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NUCLEAR
British plan for nuclear land mines is revealed
Mysterious Diseases Haunt U.S. Troops In Iraq
Why Has Our Military Refused to Show This Training Video
IAEA says looted Iraqi uranium poses no proliferation threat
Bush Insists Iraq Was Trying to Rebuild Nuke Program
Iraqi: Tubes Weren't for Nuclear Bombs
UN in Dark About Looted Iraq Dirty Bomb Material
The intelligence 'black hole' over N Korea
Report: N. Korea May Have Enough Plutonium for Bomb
China Intensifies Efforts on U.S.-North Korea Nuclear Talks
Korean class materials show anti-U.S. slant
Russia OKs Foreign Power Plants at Cities
Plant workers suit dismissed
Giuliani Promotes Indian Pt. Terror Drill
GAO Urges Overhaul of Nuclear Cleanup
Congress Asked to Reverse Court Ruling on Nuclear Waste
Ex-CIA brass call for Cheney's resignation
U.S. High Horse Now Riderless
Democrat Eyes Potential Grounds for Bush Impeachment
The Dishonesty Of the President, By Bob Graham
Wolfowitz Committee Told White House to Hype Dubious Uranium Claims
The spies who pushed for war
Senate May Widen Its Inquiry Into Prewar Intelligence
White House Aide Behind Uranium Claim, Senator Says
Democrat Eyes Potential Grounds for Bush Impeachment
Senate Rejects Panel on Prewar Iraq Data
A War on Wilson?
Iraq: Who takes the blame?
MILITARY
Boeing in talks over rocket issue
Colombian paramilitary leader praises crackdown on rebels
More than 1,000 children killed or wounded by abandoned arms in Iraq
Reconstructing Justice
Iraqis cheer U.S. death
U.S. Forces in Iraq Facing 'Guerrillas'
Unexploded ordnance continues to kill
U.S. Syria raid killed 80
NATO seeks to expand military presence to Central Asia
NATO Plans Early Start-Up of New Force
Russia rules out troops for Iraq
Explosion in Russia's Dagestan region kills 4
CIA director tells senators he's at fault for uranium story
Italy May Have Forwarded Uranium Claims
Tenet Says He Didn't Know About Claim
Media Underplays U.S. Death Toll in Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
House Backs $5.6 Billion Fund to Develop Bioterror Remedies
OTHER
CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS
Anthrax hammers immune system
Some nuts can make 'qualified' heart health claim
ACTIVISTS
Groups Protest Plans for New Plutonium Pit Facility
Locking up nuns makes sense to none
Gov. Welcomes G - 8, Protesters to Ga.
Lockheed Sues Peaceful Anti-War Protesters
Peace activists go to Baghdad to keep tabs on troops, firms
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
British plan for nuclear land mines is revealed
ALASTAIR DALTON SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT
Thu 17 Jul 2003
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=775012003
BRITAIN planned to bury huge nuclear land mines in Germany in the 1950s to prevent its occupation by Russian troops.
Plans for the seven-tonne weapons, with half the destructive power of the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, have emerged in declassified army documents.
Ten land mines would have been buried or submerged in water to devastate key sites such as oil refineries, power stations and railways. However, the project, codenamed Blue Peacock, was abandoned in 1958 after it was decided that siting a nuclear weapon in an allied country was politically unacceptable.
Defence chiefs also ruled that the risk from radioactive fall-out was too high.
Blue Peacock was originally codenamed Brown Bunny, and then Blue Bunny, one of a series of secret nuclear projects. The land mine was also thought unlikely to survive the harsh German winter, and had to be kept warm by being wrapped in glass-fibre pillows.
Its protective casing had to be pressure-tested in the open air, which took place in a flooded gravel pit in Kent. The planned cover story was that the casing was to house "an atomic power unit for troops in the field".
The only prototype to survive occupies pride of place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment's historical collection at Aldermaston in Berkshire.
David Hawkings, who retired as the collection's manager two years ago, said: "The whole operational scenario appeared somewhat theatrical." However, he added: "It remains as striking testimony to the part played by the British Army in the development of our nuclear arsenal."
Lesley Wright, who is researching the history of Britain's nuclear weapons programme at Liverpool John Moores University, said: "It may look bizarre now, but this weapon was a product of its time. It was a response to the perceived threat of overwhelming Soviet superiority in conventional weapons."
The device, which is reported by New Scientist magazine today, would have been detonated by wires or by an eight-day clockwork timer.
-------- depleted uranium
Mysterious Diseases Haunt U.S. Troops In Iraq
July 17, 2003
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-07/17/article03.shtml
NATO experts attribute the mysterious symptoms suffered by U.S. soldiers to the use of depleted uranium
BAGHDAD - Several mysterious diseases were reported among a number of American troops within the vicinity of Baghdad airport, a military source closely close to NATO unveiled.
U.S. soldiers deployed around Baghdad airport started showing symptoms of mysterious fever, itching, scars and dark brown spots on the skin, the source, who refused to be named, said in statements published Thursday, July 17, by the Saudi Al-Watan newspaper.
He asserted that three soldiers who suffered these symptoms did not respond to medical treatment in Iraqi hospitals and were flown to Washington for medication.
The military source reported a media blackout by U.S. officials to hide such information from the public.
The Americans claim the symptoms and the mysterious diseases were resulting from exposure to the scourging sun, which the U.S. troops are not used to, he added.
U.S. officials did not come up with an explanation for the symptoms, which NATO experts tend to believe result from direct exposure to powerful nuclear radiations of the sophisticated B- 2bombs used in the war on Iraq, particularly in striking Iraqi Republican Guards forces who deployed to defend the vicinity of Baghdad airport.
The military source stressed that the shrouds of secrecy imposed by American officials on the issue were prompted by fears of creating waves of panic and anger among the troops, particularly after announcements that American troops would remain in Iraq indefinitely.
He asserted that NATO experts measured levels of radioactive pollution in Iraq and confirmed there were levels of radioactive pollution with destructive impacts on man and environment that may lead to risks suffered by generations to come.
On April 25, the British Observer quoted military sources as affirming that depleted uranium shells and bombs used by U.S. and British troops during Iraq invasion were five times more than the number used during 1991 Gulf war.
The Pentagon had admitted shelling Iraq with about 350 tons of depleted uranium in 1991, aggravating cancerous tumors cases among Iraqis.
----
Why Has Our Military Refused to Show This Training Video To Our Troops Now Serving In Iraq?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3581.htm
US ARMY TRAINING VIDEO:
Depleted Uranium Hazard Awareness
Click here to view Real Video http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3582.htm
Between October and December 1995, the U.S. Army's Depleted Uranium (DU) Project completed a series of training videos and manuals about depleted uranium munitions. This training regimen was developed as the result of recommendations made in the January 1993 General Accounting Office (GAO) report, "Army Not Adequately Prepared to Deal with Depleted Uranium Contamination."
The training materials were intended to instruct servicemen and women about the use and hazards of depleted uranium munitions. In addition, the training regimen included instructions for soldiers who repair and recover vehicles contaminated by depleted uranium.
Throughout 1996, these videos sat on a shelf, while U.S. soldiers continued to use and work with depleted uranium munitions. In June 1997, Bernard Rostker, The Department of Defense (DoD) principle spokesperson for their investigation of Gulf War hazardous exposures, stated that the depleted uranium safety training program would begin to be shared by a limited number of servicemen and women in July 1997.
STILL TODAY the vast majority of servicemen and women in the U.S. military, and likely in the armed forces of other countries which are developing or have obtained depleted uranium munitions, are unaware of the use and dangers of depleted uranium munitions, or of the protective clothing and procedures which can minimize or prevent serious short-term exposures.
-------- iraq / inspections
IAEA says looted Iraqi uranium poses no proliferation threat
17 July 2003
UN
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=7733&Cr=iraq&Cr1=inspection
16 July - Uranium compounds dispersed in the reported looting of nuclear and radioactive material at the Tuwaitha complex in Iraq pose no danger from the point of view of proliferation, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency has determined.
A team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sent to Iraq for an on-site inspection last month, estimates that at least 10 kilograms of uranium compounds could have been dispersed when looters emptied and stole containers from the Location C Material Storage Facility at Tuwaitha, according to a report prepared by Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei.
The report, submitted this week to the Security Council, says a few grams of natural uranium compound could have remained in each of the approximately 200 emptied containers when upended by the looters during or shortly after the war in April, in the form of dust on the container walls or as material adhering to the bottom of folds.
"The quantity and type of uranium compounds dispersed are not sensitive from a proliferation point of view," the report adds.
It says Mr. ElBaradei will request the United States-run Provisional Authority in Iraq "to make every effort to recover" the dispersed material and to ensure the "the physical protection and security of the entire nuclear material inventory" at other locations in Iraq where material subject to IAEA safeguards is stored.
The Tuwaitha site, which has been under IAEA seal and regularly inspected since 1991, held about 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium and some 500 tons of natural and depleted uranium. The agency is responsible for safeguards and verification under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iraq is a signatory.
----
Bush Insists Iraq Was Trying to Rebuild Nuke Program
July 17, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-britain-usa-iraq.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With embattled British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side, President Bush on Thursday stood by his assertion that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program and declared: ``We won't be proven wrong.''
At a joint White House press conference, Bush and Blair closed ranks in defense of U.S. and British intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, which they used to justify invading the country and toppling its leader.
``The British intelligence that we had, we believe is genuine. We stand by that intelligence,'' Blair said.
Bush called it ``sound intelligence'' and lashed out ``the skeptics,'' who have focused on a now-discredited line in his State of the Union speech about Iraq's attempt to get uranium from Africa. The White House now says the line should not have been included in Bush's address.
``He (Saddam) possessed chemical weapons and biological weapons. I strongly believe he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program and I will remind the skeptics that in 1991 it became clear that Saddam Hussein was much closer to developing a nuclear weapon than anybody ever imagined,'' Bush said.
``He (Saddam) was a threat. I take responsibility for dealing with that threat,'' Bush said, adding: ``We won't be proven wrong ... We will bring the information forward on the weapons when they find them.''
----
Iraqi: Tubes Weren't for Nuclear Bombs
July 17, 2003
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Aluminum-Tubes.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- A key Iraqi scientist recently told the CIA that high-strength aluminum tubes bought by Baghdad weren't meant for nuclear bomb production, as President Bush suggested in his State of the Union address, two experts on Iraq's nuclear program say.
Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, who headed a uranium-enrichment unit vital to Iraq's pre-1991 bomb plans, ``also said that since '91 they hadn't resurrected a nuclear weapon program,'' according to ex-Iraq inspector David Albright, an American physicist who acted as go-between for Obeidi to talk to U.S. authorities a few weeks ago. Advertisement
The assertion that Baghdad had revived its nuclear project was central to the Bush administration's call for war early this year.
On March 16, three days before the U.S.-British invasion, Vice President Dick Cheney said Iraq was ``trying once again to produce nuclear weapons'' and even that Iraq had ``reconstituted nuclear weapons.''
Jacques Baute, chief U.N. nuclear inspector for Iraq, said he also had learned, from a trusted source, of Obeidi's statements about the tubes and program status.
The Iraqi was in a position to know, Baute said. ``He should have been aware if something had happened,'' the inspector said of claims Baghdad had revived its bomb-building.
Baute, head of the Iraq Nuclear Verification Office of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was interviewed at IAEA headquarters in Vienna.
Obeidi, now in Kuwait, made headlines last month when he dug up enrichment-centrifuge parts and documents he had buried in his Baghdad backyard, and gave them to the Americans. In CIA interviews, he said he hid them on orders from Iraqi leaders in 1991, during the Gulf War, for eventual use in rebuilding the bomb program, which was dismantled by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 conflict.
The White House said last month Obeidi's account was evidence of the ousted Baghdad regime's bomb ambitions. But U.S. officials did not, at the same time, report that the scientist had contradicted assertions that the program had already been revived and the tubes were part of it.
Asked Thursday in Washington about Obeidi's reported statements, a CIA spokesman declined to comment.
In his State of the Union address last Jan. 28, Bush offered two pieces of purported evidence that Iraq was resuming nuclear weapons work.
The first, alleging Iraq had secretly tried to buy uranium from an African state, was later discredited when Baute's team found such claims were based on forged documents of undisclosed origin.
Bush administration officials now contend other, unspecified evidence supports that allegation, but they have not produced such evidence. Washington Democrats are demanding a major investigation of possible misuse of intelligence.
The second element in the Bush speech was the tubes.
``Our intelligence sources tell us that (President Saddam Hussein) has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production,'' Bush said.
Spinning cylinders made of aluminum can be used for inferior models of enrichment centrifuges, which separate out bomb uranium. But the Iraqis by 1990 had advanced to a much more productive design using carbon fiber tubes.
The Saddam government told IAEA inspectors it was buying the aluminum tubes to make small artillery rockets. The IAEA then assembled centrifuge experts to consider the question, and last March 7 IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council that documentary and other evidence strongly supported the Iraqi version. Even earlier, before Bush's speech, ElBaradei had raised serious doubts about the tubes allegation.
Albright, interviewed by telephone in Germany, said Obeidi, Iraq's top centrifuge expert, had been unequivocal in discussions with U.N. inspectors, with him and then with the CIA.
``Before the war he took the position the tubes weren't for centrifuges, and after the war'' -- when any fear of Saddam's dictatorial regime would have faded -- ``he told them the same thing,'' Albright said.
Baute said Iraqi centrifuge components were incompatible with such aluminum cylinders.
``They'd have to redevelop a complete research-and-development program to adapt those tubes,'' redesigning head caps, vacuum jackets, piping and other elements of the centrifuge assembly, said the IAEA physicist, who once helped build France's nuclear bombs.
Such enrichment programs require thousands of centrifuges in ``cascade'' array. Using the slower-spinning aluminum tubes would have forced the Iraqis to build many thousands more of the small, highly sophisticated machines, Albright said.
The centrifuge question had been raised legitimately, Baute said, but some U.S. officials were wrong to say the aluminum tubes could only have been destined for nuclear centrifuges.
Neither the U.S. military since March nor U.N. inspectors earlier found any signs of a revived Iraqi nuclear bomb program.
As recently as this week, the administration cited the tubes in support of its case. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on Monday took note again of Obeidi's hidden centrifuge parts and said they should ``give people pause to think that maybe that is, indeed, what these tubes were intended for.''
--------
UN in Dark About Looted Iraq Dirty Bomb Material
Story by Louis Charbonneau
REUTERS AUSTRIA:
July 17, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21536/story.htm
VIENNA - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said yesterday it had accounted for most of the low-grade uranium lost during looting at Iraq's main nuclear facility, but had no information about more dangerous radioactive material.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced this in a report sent to the U.N. Security Council Tuesday about its limited inspection of the Location C storage facility outside the Tuwaitha nuclear research complex near Baghdad.
In the post-war chaos of Iraq, looters broke into Location C and at least six other nuclear sites in Iraq and emptied hundreds of containers of nuclear material. Most of the material and containers were recovered.
"The quantity and type of uranium compounds dispersed are not sensitive from a proliferation point of view," IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in the report. ElBaradei said at least 22 pounds of low-grade uranium may have been dispersed and called for authorities to recover all of it.
The term "proliferation" refers to the possibility of a country or group using these uranium compounds to make nuclear weapons.
This low-grade natural uranium would only be dangerous if ingested and would be of little use in a so-called dirty bomb, which could disperse radioactive material over a wide area through a conventional explosion.
But an IAEA spokeswoman said the agency had not been permitted by U.S. occupation authorities to check the status of Tuwaitha's stocks of highly-radioactive cesium-137, cobalt-160 and other materials which could be used in dirty bombs.
"There were around 400 of these radioactive sources stored at Tuwaitha," IAEA's Melissa Fleming said.
Witnesses have said that villagers near Tuwaitha, especially children, have shown symptoms of radiation sickness.
"Any case of radiation sickness would probably be from these highly-radioactive sources, not from the low-grade natural uranium at Location C," Fleming said.
"WHAT IT DOESN'T SAY"
The environmental organization Greenpeace organized its own mission to Iraq to determine the level of contamination of areas around Iraq's looted nuclear sites.
"It's not what the report says but what it doesn't say that is cause for concern," Greenpeace's team leader in Iraq, Mike Townsley, told Reuters in Amsterdam. "What the report doesn't talk about is the other radioactive material, the much more dangerous industrial radiation sources."
"Nobody says these isotopes are still there," he said. "Within one week our mission found three sources of these industrial isotopes. We had access to the community, the IAEA did not."
On June 24, Greenpeace handed over to the U.S. military an abandoned metal canister found in Iraq, which the group said was giving off 10,000 times the normal radiation levels.
The U.S. military would not permit the IAEA to assess the health of the local population and confined the IAEA inspection team's activities to an inventory of only the low-grade uranium at Location C.
The IAEA warned the United States and Britain after their forces took control of Iraq in April that they should secure all Iraq's nuclear facilities to prevent an environmental, medical and humanitarian emergency. The IAEA inspectors did not get to Iraq until early June.
In the report, ElBaradei again called on U.S. and British occupation authorities "to ensure the physical protection and security of the entire nuclear material inventory in Iraq."
-------- korea
The intelligence 'black hole' over N Korea
By Jon Wolfsthal Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
BBC
Thursday, 17 July, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3073677.stm
How much confidence can anyone have about intelligence estimates regarding North Korea's nuclear programme, in light of the row over Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Unfortunately, for policymakers and the public alike, the answer is not much.
North Korea is widely considered by intelligence officers as the hardest target to crack in terms of reliable information, and there are political pressures at work within the Bush administration that raise the spectre that intelligence may also be manipulated for ideological purposes.
Certain facts are not in dispute. North Korea does possess the means to produce plutonium, a key ingredient in nuclear weapons.
The country has one operating nuclear reactor in the city of Yongbyon, that can produce enough plutonium for approximately one nuclear weapon per year.
In addition, North Korea has demonstrated the ability to produce and purify plutonium, having produced at least small amounts in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Lastly, North Korea is known to have possessed some 8,000 fuel rods used to power its reactor in the early 1990s, and which are thought to have contained between 25-30kg of plutonium, enough for 5 or 6 nuclear weapons.
Beyond that, however, things are less certain.
The two important issues from a security standpoint are whether North Korea had nuclear weapons before the start of the current nuclear crisis in October 2002, and whether the country has been able to produce nuclear weapons since.
As for previous nuclear production, there is some evidence that the communist state produced enough plutonium at Yongbyon to produce one or two nuclear weapons.
The reactor was shut down in 1989 for over 2 months, time enough for North Korea to remove the plutonium-containing fuel from the facility and extract enough plutonium for a weapon.
No outside inspectors were on site at the time, so no independent facts are known for sure.
North Korea acknowledged shutting the reactor down, but claimed that only a small number of fuel elements were removed, and that only 100g of plutonium were purified.
More than 4kg of plutonium would be needed to produce a nuclear weapon.
Samples from the material produced by North Korea suggest it has not provided a complete picture of its activities before the start of nuclear inspections in 1992.
But investigations do not prove definitively one way or the other that Pyongyang was able to produce enough material for a nuclear device.
Current crisis
As for the current nuclear stand-off, there has been a great deal of confusion regarding what North Korea has been able to accomplish since nuclear inspectors were expelled from the country in December 2002.
US intelligence officials have confirmed that they have observed - via spy satellite - movement between the facility holding the 8,000 plutonium-laden fuel rods and the facility where the plutonium would be extracted.
To confirm that such extraction is taking place, however, intelligence services would need physical evidence, either from reliable human or electronic eavesdropping, or through the detection of tell-tale gasses that are released when nuclear material from a reactor undergoes reprocessing or extraction.
The chemical processing of spent fuel from a reactor releases Krypton-85 gas, which is hard to contain and mask.
The United States is thought to deploy Krypton-85 detectors in South Korea and in the waters off North Korea, as well as on airborne platforms such as spy planes.
While press reports suggest that Krypton has recently been detected by US officials, no public confirmation of this has been made.
Moreover, even if such a gas were detected, it would not give experts any hard information about how many of the 8,000 fuel elements had been processed, or how much plutonium had been extracted.
North Korea has added to this confusion - or perhaps tried to take advantage of it - by stating on several occasions that it has already begun reprocessing its spent fuel.
There is even the possibility that the release of Krypton gas could be deliberate, and part of a deception effort by North Korea to convince the world that it has crossed the nuclear threshold.
If Iraq helped show the world that intelligence is an art and not a hard science, then North Korea should reinforce the point in spades.
North Korea is a black hole for intelligence, and rarely does anything reliable come out of the hermit kingdom.
Given recent revelations about the handling of intelligence in Iraq, careful readers of developments in North Korea will want to parse every word at least once if not more.
Jon Wolfsthal is the Co-Author of Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction. He also served as the US Government on-site monitor in North Korea in 1995-1996.
Q&A: North Korea's nuclear threat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2340405.stm
NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR PROGRAMME
Yongbyon: Five megawatt experimental nuclear power reactor and a partially completed plutonium extraction facility. Activities at site frozen under 1994 Agreed Framework
Taechon: 200-MWt nuclear power reactor - construction halted under Agreed Framework
Pyongyang: Laboratory-scale "hot cells" that may have been used to extract small quantities of plutonium
Kumho: Two 1,000-MWt light water reactors being built under Agreed Framework
----
Report: N. Korea May Have Enough Plutonium for Bomb
July 17, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-report.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - China believes North Korea has processed enough plutonium to complete a nuclear bomb, the Asian Wall Street Journal said Friday.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service said last week North Korea had started reprocessing a small number of the 8,000 fuel rods it has stored at its Yongbyon nuclear complex.
The newspaper quoted diplomats in the Chinese capital and a European official as saying Chinese intelligence services had concluded in recent weeks their communist neighbor is producing enough weapons-grade plutonium and has all the components needed to make nuclear-topped missiles.
``China believes North Korea has reprocessed enough plutonium to complete a nuclear bomb -- a finding Beijing isn't publicly acknowledging but that is touching off urgent Chinese diplomacy to defuse Pyongyang's standoff with the U.S.,'' the Journal said in its front-page report from Beijing.
It said the diplomats and the official had seen internal Chinese reports or been briefed on their contents.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo is to brief Secretary of State Colin Powell Friday on his visit to Pyongyang this week, the latest step in a diplomatic push to persuade North Korea to talk about ending its nuclear program.
The crisis erupted last October when U.S. officials said Pyongyang said it had a covert atomic weapons program.
Despite the tensions and an exchange of gunfire across the North-South border Thursday, senior U.S. officials say they see signs multilateral talks could resume with North Korea.
----
China Intensifies Efforts on U.S.-North Korea Nuclear Talks
July 17, 2003
New York Times
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/international/asia/17CND-SEOUL.html
GUANGZHOU, China, July 17 - China stepped up its efforts to broker negotiations between the United States and North Korea today, dispatching a senior diplomat to Washington and urging both sides to revive a discarded 1994 accord on ending North Korea's nuclear program.
Beijing's unusual public campaign to bring the two sides together suggested that it intended to play a more assertive mediating role in a new round of talks, which some experts say could be held as soon as August, probably in the Chinese capital.
"China hopes to see the quick resumption of the peace talks" China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, said at a news briefing today. "The purpose of the Beijing talks would be to seek a final settlement to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
China's deputy foreign minister, Dai Bingguo, left Beijing today for a visit to Washington, where he is expected to meet Bush administration officials to discuss the terms of new talks with North Korea.
Mr. Dai had just returned from a four-day visit to Pyongyang, the North Korea capital.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Wednesday that the United States was open to discussions with the reclusive Communist government in North Korea. He said he expected to see the reopening of a diplomatic channel in the very near future.
If the talks do get under way, China indicated that it would urge the United States and North Korea to return to a 1994 accord, known as the Agreed Framework, that the Clinton administration negotiated in an effort to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
Under that deal, the United States and its allies agreed to provide fuel to North Korea and help it build two light-water nuclear reactors. Pyongyang agreed to shut down its heavy-water nuclear reactor and scrap all plans to build atomic bombs.
The Bush administration expressed skepticism about that deal after taking office in 2001, and it collapsed after North Korea acknowledged that it had been pursuing a nuclear program despite the accord.
Pyongyang has since fired up its heavy-water nuclear plant, pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and expelled inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Bush administration officials also said this week that North Korea boasted that it had begun reprocessing 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods to make plutonium. If that was true, the country could begin building a small arsenal of nuclear weapons within months.
Some Bush administration officials have rejected the possibility of reviving the 1994 agreement as the basis for future negotiations, asserting that that would amount to succumbing to blackmail.
North Korea, administration officials say, must unilaterally and verifiably scrap its nuclear program before the United States will discuss economic or diplomatic incentives.
China, however, says that the earlier agreement should remain the basis for new negotiations, asserting that it was effective for a time.
"The 1994 Agreed Framework played a role for a certain period of time, for 10 years," Mr. Kong said. "We hope that the agreement can be continued, but it will be up to the parties concerned."
----
Korean class materials show anti-U.S. slant
By Barbara Demick /
Los Angeles Times
Saturday, July 19, 2003
http://www.detnews.com/2003/schools/0307/19/schools-221442.htm
KOYANG, South Korea -- Here's a pop quiz about the United States.
The question comes from course material distributed to many South Korean students, who were asked which of the following descriptions of America was incorrect:
1) The world's leading arms-exporting country.
2) The world's most heavily nuclear-armed country.
3) The world's leader in chemical weapons research.
4) The world's most peace-loving country that never once was at war with other countries.
Even as the South Korean government tries to keep anti-American demonstrators off the streets, such sentiments are alive and well in many of the nation's public schools.
The above question was part of a supplemental teaching package on the war in Iraq that was distributed in March by the Korea Teachers and Educational Workers Union. Other questions in the quiz, which was given to about 400,000 students, suggested that the United States wanted to destroy North Korea, along with Iran, Cuba, Syria and Libya. The package also included graphic photographs from the 1991 Persian Gulf War of Baghdad in flames and injured Iraqi children.
During a class on the U.S. military role in South Korea, one teacher in Koyang showed her seventh-graders a photograph from police archives of a Korean prostitute who had been murdered and sexually assaulted with an umbrella by an American soldier.
The unconventional teaching materials have sparked controversy in the schools -- so much so that one might say an ideological war is raging for the hearts and minds of South Korean youth.
In one corner is the union, which represents 94,000 of the country's 360,000 public-school teachers and has a long history of political activism. Opposing it is a group of conservative educators, parents, principals and other teachers who are banding together to keep overtly political messages out of the curriculum.
The antiwar materials were withdrawn from the classrooms in May -- not because of complaints, but because major fighting in the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq had ended. The union's teachers, however, say they would not change their approach to education with the start of the new school year in September.
"It is necessary to teach students about the consequences of war and why humankind should oppose any kind of war," said Park Seok Gyun, a high school teacher. Park said he not only gave his students the quiz but also showed them television footage of antiwar activists who had gone to Baghdad as "human shields."
"I didn't consider this to be anti-American," he said. "It was teaching students the difference between right and wrong."
The backdrop of the dispute is a surge in anti-Americanism, with the younger generation in particular voicing complaints about issues ranging from the conduct of U.S. troops in South Korea to the Bush administration's tough stance toward North Korea and the war in Iraq.
U.S. officials in South Korea, which is nominally one of America's closest allies, say they are worried that the schools might be encouraging such thinking.
"We don't go around policing other countries' scholastic materials, but this does seem to show a distorted picture of America," ambassador Thomas Hubbard said. "If that is what is being circulated in schools, I'm not surprised that many young Koreans voice unfavorable attitudes toward the United States."
South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has been awkwardly trying to steer a middle ground. Since taking office in February, he has called on anti-American activists to cool their street protests for fear that the demonstrations were harming the business environment in South Korea.
Faced with another potential embarrassment over the teaching materials, he concurred with the union's position that the quiz was not anti-American while warning that "antiwar education should be encouraged but only as long as it is not anti-American, in consideration of our diplomatic relations."
Under the South Korean education system, teachers or their unions have had the right since 2001 to bring supplemental teaching materials into the classroom. In theory, the course work should be approved by principals, but educators say that seldom happens.
The antiwar material went to only those students whose social studies teachers were union members, about 20 percent of the 12- to 15-year-olds in the system. Other quiz questions in the package focused on the hardships experienced by Iraqis after the 1991 war.
For example: Which of the following descriptions of Iraq after the Gulf War is incorrect?
1) Due to economic sanctions, infant mortality increased by 150 percent, and in some areas, 70 percent of newborns had leukemia.
2) The United States and Britain conducted a bombing campaign against Iraq for 11 years after the war, causing terror among the Iraqi people.
3) Cancer among Iraqi children increased by 700 percent because of depleted uranium left from the bombing.
4) The infant mortality rate of Iraqi children in 1999 was 300 percent higher than it was a decade earlier. 5) Not a single Iraqi starved to death after the Gulf War because of the extensive food-relief program.
The course materials inspired something of a backlash from other educators, who last month formed the United Citizens for Educational Community expressly to fight what they saw as abuses by the union.
"Their views are very radical and far outside the mainstream," said Lee Sang Joo, a former education minister who is leading the drive.
Others complain that the teachers union, which until 1999 was illegal, also introduced texts that appeared sympathetic to North Korean interpretations of modern history.
Nothing, though, raised a bigger ruckus in the school system than the photograph of the dead prostitute, which was shown in December to seventh-graders at a school in Koyang, a suburb of Seoul. The photo is from a 1992 murder for which a former American soldier, Kenneth Markle III, was convicted. He is serving a 15-year sentence in a South Korean prison, although many Koreans erroneously believe he was allowed to return to the United States without being prosecuted.
The teacher who showed the photograph, Om Chang Seon, said she decided to do so because it was being widely shown on the Internet and at protests as part of the debate over the Status of Forces Agreement, which governs U.S. soldiers in South Korea. She noted that portions of the photograph of the naked corpse were obscured for the sake of decency.
"This is nothing that they couldn't have seen elsewhere," said Om, a soft-spoken 29-year-old who hardly looks older than some of her students. "Rather than giving our students canned education, we want to encourage them to think about what is going on in the world."
Many parents in Koyang apparently did not agree.
"Some of them forced their way into my office, pushed me around and verbally accosted me," Om said in an interview. She did not lose her job as a result of the incident, but Om said she was denied a promotion to teach eighth grade.
"I didn't like America much even before this," said Lee Dok Gi, 13, one student who was shown the photograph.
Americans "are always picking fights with other countries," chimed in his friend, 14-year-old Kang Woo Seok, as the two headed to the basketball court outside the junior high school.
The boys said their parents were more upset about the sexual content of the photograph than about the politics.
"My parents said you need not know about a thing like this. But we already know," the older boy said. "It was a terrible photograph, but I think it was necessary for us to see."
-------- russia
Russia OKs Foreign Power Plants at Cities
July 17, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Russia-Plutonium.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An agreement was reached Thursday between the United States and Russia on Western access to two traditionally closed Russian nuclear cities, marking another step toward shutting down Russia's last two plutonium producing reactors.
The agreement signed in Moscow establishes arrangements for foreign access to the once highly secret cities of Seversk and Zheleznogorsk for the construction of two fossil fuel-burning power plants.
The cities, part of Russian nuclear weapons complex, are among some of the most secret real estate in all of Russia. While some foreigners, with advance permission, have had access to work on joint projects, the cities remain generally off limits to anyone but those working in nuclear programs and their families.
``This is one further step in what has been a long process'' to get the plutonium reactors replaced, said Matthew Bunn, a researcher at Harvard University who has closely followed Russian nuclear issues.
Russia, with U.S. assistance, has agreed to shut down the two plutonium production reactors located at the two cities, but not until two fossil-fuel power plants are built to replace the electricity the two reactors now produce. It still will be five to eight years before the Russian reactors will shut down and stop making plutonium.
``Replacing these reactors with fossil fuel energy is critical to eliminating the production of weapons-grade plutonium in Russia and closing these facilities,'' said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
The agreement covers only access arrangements related to building the two coal-burning power plants, a sign of the political sensitivity of the access question. Access to the nuclear reactors to make safety improvements, pending their actual shutdown, still is being negotiated, officials said.
Seversk, formerly known as Tomsk-7, and Zheleznogorsk, formerly Krasnoyask-26, are among ten cities that once were at the heart of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons production complex.
Built in the 1940s and early 1960s, the so-called ``nuclear cities'' once had more than 170,000 people, both nuclear workers and their families. Those living in the closed cities once received the best of everything, but since the end of the Cold War many of the former nuclear workers have fallen on hard times.
Last May, the Energy Department announced a $466 million contract for two American companies to oversee construction of the two coal-burning power plants. Most of the actual work is expected to be done by Russian companies and workers.
The two reactors produce enough plutonium each week to make three nuclear warheads. They also are among the most dangerous in the world because of their design, similar to the Chernobyl reactor involved in the 1986 nuclear disaster in Ukraine. Unlike U.S. reactors, for example, they do not have concrete containment domes to hold in radiation in case of an accident or major leak.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- kentucky
Plant workers suit dismissed
Lawyers to appeal federal judge's tossing out $10 billion suit
July 17, 2003,
Paducah Sun
By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2003/nn11960.htm
A suit seeking more than $10 billion for Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant workers who say they suffered emotional distress and potential medical expenses because of exposure to radioactive and chemical contamination was dismissed Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Joseph McKinley.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Paducah on Sept. 3, 1999, sought damages for as many as 10,000 people who have worked at the plant since it opened 50 years ago.
The suit is separate from a whistleblower suit filed in June 1998 by workers who claim former plant operator Lockheed Martin Corp. filed false documents to cover up contamination at the plant. The U.S. Department of Justice has joined in that suit, which seeks to recover more than $100 million the federal government paid to Lockheed based on claims that the reports filed were false.
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati will be asked to review McKinley's action in dismissing the other suit. "We've done a lot of work and research in the case and think the workers and their families have a claim," said Mark Bryant, a Paducah attorney for the workers. "We aren't ready to give up."
Bryant, who was out of town Wednesday, said he hadn't read McKinley's ruling, which was a summary judgment based on motions by former plant operators Union Carbide Corp. and Lockheed Martin and by General Electric Co., which are accused of having shipped contaminated uranium feedstock to the plant from 1954 until 1998.
William McMurry of Louisville, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, was traveling and won't be back in his office until next week.
Gail Rymer - spokeswoman for Lockheed, which operated the plant from 1982 until 1997 - said the company was gratified that the suit has been dismissed. "It is consistent with our belief that the plaintiffs' claims had no basis," she said. "Lockheed Martin operations have never had any adverse impact on the community."
In a 16-page ruling, McKinley concluded that the plant operators were covered under the Price-Anderson Act, approved by Congress in 1957, that limits the liability of private operators of nuclear facilities "in the event of a nuclear incident." The law was enacted to encourage private companies to enter the nuclear industry.
McKinley also based his dismissal on recent rulings by the Kentucky Supreme Court that said a company may not be held liable for emotional distress from exposure to toxic substances even if the exposure was a result of negligence. To recover damages "requires a plaintiff to show some present physical injury," the judge wrote in his ruling.
The suit claimed that some workers suffered "chromosomal damage" from the exposure, but the judge quoted previous court rulings that said "chromosomal damage ... does not constitute a present physical injury."
McKinley delayed his ruling while waiting for the Kentucky Supreme Court to decide a case in which a woman had filed a suit against the maker of a diet supplement that was removed from the market when it was linked to cancer.
The woman had no illnesses or diseases linked to the supplement but was seeking damages for emotional distress and claims that she had a significantly increased risk of cancer or some other disease because of her use of the drug.
The Supreme Court said that without a present physical injury or illness, she wasn't entitled to file a liability claim. Her suit was dismissed.
Bryant said that thousands of pages of proof had been submitted in the case and that thousands of dollars were spent on research to substantiate the workers' claims.
"We've exhumed bodies of workers who died and taken trips to Europe to have tests done," Bryant said. "It is difficult to get a scientist in the United States to conduct testing because most have done work for the federal government," which operated the plant until 1998.
-------- new york
Giuliani Promotes Indian Pt. Terror Drill
July 17, 2003
The New York Times
By LISA W. FODERARO
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/nyregion/17NUKE.html
HARRISON, N.Y., July 16 - Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, visited Westchester County today to speak on behalf of one of his new clients, Entergy Nuclear Northeast, as it prepares for an antiterrorism drill at its Indian Point nuclear power complex.
The visit was part of an elaborate presentation by Entergy that blended the thrills of a summer action picture - an M-16 semiautomatic rifle firing blanks at an Indian Point security officer - and Mr. Giuliani's star power. It seemed designed to take back some of the attention that has lately focused on Entergy's critics, who have attacked the nuclear site's operations and its emergency evacuation plans.
Mr. Giuliani, whose consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, was hired by Entergy in April to advise the company on security and emergency planning, spoke about the usefulness of preparedness drills. He cited exercises that the city undertook while he was mayor - a mock airplane crash in Queens and an imaginary sarin gas attack in Lower Manhattan.
"We did so many drills and exercises, there was probably a point after a while that we thought we were going through too many," he said in a news conference at Westchester County Airport here. "And on Sept. 11 and 12 and 13, all those drills and exercises became enormously important."
The antiterrorism drill, involving commando-style raids in which mock terrorists try to foil the defenses at the plant, in Buchanan, N.Y., is part of a federal pilot program and will take place during several days sometime this summer, Entergy officials said. But the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, which will monitor the drill, refused to say precisely when, citing security concerns.
Before Sept. 11, all nuclear power plants underwent such drills every eight years. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the drills were suspended, as security forces at the nation's nuclear reactors were on high alert, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission focused on strengthening security guidelines.
Next year, the exercises will resume, with each of the nuclear sites undergoing drills at least once every three years, said Neil A. Sheehan, an N.R.C. spokesman. But this year, 15 nuclear sites will conduct drills under the pilot program, using the agency's new guidelines, which expand the threat from the mock adversaries. The final guidelines will be in place by the end of 2004, Mr. Sheehan said.
At Indian Point, which has two nuclear reactors, pseudoterrorists will be given a layout of the complex, as well as its defense strategy. They will then try to penetrate that defense in several mock attacks, using sophisticated laser-tag equipment and coming at the security officers from land and, possibly, from the Hudson River, said James Knubel, Entergy Nuclear Northeast's vice president for nuclear affairs.
Mr. Knubel said Indian Point will have two separate security forces in place during the drill, one to respond to the mock assailants and the other to maintain existing security in the event of a real attack. Therefore, the security officers will have warning of the timing of the drill.
Mr. Knubel said the mock attack would not come from the air, although elected officials and environmental activists have said since Sept. 11 that the plant is most vulnerable to sabotage from above.
The N.R.C. does not plan to grade Indian Point on the exercise, and Entergy officials stressed today that the drill is not a test. Rather, it is a chance for both the N.R.C. and Entergy to learn what improvements may be needed in the plant's defense.
Moreover, the N.R.C. does not intend to tell the public how the security force at Indian Point performed during the drill, Mr. Sheehan said, adding that critics of the nuclear industry have manipulated results released about such exercises in the past.
Opponents of Indian Point faulted the advance notice that the guards would receive about the drills.
"It's troubling because we know that in the real world the terrorists are not going to tip their hand and let Entergy know they are coming," said Kyle M. Rabin, the policy analyst for Riverkeeper, an environmental group.
Mr. Rabin also dismissed Mr. Giuliani's involvement as a "P.R. move," saying Entergy was "hiding behind the popularity" of the former mayor. And he ridiculed the idea of training for an assault originating on the ground, instead of one coming through the air.
Mr. Knubel defended the exercises. "This is as real as it can get without actually firing real bullets and people getting hurt," he said.
-------- us nuc waste
GAO Urges Overhaul of Nuclear Cleanup
July 17, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Cleanup.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- After spending $18 billion over two decades, the government's struggle to clean up highly radioactive waste from years of nuclear bomb production is still behind schedule with no assurance a new strategy for quicker cleanup will succeed, congressional investigators said Thursday.
The General Accounting Office, in a report presented at a House hearing, said that while the Bush administration's attempts to reduce costs and speed up cleanup were laudable, the program relies on untested technologies and procedures, and faces potentially crippling legal challenges.
The Energy Department's top official overseeing the environmental cleanup effort, Jesse Roberson, acknowledged that legal challenges to the program could cause problems, but insisted that the cleanup effort is being tested adequately to assure an ``80 percent confidence of success.''
``We are at a turning point for this program. We must not lessen our resolve,'' Roberson told the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee.
Officials and scientists have been perplexed for years over how to deal with the highly radioactive waste that has accumulated at Energy Department nuclear weapons sites -- especially Hanford in Washington, Savannah River in South Carolina and at the INEEL facility in Idaho.
Some of the material, left over from a half-century of plutonium production for nuclear bombs and other weapons activities, will remain deadly for thousands of years. In some cases, such as with the wastes in dozens of metal tanks at Hanford, scientists have no clear idea what's in the soup of chemicals because of poor record-keeping over the Cold War years.
The cleanup effort ``has been estimated to cost nearly $105 billion and take decades to complete,'' the GAO report said. Much of the waste, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, is in concentrations that will require permanent isolation from the environment either on site or at a central repository.
``After investing more than 20 years and about $18 billion, DOE acknowledged . . . that the program to clean up its high-level waste was far behind schedule, far over budget and in need of major change,'' the GAO's Robin Nazzaro told the subcommittee. Since then, the Energy Department has embarked on a program to reduce costs and quicken waste disposal.
However, she continued, the GAO has concerns about the success of these programs, noting the DOE already has scaled back its cost savings from an original estimate of $34 billion to $29 billion. ``Our assessment of the revised estimate indicates that (the cost savings) may not be reliable,'' Nazzaro said, summarizing the auditing agency's report.
A particular challenge is disposal of 94 million gallons of untreated high-level waste that has been stored for years in metal -- sometimes corroding -- tanks at the Hanford, Savannah River and Idaho facilities.
``This waste would fill an area the size of a football field to a depth of about 260 feet,'' according to the GAO report.
Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., the subcommittee chairman, said in 1996 the Hanford tank cleanup was estimated to cost $3.2 billion. This year the cost was estimated at $5.8 billion ``and the project is 10 months behind schedule.''
Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., whose district is downstream on the Columbia River from the Hanford waste tanks, said his constituents are skeptical about DOE cleanup assurances. In the past ``they have not always been telling the truth,'' he said.
The new Energy Department plan is to separate the most highly radioactive material at Hanford and the other sites, and ship it to an underground disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, once that repository gets built. The rest, after separation, would be treated and buried on site in the three states.
But a federal judge has already ruled against the department's attempt to reclassify some of the waste to allow it to be buried on site.
Roberson acknowledged concern about the legal challenges and that the department is considering asking Congress to rewrite the law governing the disposal of nuclear waste to clarify that -- as the DOE currently believes -- some of the waste may be separated and be kept on site.
----
Congress Asked to Reverse Court Ruling on Nuclear Waste
WASHINGTON, DC,
July 17, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2003/2003-07-17-09.asp#anchor2
The head of the Department of Energy's nuclear waste cleanup program today asked Congress to overturn a recent federal court ruling that the agency illegally gave itself the authority to reclassify high-level nuclear waste so that it could abandon it at three nuclear weapons facilities.
In a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Department of Energy (DOE) assistant secretary for environmental management Jesse Roberson asked Congress to legislatively reverse the court's ruling in a lawsuit brought against the agency by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
In her testimony, Roberson said, "The department believes it would be useful for Congress to reaffirm that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act does not mandate that the department dispose of defense high-level wastes in a geologic repository constructed under the [Nuclear Waste Policy Act].
The department is seeking "explicit legislative reaffirmation that the department has the authority to determine which wastes from reprocessing do not require permanent disposal in a repository designed for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste," Roberson said.
"The court said that the law applies to Energy Department waste and it can't abandon that waste," said Geoffrey Fettus, the NRDC attorney who argued the case on behalf of NRDC, the Yakama Nation, the Shoshone-Bannock tribes and the Snake River Alliance. The states of Idaho, Oregon, South Carolina and Washington filed a brief supporting the NRDC's position.
"The agency would be better off spending its energy cleaning up its mess rather than running to the Capitol to ask Congress to let it off the hook," Fettus said.
A report on nuclear waste disposal prepared by the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, and released Wednesday by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin of Louisiana says that a "prolonged court battle" on the issue of the DOE's authority to separate radioactive waste could "seriously hamper DOE's ability to meet accelerated schedules it has set under its new initiative" to accelerate the cleanup of the nation's high-level nuclear waste.
If Congress were to overturn the court's decision, Fettus explained, it would be responsible for making the Nuclear Waste Policy Act applicable to only commercial nuclear waste, not the high-level radioactive waste generated by the government. Such a decision would allow the DOE to abandon millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste in corroding, leaking tanks, he warned.
-------- us politics
Ex-CIA brass call for Cheney's resignation
July 17 2003
Cape Times, South Africa
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=vn20030717010708140C894243&set_id=1
Washington - An American soldier has died in an explosion in Iraq, bringing the number of combat deaths to 147, equalling the toll in the 1991 Gulf War.
The death on Wednesday added to the pressure on President George Bush, who is facing mounting criticism over the cost of the war and accusations that the United States exaggerated intelligence about Iraq's weapons to justify the conflict.
The Pentagon has confirmed that the military expenses of the war and its aftermath have been $48-billion (nearly R400-billion) to date, with a monthly bill of more than $3,9-billion for the next couple of months.
Senate Democrats have blasted Bush for the rising cost of the war and for failing, in the face of rocketing US budget deficits, to seek more international help in rebuilding Iraq.
'He sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here' Vice-President Dick Cheney, the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation on Tuesday when he was accused of using his office to insist that a false claim about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Niger be included in Bush's state of the union address - overriding the concerns of the Central Intelligence Agency's director, George Tenet.
Cheney was also accused of knowingly misleading congress when the administration sought its authorisation for the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein.
The allegations against Cheney have come from a number of quarters here, but most vocally from a group of senior former intelligence officials who believe information produced by the intelligence community was used selectively to support a war fought for political reasons. In an open letter to Bush, the group has asked that he demand Cheney's resignation.
There is no clear evidence proving Cheney was responsible for insisting the 16 words that repeated the claim that Saddam was seeking "significant quantities of uranium from Africa" be inserted in the speech Bush delivered on January 28.
But there is clear evidence of Cheney's interest in the claims about a Niger deal. Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, has said he was asked by the CIA, following a request from the vice-president's office, to go to Niger to investigate the claim.
Reports from CIA officials show that shortly before the war Cheney visited CIA headquarters in Virginia several times to meet officials analysing intelligence relating to Iraq.
"(He) sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior CIA official said. - Reuters, The Independent
This article was originally published on page 2 of The Cape Times on July 17, 2003
----
U.S. High Horse Now Riderless
by Jay Bookman
Thursday, July 17, 2003
by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (http://www.ajc.com)
by Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0717-05.htm
Some people are born humble. Others have humility thrust upon them.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for example, was asked in a recent interview whether he still had faith in prewar intelligence claiming a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
"I think that the, the, information we had over a period of time that I cited that the intelligence community gave to me and I read as opposed to ad-libbing was correct. It, it, it was carefully stated . . ."
Talk about carefully stated.
It's telling to see the bantam rooster of the Bush administration turn so halting and defensive, insisting that, hey, he had only been reading what somebody else handed him. Then again, there's a lot of that going around these days.
In fact, if Vietnam was the place where America lost her innocence, Iraq may be the place where we lose our arrogance.
The once-triumphant Richard Perle has gone underground. The sublimely smug William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and stalwart champion of empire, no longer looks as though he just swallowed a canary. Crow is more like it. And we've heard more from Saddam Hussein in recent weeks than from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
Maybe because Saddam, unlike Wolfowitz, has a plan that's actually working.
The humility of Rumsfeld and others, while belated, is well-earned. Too many of our soldiers are still dying. Too many others, living every day with the knowledge that an attack could come from anywhere, now find themselves acting with the brutality that has long been required of occupying forces. The transformation is no doubt necessary for their self-defense, but it may haunt their nights for years.
Contrary to previous assurances, our top generals now admit that we will be stuck in Iraq for years at a current cost of a billion dollars a week, not including substantial reconstruction costs. The need to keep at least 150,000 soldiers stationed in Iraq for the foreseeable future also means that our military will be seriously overextended for a long time.
Globally, the credibility of the United States is in tatters. At a time when both North Korea and Iran truly do seem to be moving toward a nuclear capability -- as contrasted with the fictitious nuclear program attributed to Iraq -- we find ourselves in a weak position, both militarily and diplomatically, to challenge them.
We've even been reduced to asking, all but begging, other nations to contribute troops to Iraq, but most are declining. They want no part of a war that they advised against, a war they were ridiculed by U.S. officials for opposing, a war that now seems to be going bad.
Anybody can make mistakes, of course. But mistakes born of arrogance are particularly hard to accept, and our leaders made plenty, right from the beginning. The United Nations would never dare to withhold its approval for an invasion, yet it did. The Iraqi people would welcome us with parades and confetti, but instead it's been rocket-propelled grenades. Weapons of mass destruction posed a grave threat to our safety of our loved ones, yet so far none has been found.
And the notion that we could create a democratic Iraq to serve as a beacon to the rest of the Islamic world is now exposed for the romantic claptrap it had always been.
For a year now, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have treated U.S. intelligence agencies as little more than public-relations flacks, tasked to produce propaganda that the CEO needed to sell a product. They drew up no Plan B in case they were wrong about Iraq, because the notion that they could be wrong never entered their minds. Any who dared suggest otherwise were dismissed as fools, traitors or appeasers.
Even when smart people, experienced people, such as Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, tried to tell them that an occupation of Iraq might be expensive and require a lot of manpower, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz publicly scoffed.
And in that willful blindness, they have led us here.
Today, and tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future, our men and women in uniform will be dealing with the consequences of their leaders' misinformed arrogance. But surely, those who made the mistakes should face consequences, too.
"If Donald Rumsfeld was here," Spc. Clinton Deitz of the 3rd Infantry Division told ABC News in Baghdad, "I'd ask him for his resignation."
Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor.
----
Democrat Eyes Potential Grounds for Bush Impeachment
Thu July 17, 2003 07:50 PM ET
By John Milne
(Reuters)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=04PP4LS5FVFTUCRBAE0CFFA?type=politicsNews&storyID=3112363
CONCORD, N.H. - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham said on Thursday there were grounds to impeach President Bush if he was found to have led America to war under false pretenses.
While Graham did not call for Bush's impeachment, he said if the president lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq it would be "more serious" than former President Bill Clinton's lie under oath about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
"If in fact we went to war under false pretenses that is a very serious charge," Graham, the senior U.S. senator from Florida, told reporters in New Hampshire.
"If the standard of impeachment is the one the House Republicans used against Bill Clinton, this clearly comes within that standard," he said.
Democrats and some Republicans have raised questions about the unsubstantiated claim Bush made in his January State of the Union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Graham's comments came as reporters followed up on his remarks earlier this week that any deception by Bush over Iraq might rise to the standard of an impeachable offense -- as defined by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives when it voted to impeach Clinton.
Clinton was ultimately cleared by the U.S. Senate after being impeached by the House.
After his appearance in New Hampshire, Graham issued a statement saying he was not calling for Bush's impeachment and saw the issue as a largely academic one, adding that if Bush had misled the American public he would pay the price for it in the 2004 presidential election.
In Washington on Thursday, Bush told a news conference that the speech reference was based on "sound intelligence" and he was certain that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program.
"We won't be proven wrong," he said with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side.
The flap over Iraq upstaged Graham's economic proposals. He said his plan would balance the federal budget within five years while providing middle-class tax relief and creating 3 million new jobs.
His plan would repeal most of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. It would reinstate a 38.6 percent tax bracket for wealthy individuals and create a new "millionaires tax bracket" at 40 percent. Graham also proposed cracking down on individuals and companies who transfer assets offshore or renounce U.S. citizenship to escape taxation.
---
The Dishonesty Of the President, By Bob Graham
Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) is running for president.
July 17, 2003
Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpgra173374411jul17,0,6483391.story
The administration of George W. Bush is looking more and more like a bait-and-switch operation. Much like a profiteer who advertises a too-good-to-be-true deal to lure customers into his store, this White House is willing to shade and manipulate information to sell its policies to the American people and our allies around the world.
But that cynical strategy erodes our government's credibility at home and abroad. It must stop.
To justify a pre-emptive war with Iraq, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level officials selectively used - and may have misused - intelligence information to make the case that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to his neighbors, to U.S. interests in the Mideast and even to Americans here at home.
The most egregious example: The president declared in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for production of nuclear weapons - when in fact that information had been discredited at least three months earlier.
The White House continues to claim that Bush's statement was technically accurate because he attributed it to British intelligence. But that is disingenuous because the CIA had undertaken a review of the reports from Niger at the request of Vice President Cheney and had found them bogus - and the CIA told its British counterpart in September 2002 that it had "reservations" about the information.
Claims about Saddam Hussein's biological and chemical weapons, and his ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network, have yet to be verified.
And it appears the administration has stretched some information to justify those claims. For example, President Bush and others said high-strength aluminum tubes being shipped to Iraq were to be "used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." In fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were not for uranium enrichment but for conventional weapons.
Last week under questioning from members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld disclosed that the cost of operations in Iraq are $3.9 billion a month. That is nearly twice the estimate the administration had given to the public as recently as April.
With such disclosures, it's no wonder that this White House has such a passion for secrecy. It was little noticed when the president signed an executive order in March 2003 delaying the release of millions of classified archival documents that would otherwise have been automatically declassified after 25 years. That order also gave government bureaucrats broader authority to keep materials secret.
Such tactics are coming under attack. A federal appeals court ruled on July 8 that the White House must release records from the energy task force chaired by Vice President Cheney in 2001 - records kept hidden from the General Accounting Office and other investigators for nearly two years.
But the battles continue. Last year, I co-chaired a special joint House-Senate inquiry that investigated the intelligence failures leading up to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. We not only tried to lay out the facts for the American people; we identified the lessons that we should have learned and made recommendations for reforms to avert a repeat of that tragedy.
We filed the classified version of our report on Dec. 20, 2002. It has taken seven months for the administration to decide what portions of the report can be made public. I am hopeful that the declassified version will be released this month. Then Congress can finally begin working on legislative solutions to the problems we have identified.
But we have lost valuable time to work with first responders to apply our findings and bolster our homeland security - and, even more seriously, there is much valuable information in the 800-page report that we will not be allowed to release.
Why? Because the executive branch controls the classification process, and this information would embarrass the administration or otherwise not serve its policy ends. Rather than a free and open debate over policy, analysts in the intelligence community and other agencies can see that the White House only wants information that will further its political goals. Instead of speaking truth to power, the political appointee tells the powerful what he wants to hear; and the American public cannot assess accountability or proposals for reform.
Is that what happened when the CIA reviewed a draft of the State of the Union speech - or crafted its assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction?
Only an open, honest and independent investigation will determine the answer to that question.
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Wolfowitz Committee Told White House to Hype Dubious Uranium Claims
by Jason Leopold
July 17, 2003
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/leopold10.html
A Pentagon committee led by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, advised President Bush to include a reference in his January State of the Union address about Iraq trying to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger to bolster the case for war in Iraq, despite the fact that the CIA warned Wolfowitz's committee that the information was unreliable, according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate's intelligence committee who have been investigating the issue.
The Senators and the CIA official said they could be forced out of government and brought up on criminal charges for leaking the information to this reporter and as a result requested anonymity. The Senators said they plan to question CIA Director George Tenet Wednesday morning in a closed-door hearing to find out whether Wolfowitz and members of a committee he headed misled Bush and if the President knew about the erroneous information prior to his State of the Union address.
Spokespeople for Wolfowitz and Tenet vehemently denied the accusations. Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, would not return repeated calls for comment.
The revelations by the CIA official and the senators, if true, would prove that Tenet, who last week said he erred by allowing the uranium reference to be included in the State of the Union address, took the blame for an intelligence failure that he was not responsible for. The lawmakers said it could also lead to a widespread probe of prewar intelligence.
At issue is a secret committee set up in 2001 by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the Office of Special Plans, which was headed by Wolfowitz, Abrum Shulsky and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, to probe allegations links between Iraq and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and whether the country was stockpiling a cache of weapons of mass destruction. The Special Plans committee disbanded in March after the start of the war in Iraq.
The committee's job, according to published reports, was to gather intelligence information on the Iraqi threat that the CIA and FBI could not uncover and present it to the White House to build a case for war in Iraq. The committee relied heavily on information provided by Iraqi defector Ahmad Chalabi, who has provided the White House with reams of intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs that has been disputed. Chalabi heads the Iraqi National Congress, a group of Iraqi exiles who have pushed for regime change in Iraq.
The Office of Special Plans, according to the CIA official and the senators, routinely provided Bush, Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice with questionable intelligence information on the Iraqi threat, much of which was included in various speeches by Bush and Cheney and some of which was called into question by the CIA.
In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld became increasingly frustrated that the CIA could not find any evidence of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons program, evidence that would have helped the White House build a solid case for war in Iraq.
In an article in the New York Times last October, the paper reported that Rumsfeld had ordered the Office of Special Plans to "to search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists" that might have been overlooked by the CIA.
The CIA official and the senators said that's when Wolfowitz and his committee instructed the White House to have Bush use the now disputed line about Iraq's attempts to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger in a speech the President was set to give in Cincinnati. But Tenet quickly intervened and informed Stephen Hadley, an aide to National Security Adviser Rice, that the information was unreliable.
Patrick Lang, a former director of Middle East analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with the New Yorker magazine in May that the Office of Special Plans "started picking out things that supported their thesis and stringing them into arguments that they could use with the President. It's not intelligence. It's political propaganda."
Lang said the CIA and Office of Special Plans often clashed on the accuracy of intelligence information provided to the White House by Wolfowitz.
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the author of a May New Yorker story on the Office of Special Plans, reported, "former CIA officers and analysts described the agency as increasingly demoralized. George knows he's being beaten up," one former officer said of George Tenet, the CIA director. "And his analysts are terrified. George used to protect his people, but he's been forced to do things their way." Because the CIA's analysts are now on the defensive, "they write reports justifying their intelligence rather than saying what's going on. The Defense Department and the Office of the Vice-President write their own pieces, based on their own ideology. We collect so much stuff that you can find anything you want."
"They see themselves as outsiders," a former CIA. expert who spent the past decade immersed in Iraqi-exile affairs said of the Special Plans people, told Hersh. He added, "There's a high degree of paranoia. They've convinced themselves that they're on the side of angels, and everybody else in the government is a fool."
By last fall, the White House had virtually dismissed all of the intelligence on Iraq provided by the CIA, which failed to find any evidence of Iraq's weapons programs, in favor of the more critical information provided to the Bush administration by the Office of Special Plans
Hersh reported that the Special Plans Office "developed a close working relationship with the (Iraqi National Congress), and this strengthened its position in disputes with the CIA and gave the Pentagon's pro-war leadership added leverage in its constant disputes with the State Department. Special Plans also became a conduit for intelligence reports from the INC to officials in the White House."
In a rare Pentagon briefing recently, Office of Special Plans co-director Douglas Feith, said the committee was not an "intelligence project," but rather an group of 18 people that looked at intelligence information from a different point of view.
Feith said when the group had new "thoughts" on intelligence information it was given; they shared it with CIA director Tenet.
"It was a matter of digesting other people's intelligence," Feith said of the main duties of his group. "Its job was to review this intelligence to help digest it for me and other policy makers, to help us develop Defense Department strategy for the war on terrorism."
Jason Leopold is the former Los Angeles bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires. He is currently finishing a book on the California energy crisis.
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The spies who pushed for war
Thursday July 17, 2003
Julian Borger
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html
As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.
It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.
This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.
According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency.
The agency, called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney.
The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the State Department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war.
Mr Tenet has officially taken responsibility for the president's unsubstantiated claim in January that Saddam Hussein's regime had been trying to buy uranium in Africa, but he also said his agency was under pressure to justify a war that the administration had already decided on.
How much Mr Tenet reveals of where that pressure was coming from could have lasting political fallout for Mr Bush and his re-election prospects, which only a few weeks ago seemed impregnable. As more Americans die in Iraq and the reasons for the war are revealed, his victory in 2004 no longer looks like a foregone conclusion.
The White House counter-attacked yesterday when new chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, accused critics of "politicising the war" and trying to "rewrite history". But the Democratic leadership kept up its questions over the White House role.
The president's most trusted adviser, Mr Cheney, was at the shadow network's sharp end. He made several trips to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, to demand a more "forward-leaning" interpretation of the threat posed by Saddam. When he was not there to make his influence felt, his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was. Such hands-on involvement in the processing of intelligence data was unprecedented for a vice-president in recent times, and it put pressure on CIA officials to come up with the appropriate results.
Another frequent visitor was Newt Gingrich, the former Republican party leader who resurfaced after September 11 as a Pentagon "consultant" and a member of its unpaid defence advisory board, with influence far beyond his official title.
An intelligence official confirmed Mr Gingrich made "a couple of visits" but said there was nothing unusual about that.
Rick Tyler, Mr Gingrich's spokesman, said: "If he was at the CIA he was there to listen and learn, not to persuade or influence."
Mr Gingrich visited Langley three times before the war, and according to accounts, the political veteran sought to browbeat analysts into toughening up their assessments of Saddam's menace.
Mr Gingrich gained access to the CIA headquarters and was listened to because he was seen as a personal emissary of the Pentagon and, in particular, of the OSP.
In the days after September 11, Mr Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, mounted an attempt to include Iraq in the war against terror. When the established agencies came up with nothing concrete to link Iraq and al-Qaida, the OSP was given the task of looking more carefully.
William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Mr Cheney, runs the day-to-day operations, answering to Douglas Feith, a defence undersecretary and a former Reagan official.
The OSP had access to a huge amount of raw intelligence. It came in part from "report officers" in the CIA's directorate of operations whose job is to sift through reports from agents around the world, filtering out the unsubstantiated and the incredible. Under pressure from the hawks such as Mr Cheney and Mr Gingrich, those officers became reluctant to discard anything, no matter how far-fetched. The OSP also sucked in countless tips from the Iraqi National Congress and other opposition groups, which were viewed with far more scepticism by the CIA and the state department.
There was a mountain of documentation to look through and not much time. The administration wanted to use the momentum gained in Afghanistan to deal with Iraq once and for all. The OSP itself had less than 10 full-time staff, so to help deal with the load, the office hired scores of temporary "consultants". They included lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous rightwing thinktanks in Washington. Few had experience in intelligence.
"Most of the people they had in that office were off the books, on personal services contracts. At one time, there were over 100 of them," said an intelligence source. The contracts allow a department to hire individuals, without specifying a job description.
As John Pike, a defence analyst at the thinktank GlobalSecurity.org, put it, the contracts "are basically a way they could pack the room with their little friends".
"They surveyed data and picked out what they liked," said Gregory Thielmann, a senior official in the state department's intelligence bureau until his retirement in September. "The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defence had this huge defence intelligence agency, and he went around it."
In fact, the OSP's activities were a complete mystery to the DIA and the Pentagon.
"The iceberg analogy is a good one," said a senior officer who left the Pentagon during the planning of the Iraq war. "No one from the military staff heard, saw or discussed anything with them."
The civilian agencies had the same impression of the OSP sleuths. "They were a pretty shadowy presence," Mr Thielmann said. "Normally when you compile an intelligence document, all the agencies get together to discuss it. The OSP was never present at any of the meetings I attended."
Democratic congressman David Obey, who is investigating the OSP, said: "That office was charged with collecting, vetting and disseminating intelligence completely outside of the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the national security council and the president without having been vetted with anyone other than political appointees."
The OSP was an open and largely unfiltered conduit to the White House not only for the Iraqi opposition. It also forged close ties to a parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation inside Ariel Sharon's office in Israel specifically to bypass Mossad and provide the Bush administration with more alarmist reports on Saddam's Iraq than Mossad was prepared to authorise.
"None of the Israelis who came were cleared into the Pentagon through normal channels," said one source familiar with the visits. Instead, they were waved in on Mr Feith's authority without having to fill in the usual forms.
The exchange of information continued a long-standing relationship Mr Feith and other Washington neo-conservatives had with Israel's Likud party.
In 1996, he and Richard Perle - now an influential Pentagon figure - served as advisers to the then Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu. In a policy paper they wrote, entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, the two advisers said that Saddam would have to be destroyed, and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran would have to be overthrown or destabilised, for Israel to be truly safe.
The Israeli influence was revealed most clearly by a story floated by unnamed senior US officials in the American press, suggesting the reason that no banned weapons had been found in Iraq was that they had been smuggled into Syria. Intelligence sources say that the story came from the office of the Israeli prime minister.
The OSP absorbed this heady brew of raw intelligence, rumour and plain disinformation and made it a "product", a prodigious stream of reports with a guaranteed readership in the White House. The primary customers were Mr Cheney, Mr Libby and their closest ideological ally on the national security council, Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy.
In turn, they leaked some of the claims to the press, and used others as a stick with which to beat the CIA and the state department analysts, demanding they investigate the OSP leads.
The big question looming over Congress as Mr Tenet walked into his closed-door session yesterday was whether this shadow intelligence operation would survive national scrutiny and who would pay the price for allowing it to help steer the country into war.
A former senior CIA official insisted yesterday that Mr Feith, at least, was "finished" - but that may be wishful thinking by a rival organisation.
As he prepares for re-election, Mr Bush may opt to tough it out, rather than acknowledge the severity of the problem by firing loyalists. But in that case, it will inevitably be harder to re-establish confidence in the intelligence on which the White House is basing its decisions, and the world's sole superpower risks stumbling onwards half-blind, unable to distinguish real threats from phantoms.
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Senate May Widen Its Inquiry Into Prewar Intelligence
After questioning CIA chief, some panel members say administration officials could be called next.
By Greg Miller and Mark Z. Barabak
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 17, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-tenet17jul17,0,5304457.story
WASHINGTON - Democratic and Republican senators weighed expanding their probe of the prewar intelligence on Iraq on Wednesday after spending nearly five hours pressing CIA Director George J. Tenet to account for questionable claims regarding Baghdad's nuclear program and the broader failure to find banned weapons.
The closed-door hearing marked Tenet's first appearance before lawmakers since an eruption of finger-pointing last week between the White House and the CIA over who was to blame for President Bush's ill-founded allegation in the State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to procure uranium from Africa. Democrats said they would like to hear from White House officials next, and even a key Republican, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated that administration officials could be asked to testify.
Tenet issued an extraordinary statement Friday accepting blame for not striking the uranium language from the speech, though he also made it clear that the agency had expressed concern and had let it stand only when White House officials proposed attributing it to British intelligence.
Tenet did not comment to reporters after Wednesday's hearing. Sources who took part in the session said Tenet told lawmakers that he did not read the State of the Union speech before it was delivered and that agency staffers involved in vetting the text did not call the uranium language to his attention.
A U.S. official said this was in contrast to an earlier case, in October, when agency officials alerted Tenet to a similar reference in a speech Bush delivered in Cincinnati. Tenet intervened in that case to have the language removed.
Roberts said that Tenet, during his testimony, reiterated his responsibility for the uranium claim.
Roberts credited the CIA chief with being "forthright" in responding to questions but said that Tenet would probably be called to testify before the committee again - perhaps in open session in September. The senator indicated that White House officials could be called to appear before the committee.
Sen. John D. "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the committee, described the questioning of Tenet as "very vigorous." He was among a number of Democrats to emerge from the session suggesting that the committee should next be calling on White House officials to testify.
"Director Tenet took the blame," Rockefeller said. "There remains in my mind the question of whether in fact that's where it should stop." Rockefeller said he and Roberts were discussing how to manage the expansion of an inquiry that started as a review of prewar intelligence documents but has now become "a very large project."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) praised Tenet for forthright answers and characterized his statement last week accepting blame as "overgenerous."
"My view is that there are others who should step up to the plate as well," Feinstein said. "We'll see if that happens."
Rockefeller and others have singled out national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, believing that her staff pressed to have the uranium language included in Bush's speech despite widespread doubts about its reliability. Rice, in recent days, has denied any pressure.
Bush delivered the State of the Union speech on Jan. 28, at a time when he was still struggling to win international support for confronting Iraq by force.
"It is my belief there were some [in the White House] who were pushing, pushing, pushing" the intelligence on Iraq to make the case for war more compelling, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a member of the committee, told CNN.
Bayh was among a number of members, both Democrat and Republican, who emerged from the session voicing support for Tenet and saying they do not believe he should resign.
Bush's allegation in the State of the Union was based largely on documents purporting to show that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from the African nation of Niger. Those documents, obtained by Italian authorities, were shared with the United States last October. But it wasn't until March - when the documents were examined by U.N. inspectors - that they were shown to be forgeries.
The CIA's record on its handling of the uranium allegation is mixed. It included the allegation in a key prewar assessment of Iraq's weapons programs but voiced skepticism about the claim in other settings. Tenet intervened personally in October, for instance, urging White House officials to drop the Niger allegation from the speech Bush gave in Cincinnati.
The issue has become a significant problem for the White House. Wednesday's hearing was attended by a throng of cameras and news crews that was larger than the media turnout for key hearings last year on the Sept. 11 attacks.
Democratic presidential hopefuls have seized on the uranium claim and have become far more aggressive in their criticism of the Bush administration's case for war and handling of its aftermath.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) on Wednesday challenged the truthfulness of Bush and suggested that the country was no safer now than it was before the Sept. 11 attacks, a broadside that reflected the new eagerness of Democrats to challenge the administration's war on terrorism.
"With each passing day, Americans are learning we face an intelligence gap," Kerry said in a speech in New York City. "Americans should be able to trust that what the president tells them is true - especially when it comes to the life-and-death decisions of war and peace."
For months, the leading Democratic presidential candidates had muted their criticisms of Bush and his foreign policy, as polls showed overwhelming public support for the war in Iraq.
The major exception was former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who used his antiwar stance to launch himself into the top tier of contenders.
But lately other Democrats - including those, such as Kerry, who voted to support the war - have joined in the criticism, as the aftermath of the U.S. invasion grows messier and the administration fends off accusations that it used dubious intelligence to justify war.
The only presidential candidate on the intelligence committee, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), said Wednesday that Bush was ultimately to blame for any misinformation he gave the American people.
"The responsibility is not the CIA's, it's not anyone else's," Edwards told reporters. "It is the president's responsibility."
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White House Aide Behind Uranium Claim, Senator Says
July 17, 2003
New York Times
By CARL HULSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/international/worldspecial/17CND-INTEL.html
A Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said today that a White House official insisted that claims about Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium be included in President Bush's State of the Union address, despite doubts from the Central Intelligence Agency about its credibility.
As the Senate continued to trade charges over the handling of classified information related to the war in Iraq, Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, told fellow senators today that people in the White House were "bound and determined" to include the allegation in the address, despite being discouraged by George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
"The president has within his ranks on staff some person who was willing to spin and hype and exaggerate and cut corners on the most important speech the president delivers in any given year," Mr. Durbin said as he offered a proposal to hold up $50 million in intelligence spending until the president delivers a report on the handling of the Iraqi intelligence.
Earlier today, Mr. Durbin said on ABC's "Good Morning America" that Mr. Tenet, in an closed appearance before the intelligence panel on Wednesday, named the official responsible for pushing for the line about uranium in the speech. But Mr. Durbin said he could not disclose that person's identity. "It should come from the president," he said.
The allegation prompted immediate rebuttal from the White House, where it was termed "nonsense," and by Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, who on the Senate floor accused Democrats of "nitpicking" and suggested some lawmakers were breaking secrecy rules surrounding the Intelligence Committee.
"Its time to settle down and get back to the business or providing money for the men and women in uniform around the world and to assure that the people who conduct our intelligence activities have the money to do what they've got to do," Mr. Stevens said.
The exchange followed a day of barbed attempts by Democrats to use a measure financing the Pentagon as a vehicle to attack the Bush administration's handling of the war with Iraq and its aftermath.
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Democrat Eyes Potential Grounds for Bush Impeachment
July 17, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-bush-graham.html
CONCORD, N.H. (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bob Graham said on Thursday there were grounds to impeach President Bush if he was found to have led America to war under false pretenses.
While Graham did not call for Bush's impeachment, he said if the president lied about the reasons for going to war with Iraq it would be ``more serious'' than former President Bill Clinton's lie under oath about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
``If in fact we went to war under false pretenses that is a very serious charge,'' Graham, the senior U.S. senator from Florida, told reporters in New Hampshire.
``If the standard of impeachment is the one the House Republicans used against Bill Clinton, this clearly comes within that standard,'' he said.
Democrats and some Republicans have raised questions about the unsubstantiated claim Bush made in his January State of the Union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa in its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Graham's comments came as reporters followed up on his remarks earlier this week that any deception by Bush over Iraq might rise to the standard of an impeachable offense -- as defined by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives when it voted to impeach Clinton.
Clinton was ultimately cleared by the U.S. Senate after being impeached by the House.
After his appearance in New Hampshire, Graham issued a statement saying he was not calling for Bush's impeachment and saw the issue as a largely academic one, adding that if Bush had misled the American public he would pay the price for it in the 2004 presidential election.
In Washington on Thursday, Bush told a news conference that the speech reference was based on ``sound intelligence'' and he was certain that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program.
``We won't be proven wrong,'' he said with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at his side.
The flap over Iraq upstaged Graham's economic proposals. He said his plan would balance the federal budget within five years while providing middle-class tax relief and creating 3 million new jobs.
His plan would repeal most of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. It would reinstate a 38.6 percent tax bracket for wealthy individuals and create a new ``millionaires tax bracket'' at 40 percent. Graham also proposed cracking down on individuals and companies who transfer assets offshore or renounce U.S. citizenship to escape taxation.
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Senate Rejects Panel on Prewar Iraq Data
July 17, 2003
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/politics/17DEMS.html
WASHINGTON, July 16 - The Republican-led Senate defeated an effort tonight to establish a bipartisan panel to examine the use of intelligence in the prelude to the Iraq war. The vote came as Democrats pressed the Bush administration on the rationale for the war as well as on the long-term costs of military operations.
The vote also came on a day when George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, was questioned for nearly five hours behind closed doors by the Senate Intelligence Committee about his agency's handling of intelligence and as senior Democrats stepped up their criticism of the administration's Iraq policies.
At the center of the debate was a statement by President Bush in his State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Africa to restart its nuclear weapons program. Mr. Tenet told lawmakers that he had not read Mr. Bush's speech when the White House sent it to him to review beforehand, government officials said. Administration officials have acknowledged that the information about Iraq's nuclear efforts was unsubstantiated. Democrats said that despite Mr. Tenet's willingness to take the blame for the statement in the speech, Mr. Bush is the one ultimately responsible.
"George Tenet has accepted his responsibility," said Senator John Edwards, Democrat of North Carolina, a member of the intelligence panel and a presidential candidate. "But at the end of the day, the president, when he speaks, has to take responsibility for what he says."
On the Senate floor, the debate over Iraq was partisan and pointed.
"The American people want to know how long their sons and daughters are going to be shot at in Iraq," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts. "How long? And what's the policy? And why?"
Lawmakers rejected on a 51-to-45 vote the proposal by Senator Jon Corzine, Democrat of New Jersey, to create an independent 12-member commission with a broad mandate to examine questions like whether Iraq possessed so-called weapons of mass destruction, had links to Al Qaeda or had tried to buy uranium in Africa. The administration had used such arguments in its case for war.
"Simply put, the nation's credibility, in my view, is at stake," Mr. Corzine said.
Republicans lashed out at the proposal as politically motivated, with Senator Ted Stevens, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, deriding it as the start of the 2004 campaign. "This isn't Watergate," Mr. Stevens said dismissively about the intelligence controversy. "This is an attempt to smear the president of the United States."
He and other Republicans said that any commission should come after intelligence panels in the House and Senate as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee completed their own reviews. The Republicans also argued that any commission was ill-timed, because troops were still in the field.
Democrats, after struggling for months to find a way to challenge Mr. Bush on his Iraq policy, are trying to take advantage of the recent admission by the White House that the uranium claim should not have been included in the speech.
Nearly all the Democratic presidential candidates criticized Mr. Bush on the issue this week, and the party today sought to turn consideration of the military spending measure into a proxy fight over the administration's handling of the war.
Republicans beat back a series of pointed amendments by Democrats to the $369 billion measure. The critics said the bill was flawed because it contained no money next year for operations in either Iraq or Afghanistan, though the administration recently said the effort in Iraq was costing $3.9 billion a month while the estimate for Afghanistan was about $900 million a month.
"I think we have a responsibility here in the Congress to try to understand how much these operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other areas of the world are costing us and how we plan for that and how we pay for that," said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota.
Mr. Stevens, who led the Republicans in holding off the Democrats, said the Iraq operations were still being financed out of an emergency $62 billion allocation made this year. Republicans said the administration would make a separate request for money later this year when the financial needs were definitively known and the expense could be less.
"It is impossible to know what the costs will be of fighting a war in advance," said Mr. Stevens, who said the nation historically paid for combat operations in this fashion.
Democrats say the administration is not being forthright about the war costs, suggesting that it did not want to endanger public support for the effort by detailing its expense at a time of rising deficit figures.
The Senate voted 53 to 41 to block the effort by Mr. Dorgan to require the administration to add a cost projection to the Pentagon bill.
Lawmakers voted 50 to 45 against a proposal by Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, to require the administration to report monthly on the war's costs, the manpower involved, the level of participating foreign troops and international aid, casualties and rebuilding contracts in excess of $10 million.
A proposal by Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, to require more disclosure about those being held as unlawful combatants was also turned back by the Senate.
Mr. Kennedy lost in his effort to require the administration to report within 30 days on the efforts to involve more nations in Iraq. He said a broader coalition could help stabilize the country and lessen the risks for American troops.
Despite occasionally angry debate, the Pentagon measure is expected to be adopted overwhelmingly as early as Thursday to demonstrate strong backing for the armed forces.
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A War on Wilson?
Inside the Bush Administration's feud with the diplomat who poured cold water on the Iraq-uranium connection
By MATTHEW COOPER, MASSIMO CALABRESI AND JOHN F. DICKERSON
Thursday, Jul. 17, 2003
Time
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,465270,00.html
Has the Bush Administration declared war on a former ambassador who conducted a fact-finding mission to probe possible Iraqi interest in African uranium? Perhaps.
Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson raised the Administration's ire with an op-ed piece in The New York Times on July 6 saying that the Administration had "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate" the Iraqi threat. Since then Administration officials have taken public and private whacks at Wilson, charging that his 2002 report, made at the behest of U.S. intelligence, was faulty and that his mission was a scheme cooked up by mid-level operatives. George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took a shot at Wilson last week as did ex-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Both contended that Wilson's report on an alleged Iraqi effort to purchase uranium from Niger, far from undermining the president's claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq sought uranium in Africa, as Wilson had said, actually strengthened it. And some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore, sometimes referred to as yellow cake, which is used to build nuclear devices.
In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president's father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. "That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case," Wilson told TIME. "I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job."
Government officials are not only privately disputing the genesis of Wilson's trip, but publicly contesting what he found. Last week Bush Administration officials said that Wilson's report reinforced the president's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa. They say that when Wilson returned from Africa in Feb. 2002, he included in his report to the CIA an encounter with a former Nigerien government official who told him that Iraq had approached him in June 1999, expressing interest in expanding commercial relations between Iraq and Niger. The Administration claims Wilson reported that the former Nigerien official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.
"This is in Wilson's report back to the CIA," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters last week, a few days before he left his post to join the private sector. "Wilson's own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it...reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales."
Wilson tells the story differently and in a crucial respect. He says the official in question was contacted by an Algerian-Nigerien intermediary who inquired if the official would meet with an Iraqi about "commercial" sales - an offer he declined. Wilson dismisses CIA Director George Tenet's suggestion in his own mea culpa last week that the meeting validates the President's State of the Union claim: "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the president alleged? These guys really need to get serious."
Government officials also chide Wilson for not delving into the details of the now infamous forged papers that pointed to a sale of uranium to Iraq. When Tenet issued his I-take-the-blame statement on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium connection last week, he took a none-too-subtle jab at Wilson's report. "There was no mention in the report of forged documents - or any suggestion of the existence of documents at all," Tenet wrote. For his part Wilson says he did not deal with the forgeries explicitly in his report because he never saw them. However, Wilson says he refuted the forgeries' central allegation that Niger had been negotiating a sale of uranium to Iraq. Wilson says he explained in the report that several Nigerien government signatures would be required to permit such a sale - signatures that were either absent or clearly botched in the forged documents.
Administration officials also claim that Wilson took at face value the claims of Nigerien officials that they had not sold uranium ore to Saddam Hussein. (Such sales would have been forbidden under then-existing United Nations sanctions on Iraq.) "He spent eight days in Niger and he concluded that Niger denied the allegation." Fleischer told reporters last week. "Well, typically nations don't admit to going around nuclear nonproliferation,"
For his part, Wilson says that the Administration conflated the prior report of the American ambassador to Niger with his own. Wilson says a report by Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the American ambassador to Niger, addresses the issue of Nigerien government officials disputing the allegation. Wilson says that he never made the naïve argument that if Nigerien officials denied the sales, then their claims must be believed.
A source close to the matter says that Wilson was dispatched to Niger because Vice President Dick Cheney had questions about an intelligence report about Iraq seeking uranium and that he asked that the CIA get back to him with answers. Cheney's staff has adamantly denied and Tenet has reinforced the claim that the Vice President had anything to do with initiating the Wilson mission. They say the Vice President merely asked routine questions at an intelligence briefing and that mid-level CIA officials, on their own, chose to dispatch Wilson.
In an exclusive interview Lewis Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff, told TIME: "The Vice President heard about the possibility of Iraq trying to acquire uranium from Niger in February 2002. As part of his regular intelligence briefing, the Vice President asked a question about the implication of the report. During the course of a year, the Vice President asked many such questions and the agency responded within a day or two saying that they had reporting suggesting the possibility of such a transaction. But the agency noted that the reporting lacked detail. The agency pointed out that Iraq already had 500 tons of uranium, portions of which came from Niger, according to the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA). The Vice President was unaware of the trip by Ambassador Wilson and didn't know about it until this year when it became public in the last month or so. " Other senior Administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, have also claimed that they had not heard of Wilson's report until recently.
After he submitted his report in March 2002, Wilson says, his interest in the topic lay dormant until the State of the Union address in January 2003. In his speech, the President cited a British report claiming that Hussein's government had sought uranium in Africa. Afterward, Wilson says, he called a friend at the Africa bureau of the State Department and asked if the reference had been to Niger. The friend said that he didn't know but, says Wilson, allowed the possibility that Bush was referring to some other country on the continent. Wilson says he let the matter drop until he saw State Department spokesman Richard Boucher say a few months later that the U.S. had been fooled by bad intelligence. It was then that Wilson says he realized that his report had been overlooked, ignored, or buried. Wilson told TIME that he considers the matter settled now that the White House has admitted the Bush reference to Iraq and African uranium should not have been in the State of the Union address.
----
Iraq: Who takes the blame?
By Jim Lobe
Jul 17, 2003
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG17Ak03.html
WASHINGTON - Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld has become distinctly testy, while Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz seems almost to have disappeared from public view, and Vice President Dick Cheney hasn't been heard from in weeks.
Outgoing White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has been reduced to barnyard epithets when asked about how a reference to forged documents about alleged Iraqi purchases of African uranium made it into President George W Bush's State of the Union address in January, while the headline in the USA Today on Monday says "CIA director [George Tenet] nudged toward the plank".
Bush's standing in the polls is declining rapidly. Indeed, a Washington Post poll published on the weekend says his overall job-approval rating, while still a majority, dropped nine points in the previous 18 days - as did public support for the Iraq deployment. The same poll found that 52 percent believe US casualties have reached an "unacceptable" level.
Meanwhile, yet another US soldier was killed and six others wounded in a multiple rocket-propelled-grenade attack on their patrol in Baghdad on Monday, and two more on Wednesday, bringing to 34 the total number of US soldiers killed in combat since Bush declared the war over on May 1 after his celebrated flight to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, from where he made the announcement.
Retired army generals are grumbling ever more loudly that the 148,000 US and 12,000 foreign troops in Iraq now are not enough to ensure stability, and even Rumsfeld was forced to admit publicly two days after predicting that the US occupation of Iraq will cost almost US$4 billion a month - twice as much as predicted before the war - that more troops may be required.
The realization that the US did not prepare even remotely adequately for its occupation of Iraq and now appears to be drifting toward serious trouble has definitely dawned in Washington. Even Democratic presidential candidates smell blood and are baring their teeth.
"It's important that we not lose sight of the bigger picture, which is the enormous failure that is looming in Iraq today," Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, among the mildest of Democratic aspirants and a supporter of Bush's war, told the New York Times after tearing into Bush for the loss of credibility he has suffered over the uranium report and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
This is clearly a critical moment in the imperial trajectory on which the Bush administration's hawks, centered primarily in the Pentagon and Cheney's office, set US foreign policy after September 11, 2001.
Their dreams of global supremacy based on the unilateral use of US military power are clearly foundering in Iraq as they come up against the very real limits of US manpower and their contempt for the interests of other nations.
Increasingly, analysts in Washington agree that the only way the administration can get out its present situation with its power, treasury and credibility intact is if it hands over control of Iraq to a multilateral institution - the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), if not the United Nations - capable of enlisting sufficient support from the international community, in the form of peacekeepers, aid and investment, to stabilize Iraq and launch it on the path to reconstruction.
"The administration faces a classic tradeoff between keeping control and getting outside participation," James Dobbins, a former top US diplomat who helped run reconstruction and peacekeeping operations in Kosovo, Haiti, Afghanistan and elsewhere, told the Times. "This administration does not want to lose control, but they'll have to take another look at that position."
Even Republican lawmakers are beginning to see the necessity of such an approach. On Friday, just one day after Rumsfeld admitted that occupation costs were twice what the Pentagon had predicted, the Senate approved a non-binding resolution urging the administration to reach out to NATO and the UN for assistance.
"I don't want every kid that is blown up at a checkpoint being an American soldier," said Senator Joseph Biden, a co-author of the resolution and ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. "This is the world's problem, not just ours. I want to give the French ... the honor and the opportunity to do the same thing as our young men do," he said.
But such a course of action is anathema to unilateralist hawks such as Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney, who had confidently predicted before the war that only between 50,000 and 75,000 US troops would be necessary to police Iraq after the war, and now find themselves agreeing that at least 150,000 will be necessary for the foreseeable future.
Rumsfeld said last week that Washington had approached "70, 80, 90" countries for police or troops to help out, but lawmakers mocked the seriousness of some of those requests and warned that very few countries would be inclined to respond given the Washington's insistence on overall control.
That point was underlined on Monday when India, which the Pentagon had been counting to provide as many as 20,000 peacekeepers for Iraq, announced that it would not provide any in the absence of an "explicit UN mandate". The State Department expressed "regret" over the announcement, although Secretary of State Colin Powell has privately long warned that Washington was unlikely to get even aspiring strategic allies like India behind it without giving up more control.
The announcement was seen as a major blow to the Pentagon, which has been telling Congress that Indian troops would constitute at least half of the foreign recruits. "This is chickens coming home to roost," one administration official told Inter Press Service. "One would hope the hawks would understand by now that their arrogance and unilateralism have serious costs, but that's probably too optimistic."
He pointed to reports that NATO, if asked, may itself not have many troops to spare, given its current commitments in Afghanistan and the Balkans. France and Germany have indicated that their participation would require a UN mandate in any event.
Indeed, there appears to be a growing consensus among military experts that the United States will itself have to send more of its own troops sooner or later. Dobbins, echoing predictions (mocked by Wolfowitz as "wildly off the mark") by the former army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, before the war, told the Times that he thinks the 160,000 troops there now will eventually have to be doubled.
Most military experts believe that the deployment of even 100,000 US troops - let alone as many as 300,000 - will put such a burden on the army that Congress will face pressure to increase its size, adding billions of dollars to a defense budget that this year will exceed $400 billion, roughly equal to the anticipated federal budget deficit.
Such assessments help explain a growing sense that, while Tenet's job may be on the line most immediately, top Pentagon officials, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, may soon find themselves facing calls to resign for so badly misjudging postwar requirements. Indeed, H D S Greenway, a mainstream columnist in the Boston Globe, called Saturday for both to be "given the boot" for their "fatal combination of hubris and incompetence".
"The damage done is incalculable and not just in material terms," he wrote. "The political damage has been far worse and will be far more lasting in its consequences."
-------- MILITARY
-------- business
Boeing in talks over rocket issue
July 17, 2003
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030717-101638-7935r.htm
NEW YORK -- The Boeing Company is holding talks with the Air Force over allegations of espionage to win a contract.
The Wall Street Journal said Thursday the company is attempting to quell a furor over allegations it used corporate espionage to win a multibillion-dollar rocket competition.
The most likely compromise would require Boeing to transfer at least a handful of its existing contracts for government rocket launches to rival Lockheed Martin Corp.
The effort is taking on greater urgency partly because Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has taken a hard-nosed attitude that Boeing should be punished if Air Force investigators determine it violated federal procurement regulations.
Boeing and the Air Force are discussing shifting about five to 10 launches over several years, which would mean hundreds of millions of dollars in extra revenue for Lockheed's struggling space business.
-------- colombia
Colombian paramilitary leader praises crackdown on rebels
7/17/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-07-17-columbia-demobilize_x.htm
IN THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTHWEST COLOMBIA (AP) - Colombia's largest paramilitary group agreed to lay down weapons because of the government's success in retaking control of wide swaths of land from leftist rebels, a leader of the banned group said.
Speaking to The Associated Press late Wednesday from a straw-thatched house in a small village of northwest Colombia, Salvatore Mancuso of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia praised hard-line President Alvaro Uribe for cracking down on rebels.
Mancuso's paramilitary group arose in the 1980s to counter extortion and kidnappings by rebels in areas where government troops had little or no control. The right-wing group is accused of some of the worst human rights abuses in the history of Colombia's 39-year civil war - including massacring civilians it believed to be rebel collaborators.
"Before, the government didn't have the political will to defend institutions and Colombians," said Mancuso, who helped draft the document that launched official peace talks with the government on Tuesday.
"But President Uribe has demonstrated there is now a government that truly wants to create a democracy."
Mancuso defended the actions of paramilitary fighters, saying that at the time, there seemed to be no other option than to take up arms and defend themselves.
Twenty heavily armed men patrolled the area outside the house where Mancuso spoke as residents of the village lined up to meet with him to relay their problems.
The 38-year-old Mancuso, considered the military chief of the paramilitary group, is accused of murders and massacres in Colombia. Along with two other paramilitary leaders, he faces drug trafficking charges in the United States.
Nonetheless, Mancuso said he hopes the Colombian government will find a legal mechanism to grant him freedom, as was done with leaders of former rebel groups that demobilized.
"We are not negotiating thinking that we are going to go to jail," said Mancuso, wearing a white shirt, blue pants, tennis shoes and a gun holster.
Human rights activists, however, warn against granting the leaders impunity, and U.S. authorities have said they will continue seeking his extradition.
"Extradition is something that, at the appropriate time, we will have to handle with the government of the United States," he said.
The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia has promised to demobilize its 13,000 troops by the end of 2005, and to turn over land it seized during the war. Mancuso said the group also wants to help civilians displaced by the violence return to their homes.
Luis Carlos Restrepo, the government's peace commissioner, estimates that it will cost about $90 million a year to demobilize the paramilitary groups.
Uribe, speaking from an army base where he transferred the seat of government for three days, called on members of the international community to help support the demobilization. He asked the United Nations to monitor the process.
Splinter paramilitary groups did not sign on to the agreement to disarm. But Mancuso said he was confident they would not threaten the peace process.
"I think that those who haven't already signed on to the process are going to, and that those who don't will probably disappear as the state forces recover territory," he said.
Mancuso appeared exhausted after days of negotiations with the government peace commission and meetings of his paramilitary group. Though content with the peace declaration, which came after six months of exploratory talks, Mancuso said there was still much to be done. "This is just the first step in a long and difficult process," he said.
The conflict kills some 3,500 people annually, mostly civilians.
-------- iraq
More than 1,000 children killed or wounded by abandoned arms in Iraq: UNICEF
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Jul 17, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030717165915.ss4dmm7u.html
More than 1,000 Iraqi children have been killed or wounded by abandoned weapons and munitions since the April 9 fall of Baghdad, the UN children's fund UNICEF said Thursday, urging action from the US-led coalition here.
UNICEF official Geoff Keele told a press conference in Baghdad that the casualties were the result of handling arms, ammunition and cluster bombs dumped at several hundred sites around Iraq.
Hundreds of surface-to-air missiles abandoned by the now-disbanded Iraqi army, many of them damaged and unstable, also pose a serious threat, he said.
In Haditha, northwest of Baghdad, around 30 children were killed as they searched through an arms depot to salvage metal for sale, an activity which has become commonplace in Iraq since the war, Keele said.
He said 133 children were killed or wounded in Kirkuk in the last two weeks of April, while an average of 20 such accidents a day are being reported from Mosul, another northern city.
In southern Iraq, children are involved in about one in five of accidents involving explosives and arms, said Keele.
He pointed out that the Baghdad region alone had around 100 sites for the manufacture of surface-to-air missiles out of a total of 1,000 sites spread out across Iraq.
"Nothing has been done" to cope with the danger, said Keele, urging the US-British coalition to take prompt action and to send in specialised teams. It was their obligation as an occupying force to provide for civilians' safety, he stressed.
----
Reconstructing Justice
Clerical Shiite judges have stepped into the power vacuum in Baghdad. What will the new face of justice be in Iraq?
By Fariba Nawa
July 17, 2003
Mother Jones Magazine
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2003/29/we_484_01.html
Tucked away in an alley in the shadow of a centuries-old shrine in one of Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods, Sheikh Ra'id Saadi is performing an act for which he might have been executed three months ago.
The long-bearded, turbaned cleric is holding court, playing judge, jury and prosecutor with the Koran and Hadith as his law books. He resolves family and land disputes, marries couples, and if obliged, punishes criminals in the rare comfort of an air-conditioned room.
The US authorities here have promised to rebuild Iraq's judiciary system, crippled by decades of corruption and long dominated by those loyal to Saddam Hussein. But Baghdad's courts remain shuttered, and American officials say it will be months before they are open again. Throughout the capital, small Islamic courts like this one are filling the judicial vacuum.
"The entire administrative system is in our hands now. I deal with 100 cases at a time. Even the Sunnis come to us for rulings," Saadi says. "The Americans don't have the authority to enter this courtroom. I'm the one in charge." What remains to be seen is whether Saadi's authority will last.
Like everything else in Iraq these days, the judicial system is a work in progress, and nobody can quite agree on what the end result should be. Several prominent Shiite politicians have insisted that Sharia, or Islamic law, should form the foundation for both the government and the courts. Other factions, including the country's top Shiite clerics, envision a system blending Islamic and secular laws, but keeping religion and government separate.
The answer, of course, will be dictated by what US authorities are willing to accept. But while officials in Washington have insisted they will not accept an Islamic state like that in neighboring Iran, US officials in Baghdad are turning a blind eye to the proliferation of Sharia courts in the city. In fact, US officials don't even want to talk about the issue -- repeated requests for comment were declined.
Secular Complaints, Clerical Judgement
One day last month, about 20 men crowded into Saadi's makeshift courtroom, defendants and plaintiffs sitting across from each other on black wooden benches covered by green cloth. Saadi, in starched white tunic and clog shoes, sits between the two groups, writing out his rulings on a red plastic stool cluttered with papers.
The dispute is over land. The plaintiffs claim the defendants have illegally taken over 650,000 square meters of property. They claim that Saddam Hussein's infamous chief bodyguard, Abd Homoud, forced them off the land. Now that Homoud is gone, they want the land back. "There was a fish lake there and we had plants and date trees that were planted by my grandfather," one of the plaintiffs says. The defendants, in turn, insist the land is theirs, that they bought it from another family, not the hated Abd Homoud.
Soon, all the men are on their feet, screaming objections and pointing fingers. They all speak at the same time; one of the plaintiffs flashes a large, yellowed, torn paper, claiming it is a family map of the disputed land. Then, one of the defendants makes an accusation that inflames the already heated argument.
"They went to the Americans to ask for help," the man claims.
"We certainly did not. We're Muslims and we will solve this through Islam. We would never go to the occupiers," Jasim Jaber Shaheen, one of the plaintiffs, fires back As emotions rise, it becomes clear that while the American officials aren't welcome in Saadi's court, the occupiers are still a constant presence.
Saadi threatens to kick the men out of his court. Then, someone in the crowded room begins reciting a prayer. Each of the defendants and plaintiffs take up the verse, and the room becomes calms once more.
Eventually, Saadi calls for an investigation into the issue. He tells the defendants and plaintiffs to accompany the court investigators as they tour the property, and instructs the men that they must produce witnesses to support their claims. The courtroom clears, the mollified adversaries going their separate ways.
Civil Law, Islamic Influence
Like every other Islamic judge in Iraq, Saadi is following the direction of the Hawza, the powerful religious school and center of Shiite learning located in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf. The spiritual leader of the Hawza, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has declared that politics and religion should remain separate in Iraq, because politics corrupts religion. Not that al-Sistani wants to see Islam banished from Iraq's courts altogether. Islamic law has always been incorporated into the country's legal system. Even during Saddam Hussein's rule, while clerical courts like Saadi's were outlawed, civil laws remained rooted in Islamic teachings. .
The justice system being haltingly rebuilt in Najaf, the holiest city for the world's 110 or 120 million Shiites, reflects that approach, with judges using a blend of Islamic and secular law. It also reflects the influence of the Americans now running Iraq, and the lasting impact of Saddam Hussein.
Like Saadi, the judges in Najaf insist they are the ultimate legal authority in their courthouse. But, unlike in Baghdad, the Americans in Najaf directly involved in the city's courts. As in every other Iraqi city, American officials have insisted that civil institutions in Najaf undergo a process of "de-Baathification" -- the term coined by American administrator L. Paul Bremer for ousting members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party establishment. But how do you wipe away the influence of three decades of Baathist rule? After a vote by courthouse staff -- monitored by a US legal team -- 50 of the 200 judges in Najaf lost their jobs. That purge evidently satisfied the US overseers. While the remaining judges had all practiced during Saddam's rule, the courthouse was allowed to reopen.
The US contingent in Najaf is settled a few miles from the city's center, on the grounds of what was to be a university. Civil affairs officers Capt. Jim Rondeau and Sgt. Holly Malueg explain they are in Najaf to help the city's residents rebuild their lives. And, like the city's clerics, they insist they are only providing guidance to the court's judges. But that guidance, it is clear, sometimes take the form of orders.
"We're insisting that they have documents before they throw someone in jail. Without documents, they were throwing 10-year-old boys in jail," Rondeau says. "We had to release a lot of people."
The courthouse itself is hardly grand -- particularly when compared to Najaf's most prominent landmark. Just a few miles from the two-story court is the gold-domed, shimmering mosque where Ali, the fourth and last Islamic caliph and first Shiite imam, is buried. The mosque was left untouched by the looters who rampaged through Najaf's streets in the days after Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed. The courthouse was not. Documents, torn from court files, litter the building's dusty halls. The walls show charring from recent fires, and the rooms are all but bare. There is no electricity to power fans or provide light, and the temperature inside the drab building quickly becomes stifling.
Still, from 8:30 am to noon each weekday, the judges sit behind their desks, dressed in suits and ties, hearing the complaints of Najaf's citizens. Black-clad women and men wearing long, loose shirts squat on the cement floor in the corridors, waiting their turn. Some of the men finger prayer beads as they smoke cigarettes.
Bushra Muslim told this reporter in the halls of the courthouse that seven members of her husband's family killed her husband, daughter and sister, and then stole the family's money. Two were caught, she says, but five have escaped.
"During Saddam's time, those men would've gotten what they deserved. Now there's no one to do anything," she complains. It is a common grievance, but one that the judges and lawyers in Najaf's court vigorously reject. They insist that crime is falling, and point to the new 200-cell jail, built by Americans and located next to the courthouse.
"People's lives are getting back to normal. Marriages are rising very high, from a few a day to 20 now. And that's a sign that people have hope in their life," says Judge Fawad Doud al-Alousi.
But marriage laws are among the few largely untouched by the legal revolution taking place in Iraqi courts -- because they fall under Islamic directives. Many other laws, particularly those adopted in the last three decades, has been called into doubt. Judges in Iraq have adopted the 1969 Iraqi constitution as their legal guide. Ra'id Johi, Najaf's chief investigative judge, explains that the constitution, written after the 1968 Baathist coup but before Saddam seized control, melds secular and Islamic law.
These days, the vast majority of the accused brought before Johi are facing weapons or robbery charges. For the most part, the punishments are far less harsh than they were while Saddam was in power -- which is good news for Ali Abd Alim Jasim.
The 33-year-old stands before Johi with one arm behind his back, refusing to meet the judge's eyes. Iraqi police stopped Jasim at a gas station. When they searched his pickup, they found 30 AK-47 assault rifles. He tells Johi he has a license to keep the weapons.
"Your honor, I was looted many times, so I carried those for defense," he says.
"Were you trying to free Iraq with these weapons," Johi asks archly.
Jasim then changes his story, saying he is a member of a political organization, and that the weapons belong to that group. Johi asks if US authorities have given permission for Jasim's organization to have weapons. Jasim says he doesn't know. Johi scribbles something on his carbon copy papers, and sends Jasim out on the streets, free but without his guns. Under Saddam, Jasim may have received up to five years in jail. Johi gives him one year probation. Johi has given him a break.
"We're more lenient because the circumstances are difficult now.". What do you think?
----
Iraqis cheer U.S. death
Harris Whitbeck:
CNN,
Thursday, July 17, 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/16/otsc.whitbeck/index.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) --Major combat in Iraq was declared over more than two months ago, but U.S. troops in the country are being killed almost daily.
CNN Correspondent Harris Whitbeck in Baghdad has details of the latest attacks and measures under way to improve security.
WHITBECK: We have a couple of incidents to report. The first one occurred earlier [Wednesday] morning. One soldier was killed and three were wounded when the convoy they were traveling in, on Highway 1, west of Baghdad, was hit by an explosive device.
The convoy had just passed wreckage of an abandoned vehicle when an explosion was heard. One truck in that convoy was destroyed, and the soldier who was killed was in that truck. Those who were wounded were evacuated to a military hospital.
When that explosion was heard, a group of Iraqi civilians, who were nearby, gathered at the site of the aftermath [and] were watching what was going on.
And when they apparently realized that this was an attack on a U.S. military force, they erupted in cheers. And that cheering went on for several minutes.
Meanwhile, later [Wednesday] in western Baghdad, one U.S. soldier was injured when a grenade was thrown at his truck, which was parked in front of a bank in the Mansour district of western Baghdad. Again, that was another apparent attack on U.S. forces here.
The U.S. military authorities here are very concerned about what might happen over the next few hours.
Thursday is the anniversary of the Baath Party's rise to power in Iraq. That is Saddam Hussein's former political party. And people feel that Saddam Hussein's loyalists might try to launch more attacks on U.S. forces here as a way of commemorating that event.
Now there are some steps being taken to improve security in the Iraqi capital, and [Wednesday] the first 96 graduates of the Baghdad Police Academy were graduated. U.S. Administrator Paul Bremer was at that ceremony.
The idea of this training course, which lasts for about three weeks, is to provide the trainees with knowledge of basic policing techniques and also knowledge of basic human rights issues that the police force would have to deal with as they patrol the city's streets.
The idea of the Baghdad Police Academy is to graduate eventually about 900 officers who would take over a lot of the policing work that's now being handled by the U.S. military.
----
U.S. Forces in Iraq Facing 'Guerrillas'
July 17, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq-Military.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Saddam Hussein loyalists are fighting an increasingly organized ``guerrilla-type campaign'' against U.S. troops, and terror groups are reviving, too, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq says.
Highlighting the danger, American forces found a cache of about 4 tons of military explosives in central Iraq Thursday, a senior official at the Pentagon said. Troops found the stash of C4 explosives about 30 miles southwest of Baghdad after being tipped by Iraqis, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A statement from U.S. Central Command said troops from the 4th Infantry Division found 54 crates of C4, as well as 250,000 blasting caps.
U.S. soldiers are holding 543 Iraqis captured during Operation Soda Mountain, the latest sweep for anti-American fighters, the statement said. Those arrested include 48 identified as Saddam Hussein loyalist leaders, the statement said.
Gen. John Abizaid said the threat was nothing that the troops couldn't handle. ``They're not driving us out of anywhere,'' the four-star general said Wednesday.
Still, Abizaid's use of the term ``guerrilla warfare'' was a striking departure for a top military leader. As recently as last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials refused to use the term, saying attacks on U.S. forces were too sporadic and disorganized to qualify as a guerrilla campaign.
Abizaid credited attackers with improved organization, tactics and financing as he suggested American soldiers may face deployments of a length seldom seen since the Vietnam War.
However, he pledged that soldiers in the Army's longest-serving unit in Iraq, the 3rd Infantry Division, would be on their way home by the end of September. Other U.S. troops will be given a firm homecoming date.
``It's very, very important to all of us to make sure that our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines know when they're coming home,'' Abizaid said at a Pentagon news conference.
He suggested that comments by a few soldiers in an interview with ABC-TV -- including one who said he wanted to ask Rumsfeld to resign -- simply show the frustration of young people who are ready to go home.
``Every now and then we've got to look at our young people and understand why they said what they said, and then do something about it,'' Abizaid said.
He declined to speculate on whether those soldiers could face punishment but added: ``None of us that wear this uniform are free to say anything disparaging about the secretary of defense, or the president of the United States.''
Before they go home, those troops undoubtedly will face more attacks from former members of Saddam's Baath Party and from terrorist groups who want to derail Iraq's transition to democracy, Abizaid said. He spoke on a day when attackers killed the pro-American mayor of a northwestern Iraqi town and a U.S. soldier in Baghdad.
Though Rumsfeld has avoided characterizing the situation as ``guerrilla warfare'', Abizaid said Wednesday it was the proper term.
``It's low-intensity conflict in our doctrinal terms, but it's war however you describe it,'' said Abizaid, who took over last week as head of U.S. Central Command.
Midlevel Baath Party operatives have organized themselves into cells of perhaps 10 people. With some regional coordination and financing, those cells plan attacks on American forces with improvised bombs, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons, Abizaid said.
Terrorist groups pose another threat to American forces, he said.
Those groups operating inside Iraq include Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida-linked organization whose camp in northern Iraq suffered devastating attacks from U.S. forces in the early stages of the war in Iraq. Ansar al-Islam appears to be regrouping in Iraq, possibly aided by members coming from Iran, Abizaid said.
Other non-Iraqi fighters have ideological sympathies for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, if not orders from him to attack Americans, he said.
Wednesday's unsuccessful missile attack on a C-130 cargo plane landing in Baghdad was the second in as many weeks, Abizaid said. U.S. commanders remain worried about the threat from shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, the general said.
Abizaid said he was recently a passenger in a C-130 over Iraq when the crew swerved the plane and fired flares to avoid a possible missile launch.
``These were guys from the Oklahoma National Guard, and they actually thought it was fun. I was terrified,'' Abizaid said.
About 148,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, bolstered by an additional 12,000 or so from coalition countries, mainly Britain and Poland. The number of troops in Iraq is about right for the next several weeks, at least, Abizaid said.
``If the situation gets worse, I won't hesitate to ask for more,'' he said.
On the Net:
U.S. Central Command: http://www.centcom.mil
--------
Unexploded ordnance continues to kill Iraqi children - UNICEF
17 July 2003
UN News Centre
http://www0.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=7758&Cr=iraq&Cr1=relief#
The conflict in Iraq may be over but children continue to be killed and maimed at a steady pace by the remnants of war - coalition cluster bombs looking like toys, thousands of tons of Iraqi munitions abandoned in residential areas and leaking missiles lying around Baghdad - the United Nations children's agency said today.
"Cluster bombs come in interesting shapes that are attractive to children," the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative in Iraq, Carel de Rooy, told a briefing in Baghdad, stressing that children's natural curiosity makes them frequent victims of unexploded ordnance. "Many children are injured or killed because they see a shiny metal object, sometimes in the shape of a ball, and they have to go and pick it up and play with it."
Since the end of the war, more than a thousand children have been injured by cluster bombs or Iraqi munitions. In some neighbourhoods cluster munitions, some shaped like tiny bottles with short ribbons and others that are yellow with tissue parachutes, litter gardens and roof tops, UNICEF said. Heavier unexploded bombs are sometimes buried by impact in the floors of houses occupied by families who have nowhere else to live.
Another threat has become apparent in recent weeks, with children suffering injuries from Soviet-era missiles abandoned by Iraqi forces. Around 100 surface-to-air missiles (SA-2) are lying around Baghdad in various stages of decay, some damaged by shrapnel, filled with volatile rocket fuel and with functioning warheads. Some experts estimate that up to 1,000 SA-2 missiles have been left unguarded across Iraq.
Experts say small leaks through punctures or cracks produce a dark yellow smoke which if inhaled, can sear a person's lungs and inflict a slow, painful death. Contact with skin causes serious burns.
"These are highly volatile and can cause severe injuries on their own, let alone when they are attached to nearly 200 kilogrammes of high explosives. We have already seen children with chemical burns from playing around and fiddling with these weapons," Mr. de Rooy said.
"Just like the cluster bombs that are left over from the war, the coalition forces have a clear obligation under humanitarian law to remove these dangers from communities," he added. "Although soldiers on the ground are doing their best to respond to requests from Iraqis, it's not enough, and it's not fast enough."
A UN-coordinated mass public information campaign targeting contaminated areas in Iraq has been launched using local media networks, schools and food distribution.
On another humanitarian front, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) yesterday began registering Palestinian refugees in Iraq who were previously registered with the government. It will take three months to complete the process, which involves some 80,000 Palestinians. The Palestinians currently languishing in a tented camp in the middle of Baghdad will soon be moved to a vacant apartment block identified by UNHCR.
Meanwhile, High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers today welcomed a Jordanian Government decision to allow Iraqis to stay in Jordan while conditions in Iraq remain unsettled. Around 200,000 to 300,000 Iraqis are in a "refugee-like" situation in Jordan, according to UNHCR.
"I am pleased that the Jordanian Government has given no indication that pressure is being placed on Iraqis in Jordan to return to Iraq," Mr. Lubbers said after meetings with King Abdallah II, Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher and other senior officials in the capital, Amman. He is scheduled to go to Baghdad on Saturday, when he will meet with Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and other officials.
-------- mideast
U.S. Syria raid killed 80
By Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
07/17/03
(Washington Times)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4138.htm
Depicted by the Pentagon as a mere border skirmish, the June 18 strike into Syria by U.S. military forces was, in fact, based on mistaken intelligence and penetrated more than 25 miles into that country, causing numerous Syrian casualties, several serving and former administration officials said.
Although diplomatic relations between the two sides have been frosty after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the two nations have close intelligence ties, which have become strained as a result, these sources said.
"I think this was a deliberate effort to disrupt cooperation between U.S. and Syrian intelligence agencies," an administration official said.
According to a report in The New York Times, administration officials said that attack, carried out by Task Force 20, a Special Operations force, was based on intelligence that a convoy of SUVs, heading for Syria, was linked to senior fugitive Iraqi leaders.
"The (intel) was that senior Iraqis, perhaps even (former Iraqi leader) Saddam Hussein were getting out of the country," a State Department official told United Press International.
The ensuing raid "was conducted under the rules of hot pursuit," an administration official told UPI on condition his name not be used.
In the same Times report, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended the attack, saying it was based on "solid intelligence."
"We had good intelligence, and it indicated that there were people moving around during their curfew close to the border in a convoy of SUV's and our forces went in and stopped them," the Times quoted Rumsfeld as saying.
But one administration official described the intelligence as "totally false," and a former CIA official labeled it "flimsy" and another former U.S. intelligence official called it "almost non-existent."
One former senior CIA official with access to current intelligence information said he believed the source of the intelligence was Israel, which for months has said either Saddam or weapons of mass destruction were being smuggled into Syria.
"The Izzies (Israelis) have been pitching this to anyone who would listen," the former CIA official said.
Chief Israeli Embassy spokesman, Mark Regev, said only: "I simply don't ever discuss such matters."
But Anthony Cordesman, national security expert at the Center For Strategic And International Studies, defended the intelligence and the attack it triggered: "You have to act quickly on rumors in that situation. You have zero time."
He also pointed out that U.S. means of intelligence-collection in the area suffers from "extremely serious limitations."
For one thing, unmanned aerial vehicles or drones "can produce only a limited coverage of patterns" while even signals intelligence "can be fragmentary and unreliable," he said.
And the question of Israeli intelligence?
"Do we tend to over-rely on the Israelis? Probably, but you have to remember too that the CIA is permanently pissed by Israel and likes to discredit it," he said.
A former very senior CIA official told UPI: "Too often the Israeli intelligence product is hard to distinguish from Israel political messages."
The Times report said Task Force 20, supported by helicopters and AC-130 gunships, struck the convoy and a housing compound "in a village not far from the Syria border." Task Force 20 captured 20 Iraqis, all of whom were later released, the Times and other news reports said.
But one senior administration official told UPI the attack crossed "25 miles or more" into Syria, and the Pentagon had initial reports of 80 Syrians "who were KIA (killed in action)."
Cordesman said he believed this to be possible because "the fighting between our forces and the Syrians was extremely intense."
But instead of capturing any high-value Iraqi targets, the Task Force destroyed "a gas smuggling ring," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. This official labeled the attack "a colossal blunder."
His view was supported by a half-dozen administration officials interviewed by UPI.
The former senior U.S. intelligence official said the Task Force had destroyed SUVs "on both sides of the border" that had been fitted out as mini-gas tankers. The Task Force blew up "a great number of these vehicles," causing huge explosions and fireballs when they were hit, he said.
"The explosions could account for the casualties," he said.
A spokesman from U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, said: "We are unable to comment on any cross-border raids, especially if they involved Special Forces."
Serving and former U.S. intelligence officials attributed a political motive to the attacks, alleging they were designed to disrupt cooperation between the CIA and Syrian intelligence.
"Syria has given us invaluable help on hunting down members of al-Qaida, and they were instrumental in ex-filtrating some major Iraqi fugitives back to Baghdad," one former senior CIA official said. "That is not to everyone's liking."
In early May, two top Iraqi biological scientists who had been hiding in safe havens in Syria were ex-filtrated back to Iraq where they were captured by U.S. military forces, former CIA officials said.
A U.S. intelligence official told UPI: "It was a gift to Secretary of State Colin Powell" and also an effort by Damascus to compensate for its apparent lack of cooperation with the United States in closing the Damascus offices of Palestinian militant groups, which are on Washington's list of terrorist organizations.
But CIA-Syria cooperation was far more extensive, former and serving U.S. intelligence officials said.
According to these sources, Syria and the CIA have a joint exploitation center based in Aleppo, plus Syria turned over to the agency all its intelligence networks in Germany as well as all of Syria's cover companies there. As a result, the agency learned that Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker Mohammed Atta once worked in Germany for a Syrian cover company, these sources said.
"Syria was not the only source, but they were very helpful in this matter," a former senior CIA official said.
The CIA was also grateful to Damascus for giving early warning of a planned al-Qaida attack on U.S. installations in Bahrain, using an explosives-laden glider, which would be invisible to radar, according to these sources.
"The Syrians have been an incredible help in sharing intelligence," one serving U.S. intelligence officer said.
Senior Pentagon leaders, who administration officials describe as being very close to Israel, have been unhappy with the increasingly close CIA-Syria ties and used the June 18 attack to disrupt the CIA-Syrian intelligence relationship.
"I think that certain Pentagon officials want to see (Syrian president) Bashar Assad deposed and Syria sign a peace treaty with Israel," said former senior DIA official Pat Lang.
But other U.S. officials disagreed.
"Syria is playing a double-game," said one administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Hamas terrorists are returning to Damascus, a lot of towns in East Syria are nothing but transit points for Iraqi officials who are free to go in and out. I wouldn't put much trust in Syria."
But a serving U.S. intelligence official disagreed.
"Syria is obviously making an effort. It has gotten the message of our military victory and our aim of democratizing the region." He added: "Syria clearly realizes that it has a great deal to gain by being a friend of America and everything to lose if it turns away from friendship."
As of now, the Pentagon had ignored State Department requests for additional details on the June 18 strike, administration officials said.
Four days of phone calls to the Office of the Secretary of Defense brought no comment on the raid from any Pentagon official.
-------- nato
NATO seeks to expand military presence to Central Asia
Xinhuanet
2003-07-17
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2003-07/17/content_980795.htm
ALMA ATA, Kazakhstan, July 17 (Xinhuanet) -- A group of Kyrgyz military personnel had ended their training program in Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as part of the NATO's Partnership for Peace, the Kyrgyz Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
During a brief visit to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan last weekend, NATO Secretary General George Robertson urged closer cooperation with the two Central Asian countries to jointly combat terrorism.
Both of these moves demonstrate that the NATO is accelerating its efforts to expand its military presence in the former Soviet area.
"The attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 ... were planned and organized in Central Asia, in Afghanistan," Robertson said after meeting with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
"Terrorists confront free society in a way that we have never seen before," he said. "We must therefore have a common united front against terrorism."
Under the pretext of fighting terrorism following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the United States has deployed its troops in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and sent military instructors to Georgia to help train special task forces.
Robertson's visit came at a time when the NATO is expected to take over the leadership of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan in August.
During his visit in Kazakhstan, Robertson exchanged views with Nazarbayev on regional security, bilateral military cooperation and post-war reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"If there is to be security in the new world we must have more military cooperation," said the NATO chief. "Central Asia is now going to be very much part of NATO's agenda."
Robertson called Kazakhstan "a good friend and close partner" of the NATO and praised it for its recent decision to contribute 25 special forces to a Polish-led peacekeeping mission in Iraq.
While meeting with Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, Robertson said Central Asia and the NATO have "a single mission, tackling the new security challenges of the 21st century -- terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction."
There is a realistic need to strengthen cooperation between the two sides within the framework of the NATO's Partnership for Peace(PFP) program, which provides for increased cooperation including joint exercises, Robertson said.
As Central Asian nations have played an important role in fighting terrorism, the NATO is willing to provide them with assistance in the fields of peacekeeping, anti-terrorism and disaster relief, he said.
It is believed that Central Asian countries have the will all along to deepen relations with the NATO. As members of the PFP program, which excludes neutral Turkmenistan, these countries expect to secure economic aid, boost their military capabilities and ensure the diversity of their foreign policy through cooperation with the NATO.
Prior to the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States, NATOforeign policy focused on eastern Europe and the Transcaucasian region. But as the anti-terror campaign developed complications, the NATO began leaning toward Central Asia in its foreign policy.
In May, the NATO and Central Asian countries held joint exercises on dealing with emergencies in the Fergana Valley, located between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, pushing their cooperation to a new level.
However, Russia still stands in the way of the NATO's eastward expansion although the NATO-Russia Council was established in May and a new NATO-Russia relationship has been achieved following major comprises from Russia.
Through diplomacy and military cooperation in the past year or more, Russia has retaken the lead in Central Asia.
Russia has strengthened cooperation in collective security withKyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, among others, as members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have decided to set up an organization based on a CIS collective security pact.
It has also boosted bilateral cooperation with Kazakhstan and resolved border issues between the two sides concerning the demarcation of the Caspian Sea. And the legal procedures to establish permanent Russian military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have been almost completed.
Local analysts noted that although the Central Asian region has undergone great changes following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Robertson's visit was not enthusiastically covered by the two countries' media.
The resurgence of Russia's influence in Central Asia has made it tougher for the NATO to squeeze Russia out of the region, they said.
----
NATO Plans Early Start-Up of New Force
By REUTERS
July 17, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/international/europe/17NATO.html
BRUSSELS, July 16 - NATO said today that it would be able to deploy elements of a new strike force for high-intensity combat in mid-October, a year ahead of the deadline it had set.
Officials said the military force, proposed by the United States to adapt the cold war alliance to new security threats, could grow to 25,000 troops. The force's rapid-response brigade, however, is expected to have no more than 6,000 troops.
"We can't talk about definite numbers and figures at this point, but with the great enthusiasm of NATO nations we will be able to meet the challenging deadline to stand up an initial, credible force," Adm. Rainer Feist, the deputy supreme allied commander for Europe, said in a statement.
The force's first brigade will be made up of troops and equipment capable of quick deployment. It will be able to handle evacuations, provide support for humanitarian missions and perform counterterrorism tasks.
The force will include land, naval and air components with high-tech weaponry, and it is expected to have a core of about 5,000 troops deployable in 7 to 30 days.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia rules out troops for Iraq
By Vladimir Radyuhin,
JULY 17, 2003
The Hindu
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/07/18/stories/2003071801651400.htm
MOSCOW. Russia would not send peacekeepers to Iraq under the current dispensation, a senior Russian diplomat said today. ``Russian participation in the coalition of countries occupying Iraq is ruled out,'' the Deputy Foreign Minister, Yuri Fedotov, told the Interfax news agency.
At the same time the diplomat left open the possibility of Russia sending troops to Iraq if the United Nations issues a mandate for an international peacekeeping force. ``As for the possibility of establishing a new format for international security presence in Iraq under U.N. aegis and on a Security Council mandate, we shall take a stand on possible participation in such forces depending on specific circumstances and further evolution of the situation,'' the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said. Earlier this week Russia's Foreign Minister, Mr. Igor Ivanov, called for meeting of the U.N. Security Council to review progress in implementing Resolution 1483 on post-war reconstruction of Iraq. Today's statement by Mr. Ivanov's deputy suggests Moscow may be willing to support sending international peacekeepers to Iraq. The Russian Foreign Minister today called for further steps to normalise the situation in Iraq.
``Russia thinks it advisable for the U.N. Security Council to review the situation in Iraq and work out appropriate decisions on the Iraqi problem,'' Mr. Ivanov said in Cairo.
He called for international efforts to help the Iraqi people overcome the crisis, provided the U.N. plays "a bigger role'' in Iraq.
----
Explosion in Russia's Dagestan region kills 4
7/17/2003
(AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-07-17-russia-explosion_x.htm
MOSCOW - A shrapnel-filled bomb exploded near a police station in Russia's troubled Dagestan region on Thursday, killing at least four people and injuring 18 others, officials said.
The bomb was attached to a motorcycle or scooter parked near the police station in the city of Khasavyurt, the press service of the regional Interior Ministry said. The blast killed two police officers and two passersby - a woman and a 5-year-girl, the ministry said.
Dagestan's Interior Minister Adilgirei Magomed-Tagirov said he believed the attack was carried out by militant Muslims in Dagestan and the neighboring republic of Chechnya.
Among the dead was the head of a city police branch that provides security to private companies and state-run enterprises. The other police officer was a member of a squad that fights organized crime.
The ministry said 18 people were hospitalized, three of them in critical condition.
The explosive device was filled with nuts, bolts and ball bearings, the ministry said. The blast damaged 11 cars.
Dagestan, a mostly Muslim region in southern Russia, is plagued by violence both related and unrelated to the fighting in Chechnya. Khasavyurt is in the western part of Dagestan near the Chechen border.
Magomed-Tagirov also said the explosion could be linked to deadly blasts in Moscow this month that Russian officials blamed on female suicide bombers from Chechnya.
-------- spies
CIA director tells senators he's at fault for uranium story
July 17, 2003
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030717-120939-5632r.htm
CIA Director George J. Tenet told senators yesterday that he takes the blame for allowing a line about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa to remain in President Bush's State of the Union address - but Democrats said the White House was still at fault.
After the hearing, Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican, told reporters after the 41/2-hour closed-door hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Mr. Tenet had been questioned about the uranium intelligence.
"That subject has come up, and he has repeated his responsibility for it," said Mr. Roberts, the panel chairman.
But that wasn't enough for Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, who said the issue wasn't why Mr. Tenet didn't keep the information out of the speech, but who put it in and why.
"All roads still lead back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," he said. "The question is: Who in the White House was so determined to put information in the State of the Union which had been discounted so dramatically by American intelligence sources?"
Meanwhile yesterday, the White House voiced its harshest criticism yet of the Democrats on the intelligence issue, with spokesman Scott McClellan pointing out that many of the same lawmakers had voted for the war and/or backed similar claims made by President Clinton about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs.
"You do have to raise the question about certain members of Congress now who are trying to rewrite history," said Mr. McClellan, who then pointedly read statements made in 1998 by Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and John Kerry of Massachusetts.
The spokesman cited Mr. Kerry as saying then that "Saddam Hussein has already used these weapons and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so."
Mr. Bush mentioned in his State of the Union Address in January, during the buildup to the Iraq war, that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in March that documents linking the uranium pursuit to Niger were forgeries. And while the British government continues to stand by its claim, Mr. Tenet said U.S. intelligence sources have not confirmed it.
After the hearing, Mr. Durbin and other Democrats said the CIA chief told the panel which White House officials had sought to include the Niger information in the address. However, they would not name them, citing the confidentiality of the proceedings.
Mr. Tenet himself said nothing beyond describing the hearing as "an uplifting experience."
Mr. Roberts described the CIA head as "very contrite. He was very candid, very forthcoming. He accepted full responsibility."
The Kansas senator said after the hearing that White House officials might be called before the panel to discuss the handling of the intelligence. He also said he expected open hearings on the matter, probably in September.
"There were mistakes made up and down the chain," said Mr. Roberts, adding that the hearing confirmed to him that "the handling of this was sloppy."
All day before the hearing, Democrats suggested that intelligence was being "shaped or exaggerated" to justify the war with Iraq, while Republicans said the criticisms amount to little more than "gutter politics."
Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, said the Bush administration seems to have been "looking to try to find facts that support their political position" for war in Iraq.
"It shapes up to me as something of a battle between the CIA staff and the White House staff" in how to interpret intelligence, said Mr. Wyden, who voted against the resolution authorizing the president to use force to disarm Saddam.
"I'm particularly concerned about whether political judgments are made first, and then there is an effort to find a set of facts that will support the political call that was made at the outset," Mr. Wyden said before he entered the hearing to question Mr. Tenet.
Mr. Levin, who also voted against the war, said the purpose of yesterday's hearing and ones planned for the future are to make sure the U.S. policy-makers can rely on the intelligence they receive.
"It's important to see whether or not the intelligence was shaped or exaggerated since they were such critical reasons for going to war that were given to the American public," said Mr. Levin.
Mr. Levin also said he is "concerned that the alleged connection between al Qaeda and Iraq was exaggerated" and that there is "a lot of evidence of a pattern of exaggeration or stretching" of intelligence."
Mr. Levin's concern is contradicted by a report issued by federal Appeals Court Judge Gilbert Merritt, one of 13 judges sent to Iraq by the Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system.
Judge Merritt wrote in the Nashville Tennessean on June 25 that he has seen documents in Iraq that describe an Iraqi intelligence officer in Pakistan being "responsible for the coordination of activities with the Osama bin Laden group."
"Until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims," the Cincinnati-based judge wrote. "Now I have changed my mind."
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, said the president's statement about nuclear sales to Iraq was irrelevant because it was made three months after Congress voted to support the war in Iraq.
"These people are griping and saying they are misled when they voted for it before the statement was made," Mr. Hatch said. "It's pure politics, and gutter politics at that."
The war in Iraq was justified regardless of what the president said in his speech, Mr. Hatch said.
"Just look at the mass graves if you don't look at anything else," Mr. Hatch said. "Look at the chemical weapons [Saddam] used against his own people. It's pure politics, anything they can do to damage the president."
Sen. Evan Bayh, Indiana Democrat who voted for the war, told CNN late yesterday that while he wants to "get to the bottom" of the intelligence breakdown, the United States doesn't "need to apologize for removing a tyrant like" Saddam.
"I think it's a good thing that the people of Iraq have been liberated," Mr. Bayh said. "I still think the case for chemical and biological weapons [in Iraq] is strong."
Sen. Trent Lott, Mississippi Republican, said he doesn't see the intelligence furor as a problem for the president.
"I don't think it's serious at all. I think there are still questions about how [Iraq] was trying to get uranium from Africa," Mr. Lott said, referring to how the British are standing by their intelligence.
Mr. Lott said that as the president's critics "go in there and parse every word and re-examine everything," they must remember that intelligence gathering "isn't an exact science."
"It's very subjective, based on informants, second-hand information, satellite technology of all kinds of things that then have to be pulled together," he said.
----
Italy May Have Forwarded Uranium Claims
By TOM RACHMAN
Associated Press Writer
Jul 16, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ITALY_IRAQ_URANIUM?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ROME (AP) -- Italy may have forwarded to the United States and Britain disputed claims that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa to make nuclear weapons, the head of a parliamentary intelligence committee said Wednesday.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government has denied that Italy's intelligence services passed on "documents" about the matter. But committee chief Enzo Bianco, speaking after a top government official addressed the commission in secret, did not deny that the information may have been passed on informally.
"This is possible," he said. "I don't rule it out."
The United States and Britain used the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger to bolster their case for war. But documents supporting this contention were forgeries, putting intense pressure on both President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
News reports have said Italian intelligence was behind the documents that led to the claim. However, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Tuesday that Italy "never, never gave documentation relative to this issue to other nations' intelligence services."
Cabinet undersecretary and top Berlusconi aide Gianni Letta reiterated the government position during his briefing to the intelligence committee Wednesday. But he would not hand over Italian intelligence documents on the matter, said committee chairman Bianco, a member of an opposition party.
"The Italian intelligence services were involved in the issue with other sources and other documents that they don't wish to reveal because it would put at risk the security of sources - this is the position of the government," Bianco said.
Committee member Pierfrancesco Gamba, a member of Berlusconi's governing coalition, confirmed that Italian intelligence looked into the accusations against Saddam.
"Practically all intelligence services were involved in this issue," he said. "But (the Italian secret services) didn't acquire this unfounded document."
Letta refused to comment on the hearing. But committee members said he also ruled out a report published Wednesday in Rome newspaper La Repubblica, which included what it said were copies of four documents allegedly used to bolster the claim that Saddam was trying to buy uranium.
La Repubblica, a leftist publication that opposes Berlusconi's conservative government, said an African diplomat offered Italian intelligence services documents allegedly supporting the uranium claims.
The report quoted a source from Sismi, the Italian military intelligence service, as saying British intelligence obtained the documents in late 2001 or early 2002. The source implied that Italian colleagues provided the information.
The Sismi source, La Repubblica reported, said the Italian Foreign Ministry had raised strong objections about the information provided by Italian intelligence.
--------
Tenet Says He Didn't Know About Claim
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 17, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2936-2003Jul16?language=printer
CIA Director George J. Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee yesterday that his staff did not bring to his attention a questionable statement about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa before President Bush delivered his State of the Union address.
But Tenet told the senators during a nearly five-hour session behind closed doors that he takes responsibility for the now-famous 16-word sentence in the speech because an agency official had approved it after negotiations with the White House, according to congressional and administration sources who attended the session.
"Members were stunned," one Democratic senator in the meeting said, "because he said he basically wasn't aware of the sentence until recently."
At issue was Bush's claim in the Jan. 28 State of the Union address that the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The claim was subsequently determined to be based largely on forged documents, sparking a new furor over the uses of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war. The White House now says the claim should not have been made in the speech.
Yesterday, the Democratic senator said Tenet was repeatedly asked why the CIA permitted the allegation in the address, especially since Tenet had interceded with the White House to remove a more detailed reference to the claim from a Bush speech on Oct. 7.
"There was mixed reaction to his answers as to why they compromised after he told us how dubious and incredible the intelligence was," said the senator, who insisted on anonymity.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), the committee chairman, told reporters afterward that allowing the president to refer to Iraq's alleged attempt to buy uranium in Africa shows "the process was broken" and illustrates "sloppy coordination between [the] State [Department] and CIA and the NSC [National Security Council] and the White House."
Roberts also said the inquiry into Iraq intelligence and the president's speeches would continue, and the panel "would follow the trail wherever it leads." Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the panel, hinted that other witnesses would probably include White House personnel.
Rockefeller told reporters that while Tenet took the blame for his agency, "it remains to be seen whether that is where it stops. I think others in the administration knew about it." He said the committee would look into whether the Niger reference "was an isolated incident or part of a pattern of misleading by the administration."
Another Democrat on the committee said, "The real question is why someone was so insistent that they wanted this information in."
Before the hearing, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said he wanted to know why nobody had come forward since January "if in fact the information was not correct." Asked if others would be called, Chambliss said on CNN that the issue started "in the intelligence gathering community" but "if it's necessary to bring [Defense] Secretary [Donald H.] Rumsfeld or [national security adviser] Condoleezza Rice up, then we will."
Yesterday's session was originally scheduled to permit Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) to pursue with the CIA director whether the agency had supplied U.N. weapons inspectors adequate information about possible weapons sites in Iraq; those questions took up nearly one hour of the meeting, congressional sources said. Levin has said that the number of key sites listed in CIA documents far exceeded the number given to chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, though Tenet has publicly testified that all the major ones had been given.
Some Republicans have privately said that Bush should replace Tenet. Asked after yesterday's session whether Tenet should resign, Roberts said, "That's not my call."
Democrats were not so reticent. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), appearing in South Carolina as part of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, said: "If I was president and I was put in a position to make a statement in a State of the Union to the American people that was not truthful, and the CIA director came forward and accepted responsibility, I'd ask him to leave." Lieberman also said Bush should accept some responsibility, adding, "This president seems to be saying, 'The buck never stops here.' "
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, another Democratic presidential contender, said in an interview that Tenet was not the most serious problem under scrutiny but that he should resign because he helped cover up for the White House. "He knew very well that the intelligence was false," Dean said, "and for him to take the blame means he was participating in an attempt to avoid finding out what really happened."
Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the former chairman of the Senate intelligence panel and also a presidential candidate, said, "We do not have a George Tenet problem; we have a George Bush problem." He said current congressional investigations should be independent and focus not only on the intelligence that led to the Iraq war, but also on what "Rice and the White House did with information and what kind of pressure was put on intelligence analysts during this process."
At the White House, Scott McClellan, Bush's new press secretary, said, "I recognize there are a number of Democratic candidates trying to gain an advantage in an election. But the bottom line is, America is safer, more secure and better prepared than we were on September 11, 2001."
On Tuesday, the two senior members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence spoke in support of Tenet. Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the panel and a former CIA case officer, said at a news conference, "I have complete confidence in [Tenet's] ability to lead the agency and run the intelligence community." Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat, said Tenet had "restored morale in an agency that was badly shattered," and although he serves at the president's pleasure, she agreed with Goss's view.
Staff writers Dan Balz and Helen Dewar contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
Media Underplays U.S. Death Toll in Iraq
Soldiers Dead Since May Is 3 Times Official Count
By Greg Mitchell
JULY 17, 2003
Editor & Publisher Online
NEW YORK -- News Analysis
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1935586
Any way you look at it, the news is bad enough. According to Thursday's press and television reports, 33 U.S. soldiers have now died in combat since President Bush declared an end to the major fighting in the war on May 2. This, of course, is a tragedy for the men killed and their families, and a problem for the White House.
But actually the numbers are much worse -- and rarely reported by the media.
According to official military records, the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq since May 2 is actually 85. This includes a staggering number of non-combat deaths. Even if killed in a non-hostile action, these soldiers are no less dead, their families no less aggrieved. And it's safe to say that nearly all of these people would still be alive if they were still back in the States.
Nevertheless, the media continues to report the much lower figure of 33 as if those are the only deaths that count.
A Web site called Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (http://lunaville.org/warcasualties/Summary.aspx) is tracking the deaths, by whatever cause, of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, based on official Pentagon and CENTCOM press releases and Army Times and CNN casualty trackers. Their current count is 85 since May 2.
Looking at the entire war, there was much fanfare Thursday over the fact that the latest U.S. combat death this week pushed the official total to 148 -- finally topping the 147 figure for Gulf War 1. However, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, the total number of all U.S. deaths, combat and otherwise, in Iraq is actually 224.
This Web site not only counts deaths, it describes each one in whatever detail (often sketchy) the military provides, along with the name and age and home town of each fatality.
An analysis of the 85 deaths by E&P reveals that nearly as many U.S. military personnel have died in vehicle accidents (17) as from gunshot wounds (19). Ten have died after grenade attacks and seven from accidental explosions, another seven in helicopter crashes. Six were killed by what is described as "non-hostile" gunshots, and three have drowned.
The vast majority of those killed -- at least 70% -- were age 18 to 30 but several soldiers in their 40s or 50s have also perished. Pentagon officials also disclosed that there have been about five deaths among troops assigned to the Iraq mission that commanders say might have been suicides. As inquiries continue, one official said the susupected suicides were not clustered in any single time period that might indicate a related cause.
The most recent non-combat death was Cory Ryan Geurin, age 18, a Marine lance corporal from Santee, Calif. "He was standing post on a palace roof in Babylon when he fell approximately 60 feet," the site said.
On July 13, Jaror C. Puello-Coronado, 36, an Army sergeant, died while "manning a traffic point when the operator of a dump truck lost control of the vehicle."
Another soldier, still officially listed as "Unknown," died on July 13 "from a non-hostile gunshot incident," according to the site.
Before that, on July 9, another Marine Lance Corporal, age 20, died in Kuwait "in a vehicle accident."
Many other deaths are only vaguely described as the "result of non-combat injuries." One recent death occurred in a mine-clearing accident. Others "drowned" or "died of natural causes," and still others lost their lives in a "vehicle accident." - E&P welcomes letters to the editor: letters@editorandpublisher.com.
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS
-------- homeland security
House Backs $5.6 Billion Fund to Develop Bioterror Remedies
July 17, 2003
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/politics/17BIOS.html
WASHINGTON, July 16 - Nearly two years after a spate of anthrax-tainted letters killed five Americans and terrified millions more, the House voted overwhelmingly today to establish a $5.6 billion fund intended to encourage the development of drugs, vaccines and other defenses against biological, nuclear, radiological or chemical attack.
The 421-to-2 vote establishes an initiative known as Project Bioshield, outlined by President Bush in January in his State of the Union address. The bill now moves to the Senate, where the idea has broad bipartisan support. A similar bill was unanimously approved in committee.
"The wolves of terrorism are still on the lurk," Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the majority leader, said after the vote. "We must steel ourselves for battle whenever they threaten."
The measure would provide $5.6 billion over 10 years to encourage private companies to work with the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies to research and develop measures to combat smallpox, ebola virus, plague, anthrax and other feared biological agents. The government would then buy the drugs or vaccines and stockpile them.
The bill also gives the secretary of health and human services the authority to allow the drugs and vaccines to be used without government approval in an emergency.
Supporters of the legislation, including representatives of the biotechnology industry, call it necessary because there is no commercial market for these drugs, so private companies have little incentive to invest in research.
"You don't have an otherwise normal market," said Gillian Woollett, an official of BIO, the biotechnology industry trade organization. "Essentially, the product has no value if you don't need it, but infinite value if you do."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS
July 17, 2003
Judicial Watch Contact:
Press Office (202) 646-5172
MEDIA ADVISORY - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.b_PR.shtml
Commerce & State Department Reports to Task Force Detail Oilfield & Gas Projects, Contracts & Exploration
Saudi Arabian & UAE Oil Facilities Profiled As Well
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts." The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org.
The Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) documents likewise feature a map of each country's oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the projects, costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date.
Judicial Watch has been seeking these documents under FOIA since April 19, 2001. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) when the government failed to comply with the provisions of the FOIA law. U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Friedman ordered the government to produce the documents on March 5, 2002.
The documents were produced in response to Judicial Watch's on-going efforts to ensure transparency and accountability in government on behalf of the American people. Judicial Watch aggressively pursues those goals by making FOIA requests and seeking access to public information concerning government operations. When the government fails to abide by these "sunshine laws" Judicial Watch files lawsuits in order to obtain the requested information and to hold responsible government officials accountable.
"These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
Click here for: MAPS AND CHARTS OF OILFIELDS: CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.c_.shtml
-------- health
Anthrax hammers immune system
ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 17, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030716-112005-5561r.htm
The anthrax bug swiftly disarms the sentinels of the body's immune system, hampering the body's ability to defend against the potentially lethal bioterrorism agent, a new study shows.
The results suggest medical treatment to boost the immune system at the earliest stages of infection could counteract the toxin that anthrax produces in its initial attack. Antibiotics, like Cipro, could be used in concert to kill the bacteria themselves.
The federally supported study began in the months following the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five persons.
In those attacks, which remain unsolved, one of the first victims was sick for days before he was seen by doctors, who suspected a case of the flu. His white blood count, a sign of bacterial infection, was only slightly elevated. That suggests the anthrax bacteria were able to fly under the watchful radar of his immune system and proliferate.
As the 2001 anthrax crisis spread, physicians wondered how the weaponized bug was working. In the new study using mice, researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health provide some fundamental answers. They found that anthrax toxin targets front-line immune agents called dendritic cells. Once the bacteria disarm the dendritic cells, they can evade the immune system's other defenders and spread unchecked.
Details appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
"Anything that impairs the function of dendritic cells is really hitting at the Achilles' heel of the immune system. That is exactly what anthrax lethal toxin appears to do," said principal author Bali Pulendran of Emory University.
A previous study in the journal Science last year used test-tube experiments to show that anthrax also inhibits and destroys large white blood cells called macrophages. The immune system deploys those cells to fend off microbes.
That presumably also would allow the anthrax bacteria to spread, again unhindered by the immune system.
Together, the two studies show anthrax relies on multiple mechanisms to disrupt the body's ability to stave off infection, Mr. Pulendran said.
Michael Karin of the University of California at San Diego, and lead author of the Science study, said it was both "interesting and curious" that anthrax relied on different strategies to attack different immune agents.
"What is important in the new work is they show that the bacterium can actually inhibit the activation of dendritic cells without killing them," said Mr. Karin, who was not connected with the Nature study.
A Maryland company gained approval from the Food and Drug Administration last month to begin human tests of a drug that blocks the toxin. And the recent deciphering of the genetic makeup of anthrax likely will lead to other drugs and vaccines to thwart the germ.
Understanding of the toxin's effect on the immune system also could lead to beneficial uses for the toxin. Pulendran said new drugs might be developed to aid those suffering from auto-immune diseases, severe allergies or who risk organ rejection after transplant surgery.
----
Some nuts can make 'qualified' heart health claim
July 17, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030716-111907-3022r.htm
The labels on packages of peanuts and certain other nuts can declare that a handful a day just might help your heart, even though that potential benefit isn't yet proven.
It's the first "qualified" health claim allowed under a controversial new Food and Drug Administration program that loosens restrictions on how much scientific proof is required before potential health benefits can appear on food packages.
The claim approved Tuesday is for almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios, walnuts and peanuts. Their packages now may bear the following line: "Scientific evidence suggests but does not prove that eating 1.5 ounces per day of most nuts as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease."
That's about a third of a cup, or a handful.
It may sound like surprising advice considering that nuts tend to be high in calories and fat.
Indeed, FDA didn't approve the claim for some of the fattiest nuts, agency nutrition chief Christine Taylor said. Macadamias, for instance, contain too much heart-damaging saturated fat to make the cut.
But the American Heart Association has long said certain nuts contain mostly different types of fat that are heart-healthy - polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat. The nut industry cited the AHA position and some studies that back nut-rich diets in seeking FDA permission to promote the potential benefit.
Only packages of approved nuts can bear the claim - not fat-laden ice cream with a nut sprinkle - and packages must direct consumers to check the back label for full calorie and fat disclosure, said Miss Taylor.
Given new understanding of the role of different fats, "the feeling was as long as they help consumers to understand this contributes quite a bit of calories, they probably should be allowed to make the claim," said Miss Taylor.
The decision drew the ire of consumer groups, who say at best, looser health claims will confuse Americans reading wishy-washy advice on food packages that once could bear only scientifically proven statements.
"It would be unfortunate if the claim turned out later to be untrue. No one's going to get their money back," said Bruce Silverglade of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
It's also not clear whether consumers will understand the disclaimer that nuts' benefits are as yet unproven, Mr. Silverglade said.
The nut industry is talking with FDA about more research to find proof of nuts' benefits, Miss Taylor said.
Meanwhile, the Almond Board of California suggests one way consumers could make use of the new information: Substitute a handful of nuts for of a less-healthful snack.
Food makers had long lobbied FDA to allow packages to advertise potential health benefits, arguing that people can make sense of evolving or uncertain science.
Faced with court decisions that limit restrictions on product labeling, FDA designed a program that will allow such unproven claims, but with disclaimers designed to discourage the chanciest ones. FDA will rank claims from scientifically proven "A" ratings down to "D" ratings with almost no evidence.
The new program formally starts in September, but the nut industry had sought its heart-health claim last fall and was allowed in early when FDA decided the benefit is backed only by B-level promising evidence, not A-level proof.
Next on the list to be considered: Eating several servings a week of salmon and certain other fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids is thought to, but not proved to, reduce the risk of heart disease.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Groups Protest Plans for New Plutonium Pit Facility
WASHINGTON, DC,
July 17, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2003/2003-07-17-09.asp#anchor1
Anti-nuclear forces today protested Energy Department plans to build a new Modern Pit Facility, which would produce cores for nuclear weapons. The groups weighed in with criticism of the concept at an Energy Department public hearing Wednesday on the potential impacts of its plan to replace the production site at Rocky Flats, Colorado - that facility was closed in 1989 for environmental and safety violations.
Plutonium pits form the explosive core of nearly all nuclear weapons and critics of the Energy Department's plan say it is part of the Bush administration's strategy to develop new nuclear weapons, including "bunker busters" and low yield weapons.
According to the Energy Department, the need for the Modern Pit Facility is based on classified analyses of long-term pit production requirements. It calls for a new facility that could produce in excess of 500 plutonium pits per year.
The Energy Department estimates that the new Modern Pit Facility will cost $2 billion to $4 billion to construct, with annual operating costs of some $300 million.
Critics say the costs will run much higher and worry that the plan sends the wrong signal to the rest of the world as the United States is engaged in efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They add that the plan has not considered the environmental ramification of such a facility.
"The draft plan does not evaluate the clean up operation of the Modern Pit Facility at any potential site," said Dr. Mike McCally, a former Air Force officer and a board member of the nonprofit organization Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR).
McCally, who testified at Wednesday's hearing, says that the Energy Department's Environmental Impact Statement does not offer methods and procedures for "avoiding the environmental accidents and releases that led to the closure of the Rocky Flats plant."
PSR is one of 130 local and national groups that sent a letter to Congress asking members to oppose the Modern Pit Facility plan.
The House Appropriations Committee, which on Tuesday cut much of the funding for the new nuclear weapons research the administration has asked for, also reduced funding for environmental studies of the Modern Pit Facility from $22 million to $11 million.
"Ground burst and earth penetrating nuclear weapons produce clouds of debris coated with long lived, potent radioisotopes and plumes of particulate fallout emitting deadly radioactivity over wide areas," McCally said. "Militarily, medically and morally, these are unusable weapons."
----
Locking up nuns makes sense to none
By Jim Spencer,
Denver Post Columnist
Thursday, July 17, 2003
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E27772%7E1516373,00.html
It's called downward departure. It's a fancy term that means making the punishment fit the crime.
Federal Judge Robert Blackburn needs to do it July 25 when he sentences three nuns convicted of protesting against nuclear weapons.
In April, a jury found Sisters Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Marie Hudson guilty of obstructing national defense and damaging government property for hammering on a missile silo in northern Colorado.
The nuns' prior civil disobedience, combined with their latest convictions, puts them in the category of dangerous felons as far as federal sentencing guidelines are concerned.
The guidelines call for these women, who have devoted their lives to promoting peace and nonviolence, to serve six to eight years in the penitentiary.
If this constitutes homeland security in post-Sept. 11 America, the watchdog needs dentures. When they're not protesting for peace, the nuns teach in poor neighborhoods, helping the least of us. Locking them is like locking up Mother Teresa. It's just wrong.
So it falls to Judge Blackburn to do what's right.
He's got the power to depart from the sentencing guidelines. To do it, a judge must decide that special circumstances exist, said Sam Kamin, an assistant professor of law at the University of Denver.
"The judge basically has to say that this isn't what Congress intended when it approved the guidelines," Kamin explained.
In the nuns' case, that's such a no-brainer that John Suthers, the U.S. attorney for the Colorado region, looks brain dead.
Suthers' office plans to formally respond to the nuns' requests for downward departures today, a spokesman said.
But the government's position all along has been that these peacemakers aren't blessed.
"They have been prosecuted in the past for similar acts and sentenced to short periods of incarceration, which have not served as a deterrent," Suthers said.
Suthers apparently sees symbolic protests as security threats. He thinks taxpayers need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep the nuns off the streets.
I propose that the politically posturing prosecutor write the check out of his publicly financed salary. He obviously has too little on his plate and not much more in his head.
The crimes committed here involve three old women cutting through a fence and whacking a few hammer blows on a missile silo of reinforced concrete several feet thick. What happened posed no more threat to national security than refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing "The Star Spangled Banner."
As for costing the government money, I'm betting Suthers put more of a hurt on the federal purse prosecuting the nuns than the nuns put on the missile silo.
Platte, Gilbert and Hudson spent several months in jail awaiting trial. Time served, combined with some community service, makes sense.
The nuns should be required to pay to repair the fence they cut. They might even need to pay for the time soldiers spent responding to their protest.
But six to eight years in prison for Hudson, who is 68, Platte, who is 67, and Gilbert, who is 55, mocks justice.
DU's Kamin said that only extraordinary circumstances justify downward departures from sentencing guidelines.
Devoting your life to peace in a war-torn world qualifies not only as extraordinary, but as exemplary.
No matter, Kamin said, federal judges don't like to depart from the guidelines because the decision to do so is automatically reviewable and reversible.
"Judges," he added, "don't like to be reversed."
They ought to like turning peaceniks into prisoners even less.
Federal judges - in this case Blackburn - have wide discretion to decide what factors demand departure from sentencing guidelines.
The ability to get around the sentencing guidelines exists because the folks who wrote the guidelines knew the guidelines were not one-size-fits-all.
They sure don't fit these convictions.
The nuns have never hurt anyone. They never will. They're sort of like angels. If the whole world adopted their sacrifice and respect for humanity, terrorism and war would cease. So would crime. It would be heaven on earth.
Unless Judge Blackburn departs from the sentencing guidelines, the United States will show its angels hell on earth.
"You could make an argument that lack of discretion (in sentencing) looks ridiculous because you have people here who aren't a threat," Kamin said.
You could also argue that anyone who puts nuns in the pen for six years runs a kangaroo court.
----
Gov. Welcomes G - 8, Protesters to Ga.
July 17, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-G8-Summit-Protesters.html
SEA ISLAND, Ga. (AP) -- Saying ``company's coming,'' Gov. Sonny Perdue extended a hand of Southern hospitality to world leaders at next summer's G-8 summit -- and to throngs of protesters expected to follow them.
Speaking from the shade of a towering oak on the Cloister resort grounds, Perdue told reporters he would welcome peaceful protests as an example of American freedom rather than discourage them as an unwanted nuisance.
``Yes, we're inviting them,'' said Perdue, a Republican. ``They're going to come whether they're invited or not. ... We need to demonstrate that we're a tolerant society and we're not threatened by their free speech.''
Still, Perdue said Sea Island and neighboring St. Simons Island, both linked to the mainland by 9 miles of causeway, would be off limits to protesters. Sea Island's 500 residents would need special credentials to access the island during the summit, he said.
President Bush announced a day earlier that this Georgia resort island will host the 2004 Group of Eight summit of the leaders of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Italy and Russia next June.
More than 2,000 journalists are expected, as well as crowds of protesters such as those who caused millions of dollars in damages in Switzerland during last month's G-8 summit in nearby Evian, France. Violent demonstrations also marred the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle.
Perdue promised plenty of security from federal, state and local agencies would be available to handle protests and secure the coastal area against acts of terrorism.
The federal government has plenty of protection nearby: the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and a Coast Guard station in Brunswick, the nearest inland city, as well as the Fort Stewart Army post to the north and the Kings Bay nuclear submarine base to the south.
And the Georgia Emergency Management Agency held anti-terrorism drills just last week.
Sea Island is no stranger to prestigious visitors. Since the resort opened in 1928, visitors have included Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Jimmy Carter as well as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Bush's father and mother honeymooned here in 1945, and celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on the island.
-------
Lockheed Sues Peaceful Anti-War Protesters
Sitara Kapoor and Todd Kolze
Direct Action to Stop the War
July 17, 2003
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/newsArticle.asp?id=898
... Summary: Something is very wrong within our democracy when a multi-billion dollar corporation, Lockheed-Martin, one of our Nation's largest defense contractors, sues anti-war protestors. Civil rights advocates call it "an assault on democracy," as the company seeks to block free speech by placing a price tag on public gatherings ...
"Lockheed seeks restitution from anti-war protesters in unprecedented "backdoor" SLAPP suit"
Civil rights advocates call it "an assault on democracy"
Press Conference:
July 17, 2003, 1:00 p.m.
Sunnyvale Superior Court,
605 West El Camino Real,
Sunnyvale, California
This Thursday, July 17 marks the beginning of a unique legal battle over the public's right to free speech: specifically, whether corporations have the right to charge protesters for added security and other costs companies incur in anticipation of a demonstration.
Anti-war demonstrators over the past few months have focused their protests on corporations which they view as directly profiting from the most recent war on Iraq. One such corporation is Lockheed Martin, the largest manufacturer of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in the US, with close ties to the Bush administration.
Fifty-two protesters were arrested at the demonstrations at Lockheed Martin on April 22, 2003. A pre-trial conference pertaining to these arrests will be heard on Thursday, July 17, with the trials most likely continuing into the fall.
Working with the Santa Clara District Attorney, Lockheed Martin is seeking an unprecedented legal penalty through the criminal justice system: reimbursement for what the company represents as costs it incurred preparing for the demonstration. These costs amount to over $41,000, and include a claim for additional security hired for the day of the protest and legal fees Lockheed incurred after filing a failed motion to block the protest from occurring in the first place.
The implications of the restitution penalty are of grave concern to both protestors and civil rights groups, who worry that this case could set a dangerous legal precedent that would deeply discourage people from exercising their First Amendment rights.
The threat of restitution could effectively stifle public protest of corporations' unscrupulous or illegal actions. The public has a right to engage in protest to expose a company for manufacturing weapons so insidious they have been banned by the UN and for bilking the American taxpayer for billions of dollars.
"If Lockheed Martin wants to avoid public outrage, it should stop behaving outrageously - instead of trying to stifle criticism by charging protesters for free speech," said Sitar Kapoor, a social worker who was arrested at the April 22 protest.
Though Lockheed claims it spent over $15,000 in security costs, protesters assert that these costs were unnecessary, because prior to the demonstration organizers engaged in a cooperative dialogue with local law enforcement authorities to ensure a non-violent, non-destructive day of protest.
Indeed, no physical damage or violence was present during the April demonstration.
Defense attorney Dan Mayfield stated, "Charging a group of arrestees for the costs a company allegedly incurs in anticipation of a protest is ridiculous. What if Lockheed had hired $15,000 worth of extra security and no protesters showed up? Who would receive the bill? There is no logical basis for Lockheed Martin to claim restitution from protesters for arbitrary security costs."
Organizers from Direct Action to Stop the War, with allies from civil rights organizations and the community, are having a press conference in support of the Lockheed 52 and free speech,1 pm, July 17 in front of the Sunnyvale Superior Courthouse, 605 West El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, Californa Street Theater.
--------
Peace activists go to Baghdad to keep tabs on troops, firms
Office plans to focus on Bechtel, Halliburton
David R. Baker,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 17, 2003
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/07/17/MN256400.DTL
Some of the same peace activists who protested the U.S. invasion of Iraq have now set up camp in Baghdad, determined to scrutinize a military operation they couldn't prevent.
Their new International Occupation Watch Center, which opened last week in Iraq's chaotic capital, will keep a skeptical eye on the activities of U.S. troops and officials.
Its four-member staff will shadow U.S. companies Bechtel Corp. and Halliburton, whose role in Iraq's reconstruction provoked protests at home.
More to the point, the center will actively oppose the occupation itself and call for its swift end. Its views, to be published in newsletters printed in English and Arabic, will probe the occupiers' tolerance for dissent.
"This is a test of our rights -- of freedom of speech, freedom of the press,
freedom of assembly -- and we'll press those rights to the full extent," said San Francisco activist Medea Benjamin in an interview from Baghdad.
It is unclear whether more staffers will join the initial group, or how much access the activists will actually have to either military officials or private business concerns.
Two groups Benjamin represents, Global Exchange and United for Peace and Justice, spearheaded the center's creation. After helping fill the streets of San Francisco, New York and Washington with protests against the war, they now want U.S. troops and administrators brought home as soon as possible.
Officials with the office of the U.S. civil administrator, L. Paul Bremer, could not be reached for comment.
A Bechtel spokesman said the company already faces plenty of public examination without the new watchdogs.
Protesters besieged the construction company's San Francisco headquarters after Bechtel won a $680 million contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure. Activists have labeled Bechtel part of a corporate invasion of Iraq, profiting from the country's misery.
"We're already under close and expert scrutiny by USAID, the Army Corps of Engineers and the international media," company spokesman Jonathan Marshall said. "To this mix, Global Exchange really doesn't bring much to the table, other than an ideological and political agenda."
A $20,000 seed grant from Global Exchange and United for Peace and Justice helped establish the center, which Benjamin anticipates will operate for at least 18 months.
Its mission ranges from preparing reports and posting them on its Web site, www.occupationwatch.org, to supporting the formation of Iraqi human rights groups and labor unions. Its staff will investigate claims that occupation troops have used unnecessary force against civilians, Benjamin said.
The center will try to talk with the occupation authorities, as well as representatives of U.S. companies, as much as possible, Benjamin said. Some of its investigative work throughout the country will be performed by the center's own staff while other reports will be prepared by groups working with the center.
In addition, the center will work with activists elsewhere to put pressure on the countries participating in the occupation. Benjamin and others at the center met last week with Italian activists who want to force their own country to pull out, and Benjamin wants to expand that effort to Poland and Australia.
Many observers warn that Iraq could descend into anarchy should the troops leave too soon, and U.S. officials have recently spoken of a long stay.
Benjamin opposes a lengthy occupation, which she defined as five to 10 years. Although the center does not push for a specific date to end the occupation, Benjamin said a six- to 18-month stay would be relatively quick.
"Some (Iraqis) say the U.S. troops should leave today. Others say, 'We'll give them a year.' Some say six months," Benjamin said. "No one wants the U.S. here more than a year."
E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.
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