclear bunker-buster called the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator." They also agreed to spend money to make changes to the Nevada Test Site, shortening to as little as 18-24 months the time it would take to resume nuclear tests. (It would take 24-36 months now.)
Congress is hung up on just one element of the Bush plan: a ban on researching and developing a nuclear bomb with a payload of 5 kilotons or less. (A kiloton is equivalent to the explosive force of 1,000 tons of TNT.) The Senate voted to end the ban, while the House voted to keep it; the two sides are expected to settle their differences in a House-Senate conference committee by August.
'10, 9, 8, 7 ...'
In the peak days of nuclear testing, more than 11,000 people worked here at the test site, an area larger than Rhode Island. It was a bustling place with a movie theater, newspaper, social activities, souvenir earrings in the shape of mushroom clouds and a clear sense of mission underscored by its own peculiar brand of humor. When protesters occasionally slipped through security and hid on the grounds to try to stop a test, officials would flush them out by turning on the PA system and faking a countdown - "10, 9, 8, 7. .. " - until the terrified trespassers jumped up and waved their arms to be hustled away.
Now the test ranges look like historical snapshots that have faded under the blistering Nevada sun. Lizards skitter about the debris that survived the numerous nuclear blasts. Coyotes give hard stares to the rare human interloper who interrupts their scavenging. Just over a hill is "Area 51," the ultra-secret Air Force test site that spawned rumors of strange new weapons and UFO visits.
Go north, and the land becomes a moonscape where craters large and small pinpoint the locations of dozens of underground tests. Turn south, and the road leads to "Doom City," where twisted steel girders, a shattered bank vault and the skeletal remains of buildings, cars and airplanes are testimony to the savage power of nuclear blasts.
"In the past, you could take (a nuclear weapon) off the shelf, take it to the Nevada Test Site and detonate it to see what you needed to see," says Kevin Rohrer, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear arsenal. "Now we have to do it with computers, and that doesn't tell you how the (nuclear) material ages, what physical properties have changed, what all you need to know."
The United States has signed three treaties to limit nuclear weapons testing: the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban treaty, which prohibited aboveground and underwater nuclear tests; the 1974 Threshold Treaty, which limited tests to less than 15 kilotons; and the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban, which was to halt all testing. The Senate never ratified the 1996 treaty. But like other nations, the United States abides by treaties it has signed, even if they have not been ratified.
Bunkers and bugs
During his trip to Chile last fall, Rumsfeld questioned the reliability of aging and long-untested U.S. nuclear stockpiles. He suggested that the military might need to resume testing weapons to ensure they would work if deployed.
"If you are asking me (if I am going) to go to the president and recommend re-initiating nuclear testing, the answer is, no, I am not. Could I someday? Yes, I could, if they came to me and said, 'I'm worried about the reliability and safety and our weapons,' " Rumsfeld said then.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says nuclear weapons could be crucial tools for destroying chemical and biological weapons stocks without causing wider harm.
"In terms of anthrax, it's said that gamma rays can ... destroy the anthrax spores, which is something we need to look at," Myers told reporters at the Pentagon on May 20. "And in chemical weapons, of course, the heat (of a nuclear blast) can destroy the chemical compounds and make them not develop that plume that conventional weapons might do, that would then drift and perhaps bring others in harm's way."
Military planners also see nuclear bombs as vital for destroying deep bunkers, which they say have become rogue nations' tool of choice for putting their weapons beyond the reach of the world's mightiest military force. At the top of the bunker list is North Korea, according to an official at the Defense Intelligence Agency who asked not to be named. The North Koreans have developed advanced tunneling equipment and improved building materials that allow them to dig deeper, more quickly and more stealthily. They can make their bunkers stronger and put them in places where U.S. surveillance now has a tougher time finding them.
Neutralizing such bunkers is getting more difficult, according to a congressional agency.
"Special operations forces or precision-guided conventional bombs might defeat buried structures by attacking power supplies, ventilation systems and exits. The only way to destroy them is with a strong shock wave that travels through the ground," the Congressional Research Service said in a report in January.
The fallout problem
But some military experts argue that while underground bunkers are a legitimate concern, nuclear bunker-busters are not the answer.
"Even if there were a worldwide trend toward deeply buried bunkers, which is doubtful, alternative means exist for disabling the devices stored there," says Loren Thompson, a military analyst with The Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va., public policy group. "These include conventional penetrating warheads with higher yields, microwave weapons that shut down bunker electronic systems and various special forces."
The limitations of physics mean even the best-designed bunker-busters can burrow only 30 to 50 feet before exploding. The explosion triggers shock waves that travel down toward buried targets and destroy them.
Critics say that means nuclear bunker-busters wouldn't be able to burrow deep enough before exploding to contain the fallout they would create. Sidney Drell, a Stanford University physicist, determined that destroying a target dug 1,000 feet into rock would require a nuclear weapon with a yield of 100 kilotons - more than six times that of the Hiroshima bomb. The explosion of a nuclear bomb that big would launch enormous amounts of radioactive debris into the air and contaminate a huge area.
To contain fallout for a one-kiloton bomb, the warhead would have to penetrate an estimated 220 feet underground, many times the depth achievable by any current earth-penetrator warhead. The challenge scientists face is to find some way to get the bomb deep enough so that the explosion harms only what's underground - not people on the surface.
Critics say the evidence against battlefield use of nuclear weapons is spread all over the Nevada Test Site. Most notable is Sedan Crater, 1,280 feet across and 320 feet deep. It is the largest crater at the test site, the result of a 104-kiloton device that was exploded 635 feet underground in 1962.
The idea was to see whether nuclear weapons could be used for such peaceful purposes as creating new harbors. The blast threw 12 million tons of radioactive earth 290 feet into the air, where it became airborne fallout. That was the end of the idea of digging harbors with nuclear bombs.
Skeptics of the Bush program - and the ability of the new weapons to perform as advertised - say they hope the debate over the weapons has not started too late.
"The public does not focus very much on national security and foreign policy," says John Isaacs, president of Council for a Livable World, a Washington, D.C.-based nuclear arms public policy group. "The administration has prevailed by telling Congress this is only research, not developing or testing or building. The next battles (in Congress) may not be as easy."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Decision kills plans to dispose of waste
Sunday, July 6, 2003
By Jim Nesbitt | South Carolina Bureau Chief
Augusta Chronicle
AIKEN - An Idaho federal judge's decision late last week to torpedo an attempt to reclassify radioactive waste so it could be stored at the Savannah River Site and two other government nuclear reservations will have a broader and more expensive impact than initially thought, environmentalists and pro-nuclear advocates say.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill rejected a Department of Energy claim that some wastes were exempt from the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
The ruling shatters the DOE's plan to avoid an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion environmental cleanup partly by mixing grout and concrete with about 49,000 gallons of sludge in underground carbon-steel tanks.
The tanks store strontium-90, plutonium, uranium and other radioactive wastes from 49 years of making nuclear materials.
The ruling also threatens a second cost-cutting measure at SRS - turning low levels of cesium into solid cakes of grout, fly ash and cement that can be stored in sealed concrete bunkers at the site's Saltstone unit.
Tom Clements, an organizer with International Greenpeace, and Mal McKibben, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology, said Judge Winmill's ruling affects both attempts to accelerate cleanup of wastes from the Cold War nuclear buildup.
"If I were a judge, I'd say it's all the same thing," said Mr. McKibben, a retired SRS employee who was senior manager of construction for the site's Defense Waste Processing Facility. "It's all high-level waste. According to the judge's ruling, you can't say that is waste incidental to processing."
Mr. Clements said the ruling carries an expensive but unknown price tag.
"That's the key question - how much this is going to cost and how it's going to affect the timetable."
If Judge Winmill's decision survives a probable DOE appeal, it means the cesium-laced cakes and the sludge will have to be processed for eventual permanent storage. It and the rest of SRS's waste would go to a high-level radioactive dump in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
There are 85 million gallons of deadly nuclear weapons waste at SRS, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. SRS holds 34 million gallons.
In May 2001, Georgia Department of Natural Resources officials sharply protested DOE's plans to grout the sludge.
"As you know, the State of Georgia is opposed to the disposal of high-level radioactive waste onsite at SRS and has expressed this opposition ... many times over the years, dating as far back as the administration of Gov. Jimmy Carter," wrote James C. Hardman Jr., the department's environmental radiation program manager. "We consider "Direct Disposal in Grout" to be nothing more than onsite disposal of high-level waste, and for this reason, we are strongly opposed..."
Both grouting the sludge and making cesium cakes were attempts to avoid heavy costs. But they betrayed a promise made by both the current and former contractors who ran SRS for the government - Westinghouse and Dupont, Mr. McKibben said.
"That's what bothered me most," Mr. McKibben said. "For 25 years, Westinghouse and Dupont said they'd get rid of all the waste and take it off-site. Then they said 'Oh, we're going to leave some of it behind."'
-------- florida
Environmental agency to spray radioactive wastewater into Gulf to prevent 'ecological disaster'
The Associated Press
July 6 2003
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-706pollution,0,1925025.story?coll=sfla-news-florida
PINEY POINT -- The state this week will try to clean up the Piney Point fertilizer plant, spraying millions of gallons of wastewater into the Gulf of Mexico to try to avert what one state regulator calls ``one of the biggest environmental threats in Florida history.''
State officials knew in 1995 that the owner, Mulberry Corp., was struggling and if it went under, the state would be stuck with hundreds of millions of gallons of acidic wastewater in gypsum stacks on the edge of Tampa Bay.
But according to a review of files by the St. Petersburg Times, the state didn't act on warnings that the company was in trouble and didn't do enough to prevent an environmental hazard.
State officials fear the wastewater will spill into Tampa Bay, destroying plant and animal life for miles.
So this week they plan to treat the waste, load it on a barge, and spray it into the Gulf of Mexico at an estimated cost of $140 million.
Critics -- including some in the phosphate industry -- say the Department of Environmental Protection didn't go after the company soon enough.
``Did they have enough authority to shut Piney Point down? I think they did,'' said Bob Hugli of the Florida Phosphate Council. ``I don't know why they waited so long.''
But DEP Deputy Secretary Allan Bedwell said regulators did all they could under state law.
The plant is in Manatee County, a mile from Bishop Harbor on Tampa Bay.
Production of phosphate fertilizer creates a radioactive byproduct called phosphogypsum, which is stacked into sandy mountains. The stacks form dikes, creating holding ponds for radioactive water that is another byproduct of fertilizer manufacturing. Piney Point's two phosphogypsum stacks -- the walls of the ponds -- are 50 to 70 feet high.
The biggest potential danger is that heavy rains will overflow the holding ponds, sending untreated radioactive water into the watershed that runs into the bay.
When a fertilizer plant is running, the plant reuses the water and rainfall isn't usually a threat to create a spill. But Piney Point was idle for much of the 1990s, requiring continuous use of pumps to keep water at safe levels. If the pumps fail, the water would likely overflow.
In 1991, one DEP official suggested going to court to close the ponds, the newspaper found. But the state didn't. In 1993, new owners Mulberry took over and promised to restart production, but didn't.
State rules say a stack that sits idle for more than a year should be closed permanently, the water drained and the top covered. But DEP never enforced the rule at Piney Point because the company promised to revive the plant.
Several times the company managed to avoid having to clean up the stacks, promising to revive production. But by January 2000 Mulberry had shut down all operations.
A DEP inspection in late December 2000 found Piney Point on the verge of having its power cut off for nonpayment. No power meant no pumps circulating the water. Still, DEP did nothing, the paper reported.
DEP attorney Jonathan Alden denied his agency bent rules to allow the company to keep from cleaning up the stacks despite warnings that its finances were in bad shape.
In July 2001, after Mulberry's bankruptcy had forced DEP to take over the cleanup, engineers warned Piney Point couldn't handle a heavy storm. Then, heavy rain from Tropical Storm Gabrielle inundated the area, and DEP dumped millions of gallons of waste, with elevated levels of acid and nitrogen, into Bishop Harbor.
After a tropical storm in 2002 dumped 16 inches of rain, the stack was closer to spilling its waste water and in January 2003, DEP said it was considering dumping the waste into the Gulf as the only way to lower the level before hurricane season filled Piney Point to the breaking point.
DEP says it's more expensive than just dumping it into the harbor nearby, because it will carry the water far out into the Gulf and disperse over a wide area to dilute it.
``DEP is willing to pay a higher price for Gulf dispersion to protect lives and the environment,'' Bedwell wrote in one document cited by the paper.
In April, the EPA agreed to dumping the water from barges, which are set to head out this week.
-------- south carolina
Decision kills plans to dispose of waste
Sunday, July 6, 2003
By Jim Nesbitt | South Carolina Bureau Chief,
Augusta Chronicle
http://www.augustachronicle.com/stories/070603/met_221-7040.000.shtml
AIKEN - An Idaho federal judge's decision late last week to torpedo an attempt to reclassify radioactive waste so it could be stored at the Savannah River Site and two other government nuclear reservations will have a broader and more expensive impact than initially thought, environmentalists and pro-nuclear advocates say.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill rejected a Department of Energy claim that some wastes were exempt from the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
The ruling shatters the DOE's plan to avoid an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion environmental cleanup partly by mixing grout and concrete with about 49,000 gallons of sludge in underground carbon-steel tanks.
The tanks store strontium-90, plutonium, uranium and other radioactive wastes from 49 years of making nuclear materials.
The ruling also threatens a second cost-cutting measure at SRS - turning low levels of cesium into solid cakes of grout, fly ash and cement that can be stored in sealed concrete bunkers at the site's Saltstone unit.
Tom Clements, an organizer with International Greenpeace, and Mal McKibben, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology, said Judge Winmill's ruling affects both attempts to accelerate cleanup of wastes from the Cold War nuclear buildup.
"If I were a judge, I'd say it's all the same thing," said Mr. McKibben, a retired SRS employee who was senior manager of construction for the site's Defense Waste Processing Facility. "It's all high-level waste. According to the judge's ruling, you can't say that is waste incidental to processing."
Mr. Clements said the ruling carries an expensive but unknown price tag.
"That's the key question - how much this is going to cost and how it's going to affect the timetable."
If Judge Winmill's decision survives a probable DOE appeal, it means the cesium-laced cakes and the sludge will have to be processed for eventual permanent storage. It and the rest of SRS's waste would go to a high-level radioactive dump in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
There are 85 million gallons of deadly nuclear weapons waste at SRS, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. SRS holds 34 million gallons.
In May 2001, Georgia Department of Natural Resources officials sharply protested DOE's plans to grout the sludge.
"As you know, the State of Georgia is opposed to the disposal of high-level radioactive waste onsite at SRS and has expressed this opposition ... many times over the years, dating as far back as the administration of Gov. Jimmy Carter," wrote James C. Hardman Jr., the department's environmental radiation program manager. "We consider "Direct Disposal in Grout" to be nothing more than onsite disposal of high-level waste, and for this reason, we are strongly opposed..."
Both grouting the sludge and making cesium cakes were attempts to avoid heavy costs. But they betrayed a promise made by both the current and former contractors who ran SRS for the government - Westinghouse and Dupont, Mr. McKibben said.
"That's what bothered me most," Mr. McKibben said. "For 25 years, Westinghouse and Dupont said they'd get rid of all the waste and take it off-site. Then they said 'Oh, we're going to leave some of it behind."'
-------- us politics
Quizzing Them on 9/11
Bush and Clinton may be asked to meet with the independent commission investigating the terrorist attacks
By TIMOTHY J. BURGER AND MATTHEW COOPER
Sunday, Jul. 06, 2003
TIME Magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030714-463061,00.html
Will President Bush be summoned before the independent commission investigating 9/11? It now appears very likely. John Lehman, Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary and one of five Republicans on the 10-member panel, told TIME that he wants both President Bush and former President Clinton to meet with the commission and discuss matters that could include what their Administrations knew about the al-Qaeda terrorist plots-and what was done to combat them-before the 9/11 attacks.
With the commission evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, Lehman's position makes it all but certain that a majority will support a request to interview Bush and Clinton. "I don't think any commission should ever formally call a President to testify," Lehman said, "but I think it is very much in the country's interest-and in both President Clinton's and President Bush's interest-to meet directly with the commissioners." Responded White House press secretary Ari Fleischer: "The White House has been and will continue to cooperate with the commission and its work is important. I'm not going to speculate about an event that has not even taken place."
Investigation fever is building on Capitol Hill. Richard Shelby, former top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who complained that federal agencies like the cia and countries like Saudi Arabia hampered the congressional probe into the Sept. 11 attacks, has a new angle. Term limits forced the Alabama Republican off the intelligence panel this year, but as new chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he is setting up hearings aimed at terrorist funding. A Shelby aide says the hearings will have "the Executive Branch telling the committee what they've done with the Patriot Act," the post-9/11 law that expanded the government's antiterror capabilities. The aide says the hearings' focus will include the CIA and the governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen-and what they're doing to stanch the flow of terrorists' funds.
From the Jul. 14, 2003 issue of TIME magazine
----
Leading Senators Clash on Iraq Probe
July 6, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-intelligence.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee clashed on Sunday over whether to open another probe into alleged White House manipulation of intelligence to make the case for war against Iraq.
Michigan Sen. Carl Levin told NBC's ``Meet the Press'' that new accusations by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson over claims Iraq bought uranium from Niger added fuel to an investigation he was opening with his own staff.
But the committee chairman, Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, said he favored letting the Senate Intelligence Committee finish its probe before deciding whether his panel should dig further.
``We cannot sort out this morning, in one minute, this situation. It is being carefully reviewed and objectively reviewed by the Senate in the Intelligence Committee,'' Warner said. He said he did not see any compelling evidence that the administration twisted intelligence for its own purposes.
Controversy is raging in both Britain and the United States over charges that the governments of the two countries manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. No evidence of such weapons has been found by the occupying forces in Iraq.
Wilson, Washington's envoy to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, told the New York Times and NBC that he traveled to Africa in 2002 at the request of the CIA to investigate a report about Iraq buying uranium from Niger.
Wilson said he had reported back that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place and that the CIA would have passed on his assessment to Vice President Dick Cheney.
``INTELLIGENCE TWISTED''
Yet Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair both cited the report earlier this year to support their charges that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain nuclear weapons and to justify their invasion of Iraq in March.
The International Atomic Energy Agency later also dismissed the report as being based on forged documents.
``Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat,'' Wilson wrote in Sunday's New York Times.
``Either the administration has information that it has not shared with the public or ... they were using the selective use of facts and intelligence to bolster a decision that had already been made to go to war,'' Wilson said on ``Meet the Press.''
Levin said the new allegations were deeply troubling.
``I've instructed my staff on the armed services committee to make a very in-depth inquiry into a number of issues, including this uranium issue,'' Levin said.
``But Ambassador Wilson's statement this morning adds a great deal of additional evidence to me because now it's personal evidence from the ambassador.''
Warner denied suggestions that he was bowing to White House pressure not to hold separate hearings on the issues and said he remained confident that weapons of mass destruction would ultimately be found in Iraq.
----
Using one war to distract from another
By G. Jefferson Price III Perspective Editor
July 6, 2003
Baltimore Sun
http://www.sunspot.net/news/opinion/oped/bal-pe.column06jul06,0,2760802.story
Keep a sharp eye on Liberia, folks.
Not that what happens there is of crucial importance to Americans - any more so than, say, what happens in Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Zimbabwe or any other African country where life is dangerous, degrading and desperate, and America has done practically nothing about it.
By the time you read this column, U.S. forces might have landed in Liberia and it would be logical for Americans to wonder why - why now? If they haven't landed, but the Bush administration is still talking about the possibility, the same question applies. Why Liberia? Why now? The place has been in a state of bloody chaos for more than a decade.
Could it be that the Bush administration needs a distraction?
The scenario is awfully reminiscent of one that existed almost 20 years ago, when Ronald Reagan was president and George Bush senior was his vice president.
American troops were in Lebanon to help save democracy from godless communism and its terrorist surrogates, and to bring order and stability to a bad place, preferably under a Christian leadership. American Marines were being shot at and killed. Most Lebanese, especially the Lebanese Shiites, were not happy the Marines were there. Then one terrible day, a Shiite drove a truck bomb into the Marine barracks near Beirut airport and the explosion killed more than 200 U.S. servicemen.
This disaster shocked the Reagan White House and the American people who wondered what on earth American Marines were doing in Lebanon. The world press was glued to the grisly scene in Beirut, where Marines were being brought out of the rubble, one body after another.
One day they focused on Vice President Bush, who surveyed the rubble dressed in a helmet and a flak jacket and proclaimed that America would not let "a bunch of insidious terrorists shape the foreign policy of the United States." He also promised, "We are not going to let our friends down because of terror."
Later events rather quickly proved that Bush was wrong on both counts. "Insidious terrorists" quickly changed the policy of the United States government in Lebanon.
Within a year, the U.S. Marines and the naval armada lying off the coast of Lebanon were gone. America's friends in Lebanon - whoever they were - were left to their own devices.
And today, a bunch of insidious terrorists has had a drastic impact on the shape of American policy.
The bombing of the Marine barracks happened on a Sunday morning in late October 1983. Bush's visit was the following Wednesday. That Friday, Reagan ordered the invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, where he claimed Godless communists were taking over and threatening America.
Grenada? Anybody remember that pathetic place in the catalog of Reagan adventures? The debate goes on over whether there was any cause to invade the island to get rid of the communists from Cuba and the Soviet Union. Most people don't remember Grenada. But it served its purpose in a couple of ways in 1983, and one of them was to distract from the tragedy of Beirut.
Today, President Bush, whose foreign and domestic policies are overwhelmed by insidious terrorism, has America deeply settled into the aftermath of a war in Iraq, which is not going well at all.
It is similar to Lebanon in some ways, but worse.
No one dragged America into Iraq as they did in Lebanon. The war is not over, no matter what Bush may say, because American soldiers are still being killed by Iraqis.
In Iraq, as in Lebanon, America says it wants to bring freedom and stability to the Iraqi people, but they do not want America's style of democracy and freedom.
Weapons of mass destruction, the main reason for going after Saddam Hussein, have not been found. Neither has Hussein been found. Iraq's vast oil fields are not working. The talk from the president - when he's not doing his macho "Bring them on" - is that Americans will be in Iraq for a long and dangerous time.
Not a happy picture.
Imagine how delightful, under the circumstances, it would be to go to a place like Liberia where people are being shown on television pleading for the United States to come and rescue their country. All those happy faces cheerfully welcoming U.S. troops dispatched by President Bush.
Though there is strong post-Somalia reticence about all things African, the possibilities must still seem irresistible to the Bush handlers.
Reagan had Grenada. Bush could have Liberia. Shucks, there are probably some al-Qaida there.
Remember Wag the Dog, the film that came out during Bill Clinton's presidency? It was a marvelous satire about a president who was in trouble over a love affair and whose handlers created a phony war to distract the public.
If Bush sends troops to Liberia, it would be "Wag the Dog Comes True," except Bush wouldn't be trying to distract from a love affair that disgraces the presidency. He'd be trying to distract Americans from the last war he started in a place that has been wrecked, and where Americans are being killed every week.
-------- MILITARY
FIRST CHAPTER
'What Every Person Should Know About War'
By CHRIS HEDGES
July 6, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/books/chapters/0713-1st-hedges.html
What is a war?
War is defined as an active conflict that has claimed more than 1,000 lives.
Has the world ever been at peace?
Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history.
How many people have died in war?
At least 108 million people were killed in wars in the twentieth century. Estimates for the total number killed in wars throughout all of human history range from 150 million to 1 billion. War has several other effects on population, including decreasing the birthrate by taking men away from their wives. The reduced birthrate during World War II is estimated to have caused a population deficit of more than 20 million people.
How many people around the world serve in the military?
The combined armed forces of the world have 21.3 million people. China has the world's largest, with 2.4 million. America is second with 1.4 million. India has 1.3 million, North Korea 1 million, and Russia 900,000. Of the world's 20 largest militaries, 14 are in developing nations?
How many wars are taking place right now?
At the beginning of 2003 there were 30 wars going on around the world. These included conflicts in Afghanistan, Algeria, Burundi, China, Colombia, the Congo, India, Indonesia, Israel, Iraq, Liberia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.
Is there a genetic reason why we fight?
There is no single "war gene." Combinations of genes can predispose a person to violence. However, aggression is a product of biology and environment. In America, sources of aggressive dispositions include domestic violence, the portrayal of violence in the media, threats from enemies, and combat training.
Is war essentially male?
Worldwide, 97 percent of today's military personnel are male. This is thought to be a reflection of culture and biology. Fifteen percent (204,000) of American military personnel are female.
Can women fight as effectively as men do?
Yes. While fewer women are "natural killers," and women are on average smaller than men, there are many women who have the psychological makeup and the physical ability to fight. There are many men without either. Women have shown valor in combat. Dr. Mary Walker won the Medal of Honor during the Civil War.
Why are civilians so attracted to war?
War is often regarded by observers as honorable and noble. It can be viewed as a contest between nations, a chance to compete and be declared the victor.
Does the American public support war?
Between 65 and 85 percent of the American public will support a military action when it begins. Vietnam had 64 percent support in 1965. As American casualties mount, support often decreases. The Korean and Vietnam Wars ended with support levels near 30 percent. World War II support levels never fell below 77 percent, despite the prolonged and damaging nature of the conflict. The Gulf War enjoyed similar levels of support.
How large is the American military?
The active peacetime force of the U.S. armed services includes 1.4 million people, with the Army making up almost 500,000 of that number. The Navy has approximately 380,000 men and women on active duty. The Air Force has approximately 365,000, and the Marines have approximately 175,000. Approximately 1.3 million Americans serve in Reserve and National Guard branches that can be activated in time of war.
How many Americans have died in wars?
More than 650,000 Americans have been killed in combat. Another 243,000 have died while wars were being fought, due to training accidents, injury, and disease. In the twentieth century, approximately 53,000 Americans were killed in combat in World War I, 291,000 in World War II, 33,000 in the Korean War, 47,000 in Vietnam, and 148 in the Gulf War. Including deaths from disease, accidents, and other factors, each war's total was much higher: approximately 116,000 died in World War I, 400,000 in World War II, 53,000 in the Korean War, 90,000 in Vietnam, and almost 400 in the Gulf War.
How deadly is the American military?
It is difficult to measure how many enemy deaths American armed forces have inflicted. Americans and their allies typically cause 10 to 20 times more combat casualties than American forces suffer. Estimates of Iraqi soldiers killed in the Gulf War range from 1,500 to 100,000. The lowest figure would still be 10 times the number of Americans killed in the war. Approximately 850,000 Vietcong died in the Vietnam War, 18 times the 47,000 U.S. dead. More than 600,000 North Korean and 1 million Chinese fighters died in the Korean War, almost 50 times the 33,000 American dead. In World War II, 3,250,000 German and 1,507,000 Japanese soldiers, sailors, and pilots were killed, 16 times the 291,000 American servicemen who were killed.
How much does it cost the United States to maintain its armed forces?
Since 1975, America has spent between 3 and 6 percent of its gross domestic product on national defense, or approximately 15 to 30 percent of each year's federal budget. In the first years of the twenty-first century, this meant spending roughly $350 billion per year. In comparison, annual spending for other programs included roughly $15 billion on state and international assistance and $60 billion on education. From 1940 to 1996 (a period that includes several cycles of war and peace, including the arms race of the cold war), America spent $16.23 trillion on the military ($5.82 trillion of that on nuclear weapons), versus $1.70 trillion on health care and $1.24 trillion on international affairs.
How much does war cost?
The cost of the Gulf War was approximately $76 billion. Vietnam cost $500 billion; the Korean War, $336 billion; and World War II, almost $3 trillion. Put another way, the Gulf War cost each person in the United States $306; Vietnam, $2,204 per person; Korea, $2,266 per person; and World War II, $20,388 per person. At its outset, estimates for the cost of the Iraqi War were $50 to $140 billion, and an additional $75 to $500 billion for occupation and peacekeeping, or from $444 to $2,274 per person.
How big is the military industry in the United States?
Besides the 1.4 million active duty personnel, the military employs 627,000 civilians. The defense industry employs another 3 million. In total, the military and its supporting manufacturing base employs 3.5 percent of the U.S. labor force. In 2002, the Department of Defense spent $170.8 billion with military contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
How has the size of the industry changed over time?
The 2003 level of 3.5 percent of the labor force is historically low. In 1987, toward the end of the cold war, defense (including the military) made up 5.7 percent of the U.S. labor market; in 1968, during Vietnam, 9.8 percent; in 1943, during World War II, 39 percent. After World War II, defense employment dropped to 4.5 percent, but jumped back to 11 percent in 1951 with the Korean War and the start of the cold war.
Does the military industry help make defense spending decisions?
Yes. In 2000, defense lobbying groups spent approximately $60 million. Defense political action committees also contribute roughly $14 million per congressional election cycle. Defense aerospace, defense electronics, and miscellaneous defense are the 31st-, 44th-, and 46th-ranking industries, respectively.
How many weapons does the U.S. military industry export each year?
In 2001, U.S. arms manufacturers exported $9.7 billion in weapons worldwide. The United Kingdom was second in international exports with $4 billion. In addition, the United States made new sales of $12.1 billion. Russia was second with $5.8 billion. The United States is the world's largest arms manufacturer, supplying almost half of all the arms sold on the world market.
What kinds of arms does the United States export?
In 2002, U.S. manufacturers planned to export arms including Cobra and Apache attack helicopters, Black Hawk helicopters, KC-135A Stratotanker air-to-air tanker/transport aircraft, Hellfire and Hellfire II air-to-surface antiarmor missiles, Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, TOW 2A and 2B missiles, M-16 rifles, M-60 machine guns, grenade launchers, MK-82 (500 lb.) and MK-83 (1,000 lb.) bombs, Sentinel radar systems, GBU12 Paveway series laser-guided bombs, standard assault amphibious personnel vehicles, assault amphibious command vehicles, and CBU-97 sensor fused weapon antitank cluster bombs.
How many of the weapons U.S. companies export go to developing countries?
Approximately half. From 1994 to 2001, the United States exported $131 billion in arms, with $59 billion going to developing nations. The United States is the leading exporter to developing countries, with Russia and France second and third.
How do American arms exports affect the American people?
Arms exports are an important source of American jobs and help maintain U.S. military manufacturing capacity. They also have some negative consequences. When American weapons are used in a conflict-for example, by Israel against the Palestinians-America is also blamed for the attacks. U.S. forces regularly find themselves up against sophisticated weaponry of American origin, which is harder to defend against.
How dangerous is war for civilians?
Very dangerous. Between 1900 and 1990, 43 million soldiers died in wars. During the same period, 62 million civilians were killed. More than 34 million civilians died in World War II. One million died in North Korea. Hundreds of thousands were killed in South Korea, and 200,000 to 400,000 in Vietnam. In the wars of the 1990s, civilian deaths constituted between 75 and 90 percent of all war deaths.
What is the civilian experience in war?
They are shot, bombed, raped, starved, and driven from their homes. During World War II, 135,000 civilians died in two days in the firebombing of Dresden. A week later, in Pforzheim, Germany, 17,800 people were killed in 22 minutes. In Russia, after the three-year battle of Leningrad, only 600,000 civilians remained in a city that had held a population of 2.5 million. One million were evacuated, 100,000 were conscripted into the Red Army, and 800,000 died. In April 2003, during the Iraqi War, half of the 1.3 million civilians in Basra, Iraq, were trapped for days without food and water in temperatures in excess of 100 degrees.
How many refugees are there?
In 2001, 40 million people were displaced from their homes because of armed conflict or human rights violations. Refugees have been a concern throughout the twentieth century. Five million Europeans were uprooted from 1919 to 1939. World War II displaced 40 million non-Germans in Europe, and 13 million Germans were expelled from countries in Eastern Europe. Approximately 2.5 million of the 4.4 million people in Bosnia and Herzegovina were driven from their homes during that region's war in the early 1990s. More than 2 million Rwandans left their country in 1994. In 2001, 200,000 people were driven from Afghanistan to Pakistan. In early 2003, 45,000 Liberians were displaced from their homes.
What are the consequences of becoming a refugee?
Refugees have very high mortality rates, due primarily to malnutrition and infectious disease. Rwandan refugees in Zaire in 1994 had a death rate 25 to 50 times higher than prewar Rwandans. Iraqi Kurdish refugees in Turkey in 1991 had a death rate 18 times higher than usual.
How does war affect children?
More than 2 million children were killed in wars during the 1990s. Three times that number were disabled or seriously injured. Twenty million children were displaced from their homes in 2001. Many were forced into prostitution. A large percentage of those will contract AIDS. Children born to mothers who are raped or forced into prostitution often become outcasts.
How many child soldiers are there?
More than 300,000 worldwide. Soldiers are sometimes recruited at age 10 and younger. The youngest carry heavy packs, or sweep roads with brooms and branches to test for landmines. When children are hostile, the opposing army is more likely to consider every civilian a potential enemy.
Why do children join armies?
They are often forced to. Some are given alcohol or drugs, or exposed to atrocities, to desensitize them to violence. Some join to help feed or protect their families. Some are offered up by their parents in exchange for protection. Children can be fearless because they lack a clear concept of death.
How can war affect women?
Women often take on larger economic roles in wartime. They must find ways to compensate for their husband's military deployment or unemployment. Those in war zones must search for food, water, medicine, and fuel despite shortages. Some women in war zones are forced into prostitution to provide for their family. Famine and stress cause increased stillbirth and early infant death. AIDS risk increases for many women in war, from prostitution, husbands who return from military duty with HIV, or rape.
What is genocide?
Genocide is any number of acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, according to the United Nations. Others include political and social groups in the definition, making genocide more broadly the annihilation of difference. Genocidal campaigns have become more frequent since World War I. Modern industrial weapons have made mass killings easier to commit.
How many genocides have occurred since World War I?
Dozens. The most devastating include those in the Soviet Union, where approximately 20 million were killed during Stalin's Great Terror (1930s); Nazi Germany, where 6 million Jews were killed in concentration camps along with 5 million or more Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other "enemies of the German state" (1937-1945); Cambodia, where 1.7 million of the country's 7 million people were killed as a result of the actions of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979); Iraq, where 50,000 Kurds were killed during the ethnic cleansing of Anfal in 1987; Bosnia, where 310,000 Muslims were killed (1992-1995); and Rwanda, where more than 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered over ten weeks in 1994.
Chapter Two
ENLISTMENT
How is the U.S. military organized?
The U.S. military is run by the Department of Defense. It oversees the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, which are responsible for land, sea, and air fighting respectively.
Continues...
Excerpted from WHAT EVERY PERSON SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WAR by CHRIS HEDGES -------- afghanistan
UN warns of further suicide attacks in Kabul
Sunday, July 06, 2003 - AFP
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_18-6-2003_pg7_57
KABUL: The United Nations on Tuesday issued a warning of further suicide bombings in the Afghan capital, following a deadly attack on German peacekeeping troops.
The notice issued to all UN personnel and seen by AFP warned of possible attacks in the next two or three days by suicide bombers using two Japanese motorbikes and two Japanese cars. Possible targets include high-ranking Afghan government officials, the US ambassador and top commanders from the US military or the International Security Assistance Force, it said.
Meanwhile, 20kg explosives with detonators were found planted outside the house of Afghan Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, local television reported.
----
At least three killed, five wounded in latest northern Afghan skirmishes
By TODD PITMAN
The Associated Press
7/6/03
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=7cb66c868ad9deac
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Loyalists of rival warlords clashed Sunday in northern Afghanistan, leaving at least four dead and three wounded, a military commander said.
The battles in Samangan province's Dar-e-Suf district were the latest in a series of deadly skirmishes between forces loyal to northern warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and his rival, Atta Mohammed.
Both sides blamed each other for the fight, which started late Saturday with machine-gun and rocket-fire and was intensifying with artillery Sunday, said Gen. Abdul Sabor, one of Mohammed's senior commanders.
"It's getting worse," Sabor said by telephone from the northern capital, Mazar-e-Sharif.
The fighting between the two warlords, both of whom are aligned to President Hamid Karzai's government, is indicative of the trouble facing authorities in uniting the fractured country.
War-ravaged Afghanistan is primarily controlled by powerful warlords, who operate with little interference from the government of President Hamid Karzai and frequently turn their guns on each other.
Dostum is deputy defense minister and Mohammed is a close ally of Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, receiving men and ammunition from the ministry.
Each side lost two dead, Sabor said. Two of the wounded were on Dostum's side, and the other was on Mohammed's.
Last week, a regional security commission intervened to broker a cease-fire after the two sides fought in Dar-e-Suf for three days with mortars, heavy machine guns and rocket launchers. At least seven civilians were wounded in the battle.
Sunday's fighting took place as Japan's special envoy to Afghanistan arrived in the capital for a one-week visit aimed at reviewing Japanese aid for the country.
The visit is the third for Sadako Ogata, former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, since the Taliban regime was toppled in a U.S.-led war in late 2001, said Maki Shinohara, spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency.
Ogata will meet with senior Afghan officials, including Karzai and the defense minister, Shinohara said.
-------- africa
Bush plans bases to gird Africa
As the US leader begins a tour of Africa with a visit to Senegal, Muslims fear the growth of Pentagon power and others seek an apology for the slave-trading past
Eric Schmidt in Washington and James Copnall in Dakar
Sunday July 6, 2003
The UK Observer
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,992337,00.html
As George Bush prepares to leave for a whistle-stop tour of Africa, it has been revealed that he has ordered the US military to plan for a massive expansion of its presence on the continent.
The Pentagon aims to secure aircraft refuelling agreements in Uganda and Senegal, two of the five nations Bush will visit. As officials consider whether to send US troops into Liberia to oversee a tentative ceasefire, the Pentagon is working on strengthening ties with Morocco and Tunisia.
Arab countries of the Maghreb and in sub-Saharan Africa will be the main focus of new basing agreements and training exercises intended to combat a growing terrorist threat in the region. The Pentagon also wants to set up army bases in Mali and Algeria, which US forces could use for training or for strikes on terrorist targets.
The news, revealed by the New York Times, will serve to enhance the anti-American feeling in many African nations, especially in predominantly Muslim Senegal where Bush will arrive tomorrow. 'George Bush is an enemy, but we have to welcome him, as the Prophet Muhammad told us to welcome every stranger,' said young religious leader Serigne Dieng. 'But he doesn't deserve to visit Senegal.' The US security preparations for the week-long trip, the first of Bush's presidency, have been intense and programme changes frequent.
But he will be under pressure to make the US position clear on a number of issues, including a possible intervention in Liberia, and the questions of debt relief and US responsibility for slavery.
Serigne Modou Bossou Dieng, leader of the Collective of Young Religious Chiefs in Senegal, an organisation with a hold on young Muslims, is categoric. 'George Bush's visit to Senegal is a dagger blow to Islam and to Senegalese Muslims,' the marabout [religious leader] said. 'Bush is the principal enemy of Islam: thousands of unarmed Muslims were massacred in Iraq, and there is daily support for Israel against the Palestinians. He is the worst enemy of Islam.'
Others perceive the Bush visit as a confirmation that America is attempting to loosen France's links to one of its most important former colonies. Several organisations, Islamic and secular, are planning a protest march tomorrow.
Malick Ndiaye, of the Committee of Initiative of Senegalese Intellectuals (CISS), has organised the protests. 'Our problem is that this country has had a very close relationship with Europe since the seventeenth century,' Ndiaye said. 'Bush seems to be coming here like a new conqueror.'
But some US military initiatives in Africa are already under way. Later this year, US intelligence officers will begin training exercises with soldiers from four North African nations and, since late last year more than 1,800 members of the US military have been placed in Djibouti for counter-terrorism operations in the Horn of Africa.
US military chiefs say that emerging threats require the Pentagon to pay more attention to the continent. 'Africa, as can be seen by recent events, is certainly a growing problem,' US Marine Corps General James Jones, head of the European Command, said in an interview last week.
· Eric Schmidt is a correspondent for the New York Times
----
Ghosts of Somalia haunt Bush
Trevor Grundy,
Sun 6 Jul 2003
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=735132003
ON THE eve of his first presidential visit to Africa tomorrow, the ghosts of the devastating humiliation visited on America by Somalian warlords 10 years ago will be haunting George Bush.
Spurred on by Liberian president Charles Taylor's offer to step down when an international peacekeeping force arrives in his war-torn country, the White House is expected to commit hundreds of US troops to the West African nation.
But in the forefront of Bush's mind will be the fear that the same fate could befall these soldiers as did their counterparts a decade ago. Then, the corpses of American servicemen were paraded through the streets of the Somalian capital Mogadishu to the horror of the American public after a rag-tag band of militiamen downed two US Black Hawk helicopters. The film which immortalised the tragedy, Black Hawk Down, is said to be Bush's favourite movie and to have prompted him to vow that he would never allow American troops to find themselves in a similar situation again.
During his five-day visit to Africa, the first by a Republican president, Bush will focus on trade, aid - in particular to tackle the mounting death toll caused by HIV - and security. For the American president the latter will mean preventing attacks on US citizens in Africa, tackling emerging terrorist groups and, perhaps most problematic of all, dealing with requests for American intervention in the wars which are claiming thousands of lives on the battle-scarred continent.
The question is how far the US, with its existing military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan and deep budget deficit, is willing to go. At the moment, it has 150,000 troops in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan.
Whether to send American peacekeepers to Liberia has proved a thorny question for the Bush administration, even though they would be backed by 3,000 African peace-keepers drawn from the ECOWAS group of West African countries led by Nigeria and Ghana and would be unlikely to face much opposition from rebels.
Alex Vines, head of the African Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, said: "This long delay over Liberia has been caused by the terrible memory of what happened to American soldiers in Somalia in 1993 when they were displayed on television being dragged dead by armed soldiers and bandits through the streets of Mogadishu. There is concern it could happen again but that's extremely unlikely. Almost all Liberians are clamouring for an American intervention."
The immediate aim of US intervention in Liberia would be to ensure the removal of Taylor - accused of war crimes during the 14-year civil war which has claimed at least 200,000 lives.
But there are other concerns. Vines said: "America wants to see stability in Liberia because the war there is destabilising most of West Africa. That includes Nigeria, America's number one oil supplier, and Equatorial Guinea, which has enormous potential as an oil supplier to the USA.
"Bush also wants to show Africa a humanitarian face and tell its leaders that America isn't just interested in the Middle East, terrorism and oil supplies."
Sources in Washington say that a decision to commit American soldiers to Liberia would represent a victory for Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, over Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary.
Sources at the Brooking Institution, a neo-conservative think-tank which influences American foreign policy, say that Rumsfeld has warned Bush that American soldiers could be dragged into an African war against forces still loyal to Taylor. Last week Rumsfeld said that the US had "no vital interests" in Africa.
The Bush administration has also been pressed by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to contribute soldiers to the French-led peacekeeping force already in Congo, where nearly five million people have been killed over the past five years. So far, America has resisted, and has also refused to be drawn into military intervention in the conflict in Sudan were two million people have died over the past two decades in fighting between the Muslim government and Christian and animist separatists.
Now, however, America's principal concern is shoring up security in sub-Saharan countries which have proved a soft target for terrorist groups. In 1998 suicide bombers targeted the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing a total of 231 people. And last November, 16 people, mostly Kenyans, died when a hotel was blown up in the coastal resort of Mombassa. Last week, Bush pledged $100m (£60m) to East African countries to tighten security around airports, sea ports and other targets.
The US military is already planning to expand its presence in northern and sub-Saharan Africa, enhancing military ties with Morocco and Tunisia and securing bases in countries such as Mali and Algeria.
Last week, general James Jones, the head of the United States European Command, which oversees military operations in Africa, said: "Africa, as can be seen by recent events, is certainly a growing problem. As we pursue the global war on terrorism, we're going to have to go where the terrorists are. And we're seeing some evidence that more and more of these large uncontrolled, ungoverned areas are going to be potential havens for that kind of activity."
But while anti-terrorist measures are a priority for Bush, the ongoing crisis in Zimbabwe is expected to feature prominently in his talks with the leaders of Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda, and Nigeria.
Vines believes that Bush will make a "very loud call" for the removal of Robert Mugabe as head of state in Zimbabwe but this is likely to put him at loggerheads with South African president Thabo Mbeki who said last week he had no intention of calling for Mugabe's removal.
In Maputo, Mozambique, next Thursday the 48 heads of state at the African Union will discuss African affairs without mentioning the possibility of sanctions or further action against Zimbabwe.
Bush is also expected to find himself in an uncomfortable position if, as is expected, he raises the issue of Mbeki's lack of enthusiasm in accepting Western help in fighting Aids. Bush recently promised $15bn (£9bn) for the fight against HIV/Aids in Africa.
Nonetheless, he is a strong supporter of the South African president's plan for pan-African economic reform, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad). Under the plan, African countries would commit themselves to democracy, tackling corruption and market-orientated policies in return for Western assistance, in particular easier access to their markets for Africa's exports. Trade, in the view of most African leaders, is more important than aid.
The choice of the counties Bush will visit reflects his belief in the plan. He has been impressed by the efforts of Uganda to tackle Aids and Senegal has been trumpeted as a model of democracy in West Africa. Meanwhile, Botswana has won plaudits for good environmental practice.
Bush's African adventure holds great promise. Whether he emerges as a man of peace - capable of changing the lives of the world's poor through ambitious foreign policy - as well as a warrior intent on crushing global terrorism, hangs in the balance, as does the future of the troubled continent.
TWO DECADES OF CIVIL WAR
LIBERIA, Africa's oldest republic, has been in an almost continuous state of civil war over the past two decades.
The country, which was founded by freed American slaves, enjoyed relative calm until 1980 when the president, William Tolbert, was overthrown by Sergeant Samuel Doe following food price riots.
In 1989 the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), led by Charles Taylor, right, began an uprising against the government. The Liberian-born, American-educated Taylor became president in 1997 after achieving a landslide victory.
Six years later he was indicted by a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal for allegedly backing rebels during the bloody civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
Taylor's government is fighting the rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), which has gained territory in the north and west of the country. Meanwhile, another rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (Model) has secured parts of the south and east. Between them, the groups now control around two-thirds of the country.
It is feared that the crisis in Liberia threatens Sierra Leone, which is struggling to recover from its civil war, Guinea, and Côte d'Ivoire.
--------
Bush Wants Warplanes To Fuel Here
By Alfred Wasike
Sunday, 6th July, 2003
http://www.sundayvision.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=7&newsCategoryId=123&newsId=144967
PRESIDENT George W. Bush wants United States fighter planes to refuel in Uganda while on anti-terrorism combat operations.
Bush's quest for refuelling agreements with Ugandan government are part of a wider strategy to increase America's combat readiness on the African continent.
According to Friday's editions of The New York Times, the Bush administration wants a similar deal with Senegal, another of the five countries that he will be visiting this week. The United States military is also seeking to expand its presence in the Arab countries of northern Africa and in sub-Saharan Africa through new basing agreements and training exercises intended to combat a growing terrorist threat in the region, the New York Times reported.
The paper also said that since late last year more than 1,800 members of the American military have been placed in Djibouti to conduct counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa.
United States military and intelligence officials say vast swathes of the Sahara, from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east, which have been smuggling routes for centuries, are becoming areas of choice for terrorist groups, including Al- Qaeda.
President Bush will spend four hours in Uganda. Officially, his visit is about Uganda's remarkable struggle against AIDS and new trade initiatives, including AGOA. Ends
-------- asia
U.S., Indonesian jets in standoff
By LELY T. DJUHARI,
Associated Press
July 5, 2003
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/world/article/0,1406,KNS_351_2089144,00.html
JAKARTA, Indonesia - In a tense encounter above the Java sea, U.S. fighter planes went into attack mode and locked their missiles on Indonesian warplanes deployed to intercept them, an Indonesian air force official said Friday.
Rear Air Marshal Wresnowiro said air force radar detected the F-18 Hornet planes maneuvering over Bawean Island off the northern coast of Java island on Thursday.
Two Indonesian F-16 fighter jets intercepted the U.S. planes and warned them they were in Indonesian airspace, he said.
"It was tense as the F-18 planes went into attack positions," said Wresnowiro, who goes by a single name. "They adopted an attack maneuver and had their missiles locked on our planes, ready to fire."
Wresnowiro said the planes were guarding an aircraft carrier, two frigates and a tanker traveling in the area.
The naval convoy was not in an international sea lane and had sought permission from the Indonesian government, he said, "but our bureaucracy is too slow to pass the security clearance."
Wresnowiro said Indonesia was considering whether to send the United States a complaint.
A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said officials were looking into the report.
Nationalist politicians and military officers have long complained about espionage flights or clandestine airdrops by foreign aircraft across Indonesia's 13,000 islands, which sit strategically between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
"President Megawati Sukarnoputri must strongly protest the arrogant actions of U.S. pilots, which have insulted Indonesia's sovereignty," nationalist legislators said in a statement.
----
China, Russia, India aim to counter growing US muscle in SE Asia
AFP
July 6, 2003
http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/content.asp?y=2003&dt=0619&pub=Utusan_Express&sec=World&pg=wo_01.htm
PHNOM PENH June 18 - Nuclear powers Russia, China and India want to forge strategic partnerships with Southeast Asia to counter growing US influence and assertiveness in the region, officials said Wednesday.
The three have given ``strong signals'' to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that they would sign up to the grouping's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), effectively a non-aggression pact among the 10 ASEAN member states.
The treaty was originally signed in 1976 by ASEAN's five founding members - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Russia, China and India are the first to offer to sign up to the pact to ``demonstrate that we are benign powers and do not desire your territory,'' an ASEAN diplomat said.
``We believe the three will sign the agreement in Bali,'' during the annual summit meeting of ASEAN leaders in October, the diplomat told AFP.
``This is going to be very symbolic because it was in Bali that the original regional concept of maintaining peace and security evolved,'' he added.
Russia will this week also sign a joint declaration on a ``partnership of peace, security, stability and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region'' with ASEAN.
The move by the three nuclear powers to forge such pacts comes at a time when the United States is stamping its influence on the region under the guise of the international fight against terrorism, analysts said.
With nudging from Washington, ASEAN foreign ministers made an unprecedented call Tuesday for the early release of Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from detention by her country's military rulers.
This is payback time for Southeast Asia, which is getting enormous assistance from the United States in its uphill battle against groups linked to Osama bin laden's Al-Qaeda network trying to establish a pan-Islamic state in the region, analysts said.
But some ASEAN members themselves are worried about the high-profile US influence in the region, including Indonesia, which has come under pressure from Washington for its strong-arm approach in containing a revolt in its province of Acheh.
``If we put this renewed assertiveness in the context of American dominance in the international arena and its ability to impose its will through its unrivalled military capability, we can understand the worries of some ASEAN nations that this could very well turn out to be American dominance in this region too,'' said Andrew Tan, an analyst with the Singapore-based Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies.
``This worries Russia and China and India as well and it is not surprising that they want to sign the TAC too. It could be symbolic, but this is the way of communicating a political message,'' Tan told AFP.
China has warned that any relocation of US military personnel to the region could complicate the North Korea nuclear question.
``We think the North Korean nuclear issue is at a sensitive period. Anything other countries do shouldn't intensify the situation,'' China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said.
China, Russia and India, like the United States, are among ASEAN's dialogue partners.
In the past ASEAN had expected Japan, its biggest investor, to balance the role of the United States and China, which has overlapping claims with several Southeast Asian nations on a group of islands in the South China Sea.
But ASEAN's confidence waned due to Tokyo's lack of assertiveness in its foreign and defence policies and its continuing reliance on the United States, analysts said.
ASEAN officials said the grouping could not ignore the enormous economic potential of China and India as both markets and trading partners.
``On the economic front particularly, we need to diversify our risks as we cannot rely on the US alone and we need establish building blocks with all strategic players in the global scene, particularly Asia,'' said Sundram Pushpanathan, ASEAN's head of external relations.
ASEAN is already working on a free trade area with China, while Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has personally agreed to undertake ``concrete cooperation'' for its own free trade area linking the world's second most populous nation with Southeast Asia. - AFP
-------- britain
Army admits units were starved of kit during Iraq war
By Sean Rayment,
Defence Correspondent
06/07/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/07/06/nkit06.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/07/06/ixhome.html
Despite months of denials by Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, senior Army officers have finally admitted that British troops were forced to take part in combat operations in Iraq without the correct weapons, body armour and clothing.
Mr Hoon and the Ministry of Defence described the problem of kit deficiencies as a minor issue. Senior officers have now admitted, however, that they "got it wrong" and have apologised to troops.
The revelation will embarrass Mr Hoon, who claimed that complaints from troops in the field were overblown and that soldiers had been properly supplied. He told a defence select committee on May 14: "When they [British troops] went into operations all of our forces were given the right boots. There was sufficient clothing and protective equipment in-theatre to deal with a force of this size."
The Telegraph has learnt that the post-operational report into the war, due for publication in the next few days, will show that every front-line fighting unit sent to the Gulf suffered, to varying degrees, from equipment deficiencies.
One section of the report, under the headline "Lessons identified", is understood to be highly critical of the time it took to issue vital equipment and clothing to troops sent to fight in the Gulf. It adds that in many cases those in most need of equipment were the last to receive it.
Such deficiencies have also been admitted by senior officers at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) at Northwood, Middlesex, from where the British contribution to the Iraq war effort was planned. They have been forced into making a public response after a non-commissioned officer wrote to the Army's in-house magazine, Soldier, to highlight the failings of the military planners.
Colour Sgt S Baillie, a company quartermaster sergeant with the 1st battalion of the Light Infantry, revealed that his troops went into battle without adequate body armour, grenade launchers, rifle grenades, night-vision devices, desert boots, hats, socks and uniforms.
Writing from the Gulf, he said: "Before leaving Germany we received an admin instruction which highlighted the kit we would receive as part of a task issue.
"After being deployed for eight weeks, out of an infantry company of 164 men we still have only one set of desert combats a man, most of them unserviceable. The men are wearing a mixture of desert and combat 95 [the standard Army camouflage uniform designed for fighting in a European theatre]. I am still waiting for 79 pairs of desert boots and 50 desert hats. We still have no socks or T-shirts.
"The issue of body armour and plates was slow, with personnel being sent into battle without plates. The issue of ammunition and weapons was also slow. We received our RGGS [rifle grenades] the day after we attacked Basra - six weeks after arriving in-theatre.
"I am writing to highlight these problems because we had been promised that, when needed, necessary kit would be issued. I laughed to myself while writing out 1033s [equipment issue forms] under the sound of gunfire in Basra. Colleagues in other battle groups were in the same boat - peacetime accounting in war. Hopefully, we, the borrowers, can get it right next time, in about 10 years from now?"
In response to the letter, Brig Seamus Kerr, an assistant chief of staff at the PJHQ, admitted that mistakes had been made. He replied: "It is worrying to hear about any examples of important equipment not getting through to those that needed it and in this instance we got it wrong and for that I apologise."
Brig Kerr goes on to invite CSgt Baillie to visit PJHQ to discuss each issue in detail.
An MoD spokesman said: "We do not believe there is a contradiction between what the Secretary of State told the defence select committee and what CSgt Baillie said in his letter. With a logistics operation of this size there are always going to be one or two glitches. There is a lessons-learned exercise under way to make sure that we can improve future operations."
-------- china
Leader Presses Security Bill in Hong Kong After Changes
July 6, 2003
The New York Times
By KEITH BRADSHER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/international/asia/06HONG.html
HONG KONG, July 5 - The government and democracy advocates braced for another showdown over internal security legislation in the coming weeks after Hong Kong's leader today softened some of the bill's more provocative elements but insisted that the legislature pass it quickly. Democracy supporters called the changes by Hong Kong's chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, inadequate and vowed to stop the bill.
After a protest march by as many as 500,000 people on Tuesday, the dispute has turned into the biggest political crisis here since Britain handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997.
There have been reports here that President Hu Jintao of China convened an emergency meeting of the Politburo in Beijing on Thursday to review developments here. Tonight, the official New China News Agency reported that a legal expert in China's national legislature had urged Hong Kong to "consider the fundamental and long-term interests of Hong Kong and actively support and cooperate with the administrative region government in completing this legislation on time."
Democracy advocates and one of the two pro-government political parties, the Liberal Party, recommended that Mr. Tung postpone consideration of the bill until autumn to allow time for more public consultations and more legal review, and to build a consensus for the legislation. Instead, Mr. Tung went along with the advice of the most ardently pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, to amend the bill and then demand that the Legislative Council take it up Wednesday as scheduled.
The changes include the deletion of a provision that would have allowed the police to conduct searches and make seizures without a warrant during urgent national security investigations. Mr. Tung also deleted another provision that would have let the government ban groups in Hong Kong that were subordinate to groups that had been banned in mainland China on security grounds.
Finally, Mr. Tung said he would accept an amendment to the bill's penalties for the "theft of state secrets." Defendants charged with the crime would be allowed to argue that they were acting in the public interest, a measure to reassure financial analysts and journalists who may write reports based on unpublished documents from the government or state-owned enterprises.
At a news conference today, Mr. Tung echoed the Democratic Alliance's patriotic rhetoric in his opening remarks, saying that the security legislation "is a matter relating to the national dignity and the glory of the Chinese race."
Democracy supporters dismissed Mr. Tung's changes to the bill as inadequate, complaining that the bill still set stiff criminal penalties for sedition and the handling of seditious documents. The bill defines sedition as inciting someone else to commit violence against the state, and specifies that charges can only be brought if violence actually occurs.
Mr. Tung's retreat on three provisions today "is too little, and it has come too late," said Yeung Sum, the chairman of the opposition Democratic Party.
Colonial laws left over from British rule already ban sedition but have not been enforced in half a century. The colonial-era security regulations here are also tainted by the discriminatory manner in which the British applied them against Chinese residents.
Pro-democracy groups had announced plans earlier this week to have a huge crowd surround the Legislative Council on Wednesday evening. But the police announced today that they had not yet granted permission for that rally and were concerned about whether more than 10,000 people could gather safely near the council's modest, domed building in the heart of downtown.
It is rare for the police to withhold permission for a rally. Richard Tsoi, a spokesman for the Civil Human Rights Front, a coalition of groups that organized the march Tuesday, said that the front was still trying to negotiate a compromise with the government but that it was not willing to accept a limit on the size of the demonstration.
"The numbers can't be limited, it's the people's voice," Mr. Tsoi said.
Emily Lau, the leader of the Frontier Council, the second-largest pro-democracy party here after the Democratic Party, said Mr. Tung's insistence on an early vote, and the reluctance of the police to allow a large demonstration, could make it harder for the opposition to maintain discipline during any protest.
"You've got to give the people a chance to show their anger in a peaceful way," she said.
Ms. Lau said her party planned to help organize another large rally on July 13, on the expectation that it could take the Legislative Council a week to hold a final vote on the bill once debate starts.
Mr. Yeung said that pro-democracy lawmakers would try to send the bill back to committee on the first day of debate, but that he was uncertain whether he had enough votes. While most lawmakers elected by the general public oppose the bill and want more democracy, three-fifths of the legislature consists of members chosen either by the government or by industries, most of which lean toward Beijing.
James Tien, the leader of the pro-government and pro-business Liberal Party, had announced here on Friday, after returning from Beijing, that Chinese officials had told him they would leave it up to Hong Kong to decide when to pass the security legislation and what the details would be. He called for postponing action until the end of this year.
But Ma Lik, the secretary general of the Democratic Alliance, said in a phone interview tonight that top Chinese officials had decided they could not accept delay. "The final decision of Beijing is to have the bill amended and to be tabled as scheduled" for the debate to begin in the legislature on Wednesday, Mr. Ma said.
Mr. Ma predicted that the council would hold a final vote on July 18 or 19 after more than 100 amendments have been considered, and that the government's bill would pass.
-------- iraq
Grounding Planes the Wrong Way
Coalition troops looted and vandalized the Iraqi airport that now must be rebuilt
By SIMON ROBINSON/BAGHDAD
Sunday, Jul. 06, 2003
TIME magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030714-463062,00.html
Much has been written about how Iraqis complicated the task of rebuilding their country by looting it after Saddam Hussein's regime fell. In the case of the international airport outside Baghdad, however, the theft and vandalism were conducted largely by victorious American troops, according to U.S. officials, Iraqi Airways staff members and other airport workers. The troops, they say, stole duty-free items, needlessly shot up the airport and trashed five serviceable Boeing airplanes. "I don't want to detract from all the great work that's going into getting the airport running again," says Lieut. John Welsh, the Army civil-affairs officer charged with bringing the airport back into operation. "But you've got to ask, If this could have been avoided, did we shoot ourselves in the foot here?"
What was then called Saddam International Airport fell to soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division on April 3. For the next two weeks, airport workers say, soldiers sleeping in the airport's main terminal helped themselves to items in the duty-free shop, including alcohol, cassettes, perfume, cigarettes and expensive watches. Welsh, who arrived in Iraq in late April, was so alarmed by the thievery that he rounded up a group of Iraqi airport employees to help him clean out the shop and its storage area. He locked everything in two containers and turned them over to the shop's owner.
"The man had tears in his eyes when I showed him what we had saved," says Welsh. "He thought he'd lost everything."
Coalition soldiers also vandalized the airport, American sources say. A boardroom table that Welsh and Iraqi civil-aviation authority officials sat around in early May was, a week later, a pile of glass and splintered wood. Terminal windows were smashed, and almost every door in the building was broken, says Welsh. A TIME photographer who flew out of the airport on April 12 saw wrecked furniture and English-language graffiti throughout the airport office building as well as a sign warning that soldiers caught vandalizing or looting would be court-martialed. "There was no chance this was done by Iraqis" before the airport fell, says a senior Pentagon official. "The airport was secure when this was done." Iraqi airport staff concede that some of the damage was inflicted by Iraqi exiles attached to the Army, but these Iraqis too were under American control.
The airplanes suffered the greatest damage. Of the 10 Iraqi Airways jets on the tarmac when the airport fell, a U.S. inspection in early May found that five were serviceable: three 727s, a 747 and a 737. Over the next few weeks, U.S. soldiers looking for comfortable seats and souvenirs ripped out many of the planes' fittings, slashed seats, damaged cockpit equipment and popped out every windshield. "It's unlikely any of the planes will fly again," says Welsh, a reservist who works for the aviation firm Pratt & Whitney as a quality-control liaison officer to Boeing.
U.S. estimates of the cost of the damage and theft begin at a few million dollars and go as high as $100 million. Airport workers say even now air conditioners and other equipment are regularly stolen. "Soldiers do this stuff all the time, everywhere. It's warfare," says a U.S. military official. "But the conflict was over when this was done. These are just bored soldiers." Says Welsh: "If we're here to rebuild the country, then anything we break we have to fix. We need to train these guys to go from shoot-it-up to securing infrastructure. Otherwise we're just making more work for ourselves. And we have to pay for it."
----
Top General Says Iraqi Resistance Is Far From 'Monolithic'
July 6, 2003,
by BRIAN KNOWLTON
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/international/worldspecial/06CND-POLI.html?hp
WASHINGTON, July 6 - Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today that despite the continuing attacks in Iraq, anti-coalition resistance was far from "monolithic," coming from at least five distinct groups operating in a relatively restricted central area.
"A lot of the country is relatively stable," General Myers said.
At least 68 American troops have died in Iraq, many of them in ambushes or shooting attacks by small but organized groups of assailants since May 1, when President Bush declared that major combat had ended.
Coalition forces have responded with a major campaign to eradicate those responsible. But fears of destabilization, and of persistent and messy challenges to the occupying forces, grew on Friday with the release of an audiotape in which a voice, purportedly that of Saddam Hussein, calls for greater resistance.
Meanwhile, United States opinion polls show the attacks beginning to erode domestic support for the occupation of Iraq.
But General Myers said that it was wrong to think that the entire country was unstable or that coalition troops everywhere were under siege. To bolster his point he broke down the threat by geography and source.
In northern Iraq, which is dominated by Kurds, and the south, where Shiite Muslims prevail, "the situation is basically stable," with water, electric and sanitation systems back to prewar levels or better, General Myers said on Fox TV.
The problem, he added, was in Sunni-dominated central areas, and particularly in a triangle formed by Baghdad; Ramadi, to the west, where a bomb explosion on Saturday killed seven United States-trained Iraqi police recruits marching from their graduation ceremony; and Tikrit, to the northwest, a stronghold of Mr. Hussein.
"That's where 90 percent of the incidents are," he said.
General Myers said that not only are the problems geographically limited, but they come from at least five separate sources, with no firm evidence of intergroup coordination.
He listed an amalgam of sympathizers of the former government, including Baath Party remnants, Fedayeen Saddam militia members, and former members of elite military or security units; foreign fighters, entering from Syria and Iran, who may or may not be government-sponsored; Ansar al-Islam, a small, radical Islamic group based near the Iranian border in northern Iraq, which the United States has said has links to the Qaeda terror network; "criminals," including those freed from prison by Mr. Hussein on the eve of the war; and Sunni extremists "that just want to almost be terrorists."<