Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Dr. Norman C. Rasmussen, 75, Expert on Nuclear Power Risk, Dies
Hydrogen gas a nuclear waste danger?
UN nuclear watchdog planning new Iran missions
South Korea Says North Talks Process Bogged Down
Duke Power Company to Test Plutonium Fuel
House Chooses Nuclear Space Flight Over Superfund
Kucinich: Bring troops home
Lieberman says Bush mishandling of Iraq
Was Poppy Right After All?
Against Liberal Intervention
MILITARY
U.S. May Authorize $1 Billion to Speed Up Afghan Projects
Afghan Says Aid Will Help Rebuild Peace
U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Urges Rebels to Leave Capital
Pentagon's Futures Market Plan Condemned
OPEC sees little risk from Iraq as sabotage saps oil production
Poll finds majority in Poland oppose sending troops
US presses India to supply Iraq peacekeepers
'Dead dictators tell no tales'
US says 30 nations have signed on for Iraq stabilization force
U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters
Iraqi civilians caught in crossfire of US operations
US troops turn botched Saddam raid into a massacre
Bloody U.S. Raid in Baghdad Leaves Iraqis Furious
3 Iraqis Killed as G.I.'s Set Up Raid in Hunt for Hussein
Israel to Free Many Militants and Lift Some Roadblocks
ISRAEL DELAYS SECURITY FENCE PROJECT
Palestinians Losing Land to the Fence
Outposts highlight Israeli failure to meet terms of roadmap
Israel Removes 3 Checkpoints
Japan Courts a Public Wary of Sending Its Troops to Iraq
Japanese reporters in Iraq say U.S. troops roughed them up
Japan strikes commercial oil deal with Iraq
Shootout in Saudi Arabia Kills Eight
Syrian PM: Regional states should resist US bid to reshape the Middle East
Sheikh Nasrallah: US Administration is sponsor of terrorism
Brief Mutiny Was Pale Shadow of Past Philippine Coups
U.S. far outdistancing potential competitors in space-weapons race
Pentagon's Futures Market Plan Condemned
Moscow Dusts Off Informers
West Wing Pipe Dream
Rwanda Is Said to Seek New Prosecutor for War Crimes Court
Lawyers sue Blair over war
U.N. to replace war court attorney
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Congress' 9/11 Report Raises Credibility Questions
Immigrants Fear Deportation After Registration
Study Finds 2.6% Increase in U.S. Prison Population
Number Of Prisoners Rises as Crime Drops
OTHER
EPA Will Reconsider Enforcement Policies
ACTIVISTS
As Trial in Taped Beating Nears End in Los Angeles
Israeli Troops Shoot to Stop 'Fence' Protest
Police fire rubber bullets at fence protesters
There always have been those who stymied liberty
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Dr. Norman C. Rasmussen, 75, Expert on Nuclear Power Risk, Dies
July 28, 2003
New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/obituaries/28RASM.html
Norman C. Rasmussen, a former professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who pioneered a technique for measuring risk at nuclear power plants, died on July 18 at a nursing home in Concord, Mass. He was 75.
The cause was complications from Parkinson's disease, his son, Neil E. Rasmussen, said.
In 1975 Dr. Rasmussen oversaw the production of a landmark report, the 21-volume Reactor Safety Study, sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission, a precursor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The report predicted that in power reactors in this country, a core damage accident would occur only once in every 20,000 years of operation, with one reactor running for one year counting as a year of operating experience.
But after the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island 2 reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979, when the nuclear industry in this country had fewer than 500 years of operating experience, a new study ordered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reassessed the risk and estimated it at one meltdown per 1,000 years of reactor operation.
The commission disavowed some of the findings of the Rasmussen study. But it continued to embrace his technique, now known as probabilistic risk assessment, which involved drawing up a "fault tree" to trace how problems can spread through a plant when a piece of equipment fails. Among the problems with the Rasmussen study were that it overlooked some risks, like fires, and that it was based on reactor designs that did not include the Three Mile Island type.
Dr. Rasmussen was a professor of nuclear engineering at M.I.T. from 1958 until 1994, and was in charge of the institute's nuclear engineering department from 1975 to 1981. In 1985, the government presented him with the Enrico Fermi Award for his "pioneering contributions to nuclear energy in the development of probabilistic risk assessment techniques that have provided new insights and led to new developments in nuclear power plant safety."
Born in Harrisburg, Pa., Dr. Rasmussen served in the Navy from June 1945 to August 1946 and graduated from Gettysburg College in 1950. He received a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T. in 1956.
In addition to his son, of Concord, Mass., survivors include a daughter, Arlene R. Soule, of Littleton, N.H.; five brothers, Frederick, of Moorestown, N.J., Howard, of Charlotte, N.C., Holger, of Penn Valley, Calif., John, of Columbus, Ohio, and David, of Clarksville, Va.; and four grandchildren.
--------
Hydrogen gas a nuclear waste danger?
July 28, 2003
By Charles Choi
UPI Science News
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030725-052215-2034r.htm
NEW YORK, July 28 (UPI) -- Controversial new findings from an international team of scientists have renewed the debate over whether nuclear waste can absorb enough oxygen from water to produce explosive hydrogen gas.
The worry is not that nuclear waste canisters will detonate like dirty bombs after swelling with a Hindenburg's worth of hydrogen. The chemical reaction in question, if it happens at all, would take place over years. But experts think the prospect highlights just how much remains unknown about the mysterious element plutonium and how such uncertainty can effect attempts to handle and store it.
"Hopefully, if we can better understand how safe is safe enough with plutonium and have scientific backing of that, we could save money (and) spend money in the right place," actinide chemist Ken Czerwinski of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge told United Press International.
"We don't have a complete understanding of plutonium," Czerwinski said. "It's a very complicated material, and these issues are very serious. We need to get a handle on this material. It isn't going to just go away."
Plutonium is a silver-grey metal that weighs more than twice as much as lead. Discovered in 1941, the human-manufactured radioactive element was named after the planet Pluto, which in turn was named after the Roman god of the dead. In a certain form, plutonium is 10 times more toxic than any nerve gas. When inhaled, as little as 12 millionths of a gram can cause death within 60 days.
A handful of plutonium is capable of generating incredibly large amounts of energy. About two pounds is equivalent to 3,800 tons of coal. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945 contained only about 12 pounds of plutonium. Between 1944 and 1994, the United States produced or acquired nearly 111.4 metric tons of plutonium, enough for more than 18,000 Nagasaki-sized bombs.
To reduce the danger of accidental explosion, when spheres of plutonium are removed from the hearts of atomic weapons for storage, they are cut up, powdered, reacted with oxygen and converted to plutonium dioxide, a substance scientists had thought was chemically stable. PuO2 was the compound of choice for the long-term storage of plutonium, showing no sign of reaction when exposed to air, physicist Axel Svane of the University of Aarhus in Denmark and colleagues note in a report in the July 25 issue of the journal Science.
Despite these precautions, early PuO2 storage cans developed problems. "There was some swelling," Czerwinski noted.
Chemist John Haschke, formerly head of Los Alamos National Laboratory's applied weapons research and development team in New Mexico, suggested plutonium dioxide could be chemically reacting with moisture sealed inside the container. Plucking oxygen from water would leave hydrogen gas -- the H2 of water's H2O. Hydrogen is the lighter-than-air gas used to float the Hindenburg, the infamous airship that went down in flames on May 6, 1937 in Lakehurst, N.J.
This chemical reaction became the center of much concern over the long-term storage of plutonium. Haschke and his colleagues suggested the amount of hydrogen in canisters in a few years could accumulate enough pressure to damage the containers.
"Potentially you could have an explosion from hydrogen gas as the worst-case scenario," Czerwinski said.
Yet, the theory remained controversial because attempts to prepare hyper-oxygenated plutonium failed. Now, new theoretical results from Svane and his colleagues in Britain and the United States lend weight to Haschke's suggestion.
When the scientists modeled electron behavior in plutonium dioxide, the molecules assembled into cubes. Based on their calculations, the investigators found plutonium could act as an electron reservoir, accommodating electron-loaded oxygen atoms right in the core of each cube. In their paper in Science, the researchers said the temperatures needed to trigger such a reaction could occur in plutonium-storage facilities.
Analytical chemist Mark Paffett of Los Alamos National Laboratory disagreed with the chemistry proposed. His research suggests instead that plutonium dioxide is far more chemically stable, with water molecules sitting atop the surface of the radioactive material and only occasionally releasing hydrogen.
"In practice, we haven't seen high pressures of hydrogen from these materials. We do see some hydrogen, but it's very, very low-content," Paffett said.
Still, Paffett found Svane's team's work intriguing. "The calculations are very interesting and useful. These are things I've been trying to get others to do," Paffett told UPI. "Hopefully this will raise more work and questions."
Paffett stressed storage procedures for plutonium dioxide are now very careful to bake out as much moisture and any other contaminants as possible at 1,742 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours before it is canned. Every 10 pounds or so of plutonium of dioxide is sealed inside a two-layer container that is welded shut with a chemically inert gas such as argon.
"We've done everything that's scientifically possible to mitigate this problem. Clearly you don't want to store plutonium dioxide with water," Paffett said.
Although hydrogen buildup from nuclear waste seems to pose no imminent danger, "the better we understand what would happen to plutonium dioxide in a radioactive waste depository, the better," nuclear physicist Frank von Hippel of Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., told UPI.
Czerwinski agreed. Plutonium dioxide currently is thought to be insoluble, but interaction with water or other chemicals could change that condition over thousands of years, he suggested.
"The more we scientifically understand the element, the more we can translate that to better policy decisions," Czerwinski said. For instance, scientists hope to burn plutonium-loaded elements as fuel, "but these questions about the chemistry need to be understood before we can decide."
A better understanding of how plutonium can release hydrogen could even help with the hydrogen-powered economy President Bush is proposing to replace fossil fuel dependence. "I'm not talking about plutonium catalysts, mind you," Czerwinski said. But investigations of plutonium could reveal how metals in general could generate the gas, he said.
"The obstacle I see to the future is that it's very difficult to get students trained in these areas," Czerwinski told UPI. Most chemistry classes in the country don't discuss heavy, radioactive elements such as plutonium, he said, "or don't talk about radiation generally. For students to actually work with an element like plutonium in a university setting is extremely rare."
Czerwinski also said he was concerned that "the age of the people at the national laboratories is only growing. "We're really trying to find replacements, and students just aren't getting the training."
-------- iran
UN nuclear watchdog planning new Iran missions
VIENNA (AFP)
Jul 28, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030728135119.k5zwzc9b.html
The UN nuclear watchdog said on Monday it will next month send two new teams of specialists to Iran, suspected by the United States and its allies of developing nuclear weapons.
The announcement came a day after Iran's representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency took the unusual step of urging his government to agree to surprise inspections of its nuclear facilities by the
The international community is pressing Tehran to sign an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to allow the no-notice inspections, but so far Iran has not obliged.
A first IAEA team of judicial experts will go in the first week of August on a 48-hour mission to explain how the protocol will work if Tehran signs, IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.
The second team will carry out routine inspections ahead of a report on Iran's nuclear facilities by the IAEA due to be released on September 8, Fleming said, without giving specific dates for the visit.
During a visit to South Africa last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi said the country's leadership would decide whether to agree to sign after hearing from the IAEA experts.
Iran, however, repeated assurances Monday that it has no intention of quitting the NPT altogether.
"Our policy remains the same as we declared before," foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
Earlier this month, European Union foreign ministers expressed their increasing concern" over Iran's nuclear programme and demanded Iran's unconditional acceptance of the additional NPT protocol.
The EU, which is negotiating a key trade pact with Iran, said it would review its cooperation with Tehran in September, when the IAEA delivers its latest report.
Iran, a country rich in oil, is suspected by its archfoe the United States of covertly developing nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian nuclear programme, allegations strongly denied by Tehran.
Last week, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami accused the United States of seeking to overthrow the Islamic regime and of using the nuclear weapons allegations as a pretext.
Iran's representative to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, warned Sunday that if the protocol was not signed, there was a real danger the agency might refer Iran's case to the UN Security Council, as threatened by Washington.
-------- korea
South Korea Says North Talks Process Bogged Down
July 28, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - Negotiations between China and North Korea on restarting talks on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions have become bogged down, South Korea's foreign minister said Monday.
Yoon Young-kwan told reporters no one could tell for sure whether multilateral talks would be held next month or in September because Pyongyang had yet to respond to the idea.
``The negotiating progress between North Korea and China is not speedy, but has slowed down a bit,'' Yoon said. ``North Korea holds the key. The ball now is in North Korea's court.''
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said last Friday after talks with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun she saw possible fresh nuclear talks in a few weeks and said ``hopefully August'' when asked whether that meant September or next month.
China has played a crucial role in seeking to persuade its communist neighbor and long-time ally to return to talks and accept Japan, South Korea and possibly Russia at the table, too. Beijing hosted an inconclusive first round between China, the United States and North Korea in April.
``No one can tell for sure what the timing of the talks will be,'' Yoon said. ``Since North Korea has yet to respond, we can't predict the timing. We need to wait.''
Separately, a YTN television quoted an unnamed Unification Ministry official as saying multilateral talks could be held one day after a re-run of the three-way talks. A Unification Ministry official could not confirm the report.
BUMPY ROAD TO TALKS
The road to talks with North Korea is often circuitous and bumpy. North Korea has been pumping out the rhetoric from its state-run media, as veterans and dignitaries from the United States and its Korean War allies marked the 50th anniversary of the armistice that halted the fighting on July 27, 1953.
The Koreas are still technically at war because the armistice has not been replaced by a peace treaty.
The North would like that, plus a non-aggression pact with Washington, but Roh told ABC News ``This Week with George Stephanopoulos'' Sunday he thought the latter was unnecessary.
North Korea says it won the Korean War and refers to the ``50th anniversary of the Great Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War.'' The North's official KCNA news agency said an extravaganza was staged in Pyongyang around a central square.
``The square turned into a veritable sea of dancers with the will to demonstrate the invincible spirit of heroic Korea once again in the present confrontation with the U.S.,'' it said.
In the South, Among those commemorating the armistice were members of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission, a little-known team that has helped monitor the truce along the Demilitarised Zone bisecting the Korean peninsula for 50 years. Polish Maj. Gen. Andrzej Ekiert told Reuters in Seoul Monday Poland may return full-time to the commission.
A camp at the heart of the DMZ, on the southern side of the divide, houses five Swiss and four Swedish officers in makeshift but well-kept huts in national colors.
When first set up under the 1953 Armistice Agreement, the commission included Polish and Czechoslovak camps north of the border. North Korea expelled the Czechoslovaks when their country split in 1993. Poland was later forced out and has since sent two-man teams to commission meetings but not set up at the camp.
``Maybe, but this is our government decision, there will be the situation that a small Polish delegation will be in Panmunjom like the Swiss and Swedish delegations,'' said Ekiert in English.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Duke Power Company to Test Plutonium Fuel
July 28, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2003/2003-07-28-09.asp#anchor4
WASHINGTON, DC - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) published a notice in the Federal Register Friday about plans by the Duke Power Company to test plutonium fuel - known as mixed oxide fuel (MOX) - in either its Catawba, South Carolina or McGuire, North Carolina nuclear stations.
Four MOX "lead test assemblies" (LTAs) would be used in one of four Duke reactors. Both nuclear plants are both located near Charlotte, North Carolina.
The test is planned as part of the Energy Department's plutonium disposition program, although the agency acknowledged to Congress last year that "immobilizing" the plutonium in high-level waste was cheaper than using it as MOX.
Many environmental groups oppose the MOX program due to safety questions raised by MOX use in reactors and because of the increased proliferation concerns posed by plutonium handling and processing in the United States and Russia.
The Federal Register announcement affords the public the opportunity to request a hearing on the license amendment necessary to test the MOX.
Greenpeace, a vocal critic of the plan, says that because the United States does not have a MOX fuel fabrication plant, the MOX assemblies would have to be fabricated in Europe. The organization notes this would be controversial as approximately 150 kilograms weapons plutonium would have to be transported overland from Los Alamos National Laboratory and then shipped, along with an armed escort vessel, to one of two MOX fabrication plants in France or Belgium.
Earlier this week the NRC announced that its final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the U.S. MOX plant, which is planned for the Energy Department's Savannah River Site would not be ready until the end of September.
-------- us politics
House Chooses Nuclear Space Flight Over Superfund
By J.R. Pegg,
July 28, 2003
(ENS)
http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2003/2003-07-28-10.asp
WASHINGTON, DC - The House turned back an effort Friday to fully fund the Bush administration's 2004 request for the Superfund program, opting not to divert $115 million from an initiative to develop nuclear powered space flight in order to fund additional efforts to clean up hazardous waste sites.
The move comes amid rising concerns that the Superfund program is being undermined by a lack of funding - cleanup of existing sites has fallen by some 50 percent in the last two years.
The provision was offered by Representatives Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Charles Bass, a New Hampshire Republican, as an amendment to the House spending bill for several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
It was easily defeated with 309 members voting against and only 114 in favor.
"It is very disappointing to see so many members place the health of their communities so low on their list of political priorities, and is impossible to justify as a matter of environmental justice or wise allocation of scarce federal funding," Markey commented on the vote.
The Bush administration, which has been blasted by environmentalists for the slowdown in clean up at Superfund sites, asked for $1.39 billion. The failure of the amendment means the House has provided the Superfund program with $1.275 billion for fiscal year 2004 - in line with the $1.27 billion it appropriated for the current fiscal year.
The House leadership says the limited increase is the result of its policy of strict fiscal discipline. The Bush administration recently announced that the budget deficit could be as high as $400 billion.
Markey and Bass proposed taking $115 million out of the bill's $279 million allocation for NASA's Project Prometheus, an initiative to develop nuclear powered space probes.
Markey told House colleagues that the amendment struck the necessary balance "our exploration of the stars and our preservation of the Earth."
The $279 billion the House has put forth for Prometheus is in line with the Bush administration's request and is a 133 percent increase over the program's 2003 appropriations. This figure includes $186 million for the Nuclear Systems Initiative and $93 million for a first flight mission - known as the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter (JIMO).
Taking $115 million out of the initiative and allocating it to the Superfund program, Markey said, would give Prometheus a 31 percent increase and afford Superfund a nine percent increase over 2003 levels.
"It is an issue of priorities," Bass added. "The moons of Jupiter are going nowhere, but the people who live around these Superfund sites are people that are affected and potentially affected by this issue every single day."
Supporters of the amendment noted that earlier this month, the EPA announced 20 new Superfund sites and acknowledged that only 11 would be funded. There are more than 1,230 Superfund sites across the nation.
"We are not keeping up with our Superfund responsibilities," said Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat.
But opponents of the amendment said that nuclear powered space flight is integral to the future of space exploration and that Prometheus is too important to be cut.
The money allocated by the House for Superfund "keeps cleanups going at a steady pace," said New York Republican Jim Walsh. The $115 million cut to the space initiative would "severely hamper the operations of NASA."
"It would also place in jeopardy many worthwhile space and Earth missions which would improve the understanding of our world, basic knowledge, which we, as humans, strive for," Walsh said.
NASA wants to spend some $3 billion on Project Prometheus over the next five years, with $2 billion slated for development of the JIMO spacecraft, which is being designed to investigate three of Jupiter's 52 moons. The three moons - Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa - may harbor vast oceans beneath their icy surfaces.
Aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman have each been awarded multimillion dollar contracts to develop design studies for the orbiter.
Speaking against the amendment, California Republican David Drier said the cut in funding for the space project would "be extraordinarily short-sighted."
"If you do not take risks, you are not going to learn anything," said Drier.
Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank countered that Americans ought not to have to "take the risk of living next to a Superfund site."
Seventy million people, including some 10 million children, live within four miles of the nation's more than 1,230 Superfund sites. Children are most vulnerable to the arsenic, DDT and brain-damaging toxins like lead and mercury that are found in the water and soil at these locations.
In the late 1990s, the EPA cleaned up an average of 86 Superfund sites a year, but it only cleaned up 42 sites in 2002.
Last year, 46 sites that requested cleanup funds did not receive full funding, resulting in a 45 percent shortfall in funding.
And earlier this year, Congress voted against reinstating the polluter pays tax, which forces polluters to pay the bill for toxic cleanups at Superfund sites. The provision expired in 1995, when the trust fund was at a historic high of some $3.6 billion.
The fund is likely to be completely depleted by 2004, forcing the government to pay entirely for future Superfund cleanup.
The bill passed Friday included a total of $8.01 billion for the EPA, $375 million more than the Bush administration requested but some $1 million less than Congress gave the agency last year.
Although generally displeased with the funding levels in the bill, environmentalists hailed the decision by the House to reject the Bush administration's proposal to cut the EPA's enforcement staff amid widespread concern that enforcement at the agency is underfunded and understaffed.
The Senate has yet to consider the EPA's budget for fiscal 2004 and will not discuss it until after the August recess.
----
Kucinich: Bring troops home
The presidential candidate also spoke about education and renewable energy.
By LYNN OKAMOTO
Des Moines Register Staff Writer
07/28/2003
http://www.dmregister.com/news/stories/c4789004/21851964.html
Ottumwa, Ia. - It's time to bring American troops home from Iraq, Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said Sunday at a nationally televised forum in Ottumwa.
"This is the time for us to rejoin the world community, rejoin the United Nations and get our troops out of there," said Kucinich, an Ohio congressman, at a forum hosted by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa and televised by C-SPAN. "I don't like the fact that our men and women are being used for targets."
Kucinich's comments came as yet another U.S. solider was killed early Sunday south of Baghdad. According to the Associated Press, 163 U.S. soldiers have now died in Iraq, including 48 killed since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1.
Springdale resident Clara Oleson, one of about 200 who attended Sunday's 90-minute forum, grew frustrated after an hour had passed and no one had talked about the war. The discussion focused instead on the economy, health care, education and renewable energy.
"George W. Bush is ready to blow up this world in our name and we're sitting here asking about prescription drugs," Oleson said. "The vast majority of people watching this are never going to vote for you or anyone else because the disbelief and the disenchantment is that great."
Kucinich said he understands the anger in this country. He led an effort in the U.S. House of Representatives that challenged the Bush administration's move toward war with Iraq, and "I continue to challenge this administration on a daily basis on why we're there and on the tremendous effect this is having on our nation and our families."
Kucinich's call for the return of U.S. troops stands in contrast to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, another opponent of the war who has said the United States can't withdraw from Iraq now, because that could lead to chaos.
Dean said he would replace reserves with Muslim troops from places such as Egypt, Morocco and Malaysia.
Nine candidates are vying for the 2004 Democratic nomination for president; five opposed the war. The other four, Joseph Lieberman, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and John Edwards, voted in favor of a resolution last fall that granted Bush authority to attack Iraq.
Aside from the war, Kucinich called Sunday for "deep, fundamental change" and echoed themes from his standard stump speech.
"If people elect me president, there will be real changes," he said.
He called for cutting the Pentagon's budget by $60 billion to pay for universal pre-kindergarten and canceling President Bush's $1.5 trillion in tax cuts in favor of universal college education. Kucinich said universal health care can be achieved with a system administered by the federal government.
Kucinich also said Sunday that the United States should have 20 percent of its energy produced from renewable sources by 2010.
Kucinich is in the bottom tier of candidates in terms of fund-raising and national polls. However, some Democratic activists have referred to him as an "up-and-comer" in Iowa, home to the first-in-the nation presidential caucuses Jan. 19.
----
Lieberman says Bush mishandling of Iraq 'threatens to give a bad name to a just war'
WILL LESTER,
Associated Press Writer
Monday, July 28, 2003
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/07/28/national0808EDT0483.DTL
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman on Monday faulted President Bush for a lack of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq while he assailed his rivals for opposing the conflict, saying "they don't know a just war when they see it."
Critical of his foes for the party nomination but reticent to name names, the Connecticut senator defended his strong support for U.S.-led military action, arguing that 12 years of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime warranted the military campaign to oust him.
"Congress did the right thing in authorizing the war," Lieberman said in a Capitol Hill speech.
He expressed concern about his foes "disquieting zeal" in seizing on questions of shaky U.S. intelligence that Bush used to justify the war and the inability of coalition forces to find weapons of mass destruction, particularly those lawmakers who supported the war but "seem to have forgotten why."
"There's a danger there will be a misimpression sent about the historic Democratic Party record of being strong on security," Lieberman said, "going back to Wilson, and Roosevelt and Truman and Kennedy and Clinton."
Asked whether he was losing the debate within the party about the war, reflected in the recent rise in popularity of anti-war candidate Howard Dean, Lieberman responded: "The battle has just begun," he said. "It won't officially begin until next year when the primaries begin, that's why I'm speaking out now."
Asked repeatedly to cite his rivals by name, Lieberman finally mentioned Dean, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri. Dean has remained a staunch opponent of the war, Kerry and Gephardt supported the congressional resolution authorizing force but have pointedly questioned President Bush's statements and policies.
Lieberman said he was concerned that Democrats, "in expressing the justified questions about 16 words (in the State of the Union address) and the stunning lack of preparedness, we obscure the fact that this was a just war."
"My confidence in the rightness of the war against Iraq is unshaken," he said.
But he also criticized the Bush administration for its lack of preparedness in dealing with postwar Iraq and its distortion of intelligence and diminished credibility.
"Why did the White House insist on pushing the uranium claim into the president's speech despite the CIA's consistent objection?" he asked. "Why has no one been held accountable? Why has no one been dismissed?"
Lieberman said the administration's poor handling of the postwar period may mean missing weapons of mass destruction are now on the open market.
Another Democratic presidential aspirant, Sen. John Edwards, said he thinks the administration has failed to sufficiently involve the international community in the reconstruction of Iraq.
Lieberman also said the administration should overcome its anger at European allies who opposed the war and moved quickly to recruit NATO forces to help secure Iraq after the initial military success.
----
Was Poppy Right After All?
by Pat Buchanan
July 28, 2003
The American Conservative
http://amconmag.com/07_28_03/buchanan.html
After five weeks of air strikes and 100 hours of ground war, President Bush ordered General Schwarzkopf to end his attacks and halt his advance. Receiving reports of air massacres of retreating Iraqis on the Highway of Death out of Kuwait City, unwilling to risk a defection of his Arab allies, Bush I ordered an end to the war. America agreed. Our goal had been to liberate Kuwait. It had been achieved, brilliantly. Saddam's army had been evicted. The 500,000-man army of Desert Storm was ordered home. And the neoconservatives never forgave Bush I for not going to Baghdad.
A dozen years later, the son, at their fanatical urging, invaded Iraq, seized Baghdad, and committed America to building a democracy that would serve as a model for the Arab and Islamic world.
Three months have now elapsed since Baghdad fell. In those 100 days, the wisdom of the father in disregarding the neocons, and the folly of the son in heeding them, have become apparent.
America has 150,000 troops bogged down in Iraq as proconsul Paul Bremer is demanding thousands more to put down a guerrilla revolt that has broken out against our occupation.
Each day brings reports of new American dead and wounded. Our enemies are said to be terrorists, Saddam's Fedayeen, the remnants of the Ba'ath Party. But Saddam had hundreds of thousands of men in his army, Republican Guard, and Special Republican Guard. We did not kill a tenth of these soldiers. Where are they now?
George W. Bush is in more trouble than he realizes. Indeed, his place in history may yet hinge on how he deals with what Americans are coming to see as an intolerable cost in lives to maintain a presence in Iraq when they are not yet convinced it is vital to our security.
The president spent a year convincing us of the ominous threat of Saddam-his weapons and ties to terrorists-a threat that could be eliminated only by an invasion and the death of his regime. But he has not even begun to make the case for why we must stay on in Iraq.
Why are we still there? If our goal is a democracy in Iraq, that is surely noble, but is it doable? What is the price in blood of achieving it? What is the cost in tens of billions? What are the prospects for success? What would constitute indices of failure, at which point we would write off the investment? What is our exit strategy?
None of these questions has been answered. What we hear from the president is "Bring 'em on," and from senators who visit Baghdad, "We must be prepared to stay five or ten years." But why must we be prepared to stay five or ten years? Now that Saddam is gone and his weapons of mass destruction no longer threaten us, if ever they did, why must we stay?
Iraq is not Vietnam where we lost 150 soldiers each week for seven years. But it has taken on the aspect of the colonial wars of the European empires, all of which were lost because the natives were more willing to pay in blood to drive the imperialists out than the imperialists were willing to pay in blood to stay around.
The truism stands: the guerrillas win if they do not lose. And they do not lose as long as they keep fighting, dying, killing, and raising the cost of the occupation. British, French, Israelis, and Russians can testify to that.
Americans sense, rightly, that we do not need to occupy Iraq to be secure here at home.
Bush's father understood this. Is the son wiser? Why did Bush I stop at Basra and not go on to Baghdad? He had no desire to occupy and rule Iraq. He saw no need to. He feared that a U.S. occupation would alienate Arab allies, inflame the Arab street, and invite an Iraqi intifada. He placed a high value on the coalition he had stitched together to fight, and to pay for, the war. He was warned Iraq could split apart and a Shi'ite south sympathetic to Iran could break loose. He did not see a routed Saddam as a mortal threat. He believed Iraq could be deterred, contained.
On this, he was a conservative. Has not history proven him right?
His son, however-to invade and occupy Iraq and oust Saddam-was willing to shatter alliances, alienate Arabs, Turks, French, Germans, and Russians, have his country pay the full cost of the war, and run the entire occupation ourselves. Now, U.S. casualties, after the fall of Baghdad, are approaching the number of lives lost in the war.
Looking back, were Saddam's weapons so imminent a menace they required an invasion? Or did the neocons get revenge on the father by leading his son down the garden path-to the empire of their dreams, now creaking at the joints?
What does the son do now, with the election 15 months away?
----
Against Liberal Intervention
By John R. MacArthur
7.28.03
In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=285_0_1_0_C
The United States vetoed any attempt to reinforce U.N. troops in Rwanda, leaving 800,000 to die on the altars of national sovereignty and Western indifference.
During the early phase of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, I came across a scathing critique of the war in a suprising locale, written by the unlikeliest (or so I thought) accuser of the Bush-Blair axis of imperialism.
The publication was Conrad Black's militantly right-wing, pro-war British weekly, The Spectator, and the author was named Hitchens-not the putatively "leftist" one named Christopher, but his supposedly "reactionary" brother, Peter.
In its high rhetorical pitch the essay was pure Hitchens, regardless of given name. But there was no confusing the brothers after the first paragraph. Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to Peter Hitchens, was a "left-wing war," a destructive enterprise that provided "the excuse for censorship, organized lying, regulation, and taxation," a "paradise for the busybody and the narc" that "damages family life and wounds the Church, all the while polluting the minds of millions with scenes of horror and death."
Remarkable, especially coming after my old ally C. Hitchens' celebrated defection from the leftish, anti-American peace camp to the bipartisan war party. But a left-wing war? Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz et al. in the same ideological basket as Eugene Debs, William Sloane Coffin, and Michael Moore?
At first glance, Peter Hitchens' thesis was preposterous-the application of raw, unilateral military power (and the subsequent war profiteering by big business) seems a rather authoritarian idea more in keeping with the brutal dogma of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan than with nice liberal notions of international cooperation, humanitarian aid, and peaceful disarmament. But on closer examination I realized that Peter Hitchens was on to something, for if you think that namby-pamby niceness is all the liberal left has been pushing the last two decades, you haven't been paying attention.
Indeed, liberals have been lobbying since the early '80s for more aggressive "humanitarian" interventions that would override the niceties of international law, the sovereignty of nations, and even U.N. peacekeeping efforts. To the extent that the Bush-Blair doctrine of pre-emptive war encompasses human rights and the "right" to overthrow tyrants, this one was very much a "left-wing" war.
Of course, I don't buy George Bush's human rights rationale for Gulf War II any more than I bought his father's epiphany in 1990 that Saddam Hussein was the new Hitler. Too many murderous American clients, including Saddam, have gone in and out of favor since 1898 (the year we "liberated" Cuba from Spain) for me to take seriously the altruistic prattle emanating from this White House.
But a surprising number of liberals did take Bush at his word (as they had his father) whenever he turned misty-eyed about Baathist atrocities (real and fabricated), as well as the urgent need for "liberating" the Iraqi people. Behind their dovish compassion lay a ferocious streak of Wilsonian hawkishness that had first presented itself during the Bosnia crisis in the early '90s.
It was then that human rights hawks adopted the principle of "liberal intervention" laid down in the '80s by two Paris-based intellectuals, the international law professor Mario Bettati and the physician-activist Bernard Kouchner. Eventually, as Ian Buruma recently wrote in the New York Review of Books, the rhetorical grandstanding by Kouchner-"the day will come ... when we are able to say ... 'Mr. Dictator, we are going to stop you preventively from oppressing, torturing and exterminating your ethnic minorities'"-took hold and nice liberals started sounding like nasty, pre-emptive militarists.
I recall a hair-raising speech by the currency speculator-turned-human-rights-promoter George Soros, in which he argued for creation of a U.N. rapid deployment military force that could intervene anywhere in the world on a moment's notice to prevent the powerful from killing the weak-by killing the powerful. Around the same time, it became fashionable on the left (especially in the neighborhood inhabited by Susan Sontag and David Reiff) to denounce the U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia for not being sufficiently anti-Serb, the Serbs being ultra-nationalist "fascists." At a human rights group board meeting I heard a well-known U.S. television journalist actually refer to the blue-helmeted soldiers in Sarajevo as "capos in a concentration camp," who functioned as oppressors, not protectors, of the noble Bosnians.
"Liberal" military interventions by the United States and its allies followed in due course. Bush I had already played the human rights card by promoting the fake baby incubator atrocity in Kuwait, a brilliant maneuver that undermined both the "no blood for oil" and the "no more Vietnams" lobbies. Then came Somalia, which was a disaster for Americans and Somalis alike; Haiti, where the United States intervened in support of the sometimes repressive Bertrand Aristide; and lastly, Kosovo, which achieved reverse ethnic cleansing of Serbs on behalf of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Like Saddam, Slobodan Milosevic was alternately denounced by do-gooders on the left as a Hitler-like fascist and "the last Stalinist," first cousins to Christopher Hitchens' "Islamic Fascists."
Kosovo was the clearest assertion of the new doctrine of liberal intervention, a legal and moral template for the overthrow of Saddam. According to its critics, the NATO bombing campaign was a pre-emptive war in clear violation of international law (Kosovo was legally part of Serbia, which had attacked no other country). But liberals were happy because the 78 days of aerial mayhem led to the eventual removal of Milosevic from power.
"Leftists" more radical than Kouchner, like Paul Berman, now seek to expand the concept of liberal pre-emption by claiming Abraham Lincoln as their patron saint. Lincoln, they say, was bent on liberating the whole world, not just the southern states-a foolish exaggeration about a practical politician who nearly wrecked his career by opposing America's imperialist invasion of undemocratic Mexico in 1846 (and who initially wanted to send the slaves back to Africa). It's no coincidence that President Bush has chosen the USS Abraham Lincoln for his welcome- home photo op.
Where does all this leave the liberal constitutionalists like me, who opposed all the aforementioned interventions? I certainly subscribe to the principle of universal human rights, just as I support the corrupt and imperfect United Nations. But I understand that the Enlightenment ideals codified by the United Nations stem from the (thus far) historically unique Nazi terror. And I suspect that all attempts to compensate for the lack of pre-emptive intervention against Hitler are essentially symbolic. Look how virtuous and tough we are, says Berman, compared with those weak-kneed French and British appeasers of the '30s.
The problem with symbolic military gestures is that they kill innocent bystanders as surely as do acts of naked aggression that are devoid of good intentions. Total the many thousands of civilian dead (or just dead women and children) in the first Gulf War, Somalia, Kosovo/Serbia and Gulf War II, and you already have a pretty good argument against liberal intervention.
Moreover, war unleashes death in unpredictable ways; I think, for example, that the NATO bombing led to the death of more Albanians than would have died from nonintervention--by sowing panic and granting the Serbs a pretext for settling scores with the KLA. (It's forgotten that Milosevic had agreed to U.N. monitors in Kosovo, just not in Serbia proper).
As a liberal, I wish the French had invaded the Rhineland in 1936 when Hitler remilitarized the region in violation of the Versailles peace agreement. But as an American liberal, I also wish that my fellow citizens believed that charity begins at home; I wish the United States had taken in millions of persecuted Jews before Hitler could liquidate them; I wish we'd offered a haven to tens of thousands of Bosnians-Muslim, Orthodox Christian, and Catholic-for we could certainly have afforded it. And I wish that we had listened to a liberal Swedish internationalist named Blix, instead of a right-wing Texas nationalist named Bush.
Liberal interventionism has given moral cover to the ugliest, most undemocratic impulses seen in this country since Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act (which put Eugene Victor Debs in jail for opposing the war) and unleashed his attorney general's infamous "Palmer raids" against "subversives" (John Ashcroft must envy the free hand of Alexander Mitchell Palmer). Worse still, Liberal interventionism has defaced the Constitution with the forged signature of Lincoln, written in the blood of Arabs who will never stroll on the Mall.
John R. MacArthur is the publisher of Harper's Magazine and author, most recently, of The Selling of Free Trade.
-------- MILITARY
------ afghanistan
U.S. May Authorize $1 Billion to Speed Up Afghan Projects
July 28, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/international/asia/28AID.html
WASHINGTON, July 27 - The Bush administration is weighing a proposal to seek up to $1 billion in aid to help rebuild Afghanistan, administration officials said today.
Congress authorized $3.3 billion in financial and military assistance over four years in the fall of 2001, but only about $300 million has been spent so far.
The new proposal would accelerate some of that spending and request additional money from Congress, a senior military official said.
The proposal aims to finance projects that could be completed within a year and have a maximum effect before Afghan elections in late 2004. The projects could include building roads and schools, and speeding the training of the Afghan Army, the officials said.
A major purpose of the plan, which is expected to involve State and Defense Department financing and would probably require Congressional approval, would be to shore up the government of President Hamid Karzai and demonstrate both to the American public and to foreign donors that the administration is not neglecting Afghanistan, even as it grapples with the more complex task of rebuilding Iraq.
"This is part of a strategic update that was begun in April or May," the military official said. "It's part of a concerted effort in which, during the time when everyone's attention is focused on Iraq, we're also doing everything we could be doing in Afghanistan."
The aid proposal was first reported today by The Washington Post.
Asked today on the NBC News program "Meet the Press" if the United States would send $1 billion in new aid to Afghanistan, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said, "We'll wait and see." But he added, "The best thing we can do in Afghanistan is help the Afghan people help themselves, which helps us."
The accelerated financial assistance would likely be on top of the $10 billion the Pentagon is now spending annually to maintain 9,000 United States troops in Afghanistan.
Despite the administration's stated commitment to Afghanistan, many aid agencies, lawmakers and Afghan leaders themselves have warned that the administration has budgeted less for rebuilding the nation than Congress has authorized.
During a visit to Washington in February, President Karzai thanked President Bush both for driving the Taliban from power and for initial reconstruction efforts.
But Mr. Karzai also brought another message, saying, "I'm also here to ask you to do more for us in making the life of the Afghan people better, more stable, more peaceful."
On July 14 the Afghan foreign minister, Abdullah, made a similar plea during a visit here. Dr. Abdullah said Afghans still trusted Mr. Karzai's government and the American-led recovery effort, but he warned that support could wane without improvements soon in providing jobs, electricity and security.
"They are giving us time - how long?" Dr. Abdullah asked. "This is my point. The international community should build the capacity in the central government in order to deal with the core issues of security and reconstruction in the economic sector."
International donations to the rebuilding have lagged behind the $4.5 billion pledged last year at a donors' conference in Tokyo. Earlier this month the former top American general in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, warned in an interview that recovery was imperiled unless the international community took bolder steps in rebuilding.
--------
Afghan Says Aid Will Help Rebuild Peace
U.S. Assistance 'Gives People Hope,' Top Official Asserts
By April Witt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54072-2003Jul27?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 27 -- A $1 billion aid package that the Bush administration plans to propose soon will help war-shattered Afghanistan rebuild the peace as well as roads and schools, President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff said today.
"Reconstruction creates jobs," Said Tayab Jawad said. "It creates a sense of trust and gives people hope for a more peaceful future."
His comments came in response to a Washington Post report on the aid, which quoted senior Bush administration officials.
In meetings over the past few weeks, Jawad said, Washington has discussed giving Afghanistan a $1 billion aid package, more than triple the $300 million in U.S. aid that it now receives. Afghan and U.S. officials expect other international donors to match the U.S. package, coming up with another $600 million to $1 billion, Jawad said.
The money will be spent largely on projects to reconstruct infrastructure such as roads and schools; the efforts are designed to have a significant and rapid impact on people's daily lives. The money also will fund training for police nationwide as well as for soldiers of the Afghan army.
Nearly two years after the U.S.-led coalition toppled the Taliban regime -- and pledged to help rebuild Afghanistan -- much of the country and the economy remain shattered. Major roads are unpaved and so rutted that it can take three or four hours to drive 100 miles. The economy remains so devastated. that some doctors earn a salary of about $50 a month. Legions of schoolchildren still study outdoors, under tents so hot in summer and so cold in winter that students frequently fall ill. Plumbing is so rudimentary that even here in the capital most people still bathe by dumping buckets of water on themselves.
Police and other key government employees lack the basic tools -- such as cars and radios -- to do their jobs. Many haven't been paid for months. Desperate farmers, deprived of usable irrigation systems and unable to support themselves growing wheat or corn, have begun planting opium poppies. Afghanistan is now the world's largest opium producer.
The new U.S. aid package is designed to improve people's lives before national elections slated for October 2004 and to mitigate Afghan disappointment at a time when terrorist attacks on coalition forces, and on supporters of the central government, are increasing. Afghan officials increasingly have said that the slow pace of reconstruction is contributing to instability and terrorist attacks.
"We have nothing here," Said Rahman, assistant border commander of Nangahar province, in eastern Afghanistan, said recently. "We don't say the U.S. hasn't helped us. They helped us. But not as much as we expected."
"Afghans are standing beside the U.S. looking for al Qaeda and fighting al Qaeda. We need factories for our people to find jobs. Of course, when we have nothing, it's a problem," he said. "These are poor people. For five afghanis [the national currency] they are ready to lay a land mine somewhere or kill someone."
Even as the United States prepares to provide an influx of new aid, Afghans will have to scale back their expectations and to be more realistic, Jawad said. "Some of the disappointment and disillusionment were due to the fact that people were initially very optimistic about the process of reconstruction," he noted. "Everything people hoped for was not realized in a matter of a year and a half or two years.
"We are trying to rebuild our country brick by brick. It's going to take time. Initially people did not have a good sense of how long it would take. Now we are learning."
-------- africa
U.S. Ambassador to Liberia Urges Rebels to Leave Capital
July 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/international/africa/28LIBE.html
MONROVIA, Liberia, July 27 (AP) - Explosions rocked this capital city today as rebels and government forces battled at crucial crossings leading to President Charles G. Taylor's downtown stronghold, and at least 16 people died late Saturday and today when mortar shells hit their homes.
The United States ambassador to Liberia appealed to insurgents to lift their eight-day siege of Monrovia and withdraw - even as government commanders and residents reported that the rebels were stepping up their drive into the city.
Rebels are pressing forward in their third effort in two months to take Monrovia, an isolated and disease-ridden city of at least 1.3 million hungry residents and refugees. Their goal is to drive out Mr. Taylor, a former warlord behind nearly 14 years of ruinous conflict in this once prosperous West African nation.
The main rebel movement "needs to show that they have regard for the people of Liberia, that it is not indifferent to the great human suffering that is taking place here," Ambassador John Blaney told reporters at the heavily guarded American Embassy.
The ambassador urged the rebels, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, to pull back to the natural boundary of the Po River, six miles outside the capital. The withdrawal would open up the port and camps outside the city for urgently needed food and aid.
Mr. Blaney said Mr. Taylor had agreed to the proposal, and the ambassador urged the rebel movement to do the same. "If they want to get to a post-Taylor era, this is the way to do it," he said.
Sekou Conneh, the rebels' civilian chairman, said they would retreat only when peacekeepers were in place.
"We agree to fall back, but we want the peacekeepers to come," Mr. Conneh said. "We don't want to hand over the port to Charles Taylor."
Under international pressure to intervene, President Bush has ordered American ships to take up positions off the coast of Liberia, ready to support a West-African-led peace force, which has been delayed amid debates over financing.
Mr. Bush has demanded that Mr. Taylor, who is indicted for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, step down. Mr. Taylor says he will do so, accepting an asylum offer in Nigeria, only when peacekeepers arrive.
Fighting has focused on the port and bridges leading to downtown. Insurgents overnight bypassed the Stockton Bridge, which leads from a rebel-held island to mainland Monrovia, government field officers said.
At daylight, after a night of combat, rebels were in what had been a government-controlled suburb around the bridge, saying they were in control.
"This morning we saw fighters coming in, telling us not to panic," said one resident, reached by telephone, in the New Georgia neighborhood. Gunfire and booms echoed behind her. "I'm scared," she added, saying she was too fearful to give her name.
Taking northern neighborhoods around the bridge would give the rebels a foothold on the mainland, from which they could battle their way toward the government-held downtown. New bombardments also crashed into neighborhoods. One round landed before dawn today on a tin-roofed shack near the embattled Old Bridge, killing four people, according to aid workers collecting bodies in the area. Another fell on a nearby house, killing two people.
A shell that had fallen close by late Saturday killed an entire family - eight adults and two children, aid workers said.
Mr. Taylor said on Saturday that as many as 1,000 people had died since rebels began their latest effort to take the capital. Aid workers put the week's toll at about 400.
Government and rebel officials have traded accusations of blame for the shelling in densely populated neighborhoods. Witnesses in areas closest to the fighting said today that some mortar rounds fired by the government were landing short of their rebel targets, killing residents on their own side.
Elsewhere, the Liberian defense minister, Daniel Chea, said his forces were repelling an advance by Liberia's second, smaller rebel group, the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, in the southeast. Insurgents of the group had advanced in recent days to within 30 miles of Buchanan, Liberia's second-largest city and home to an important port.
Rebels said to be backed by the governments in neighboring Ivory Coast and Guinea control at least 60 percent of Liberia, a country founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.
West African leaders have pledged to send two Nigerian battalions to Liberia within days - the vanguard of what they say should be an international force of 3,250 to bring peace to the devastated nation.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said on the television program "Fox News Sunday" that American forces were "going in when there is a cease-fire, when Charles Taylor is leaving, has left."
Mr. Wolfowitz also said the United States' role was to assist the United Nations and West African countries "to stabilize the situation, to avert a humanitarian disaster."
"As part of that, it's necessary to get Charles Taylor to leave the country and for the U.N. to begin a political process," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
-------- business
Pentagon's Futures Market Plan Condemned
Mon Jul 28
By KEN GUGGENHEIM,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&e=5&u=/ap/20030728/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_market
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits.
Two Democratic senators demanded Monday the project be stopped before investors begin registering this week. "The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said.
The Pentagon office overseeing the program, called the Policy Analysis Market, said it was part of a research effort "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks." It said there would be a re-evaluation before more money was committed.
The market would work this way. Investors would buy and sell futures contracts - essentially a series of predictions about what they believe might happen in the Mideast. Holder of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of investors who put money into the market but predicted wrong.
A graphic on the market's Web page showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown.
Although the Web site described the Policy Analysis Market as "a market in the future of the Middle East," the graphic also included the possibility of a North Korea missile attack.
That graphic was apparently removed from the Web site hours after the news conference in which Wyden and fellow Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota criticizing the market.
Dorgan described it as useless, offensive and "unbelievably stupid."
"Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?" he said.
According to its Web site, the Policy Analysis Market would be a joint program of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, and two private companies: Net Exchange, a market technologies company, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information arm of the publisher of The Economist magazine.
DARPA has received strong criticism from Congress for its Terrorism Information Awareness program, a computerized surveillance program that has raised privacy concerns. Wyden said the Policy Analysis Market is under retired Adm. John Poindexter, the head of the Terrorism Information Awareness program and, in the 1980s, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.
In its statement Monday, DARPA said that markets offer efficient, effective and timely methods for collecting "dispersed and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions."
The description of the market on its Web site makes it appear similar to a computer-based commodities market. Contracts would be available based on economic health, civil stability, military disposition and U.S. economic and military involvement in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey.
Contracts would also be available on "global economic and conflict indicators" and specific events, for example U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state.
Traders who believe an event will occur can buy a futures contract. Those who believe the event is unlikely can try to sell a contract. The Web site does not address how much money investors would be likely to put into the market but says analysts would be motivated by the "prospect of profit and at pain of loss" to make accurate predictions.
Registration would begin Friday with trading beginning Oct. 1. The market would initially be limited to 1,000 traders, increasing to at least 10,000 by Jan. 1.
The Web site says government agencies will not be allowed to participate and will not have access to the identities or funds of traders.
The market is a project of a DARPA division called FutureMAP, or "Futures Markets Applied to Prediction." FutureMAP is trying to develop programs that would allow the Defense Department to use market forces to predict future events, according to its Web site.
"The rapid reaction of markets to knowledge held by only a few participants may provide an early warning system to avoid surprise," it said.
It said the markets must offer "compensation that is ethically and legally satisfactory to all sectors involved, while remaining attractive enough to ensure full and continuous participation of individual parties."
Dorgan and Wyden released a letter to Poindexter calling for an immediate end to the program. They noted a May 20 report to lawmakers that cited the possibility of using market forces to predict whether terrorists would attack Israel with biological weapons.
"Surely such a threat should be met with intelligence gathering of the highest quality - not by putting the question to individuals betting on an Internet Web site," they said.
Wyden said $600,000 has been spent on the program so far and the Pentagon plans to spend an additional $149,000 this year. The Pentagon has requested $3 million for the program for next year and $5 million for the following year.
Wyden said the Senate version of next year's defense spending bill would cut off money for the program, but the House version would fund it. The two versions will have to be reconciled.
On the Net:
Policy Analysis Market: www.policyanalysismarket.org
DARPA's FutureMap Web site: http://www.darpa.mil/iao/FutureMap.htm
----
OPEC sees little risk from Iraq as sabotage saps oil production
July 28, 2003
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20030727-104258-8401r.htm
LONDON - OPEC ministers are not nearly as concerned these days about oil exports from a resurgent Iraq undermining high prices.
Chronic looting and sabotage have hampered Iraq's efforts to ramp up oil exports and exploit its crude reserves, which rank second in size only to those of Saudi Arabia. The longer Iraq takes to restore its once-mighty oil industry, the longer its fellow cartel members can put off cutting their own output to make way for fresh Iraqi barrels.
Demand for oil remains strong, with the United States and other major importers running down their inventories and the peak summer driving season shifting into top gear. The price for OPEC's benchmark crude has been stuck at or near $28 a barrel - the top end of the group's desired price range.
Given such conditions, representatives of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting Thursday in Vienna, Austria, will feel little need to tinker with output, oil analysts say.
"At these sorts of numbers, they must be quietly rubbing their hands," said Rob Laughlin, managing director of London brokerage GNI Man Financial.
OPEC supplies about a third of the world's crude. The group agreed at its June meeting to leave its production ceiling unchanged at 25.4 million barrels a day.
"OPEC should retain the current production quota, because the current price is still quite good," Purnomo Yusgiantoro, Indonesia's minister of energy and mineral resources, said in comments reported last week by Indonesia's national news agency, Antara.
Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali Naimi, seeking to reassure consumers, insisted that oil prices "are not high" in an interview Thursday with the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat.
"Even if we do not change the production ceiling, it is important to meet to review the market situation and developments and to hear the views of the 10 ministers regarding the developments in the markets," Mr. Naimi explained.
The United Arab Emirates' top oil minister, Obaid bin Saif al-Nasseri, yesterday said that there are no "convincing reasons" to change the ceiling. The big issue, as always, will be Iraq.
Although Iraq is a founding member of OPEC, it hasn't participated in OPEC's quota agreements since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990. Iraq's erratic exports under the U.N. oil-for-food program made it the cartel's biggest wild card. Iraq stopped pumping crude altogether during the U.S.-led invasion, and it started offering long-term supply contracts just last week.
In anticipation of an early resumption of Iraqi exports, other OPEC members began this spring to rein in excess production and stick more closely to their agreed quotas. Led by Saudi Arabia, they trimmed their excess output by 1 million barrels a day in May and an additional 250,000 barrels in June, Mr. Laughlin said.
Some oil ministers suggested at OPEC's June meeting that it needed to go even further and lower its production ceiling to avert a price crash once Iraq began pumping again at its prewar level of 2.1 million barrels a day.
Few of them foresaw the problems and delays Iraq would face. Looters and, more recently, saboteurs have compounded the task for American and Iraqi oil workers trying to repair facilities left in tatters after 12 years of U.N. sanctions and a lack of investment.
"It's still not looking like OPEC needs to get worried about a major return of Iraqi oil to the market," said John Waterlow of Wood Mackenzie Consultants in Edinburgh, Scotland.
OPEC ministers likely will show "a steady hand on the tiller" in Vienna and decide to do nothing, he said.
-------- europe
Poll finds majority in Poland oppose sending troops to Iraq; More also fear terrorism
ANDRZEJ STYLINSKI
Associated Press Writer
July 28, 2003
http://ap.lubbockonline.com/pstories/packages/iraq/20030728/1334030.shtml
Public support for Poland's role in Iraq appeared to be eroding, with a poll published Monday showing more than half of those surveyed disapproved of sending troops.
A growing number of Poles also feared that Polish participation could lead to attacks at home.
Against the backdrop of daily attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, 68 percent said they feared Poland would become a target if the government sends troops as planned to command a stabilization zone, the independent CBOS polling agency said. That was up a full 15 percent from a survey in June.
The July 4-7 survey of 952 Poles was the first time Poles were asked specifically if they approved of their nations' role in helping stabilize Iraq.
About 55 percent of the respondents were against sending Polish troops to command a stabilization zone, some 36 percent approved and eight percent had no opinion. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Warsaw, a leading European supporter of the U.S.-led military operation in Iraq, is deploying 2,000 troops to lead an international peacekeeping force controlling a zone in southern central Iraq beginning in September.
Asked in June if they supported Warsaw's decision to accept the U.S. proposal to lead a stabilization zone, 50 percent said yes and 33 percent said no.
COBS analyst Anna Grudniewicz said the previous survey tested attitudes toward U.S. recognition of Poland's support during the Iraq war. The latest numbers, she said, are a more reliable measure of Poles' attitudes, indicating a fear of "sending their sons or grandsons to war, even as a part of a stabilization force."
Grudniewicz said Poles' changing attitudes clearly were influenced by continuing attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.
The growing fear of terrorist attacks is due to concerns that the presences of a large number of Polish troops in Iraq will make Poland a target of extremists, she said.
-------- india
US presses India to supply Iraq peacekeepers
By Edward Luce in New Delhi
July 28 2003
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1058868224832
The US on Monday stepped up pressure on India to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq despite New Delhi's polite refusal to do so earlier this month. Advertisement
General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, met Madhavendra Singh, his Indian counterpart, in New Delhi on Monday and will today meet Brajesh Mishra, head of the national security council.
US diplomats say the participation of India, which is being asked to supply 17,000 troops and to manage its own sector in the north of Iraq, would be of high value in widening the scope of the US-led occupation.
As the world's most populous democracy with more than 1m men in uniform, India also has an extensive record of coping with "low intensity" conflict in the disputed state of Kashmir.
"Say what you like about India's record in Kashmir, but it does not use tanks, artillery or helicopters in civilian areas," said Prem Shankar Jha, an Indian commentator. "The same cannot be said for the US forces in Iraq."
However, Indian officials said New Delhi would stick to its line that it would not consider the request until there was a United Nations resolution authorising the US-led occupation of Iraq. "If the US wants Indian peacekeepers in Iraq then perhaps General Myers should be visiting Paris instead," said one official.
The US is thought to be offering further relaxation of its restrictions on the export of dual use technology that India claims hinders the development of its civilian space and information technology industries.
There has been heavy lobbying to persuade the US to permit Israel to go ahead with the $100m sale of the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system to India. Earlier this year Washington allowed Israel to on-sell the Phalcon airborne early warning system to India.
"Washington has already considerably relaxed its export licensing regime for India," said Amit Mitra, head of Ficci, an Indian industry body. "But there are still constraints on trade in supercomputers and technology that affects India's IT and space industries."
Military co-operation between the US and India is intensifying. In the past 12 months the two have conducted on average one joint exercise a month. The Indian navy has also provided anti-piracy protection to US commercial vessels travelling through the Malacca straits. US warships now refuel in Bombay and Madras.
US defence sales to India have increased from zero to almost $200m in the past 14 months. Future deals are thought to include the possible Indian purchase of defensive nuclear, biological and chemical equipment, Special Forces gear and P3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft.
Gen Myers will also be travelling to Pakistan, which is under pressure to send a smaller contingent of peacekeepers to Iraq.
-------- iraq
'Dead dictators tell no tales'
by Eric Margolis,
CBC News (Canada)
Mon, 28 Jul 2003
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/07/27/saddam_margolis030727
TORONTO - U.S. soldiers have intensified the hunt for Saddam Hussein in recent days, but the White House is hoping they find him dead not alive, says a foreign affairs analyst.
"If they put him on trial Saddam Hussein will have very embarrassing revelations to make about the time when he was a close American ally during the 1980s," Eric Margolis told CBC TV's Sunday Report.
"Dead dictators tell no tales."
On the weekend, U.S. soldiers raided a house where the former Iraqi leader had been hiding only 24 hours earlier, according to American military commanders.
- FROM JULY 27, 2003: U.S. 'tightens noose' in search for Saddam
"The Americans think they're very close," said Margolis.
"This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Iraq is not that large a place," he told CBC TV's Sunday Report. "And Saddam has lots and lots of enemies."
The toppled president is not only hiding from American troops, noted Margolis, but also from the Kurds and countless bounty hunters keen to claim the $25-million reward.
Written by CBC News Online staff
----
US says 30 nations have signed on for Iraq stabilization force
Monday, 28-Jul-2003
Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/du/Qus-iraq-force.Rn72_DlS.html
WASHINGTON, July 28 (AFP) - The United States said Monday that 30 nations have thus far agreed to participate with it in an international stabilization force for Iraq even without a specific UN mandate demanded by some.
The State Department would not say exactly what the countries would contribute to the mission, but maintained that each would provide at least some military, technical or logistic component to the force.
"We know of 30 countries already whose participation in stabilization operations is confirmed," spokesman Richard Boucher said.
"(They) will have some form of direct participation in the stabilization operation," he told reporters. "Each will have to provide the details on its own."
He added that the effort to recruit more nations was ongoing.
"We're continuing our discussions with a number of other countries regarding possible contributions," he told reporters.
Several nations, including India, France, Russia and Germany, have said they will not participate in the stabilization mission unless it is specifically authorized by the UN Security Council in a new resolution.
US officials have indicated in recent weeks that Washington is open to the idea of a new UN mandate for the forces, but Boucher gave no indication that such a resolution would be pursued.
"Several countries have raised the issue of mandate ... so we have looked at this we are continuing to consider it and discuss it," he said.
"Whether we actually go forward with it or not in the United Nations will depend on how those discussions proceed," Boucher said. "At this point, I don't have a judgement for you."
He identified the 30 countries as: Albania, Azerbaijan, Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, El Salvador, Georgia, Honduras, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain and Ukraine.
Most of the countries identified by Boucher were also members of the so-called "coalition of the willing" that publicly backed the US-led war in Iraq.
----
U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters
Intensified Offensive Leads To Detentions, Intelligence
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54345-2003Jul27?language=printer
BAGHDAD -- Over the past six weeks a small but intense war has been conducted in the mud-hut villages and lush palm groves along the Tigris River valley, fought with far different methods than those used in the campaign that toppled president Saddam Hussein.
As Iraqi fighters launched guerrilla strikes, the U.S. Army adopted a more nimble approach against unseen adversaries and found new ways to gather intelligence about them, according to dozens of soldiers and officers interviewed over the last week.
Thousands of suspected Iraqi fighters were detained over the six-week period, many temporarily, in hundreds of U.S. military raids, most of them conducted in the dead of night. In the expansive region north of Baghdad patrolled by the 4th Infantry Division, more than 300 Iraqi fighters were killed in combat operations, the military officials said. In the same period, U.S. forces in all of Iraq have suffered 39 combat deaths. The continuing casualties -- such as the four soldiers killed Saturday -- are the direct result of the intensified U.S. offensive, the military officials added.
Despite their losses, Army officers and soldiers asserted that they are making solid gains in this region, where most of the fighting has taken place and where about half the 150,000 U.S. troops in the country are posted.
At the beginning of June, before the U.S. offensives began, the reward for killing an American soldier was about $300, an Army officer said. Now, he said, street youths are being offered as much as $5,000 -- and are being told that if they refuse, their families will be killed, a development the officer described as a sign of reluctance among once-eager youths to take part in the strikes.
At the same time, the frequency of attacks has declined in the area northwest of Baghdad dominated by Iraq's Sunni minority, long a base of support for Hussein. In this triangle-shaped region -- delineated by Baghdad, Tikrit to the north and the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi to the west -- attacks on U.S. forces have dropped by half since mid-June, military officers reported.
That decrease is leading senior commanders here to debate whether the war is nearly over. Some say the resistance by members of Hussein's Baath Party is nearly broken. But other senior officers are bracing for a new phase in which they fear that Baathist die-hards, with no alternative left, will shift from attacking the U.S. military to bombing American civilians and Iraqis who work with them.
In addition, there is general agreement among Army leaders here that in recent weeks both the quality and quantity of intelligence being offered by Iraqis has greatly improved, leading to such operations as the one last Tuesday in Mosul that killed Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay.
Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later.
The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered. The U.S. Offensive
In the weeks after President Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, there were growing signs of resistance in the Sunni triangle, where many former Baath Party operatives, intelligence officers and Special Republican Guard members were still actively fighting the U.S. military.
Rocket-propelled grenade attacks on U.S. vehicles began in earnest near the end of the month. On May 30, a sophisticated three-point ambush was launched against U.S. troops patrolling in the town of Bayji, just north of Tikrit. As U.S. troops evaded one line of fire, they were attacked by the next. When troops fired back, the Iraqis continued to fight instead of running.
On June 7, a patrol of U.S. military police drove into the town of Thuluya, on a big bend in the Tigris River southeast of Tikrit. Iraqis there told them to leave, and warned that if they came back, they would be killed, said a U.S. commander. It was then that "we started to kick down doors," recalled a senior Central Command official.
Instead of leaving, at 2 a.m. the next morning, hundreds of U.S. troops cordoned off Thuluya and hundreds more conducted searches throughout the town. F-15 fighters and Apache helicopters whirred overhead, ready to launch missiles on ground commanders' call. U.S. military speedboats patrolled the Tigris River, cutting off an escape route. The aggressive operation set the tone for the new phase of the war.
Since then, the Army has sought to keep up an unrelenting pace. "The reality is that in this company, we've been doing raids and cordon searches nearly every day" since early June, said Capt. Brian Healey, commander of an infantry company based near Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad. Over the past six weeks, he said, sitting on a cot in an old Iraqi military base, his unit alone has detained nearly 100 people.
"I figure you can either sit barricaded in your base camp or take the fight to the enemy," said Lt. Col. Larry "Pepper" Jackson, commander of an Army outpost on the outskirts of Bayji, which is still described as hostile by U.S. military intelligence analysts. "Our key to success is staying on the offense. But you don't do it recklessly, because then you'd lose the people."
He said he has two patrols on the streets of Bayji at any given time. His troops are still attacked, but as a result of the new tactics, "It is a lot quieter -- about half as much contact as in May."
Three major U.S. operations unfolded over the past two months. In the first one in June, Peninsula Strike, U.S. commanders learned that much of the opposition was coming from Baath Party operatives and their allies in the old Iraqi intelligence services. Desert Scorpion, aimed at cutting off escape routes for fugitive Iraqi leaders, came in late June. It began with 56 simultaneous large-scale raids across central Iraq and brought in a hoard of intelligence. Among those netted was Abid Hamid Mahmud, Hussein's trusted aide. "That was a big event," recalled a senior Army official. "He has revealed a lot. He knew where all the safe houses and ratlines were." Ratlines is an Army term for escape routes.
The third major operation, dubbed Soda Mountain, was the first expressly preemptive effort. Concerned about the threat of an offensive tied to July 17, the 35th anniversary of the day Hussein's Baath Party took power, U.S. troops rounded up 600 party operatives. "We were aggressive and out there, looking to preclude attacks," the official said. For example, for six days leading up to the holiday, every car leaving Bayji -- a town of 30,000 sitting astride Iraq's major north-south highway -- was stopped at a checkpoint, and many were searched.
Results and Resistance
U.S. officials say they began to see a significant payoff from the series of operations early this month, when the number of attacks began to decline and Iraqis began to provide more information about the resistance. "When you have one operation after another, there is a cumulative effect," the Army official said. "The effect of all these operations was that walk-in humint" -- human intelligence -- doubled from early June to mid-July. What's more, he said, "it was very good quality."
Tips began paying off so quickly that officials would launch one raid before another was completed, allowing troops to catch some targets off-guard because they didn't know that fellow resistance fighters had been apprehended. Iraqi resistance fighters in the Sunni triangle at first tried to attack U.S. forces directly with AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. While some killed U.S. troops, many attempts were ineffective. So in recent weeks, military officers said, Iraqi fighters have turned to other weapons.
"They've gone to standoff weapons -- mines and mortars, and IEDs" -- improvised explosive devices, or bombs -- said Capt. John Taylor, the intelligence officer for the base near Bayji.
Last Wednesday, a tank from the base hit an antitank mine for the first time since its unit came to Iraq in April. Lt. Erik Aadland, a former resident of Springfield, Va., was standing in the turret of his tank as it was returning to base after a patrol through Bayji. With the tank just a stone's throw from the front gate, the mine exploded. "Everything went red," he recalled. "Then we were covered in black smoke." Aadland and his crew dismounted and stared at the damage: The right track was blown off, the fender above it twisted upward and three armored panels weighing a total of about 1,100 pounds had been hurled about 90 feet away.
Iraqi fighters have adjusted their tactics in other ways. Upon learning that their homes were being targeted for raids, Baath Party operatives often moved their weapons, cash and documents into the homes of neighbors, military officials said.
In turn, U.S. forces expanded the scope of their raids. "The past six weeks, our patrols have gotten more aggressive, much more frequent," said Healey, the infantry company commander. "Instead of doing one house, for example, we'll do a whole street."
Likewise, Iraqi fighters learned the U.S. military is most comfortable operating at night, when it stands to gain the most from its technical advantages, such as night-vision goggles. Some fighters started going back to their homes during the day, and even holding meetings then, U.S. military officials said.
But in military operations, for every action there is a reaction. Hogg, the 2nd Brigade commander, noted this as he sat in a Humvee on Wednesday afternoon, clenching the butt of a Dominican cigar in his teeth. "The knuckleheads kind of figured out that we like to operate at night, so they started operating during the day, so we starting hitting them during the day," he said as he waited for one of his battalions to launch a daylight raid. "It's harder, because of the crowds, but it's also effective."
Underscoring the intense nature of the combat, Hogg's brigade, after weeks of being pestered by enemy mortars, has begun responding with heavy artillery, and so far this month has fired more than 60 high-explosive 155 mm shells.
Some Army units have modified their equipment to help them adjust to urban warfare. At least two battalions in the 4th Infantry Division have mounted .50 caliber heavy machine guns on the back of the pickup-truck version of their Humvees, vehicles sometimes used to carry infantry troops to raids. "Gun-vees," which resembles the "technicals" used by Somali fighters, are especially useful in battling guerrilla fighters in alleys and other tight urban spaces where tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles cannot maneuver.
The modified vehicle also provides a helpful element of surprise, said Jackson, the U.S. commander near Bayji. "A Humvee can sneak up for a raid," he said. "A tank you can hear a mile away."
After the fighting is over, U.S. military officials say, it becomes important to repair the damage -- a door smashed, a wall breached, an irrigation culvert flattened by a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank. Every U.S. brigade commander in Iraq has a "Commander's Emergency Repair Fund" of $200,000 that is replenished as he spends it. Over the past six weeks of the U.S. offensive, commanders across Iraq dispensed $13 million to rebuild schools, clinics, water treatment plans and police stations, said Army Col. David MacEwen, who helps coordinate the civic works.
"During Peninsula Strike, we worked very hard for every combat action to have a 'carrot' that followed," MacEwen said. "We'd do a cordon and search in one area, and then make sure the next day that LPG [cooking gas] was available, or that a pump at a water plant was working."
The efforts aren't just aimed at winning hearts and minds, but also at gaining intelligence. "When you're out doing the civil affairs operations, you get a lot of people coming up and giving you good information," said Maj. David Vacchi, the operations officer for a battalion operating just northeast of Baghdad.
Senior U.S. commanders here are so confident about their recent successes that they have begun debating whether victory is in sight. "I think we're at the hump" now, a senior Central Command official said. "I think we could be over the hump fairly quickly" -- possibly within a couple of months, he added.
Hogg, whose troops are still engaged in combat every day, agreed. "I think we're fixing to turn the corner," he said Thursday. "I think the operations over the next couple of weeks will get us there."
Staff researcher Robert Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.
----
Iraqi civilians caught in crossfire of US operations
Mon Jul 28,
(AFP)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030728/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_us_raids_030728140406
BAGHDAD - At the checkpoint, the Americans found a handgun, ordered the 56-year-old man out of his car and proceeded to bash his head with a rifle butt.
Rahim Nasser Mohammed points to his right temple, the side of his mouth and lifts his shirt, to show the spots where the soldier cudgeled him again and again nearly a month ago.
His story -- that of a government employee pulled over in his car by the US army -- seems one in a thousand as reports mount of beatings and sometimes deaths of Iraqi civilians at the hands of US soldiers.
On Sunday, five Iraqis were killed during a raid on a home in Baghdad's wealthy Mansur district, witnesses said, as troops searched the house of a relative of Saddam Hussein for the strongman himself.
The same day, a demonstration over a nighttime patrol near a holy shrine in the southern Shiite holy city of Karbala, turned ugly, ending with marines firing in the air and a protestor dead.
"It's an embarrassment for us. A lot of this has to do with the war being over, and there being not a lot for us to do and soldiers getting killed and then their friends taking it out on regular civilians," said a US military police officer investigating instances of excessive force.
The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, vented anger over the army's failure to make a real example of those soldiers doling out their own "Dirty Harry" style of vigilante justice or operating in brutish fashion.
"They should do certain things like sting operations and arrest those soldiers like common criminals. A lot of them should be relieved and reassigned ... That's not happening," he said.
"I've seen at least 20 cases," he added, referring to incidents where soldiers have beaten or robbed civilians at checkpoints.
In a first sign the Pentagon was starting to deal with the problem, it announced Saturday four US soldiers were under investigation for beating Iraqi prisoners of war.
Asked if there were any other cases under investigation, a senior coalition military official said Sunday he was not aware of any other such disciplinary inquiries.
But Mohammed's story is a cause for alarm, with his account backed by US military officers and Iraqi police during interviews with AFP.
"They beat him pretty bad. They beat him, tied him up and beat him again," said a US officer on condition of anonymity.
On July 3, Mohammed, an electricity department employee, was stopped by two army vehicles and his government car searched at 9:30 pm.
The soldier found a small handgun, which Mohammed said he carried to protect the car and himself, but immediately the soldier started to beat him.
"He cuffed my hands behind my back and taped my mouth and started to beat my face, hands and stomach using his rifle," Mohammed said, faint bruises still visible on his face.
The rifle was butted into his stomach repeatedly even as Mohammed tried to warn him he had just received an operation for a hernia, with the scars fresh on his belly.
Mohammed was then shoved into the police car.
"He put me down on the floor and kicked me with his feet and put the rifle to my head, as if he was about to shoot," Mohammed recalled.
"Then he took me to the police station, where he started to hit me with the gun in front of the police station."
A senior coalition official, working with Iraq's interior ministry, told AFP it did not surprise him there would be some cases of soldiers beating Iraqis in post-war Baghdad.
"I know when you take young soldiers when they're not police officers and are expected to act like ones, there are going to be problems," he said.
----
US troops turn botched Saddam raid into a massacre
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad
28 July 2003:
(The Independent, UK)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4245.htm
Obsessed with capturing Saddam Hussein, American soldiers turned a botched raid on a house in the Mansur district of Baghdad yesterday into a bloodbath, opening fire on scores of Iraqi civilians in a crowded street and killing up to 11, including two children, their mother and crippled father. At least one civilian car caught fire, cremating its occupants.
The vehicle carrying the two children and their mother and father was riddled by bullets as it approached a razor-wired checkpoint outside the house.
Amid the fury generated among the largely middle-class residents of Mansur - by ghastly coincidence, the killings were scarcely 40 metres from the houses in which 16 civilians died when the Americans tried to kill Saddam towards the end of the war in April - whatever political advantages were gained by the killing of Saddam's sons have been squandered. A doctor at the Yarmouk hospital, which received four of the dead, turned on me angrily last night, shouting: "If an American came to my emergency room, maybe I would kill him."
Two civilians, both believed to have been driving with their families, were brought to the Yarmouk, one with abdominal wounds and the other with "his brain outside of his head", according to another doctor.
At the scene of the killings, there was pandemonium. While US troops were loading the bullet-shattered cars on trucks - and trying to stop cameramen filming the carnage - crowds screamed abuse at them. One American soldier a few feet from me climbed into the seat of his Humvee, threw his helmet on the floor of the vehicle and shouted: "Shit! Shit!"
There was no doubt about the target: the home of Sheikh Rabia Mohamed Habib, a prominent tribal leader who had met Saddam but who was not even in his house when the Americans stormed it. One report says they killed a guard as they entered.
"The Americans searched the house completely, very roughly," Sheikh Habib said. "It seems they thought Saddam Hussein was inside." It appears the killings started as the troops were searching the building and as motorists approached the barbed wire which the soldiers had placed without warning across the road. Witnesses said the first car contained at least two men. "The second contained two children about 10, their mother and their father who had been wounded in the Iran-Iraq war - he was a cripple," a local shopkeeper told me. "They all died. The man's legs were cut in half by the bullets," he added. A third car then approached the Americans, who opened fire again. One of the occupants fled, but the other two remained in the vehicle and were killed.
When another car arrived US troops riddled it with more bullets and it burst into flames. It is believed that two people were inside and both were burnt to death. "The Americans didn't try to help the civilians they had shot, not once," a witness said. "They let the car burn and left the bodies where they lay, even the children. It was we who had to take them to the hospitals."
Yet again, false informers, ill-trained American soldiers who appeared to exercise no fire control and a lack of military planning has created a tragedy among the people the Americans claimed to be 'liberating' from Saddam Hussein only 15 weeks ago. Last night, there were reports from the southern city of Karbala that three men had been shot dead by American troops during a demonstration.
----
Bloody U.S. Raid in Baghdad Leaves Iraqis Furious
Mon July 28, 2003
By Cynthia Johnston
(Reuters)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=3SM1YXJOGWADACRBAELCFFA?type=reutersEdge&storyID=3169263
BAGHDAD - Caked pools of blood and a bullet hole in the window of Baghdad's al-Sa'ah restaurant are the only remaining signs of a U.S. raid that killed five Iraqi civilians as they unwittingly drove into a firestorm.
Furious residents of the upscale Mansur district accuse U.S. soldiers of firing indiscriminately at passing cars Sunday as colleagues raided a villa in a vain search for Saddam Hussein.
"The cars came down the road. They didn't know the Americans were here. They were normal civilians and wanted to go home," one witness told Reuters Monday as he stood in the courtyard of the Sa'ah restaurant.
"They (U.S. soldiers) opened fire right away."
A U.S. military spokesman said the raid was conducted by Task Force 20, a special team set up to hunt Saddam and his key aides, but gave no other details.
A soldier at a nearby hospital said the bodies of five people had been brought in from the scene of the raid, including a boy in his early teens.
Monday morning not a soldier was in sight in Mansur, and four burned or bullet-riddled cars had been taken away.
"All these things are making people hate the Americans," said Muhammad, a Mansur resident.
"In the beginning, all the Iraqi people welcomed the Americans, but now the Americans have built a wall between themselves and the Iraqi people."
NO WARNING
Residents who witnessed the shooting said about 75 U.S. soldiers poured into the area in the early evening, blocking off the main street but failing to prevent innocent motorists straying into the fire zone from quiet side streets.
"They need to have barbed wire up so that people know there is an operation," one witness said. "This is a residential area. They need to take care of the civilians. There are kids here."
Another witness, who gave his name as Abbas, said he had turned away cars in a street near the restaurant. But smaller streets remained open. Witnesses said soldiers opened fire from atop a Humvee armored vehicle at the first car that neared their position. Moments later they raked a second car with gunfire as well.
"It was indiscriminate firing," one witness said as others nodded in agreement and pointed out a bullet hole in the window of the restaurant.
Flying bullets also hit the gas tank of a parked car, setting it and another car ablaze. In minutes, the shooting was over and the soldiers withdrew.
"They just left," one resident said. "Then the Iraqi firemen came to put out the fires."
----
3 Iraqis Killed as G.I.'s Set Up Raid in Hunt for Hussein
July 28, 2003
The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/international/worldspecial/28IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 27 - American soldiers fired on a Toyota passenger car in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood late this afternoon, killing at least three Iraqis, as an American Special Operations team prepared to raid a nearby house in what an Iraqi policeman later described as an unsuccessful attempt to capture Saddam Hussein.
A military spokesman confirmed that the operation involved Task Force 20, which is leading the search for Mr. Hussein, but he declined further comment about what led to the raid and whether the troops had found any evidence that the deposed dictator had recently been there.
The owner of the home that was raided, Rabia Muhammad al-Habib, a prominent tribal leader, said he had not seen Mr. Hussein for more than a year, but he acknowledged that he was "respected" by Mr. Hussein and that they used to meet occasionally. Mr. Habib was away from his home when the troops arrived.
The shootings outraged local residents, who said the Americans had not offered adequate warnings before firing on the Toyota and on another car half a block away, in which three other people were wounded. The people in the Toyota were members of a family that lived near the site of the raid, said Qais Estefan Ibrahim, who said he was a neighbor.
Witnesses said two other people traveling in a sport utility vehicle had also been shot by soldiers who chased their vehicle after it left the scene. Other reports from a Baghdad hospital said a total of five Iraqis had died during the operation.
[On Monday, a U.S. patrol was attacked with a grenade in broad daylight in central Baghdad, according to Reuters, and two soldiers were badly wounded.]
American officials said that since the killings on Tuesday of Mr. Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay, an increasing stream of tips from informants had moved them closer to capturing Mr. Hussein himself. On Thursday night, American forces arrested nearly a dozen of his personal bodyguards in Tikrit, his hometown. Today, The Associated Press reported, troops acting on information gleaned from the bodyguards raided three Tikrit farmhouses and, according to the soldiers, barely missed seizing Mr. Hussein himself and his security chief.
"In my opinion, if he's alive, it's just a matter of time," Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Baghdad today. "He is so busy saving his own skin, he is having no impact, no impact on the security situation."
While American officials had held out hope that the killings of Uday and Qusay Hussein would weaken the violent resistance to American troops, attacks by insurgents continued today. One soldier was killed and another wounded at 2:30 a.m. when a rocket-propelled grenade struck their patrol in Al Haswah, about 20 miles south of Baghdad. The soldier was attached to the First Marine Expeditionary Force.
Fourteen American servicemen have been killed in hostile attacks since July 20, the deadliest period for Americans in Iraq since May 1, when President Bush declared the end to major combat operations. Since May 1, 49 Americans have been killed in hostile attacks and 55 have died from other causes, like traffic accidents and accidental weapons discharges, a senior military official in Baghdad said today.
The shootings this afternoon created an uproar among residents in Mansur, the Baghdad neighborhood, who said the Iraqis had been gunned down with little warning after traveling onto a street that the Americans were trying to block off. The street was one block west from where the raid later took place.
"They suspected that Saddam was in one of the homes, and they cordoned off the area," said Lt. Aodee Sami, an Iraqi police officer on the scene. He said three people had died in the Toyota and one had been wounded. The driver of the Toyota was an older man who used a crutch or a cane, neighbors said.
The intensity of the shooting was evident from the condition of the Toyota, which had at least two dozen bullet holes in its front and rear windshields. Witnesses said three of the passengers, including an older woman who was wounded but not killed, were immediately taken from the car, but the body of the driver remained in the vehicle for some time.
A military spokesman, Capt. Jeff Fitzgibbons, would not comment on the deaths except to confirm that the operation involved Task Force 20. But speaking generally about how soldiers react when Iraqi drivers fail to heed orders to halt, he said, "If you cross a roadblock, we assume you mean to do harm."
This evening, Mr. Habib, the owner of the house, who said he had just returned from a trip out of Baghdad, showed reporters broken windows and other damage that he said came from bullets fired by Americans during the raid. He also displayed what he said had been a locked desk that had been forced open and searched.
Mr. Habib scoffed at the notion that Mr. Hussein had been hiding in his house. But, he said, "if anybody said he would seek refuge in my home, people would believe it." Commenting on their relationship, he added: "He was president of Iraq, and we would meet from time to time. He was helpful, and he respected me very much."
In an incident late Saturday in Karbala, a city about 60 miles south of Baghdad where relations with the occupation forces have been fairly calm, a 30-year-old cafeteria worker was shot during a confrontation between soldiers and an unruly crowd. Today, during the man's funeral, mourners chanted, "There is no God but God, and America is the enemy of God!"
Accounts of the worker's death vary, but apparently Iraqi police officers tried to intervene with some local criminals and were overwhelmed. They then sought help from American troops.
When the Iraqi officers pursued the criminals into a shrine, people nearby thought the American soldiers were going to enter, too, and began pelting them with cans and stones. The Americans fired, first into the air and then into the crowd, killing the cafeteria worker.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel to Free Many Militants and Lift Some Roadblocks
July 28, 2003
New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/international/middleeast/28MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, July 27 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government reversed an earlier position and voted today to free Islamic militants, while the military lifted several roadblocks in the West Bank. The moves came just hours before Mr. Sharon flew to the United States, where he could face rare differences with President Bush on Middle East peacemaking.
The Israeli actions seemed timed to show that Mr. Sharon's government was improving conditions for Palestinians and took place two days after the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, listed a range of Palestinian demands during a White House visit with Mr. Bush.
The Bush administration was host to Mr. Abbas and moved up the visit by Mr. Sharon, who will see Mr. Bush on Tuesday, with the goal of nudging both sides forward with the peace plan formally initiated last month. While violence is down sharply, the two sides have taken only limited steps required under the initiative, known as the road map.
Mr. Sharon's cabinet voted 14 to 9 today to free some jailed members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian factions responsible for most of the suicide bombings against Israel. Shaul Mofaz, Israel's defense minister, voted for the releases, describing the decision as a "harsh dilemma" but necessary for the peace effort.
"I think we must give this process a chance and see how it unfolds," Mr. Mofaz told Israeli radio. "It is still a bit early to say, but when examining things over the past month, I can say, with the utmost caution and considerable doubt, that the general direction is positive."
The Israeli government had said it would not free members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have declared a truce but oppose peace negotiations with Israel.
The peace plan does not specifically require Israel to release any of the roughly 6,000 Palestinian prisoners it is holding. Mr. Abbas, however, has made it a priority.
News agencies traveling with Mr. Sharon cited an Israeli official as saying the government would free 210 prisoners from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, 210 linked to the Fatah movement of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and 120 common criminals, for a total of 540.
The Israeli authorities emphasized that none of the Palestinians being freed had "blood on his hands." They have either been convicted of relatively minor crimes or have been held without being charged.
Palestinian leaders and factions said the Israeli action fell far short of their demand for the release of all prisoners. "This decision is not enough," said Ismail Haniya, a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip. "This is only public relations for Sharon before he meets Bush."
Mr. Sharon left for the United States shortly after the cabinet vote. He has been a frequent White House visitor since he came to power more than two years ago, and the Bush administration has been strongly supportive of Israel during the fighting with the Palestinians.
During this visit, Mr. Sharon plans to emphasize that the Palestinian leadership has failed to arrest and disarm Palestinian factions as required under the peace plan, Israeli officials said.
He may also raise other issues in contention. In a news conference with Mr. Abbas on Friday, Mr. Bush was critical of an Israeli security fence that cuts into the West Bank. He also called on Israel to stop developing Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In another development, Israel removed 10 major West Bank checkpoints and other barricades that had blocked or greatly limited Palestinian movement since they were imposed shortly after the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
The checkpoints dismantled in the last few days had tended to limit movements from one Palestinian town to another. Palestinians had contended that these checkpoints were largely punitive and that they did not enhance Israel's security.
But Israel said the barriers inside the West Bank were necessary to monitor Palestinian movements and to channel the flow of traffic before would-be attackers approached Israeli towns. Israel still has dozens of West Bank checkpoints.
A senior Israeli military commander said Israel was taking an "enormous risk" by removing the barriers. He said that troops continued to prevent planned attacks and that a bomb belt fashioned for a suicide bomber was found this week near the West Bank city of Nablus.
The commander said the military was encouraged by the overall reduction in violence. In addition, the first leg of the security fence, which runs along the northern part of the West Bank, is nearing completion despite the American complaints about its route.
The northern West Bank has been the main launching pad for suicide bombers, and the fence will make it more difficult - but not impossible - for bombers from those areas to reach Israeli towns, the commander said.
----
ISRAEL DELAYS SECURITY FENCE PROJECT
Mon, 28 Jul 2003
Middle East Newsline
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/july/07_29_3.html
JERUSALEM [MENL] -- Israel has agreed to delay plans to complete the establishment of a security fence to protect against Palestinian insurgents from the West Bank.
Israeli officials said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has agreed that the government would shelve plans to erect the fence within the West Bank in an effort to encompass an enclave of Israeli communities. The officials said Sharon has decided to focus on construction of the fence along the old 1967 border.
The Israeli agreement came ahead of Sharon's visit to Washington and his meeting with President George Bush on Tuesday. Bush has expressed opposition to the security fence, particularly in areas tilled by Palestinian farmers.
"It's not clear that it [security fence] will be raised with the president," Israel's ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon said. "It might be raised by National Security Adviser [Condoleezza Rice], but it will not be at the top of the agenda. I am sure they will come to mutual agreement, even if not during this visit."
----
Palestinians Losing Land to the Fence
Israel's anti-terrorism security wall makes its way through people's property in West Bank.
By Megan K. Stack
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 28, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-wall28jul28235419,0,3482108.story
RAFAT, West Bank - The red signs appeared one morning on the barbed wire. "Mortal danger; military zone," they read. "Any person who passes or damages the fence endangers his life."
And just like that, Mohammed Habbas was forbidden to reach the acres of fields and olive groves that have been in the family for as long as anyone here can remember. The people of this tiny hillside village were left behind when Israeli military walls chopped away more than half of their property, snaking all the way to the edges of houses to swallow the land - but exclude the people.
"We can see our land, but we can't reach it," Habbas said. "We are like birds now, stuck in a cage."
In the year since construction began, Israel's West Bank wall has evolved into a political quandary. Settlers think that it's perilous; Palestinians think that it's poisonous. Some of the Israeli security experts who originally pressed for its construction have forsworn the project in disgust. And the United States has warned that the miles of coiled barbed wire and electronic currents could spell the subversion of fragile peace talks.
President Bush has said it will be difficult to build confidence "with a wall snaking through the West Bank," and he pledged to raise the contentious issue with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during the Israeli leader's White House visit Tuesday. But Israel is pressing on, spending millions of dollars and squandering goodwill to raise the wall.
When construction began last summer, the barrier was introduced to a terror-battered Israeli public as a security or "separation" fence that would keep suicide bombers at bay. With hundreds of Israelis dead at the hands of Palestinian militants, it was time to build a wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories, defense officials said.
Since then, the wall's path has shifted east to consume swaths of the West Bank as one Jewish settlement after another demanded to be included on the side of the fence that is closer to Israel. Palestinians, Israelis and international peace mediators all fear the fence will harden into a border. The wall's final route is a mystery, even to the Israeli lawmakers who were pressured last week by Sharon to set aside an extra $170.5 million for it.
So far, only the northern portion has been finished - the more than 90 miles of wall run west across the north of the West Bank, then cut a looping path south to peter out just below the town of Kalkilya. More layers of fencing are rising on the outskirts of Jerusalem, including here around Rafat, and officials are talking about walling off the Jordan Valley. But they remain circumspect on the question of where - and when - the rest of the fence will be raised. Many analysts say that's because the debate is still crackling among Israel's highest officials.
Palestinians say Israel plans to wall off more than half of the West Bank. In other words, they say, the territory where Palestinians hope to found their long-awaited state is being whittled away by a fence line.
"The Palestinian vision is being crushed every hour," said Saeb Erekat, a veteran Palestinian negotiator. "Israel will tell you it's about security, but it's really about confiscating land and fait accompli policies. It seems to me that everything is about to collapse on the ground."
The Israeli government describes the fence as a badly needed security measure - and nothing more. "You have to defend yourself," said Uzi Dayan, former chair of Israel's National Security Council and one of the wall's most vocal advocates. "Otherwise we are exposed, we are vulnerable."
In the face of U.S. warnings, Israeli officials have upheld their right to self-defense.
Speaking to Israel Radio last week, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom lamented what he deemed Palestinian success in swaying world opinion to believe that the wall "will make their lives more difficult and create facts on the ground."
"The construction is intended to keep out terrorists and extremists seeking to blow up the peace process," he said.
The wall's staunchest advocates mention the Gaza Strip, which was wrapped in fences when Israeli troops withdrew in the early 1990s. The notorious walls of Gaza have drawn the ire of Palestinians and human rights groups, who point out that more than 1 million Palestinians live penned in a sprawling beach-side cage, generally unable to come and go.
But Israel lauds the Gaza arrangement as a stunning success - after all, security experts say, in nearly three years of fighting, not a single suicide bomber has managed to slip from Gaza into Israel.
But the lawmaker and former army commander who pioneered the construction of the Gaza fence in 1993 and 1994 bristles at the comparison between his pet project and the West Bank wall. Much like the Palestinians, Matan Vilnai thinks that the original notion - to wall off the West Bank with a security fence - has been hijacked.
Vilnai argues that, despite ongoing peace talks and Sharon's repeated statements in support of Palestinian statehood, the fence's path illustrates the true intentions of a government fundamentally opposed to a Palestinian nation forged on territory some Israelis regard as their rightful land.
"It's not a security fence from the point of view of the government, but rather a political fence," Vilnai said. "It's meant to make sure that under no circumstances can there be a Palestinian state. They talk about a Palestinian state, but they don't believe in it, and they're doing everything they can to prevent it."
If the government wanted to build a security fence, Vilnai argued, it would have stuck to the 1967 border between Israel and the West Bank. "The line of the fence is a catastrophe," he said. "It's not to secure our people, it annexes thousands of Palestinians to Israel. And we don't need them, and they don't want it."
Vilnai echoes the complaint of Palestinian officials: that Israel has no right to nudge the construction into the West Bank. "They can put a wall in Israel proper, and it can reach the sky. It's none of our business," Erekat said. "But to put a wall in the heart of our land - we're going to turn into the biggest prison in the world."
Jewish settlers in the West Bank are of two minds about the project. As long as government-sponsored pioneers have been homesteading the Palestinian territories in the name of "redeeming the land," the idea of erecting fences has been anathema to most ideological settlers.
When Israel began to move in earnest to build the fence, many settlers decried the project as a betrayal. While Palestinians complained that turf was being grabbed, settlers warned against abandoning a stake in biblical lands of the West Bank.
"It's a mirror image of Palestinian concerns, that the territories beyond the wall have already been, in effect, conceded," Israeli political analyst Mark Heller said.
But as the months passed, and the layers of barbed wire, towering concrete walls and military roads crept south through the West Bank, some settlers grew nervous about the prospect of being abandoned on the wrong side. Abruptly, complaints shifted.
"If the Israeli government decides to build a fence, then we should have one also," said Ron Nachman, mayor of one of the West Bank's largest settlements, Ariel. "If there's to be a fence, the Israelis should be inside the fence."
The trouble is, about 230,000 Israeli settlers live scattered throughout the West Bank - and encompassing settlements means annexing Arab towns and villages too. Ariel, a massive, secular community complete with a hotel, university and industrial park, lies about 10 miles into the West Bank. According to most predictions, the fence will dip all the way into the West Bank to protect Ariel.
"Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell you. Especially when Abu Mazen wants to know too," said Nachman, referring to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
In the nearby settlement of Karnei Shomron, an unruffled settler said she was sure her government wouldn't wall her town out. "That America is pressuring Israel doesn't interest us - we want to see what our government will do," Sondra Oster Baras said. "And we see the bulldozers - it's being built to the east of us."
Last week, members of Sharon's Likud Party staged a minor revolt, refusing to endorse the budget for the fence until they knew where it would run and precisely how the money would be spent.
The entire discussion enrages Dayan, who argues that the wall should have been built by now.
Innocent lives could have been saved, he said, if Israel hadn't allowed the construction to be bogged down in politics. "I can't accept that, because of people's views about where the fence will go, we sit around and do nothing," he said.
But on the ground, as bulldozers rumble and walls grow higher, the debate fades into background noise. Palestinians are finding themselves hemmed into their villages, divided from their land by a fence they are forbidden to approach. Palestinians refer to it as the "apartheid wall" and compare the project to the Berlin Wall.
Mahmud abu Habseh stood on the hilly rise of his Rafat backyard on a recent afternoon, tracing with his finger the distant, curling path of the wall - a layered series of barricades including a road for army trucks, coiled stacks of barbed wire and a sand pit to trap footprints. Abu Habseh, an electrician, lost more than an acre of land to the fence.
"Look how it moves - see how they took the land and left the homes?" he said. Below him, the fence curved inward to skirt the buildings.
"It makes it clear they want the land and not security," he said. "They took it against our will. But if the judge is your enemy, to whom do you complain?"
----
Outposts highlight Israeli failure to meet terms of roadmap
Monday, 28-Jul-2003
Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/cn/Qmideast-settlements.R2Fm_DlS.html
ELI SETTLEMENT, West Bank, July 28 (AFP) - Two dilapidated trailers high on a hill in the West Bank were a stark reminder Monday of Israel's failure so far to meet the terms of the US-backed roadmap for peace as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sought to convince Washington of his commitment to the agreement.
The two uninhabited cabins south of Nablus, which the settlement watchdog Peace Now says have been erected in the last few weeks, are in clear breach of a pledge by Sharon at the launch of the roadmap last month to dismantle such structures.
But while a handful of outposts have been taken down in a blaze of publicity since the launch in Jordan on June 4, Peace Now activist Dror Etkes said 12 others had since been established.
"This is an attempt to cheat the Israeli people, the Palestinians and the international community by not paying the price needed for peace," said Etkes, who discovered the latest outpost overlooking the official settlement of Eli while flying a Cessna over the area on Saturday.
Sharon has been seen as the architect of Israel's settlement policy for decades and his 1998 call to "seize the hills" has remained a rallying cry for radical settlers.
But the roadmap, which Sharon endorsesd, demands Israel remove the more than 60 outposts set up since he came to power in March 2001 as part of measures leading to the creation of an independent Palestinian state by 2005.
The Israeli army announced Monday that it had dismantled a settlement outpost overnight near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
Sharon is keen to convince US President George W. Bush during talks at the White House on Tuesday that he is serious about meeting the terms of the roadmap and that the Palestinians, rather than the Israelis, are throwing up obstacles to an agreement.
But Ektes said that Sharon's government lacked the political will to really take on the settlers.
"It's a matter of political will. They don't want to do it. They don't say they don't want to do it, but they are lying."
While the outpost near Eli is currently uninhabited, settlers have made clear their long-term intentions by carving a road up the hill through fields of olive and fig trees. Unless dismantled by the military, it seems destined to become part of an expanded Eli which is already home to some 2,500 settlers.
A vision of the future can be seen around half a mile away at the rapidly-expanding settlement of Maale Haroe, which also consisted of no more than a a couple of cabins when Etkes visited 12 months ago.
Eight families have since made Maale Haroe their home, while a group of east European construction workers could be seen Monday working on the foundations of another half-a-dozen houses.
One settler, who moved from Paris a year ago, was unapologetic about building at Maale Haroe.
"There's been a Jewish presence here since time began," said the settler who would only give his name as Allan.
The 30-year-old said that living in the West Bank, rather than somewhere like Tel Aviv, was the only way to appreciate "the reality" of Israel.
But he added he was prepared for the Israeli government to make concessions if they could lead to peace with the Palestinians.
----
Israel Removes 3 Checkpoints
Action Taken as Sharon Prepares to Meet Bush
By John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 28, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54068-2003Jul27?language=printer
EIN ARIK, West Bank, July 27 -- Israel removed three military roadblocks in the West Bank today and announced that it would release an estimated 100 Islamic militants from jail, moves that Israeli officials said were meant to strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon two days before he meets with President Bush in Washington.
Palestinians at the dismantled checkpoints belittled the removal of the concrete barriers and dirt berms as a public relations stunt, saying that dozens of checkpoints and hundreds of barriers still in place in the West Bank rendered the gesture meaningless. Palestinian officials also complained that none of the roughly 400 prisoners Israel promised to release three weeks ago has been set free. Israeli officials say, however, that about 115 have been released from that group.
"These tokens are not enough unless there are tangible changes on the ground that affect the lives of the Palestinians," said Ziad Abu Amr, the Palestinian minister of culture. "Otherwise, these tokens will be dismissed as just manufactured and public relations."
A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Jonathan Peled, said Israel was acting slowly and deliberately because the measures it has taken so far have not been matched by a sincere, concerted effort by the Palestinian government to curb terrorism.
"We're doing this step by step, very cautiously, trying to minimize security risks," he said. "Unfortunately, we haven't seen any steps on the other side."
Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly argued during an Israeli cabinet meeting today in favor of releasing additional Palestinian prisoners, saying that it was important to strengthen Sharon's position ahead of his meeting with Bush on Tuesday.
According to Israeli press reports, Sharon plans to reject a request from Bush to stop building a security fence around the West Bank. Palestinians argue that the fence is intended to mark the future boundary of a Palestinian state that would be limited to 45 percent of the West Bank's territory. Israel says the fence is meant to prevent suicide bombers and other terrorists from infiltrating Israel from the West Bank.
Bush met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on Friday. The back-to-back talks are aimed at reviving a stalled U.S.-backed peace initiative, called the "road map," that has restarted direct negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis but has led to few concrete accomplishments on the ground.
Palestinian leaders have secured from the largest and most radical Palestinian groups a three-month moratorium on killing Israelis, but have not made significant moves to dismantle the groups, arrest their members or collect their weapons -- key demands of the United States and Israel.
Israel has pulled its troops back from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Bethlehem, but has not significantly eased the closures, checkpoints and other travel restrictions that have affected millions of Palestinians.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the dismantling of two checkpoints outside Ramallah, a West Bank city just north of Jerusalem where Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat makes his headquarters, and the removal of another checkpoint outside Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, were designed to ease conditions for Palestinians.
But Palestinians at the Ein Arik checkpoint, two miles west of Ramallah and four miles north of Jerusalem, said that no Israeli troops had been stationed there for months, and that Palestinian motorists had long ago created a dirt-road bypass around the barriers that closed the main road. On Saturday, the Palestinians said, the Israelis closed the bypass, enabling them to claim a public relations coup for reopening the main road today.
"They are making fools of the Palestinian people," said Farid Ibrahim Zeid, 47, who lives in a refugee camp north of Ramallah and used the bypass to travel to his job as a painter in the Jewish settlement of Maleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem. Asked if removing the barriers from the main road would have much of an impact on him, he said: "Not much. It will be easier on my car, that's it. Less dust."
Moore reported from Jerusalem.
-------- japan
Japan Courts a Public Wary of Sending Its Troops to Iraq
By JAMES BROOKE
July 28, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/international/worldspecial/28JAPA.html?ei=1&en=4e0fac7bc8f66098&ex=1060409638&pagewanted=print&position=
TOKYO, July 27 - After winning a bitterly disputed parliamentary vote to send a military force to Iraq, Japanese government officials sought today to sell a skeptical public on sending troops to an area where they could find themselves in combat for the first time since the end of World War II.
Japanese public support for the war has never been in the majority, and with American soldiers dying nearly daily in Iraq, it has fallen over the past two months, according to polls by the Asahi Shimbun, a liberal newspaper.
"I do feel that it is difficult," Taku Yamasaki, secretary general of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, told Fuji Television when asked about the continuing American casualties. "But Iraq is a big place and naturally there will be someplace where" Japan's military "can play a role."
Declining to set a timetable, he said only, "We will definitely send them in some form."
Separately, Shigeru Ishiba, Japan's de facto defense minister, told NHK, the main public broadcaster, "I think it will take a couple of months or so."
In keeping with the government's interpretation of the post-World War II Constitution, he said, troops would "initially put greater emphasis on humanitarian and reconstruction assistance."
Japan's Constitution, adopted under American military occupation, bans the use of force in settling international disputes. But Japanese conservatives argue that Japan should be free of such restrictions.
Today, a conservative newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, urged the government to give the prime minister more authority to dispatch troops without asking Parliament for approval. Japan's military, which is called the Self-Defense Forces and is also known as the S.D.F., "will no doubt be called on more frequently to join international efforts in dealing with future conflicts," the newspaper editorialized today.
But Japan's liberal opposition, which fought hard to block Saturday's vote, did not lessen its chorus of disapproval today.
Sending troops to Iraq would violate the Constitution, Naoto Kan, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, the country's main opposition party, said today in Hiroshima.
Mr. Kan said the government's argument for sending Japanese forces to Iraq was based on the premise that troops would not go into combat zones.
"There is no way to send the S.D.F. if there are no noncombat zones," he said.
China, Japan's most powerful neighbor, also objected to the idea of Japanese soldiers carrying guns on overseas missions. During World War II, Japanese troops occupied large parts of coastal China.
"Japan should earnestly adhere to the defense-only policy," said China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan. A defensive posture helps peace and stability in the region, he added.
----
Japanese reporters in Iraq say U.S. troops roughed them up
Monday, July 28, 2003
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=267735
BAGHDAD - A Japanese reporter was manhandled and temporarily detained by U.S. soldiers Sunday for filming without their permission in an area of Baghdad where they were conducting raids, another reporter who accompanied him said.
Japan Press reporter Kazutaka Sato, 47, was put in a hold, thrown to the ground and kicked, sustaining injuries to his face and hands, according to Mika Yamamoto, 36, a Japan Press reporter who was with Sato at the time of the incident.
She said the two had been in the Mansur district of Baghdad filming the damage caused to civilians by the U.S. military when they had their cameras confiscated.
After being thrown to the ground and assaulted by several U.S. soldiers, Sato had his hands tied and was detained for about one hour.
The soldiers did not explain why photography was forbidden in the area.
"By obstructing our legitimate news gathering activities, I suppose they had something to hide from us, such as bodies of civilians," Yamamoto said.
Sato and Yamamoto had been in Iraq since July 19 doing coverage for Nippon Television Network Corp. (Kyodo News)
----
Japan strikes commercial oil deal with Iraq
By Bayan Rahman in Tokyo
July 28 2003
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1058868215878&p=1012571727169
Mitsubishi, Japan's largest trading company, concluded an agreement on Monday to buy crude oil from Iraq, in a sign that Japanese companies may reap commercial rewards for their country's backing of the war. Advertisement
Striking Japan's first commercial oil deal with Baghdad in 13 years, Mitsubishi agreed with Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation to import 40,000 barrels a day of Basrah Light crude, equivalent to 7 per cent of the Japanese company's global crude oil trades a day.
Industry analysts said the deal's significance for Mitsubishi and other Japanese companies outweighed the size of the contract. The deal could open the way for more Japan-Iraq contracts and help Japan in its pursuit of alternative sources of oil, for which it relies heavily on Saudi Arabia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
"This transaction by itself has a small impact in business terms but it may have a far greater impact politically and strategically," said Hajime Furuya, trading companies analyst at UBS investment bank. "It may be the signal for Mitsubishi to enter into other businesses in Iraq, such as pipeline or gas-plant construction. It could also open the way for other Japanese companies to go into Iraq."
Trading houses Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Marubeni had substantial dealings with Iraq before the 1990 Gulf War, in infrastructure, construction machinery, energy and pipelines. These and other trading houses and energy-related companies are studying commercial possibilities in Iraq and are poised to enter negotiations once Japan reinstates long-term export credit insurance to cover their investments in the country.
"Iraq has a lot of business potential so every trading house has to think about how to do business there," a Sumitomo official said.
Delivery of the Basrah Light to Mitsubishi could begin as early as next month and end in December, making a total of 6m barrels, although Mitsubishi said the start date could be postponed to September because of Iraq's unstable security.
Japanese companies had feared being pushed out of opportunities in Iraq by US and British businesses.
Iraq owes Japan's public sector about $4.1bn (?3.6bn, Ł2.5bn), according to Paris Club figures, and a n estimated $2bn to private companies. Japan has pledged more than $100m to help in reconstruction.
-------- mideast
Shootout in Saudi Arabia Kills Eight
Monday July 28, 2003
By FAIZA SALEH AMBAH
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2960993,00.html
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Six suspected militants were killed Monday in firefight with Saudi police, who raided a farm where they were hiding out. Two police also were killed.
The shootout, which came amid an anti-terror crackdown in the kingdom, took place in al-Qassim, 220 miles north of the capital, Riyadh, state-run TV quoted a Ministry of Interior statement as saying.
The firefight came after the suspects, armed with guns and hand grenades, refused an order to surrender by police surrounding the farm, the statement said.
One militant and eight police were injured, and four people were arrested for harboring the suspects.
Saudi Arabia has launched a series of terror raids after May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh killed 25 people and nine attackers.
The raids also followed repeated calls from the U.S. government for Saudi Arabia to do more to curb Islamic militancy after Sept. 11. Of the 19 hijackers in the attack, 11 were Saudi.
One raid, announced last week, yielded the arrests of 16 suspects linked to al-Qaida - the terror network blamed for the Riyadh bombings and the Sept. 11 attacks - and the seizure of a buried arsenal that included 20 tons of bomb-making chemicals, detonators, rocket-propelled grenades and rifles.
A U.S. Congress report on Sept. 11 released last week accused Saudi Arabia of not doing enough to counter terrorism.
The unclassified version of the report also said that one suspected organizer still at large paid many of the expenses of two Sept. 11 hijackers and ``had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia.'' It did not say if Saudi government funds were involved.
Saudi officials have rejected those conclusions.
``We are confident about ourselves and it is just a matter of mere talk,'' Defense Minister Prince Sultan was quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency as saying Sunday night. ``The American administration under the leadership of Bush has declared officially that the kingdom is not a party in these issues.''
Osama bin Laden, head of the al-Qaida terrorist network, was born in Saudi Arabia to a prominent family. He turned against the Saudi government after it allowed the United States to station troops and equipment here during the 1991 Gulf War. The Saudi government revoked his citizenship.
----
Syrian PM: Regional states should resist US bid to reshape the Middle East
28-07-2003
(Albawaba.com)
http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=255183&lang=e&dir=news
Syrian Prime Minister Mustapha Miro said in remarks published Monday that regional countries such as Turkey, Iran and Syria should strengthen their relations in order to resist US attempts to reshape the Middle East.
"The whole world knows about America's policy to establish a new order in the Middle East," Miro told the Turkish daily Sabah on the eve of his visit to Ankara.
"Therefore I think Turkey, Syria and Iran as well as other states should act more and more together because if we stay alone it becomes easier to do what has been done to Iraq," he was quoted as saying.
"Our common wish is that the occupation ends as soon as possible and America leaves the region as soon as possible," he added.
On Sunday, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq as-Shara condemned the US pressure on Damascus and said that Israeli hands are clear behind the pressure.
"The American administration is a very special case, being stupid and violent," he charged, adding there were "divisions between the hawks and the doves" over how to deal with Syria. "Israel plays a major role in American decisions against Syria," the Syrian minister conveyed.
"Because of Israeli pressure, the United States does not wish to have good relations with Damascus. Most members of the American administration are afraid of Israel," Shara said.
----
Sheikh Nasrallah: US Administration is sponsor of terrorism
(Albawaba.com)
28-07-2003
http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=255167&lang=e&dir=news
US interests around the globe may be attacked if the United States attempts to eradicate Hizbullah, according to the leader of the Lebanese movement. In his first interview with a British newspaper for five years, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah rejected Washington's classification of his group as a "terrorist organization," saying that the Bush Administration did not possess the moral authority to define terrorism.
"Hizbullah is a Lebanese resistance group. It has fought and is ready to fight," Sheikh Nasrallah was quoted as saying by The Times on Monday. "Hizbullah has offered martyrs and is ready to offer more martyrs to defend its people and country."
According to Sheikh Nasrallah, it is the Bush Administration that is the real terrorist organization.
"We believe that the American Administration has always exercised terrorist and aggressive policies and backed terrorist groups and regimes," he said, citing the training of Osama bin Laden and his fighters by the CIA against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the1980 s.
"The chemical weapons used by the Iraqis against Iranian forces in al-Faw peninsula and in Halabja were provided by the Americans," he added. "The American Administration is a sponsor of terrorism, so ethically and legally it is not qualified to categorise terrorism."
During the interview, Sheikh Nasrallah delivered a clear warning that Hizbullah would fight back if it felt that its survival was in jeopardy. "In such a case Hizbullah has a right to defend its existence, its people and its country through any means and at any time and in any place," he warned.
-------- philippines
Brief Mutiny Was Pale Shadow of Past Philippine Coups
By SETH MYDANS
July 28, 2003
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/international/asia/28FILI.html?ei=1&en=5c2204952ba4c82f&ex=1060358423&pagewanted=print&position=
MANILA, July 27 - "We mean no harm! We mean no harm!" shouted the rebel leader as his men laid booby traps around a downtown mall and luxury apartment building here early this morning.
For the next 18 hours, a band of 300 junior military officers and troopers barricaded themselves inside the apartment building and demanded the resignation of the president and defense secretary and better equipment for soldiers in the field.
By the time they gave up and agreed to return to their barracks this evening, it was clear that this had been only a caricature of the coups and popular putsches that have kept the country on edge for the past 18 years.
No shots had been fired; indeed, no guns had been pointed. No real threats had been made by either side. An overheated news conference was the mutineers' main action, and fatherly talks by senior officers brought the squall to an end.
Coup rumors are so common here that most people, while enjoying a frisson of worry, tend to discount them. The current rumors had been circulating for a week - some here say the mutiny was delayed by weather when a typhoon struck.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo may have spurred the rebels into action when she ordered the arrest on Saturday of "a small band of rogue junior officers."
The soldiers' passion was very real, though, and some of their grievances - corruption and bad management in the military - seemed justified. But as the political scientist Alex Magno said, they were "pretty naďve."
"We hope the Filipino people will get our message," said the rebel leader, Lt. Antonio Trillanes of the navy, although he never made the message quite clear. "Maybe we can change the system."
"Hooray!" his men shouted as reporters besieged them in the lobby of the apartment building.
"Of course, they are very emotional," said Glenda Gloria, an expert on the military and the Muslim insurgency in the southern Philippines. "Some were trained by the United States, and the United States is very much aware of how mismanaged the armed forces is."
Ineffectual as it was, the brief standoff offered a lesson in the patterns history sets. In a country where coup attempts were at one time almost routine and where two presidents have been ousted when the military turned against them, it was only a short step for these young officers from disaffection to mutiny.
When they dismantled their booby traps and returned to their barracks, grumbling that nothing had changed, they took with them a promise by their commanders to address their grievances.
That light touch from the commanders also followed a pattern that was set in the first of half a dozen coup attempts in the 1980's against President Corazon C. Aquino. In that case, soldiers who took over the Manila Hotel were sentenced only to a round of push-ups before being sent back to their barracks.
The most dangerous and dashing of the coup leaders from those years, Gregorio Honasan, is now an overweight senator and has declared his candidacy in the next presidential election.
Mutiny is not necessarily a career-ending move in the Philippines, and as Mr. Honasan showed in the 1980's, it can be addictive.
Some officials said they had evidence that he had been involved in today's action, but any possible backing for the mutiny remained unclear.
The mutineers, slipping on red armbands with a white sunburst, secured the Glorietta Mall and the Oakwood Premier apartments at 3 a.m. today. The shopping center was also the scene of the final big attempt against Mrs. Aquino, in 1989, after which the rebels were allowed to march out in formation.
The luxury apartments house many foreigners, including the ambassador of Australia, but by late morning all residents had been freed except, according to a local report, two who overslept.
The center of Makati, the city's business district, was sealed off by troops and armored personnel carriers, and Mrs. Arroyo addressed the mutineers on television.
"This is your commander in chief," declared Mrs. Arroyo, who has worked to cultivate an image of resoluteness. "Even if you think you can gain political power in this way, which you cannot, you will realize that there is no substitute for democracy and constitutional means."
Mrs. Arroyo's presidency is itself the product of a mutiny in January 2001 when the military, responding to clamorous crowds in the streets, told the incumbent, Joseph Estrada, that it was "withdrawing its support."
In a sign of the uncertainty that such moves produce, Mr. Estrada, who is on trial for corruption, was briefly moved this morning from the military hospital where he was being held to a more secure cell.
Though no evidence was made public of any involvement by the former president, officials said a safe house used by the mutineers was owned by one of his mistresses.
[On Monday, the Philippine police arrested Ramon Cardenas, an aide to Mr. Estrada, in connection with the mutiny, Reuters reported.]
In a statement, the rebels accused the government of selling weapons to Muslim and Communist rebels and of staging bombings to justify more aid from the United States.
At their news conference, they vented, with the desperate idealism of young officers who find themselves in a corrupt and inefficient system.
"I spent eight years of combat duty in Mindanao" fighting Muslim rebels, one officer said, his voice rising as he spoke. "I saw my friends die, but did their deaths have any value? I say they died for nothing."
-------- space
U.S. far outdistancing potential competitors in space-weapons race
By JACK KELLY
Monday, July 28, 2003
Teledo Blade (Ohio) BLOCK NEWS ALLIANCE
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030728/NEWS08/107280140
NATIONAL DEFENSE
When the Bush administration announced in 2001 that it would withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so it could build a national defense system designed to shoot enemy missiles out of the sky, critics warned it would start an arms race in space. Supporters, certain the United States would win, essentially said, "Let the race begin."
Two years later, the United States has bolted from the starting blocks and is so far ahead that it is hard to make out any potential competitors in the rearview mirror.
Pentagon scenarios for war in space go far beyond shooting down missiles that threaten the U.S. homeland.
They call for airborne and orbiting weapons that could attack targets anywhere on Earth at virtually any moment.
They call for weapons that could defend U.S. space armaments or satellites while blinding or destroying those of any potential adversary.
They call, in short, for the United States to dominate warfare's ultimate high ground, potentially locking in U.S. military superiority for decades to come.
Supporters regard such plans as the natural evolution of 21st-century military technology, much as air power came to dominate warfare in the 20th century.
Critics worry that "weaponizing" space will take the human race over yet another military threshold, creating a destabilizing arms race that would waste global resources and potentially put the United States most at risk because its economy is most dependent on satellite communications.
The swift U.S. military victory in Iraq hints at the potential of space power.
"If you ask what was the difference between Iraq's army and America's army, the big difference was satellites," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. "It's why the United States is unbeatable on a conventional battlefield. It's why the United States is the sole remaining superpower. It's why we frighten the living daylights out of the rest of the planet."
Satellites allowed U.S. forces to locate Iraqi forces, coordinate ground and air attacks, and guide warheads to their targets. "Our side knew where all of our forces were at any given moment, and the other side did not," said Steven Aftergood, a researcher for the Federation of American Scientists.
"Space dominance wins wars because it overcomes the two fundamental impediments to victory famously summarized by the 19th century theorist Karl von Clausewitz as 'fog and friction,'" said science writer Bruce Sterling. "In a fog of low quality or nonexistent information, warriors can't see allies or enemies. Amid the friction of hostile onslaughts, they can't hit the adversaries they manage to see. These are the classic military problems. Having an overhead view makes them the other guy's problem."
For the foreseeable future, "the other guy" will have to face this formidable U.S. advantage.
"We are so dominant in space that I pity a country that would come up against us," said Maj. Gen. Franklin Blaisdell, director of space operations for the Air Force, eight days before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.
The Bush administration is laying the groundwork to eventually expand and entrench that dominance.
Last year, President Bush made explicit the goal of maintaining U.S. military superiority over any other nation or group of potential adversaries. He has not yet committed the country to deploying weapons in space, and any major space systems would require the approval of Congress and future administrations. But the Pentagon is moving forward on many fronts in the belief that space is key to "full spectrum dominance."
Three key supporters of exploiting the U.S. lead in space warfare are Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Before joining the Bush administration, Secretary Rumsfeld headed an advisory commission that mapped out many of the space warfare plans the Pentagon is now exploring. Mr. Cheney was secretary of defense during the 1991 Gulf War, when satellites demonstrated their military effectiveness in targeting and communications. General Myers once headed the Air Force Space Command.
U.S. space power appears to be developing much in the way air power did. Airplanes in World War I were used first for reconnaissance and communications. Machine guns were added for self-defense and to attack enemy airplanes. Later, bombs and missiles were developed so that airplanes could protect troops and attack targets on the ground.
In a similar transition, U.S. satellites have provided military reconnaissance and communications since the late 1960s. They have been directing munitions to their targets since the Gulf War. In the past year, unmanned aerial vehicles have fired missiles at terrorists in Yemen. Pushing such vehicles into orbit, or attaching weapons to satellites, would complete the transformation.
Space weapons can be divided into three categories: those that would defend against ballistic missiles; those that would attack or defend satellites, and those that would attack targets on Earth.
Boeing is already building a prototype airborne laser - a modified 747 designed to shoot a laser beam from its nose and blow up ballistic missiles in their boost phase. Assuming the technology works, the next step could be putting a laser in orbit, where it could be aimed at enemy missiles, satellites, aircraft, perhaps ground targets eventually.
A variety of anti-satellite weapons could destroy, blind, or jam enemy satellites. They could be launched from the ground, from high-flying aircraft, or from other satellites. Some might be designed to simply crash into enemy satellites.
Orbiting weapons capable of attacking Earth targets could include lasers, missiles, or nonexplosive projectiles like the so-called "Rods from God" proposal - an orbiting platform that would send satellite-guided tungsten rods screaming toward Earth at a moment's notice. Simply by virtue of their speed and weight, the rods could destroy hardened bunkers four stories underground.
Most of these weapons are in relatively early stages of research and development, and many may never pan out for technical, political, or financial reasons. But the Pentagon seems determined to offer some of these space tools to U.S. policymakers within the decade.
Last October, in a move that emphasized the importance of space in how the Pentagon sees the future of warfare, the U.S. Space Command and the U.S. Strategic Command were merged into an organization that now controls all U.S. nuclear and space forces.
"The missions of SpaceCom and StratCom have evolved to the point where merging the two into a single entity will eliminate redundancies in the command structure and streamline the decision-making process," Secretary Rumsfeld said at the time.
One of the largest components of the new StratCom - with 40,000 airmen and civilians - is Air Force Space Command, headquartered at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo.
The Space Command's Strategic Master Plan calls for the United States, by 2025, to be able to strike any target in the world from space within minutes, to protect U.S. systems in space from hostile forces, and to deny space access to potential enemies.
"Today, space forces and the information they provide are a pre-eminent force multiplier, enhancing nearly every mission accomplished by the U.S. military," the master plan says.
Space power enthusiasts see the development of space weapons as inevitable.
Lt. Col. Thomas Bell, in a 1999 paper for the Air War College, wrote, "It is inevitable mankind will weaponize space, and equally likely that weaponization will occur with maturing of specific technologies over the next 30 years." The first country to put weapons in space, he noted, may also be the last, because it will be in a position to deny the use of space to lagging competitors.
"If America doesn't weaponize space, an enemy will," said Peter Teets, undersecretary of the Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office, which manages the spy satellites.
The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Jack Kelly, a former Marine, was deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan administration.
-------- spies
Pentagon's Futures Market Plan Condemned
July 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Market.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits.
Two Democratic senators demanded Monday the project be stopped before investors begin registering this week. ``The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque,'' Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said.
The Pentagon office overseeing the program, called the Policy Analysis Market, said it was part of a research effort ``to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks.'' It said there would be a re-evaluation before more money was committed.
The market would work this way. Investors would buy and sell futures contracts -- essentially a series of predictions about what they believe might happen in the Mideast. Holders of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of investors who put money into the market but predicted wrong.
A graphic on the market's Web page showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown.
Although the Web site described the Policy Analysis Market as ``a market in the future of the Middle East,'' the graphic also included the possibility of a North Korea missile attack.
That graphic was apparently removed from the Web site hours after the news conference in which Wyden and fellow Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota criticizing the market.
Dorgan described it as useless, offensive and ``unbelievably stupid.''
``Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?'' he said.
According to its Web site, the Policy Analysis Market would be a joint program of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, and two private companies: Net Exchange, a market technologies company, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information arm of the publisher of The Economist magazine.
DARPA has received strong criticism from Congress for its Terrorism Information Awareness program, a computerized surveillance program that has raised privacy concerns. Wyden said the Policy Analysis Market is under retired Adm. John Poindexter, the head of the Terrorism Information Awareness program and, in the 1980s, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.
In its statement Monday, DARPA said that markets offer efficient, effective and timely methods for collecting ``dispersed and even hidden information. Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions.''
The description of the market on its Web site makes it appear similar to a computer-based commodities market. Contracts would be available based on economic health, civil stability, military disposition and U.S. economic and military involvement in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey.
Contracts would also be available on ``global economic and conflict indicators'' and specific events, for example U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state.
Traders who believe an event will occur can buy a futures contract. Those who believe the event is unlikely can try to sell a contract. The Web site does not address how much money investors would be likely to put into the market but says analysts would be motivated by the ``prospect of profit and at pain of loss'' to make accurate predictions.
Registration would begin Friday with trading beginning Oct. 1. The market would initially be limited to 1,000 traders, increasing to at least 10,000 by Jan. 1.
The Web site says government agencies will not be allowed to participate and will not have access to the identities or funds of traders.
The market is a project of a DARPA division called FutureMAP, or ``Futures Markets Applied to Prediction.'' FutureMAP is trying to develop programs that would allow the Defense Department to use market forces to predict future events, according to its Web site.
``The rapid reaction of markets to knowledge held by only a few participants may provide an early warning system to avoid surprise,'' it said.
It said the markets must offer ``compensation that is ethically and legally satisfactory to all sectors involved, while remaining attractive enough to ensure full and continuous participation of individual parties.''
Dorgan and Wyden released a letter to Poindexter calling for an immediate end to the program. They noted a May 20 report to lawmakers that cited the possibility of using market forces to predict whether terrorists would attack Israel with biological weapons.
``Surely such a threat should be met with intelligence gathering of the highest quality -- not by putting the question to individuals betting on an Internet Web site,'' they said.
Wyden said $600,000 has been spent on the program so far and the Pentagon plans to spend an additional $149,000 this year. The Pentagon has requested $3 million for the program for next year and $5 million for the following year.
Wyden said the Senate version of next year's defense spending bill would cut off money for the program, but the House version would fund it. The two versions will have to be reconciled.
On the Net:
Policy Analysis Market: www.policyanalysismarket.org
DARPA's FutureMap Web site: http://www.darpa.mil/iao/FutureMap.htm
----
Moscow Dusts Off Informers
The KGB ended up in the trash can of history. But its tactic of spying on the neighbors is getting a shot at a new enemy -- terrorism.
By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 28, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-inform28jul28002418,0,2709576.story
MOSCOW - For decades, nothing went unnoticed inside these crumbling apartment blocks or in the weedy courtyards outside. The KGB had secret informers in every building, and if a neighbor seemed suspect - a late-night visitor? a drunken tirade against a factory boss that leaked through the hollow walls? - someone quietly picked up the telephone.
The line between being the subject of a stukachi's report and being labeled an enemy of the people was perilously thin. Millions were arrested during Josef Stalin's purges of the 1930s, and it wasn't until 1991, when the feared Soviet spy agency cut loose an informer force that once numbered in the millions, that Russians could consider their hallways, playgrounds and courtyards largely outside the reach of the government's inquiring eyes.
Of all the new freedoms that swept through the former Soviet empire in the 1990s, few were as personal and immediate as the knowledge that no longer would the man sweeping the sidewalks also be watching which newspapers got put out in the trash, what guests showed up for dinner, what treats were offered one's cat (when the nation, everyone knew, was hungry). No longer could a man be sent to prison based on the report of a neighbor who, when all was said and done, simply wanted the other guy's apartment.
Now comes the war on terrorism. In recent months, the once-invincible Russian security services have faced a series of deadly attacks, from the takeover of a packed theater by Chechen rebels last October to a pair of terrorist bombings this month that left 17 dead, including a police officer and two suicide bombers. A booby trap attached to two grenades was found near a downtown soccer stadium entrance a little more than a week ago.
What to do? The KGB may have been consigned to history - replaced by two new security agencies with more modern faces - but its methods are getting dusted off for a fresh shot at a new enemy. The Moscow city Duma this month considered a bill to create a major new network of neighborhood informers whose job would be to keep a discreet eye on their own apartment blocks and report "suspicious activity" to the police.
A pilot program is already getting underway in the Taganka neighborhood, five miles southeast of the Kremlin, where organizers say volunteers - some of whom will be paid informers - will be on the lookout not only for terrorists, but also for thieves, drunks, loiterers or overly boisterous youths who warrant a precautionary call to police.
Authorities say it is no more sinister than Neighborhood Watch or phone-in-tips programs long in place in the U.S. and Europe.
"Really, since the first day I came here we have been dealing with people we call responsible volunteers. These are people who out of the realization of their social responsibility help the police do their job. Now, the official practice is coming back to life again," said Lt. Col. Anatoly Shlykov, chief precinct officer in the Taganka district and a Moscow police officer since 1967.
Hanging on the crumbling paint outside Shlykov's office is a poster depicting a formidable looking police officer in heavy gear leveling a sniper rifle at eye level. "Terrorism is an illness," it says. "Meet the doctor."
"It is absolutely necessary to be in close contact with the population if we want to prevent these acts of terrorism, and people have generally been very receptive and approving of the practice being revived," Shlykov said. "And it is not enough for the people merely to feel responsible about sharing information with the police. It is also important for them to know that they will be materially rewarded."
The bill presented this month, which has the support of Moscow's mayor and could come up for a final vote Sept. 3, would pay citizens watch council chairmen 3,000 rubles a month, or about $300. Their informant forces would serve mostly unpaid, though police said they would probably reward fruitful tips.
The proposal has not been universally welcomed. In a country still battling its gulag past, it has called up unwelcome memories for some. Public debate, ironically, has not been unlike the controversy faced in the U.S. Congress over passage, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, of the USA Patriot Act, which provides American law enforcement agents, among other things, the right to secretly search homes and learn what books citizens have purchased if they suspect that someone is connected with foreign terrorists.
"The road to hell is often paved with the best intentions, given the acute danger of terrorism and the urgent need to combat it productively," said Yevgeny Bunimovich, a legislator who spoke against the Moscow bill during debate here. "There is one important factor: It is the history of Russia. In our country, anything can be treated with suspicion, given our rich history of mistaking people who are simply different for terrorists and saboteurs."
Tatyana I. Kasatkina, executive director of the human rights group Memorial, said that after a pair of apartment house bombings in Moscow in 1999, she came home and found a sign on the door of her building: "Report those who live here unregistered."
"It scared me," she said. "Especially this word, 'report.' What does it mean to report? For example, I can report on my neighbor, whom I don't like. This we know from our history."
Pavel I. Voshchanov, then-President Boris N. Yeltsin's press secretary, warned that the measure threatens to arm the ubiquitous old grandmothers who spend their days gossiping in the courtyards of Moscow apartment houses with the new weapon of suspected terrorist threats.
"Like everything else today, this would be just another farce-like repetition of what we had in this country back in the past. I can tell you who will join these councils. Old and aggressive babushkas who have nothing to do but a lot of negative energy to persecute us with," Voshchanov said.
"I can imagine how you invite to dinner a friend who incidentally happens to be an Armenian, and you're sitting at a nicely laid table sipping good wine and having a friendly conversation while this watchful babushka frenetically dials the local police office, and shortly an angry policeman escorted by the delighted babushka knocks on your door, checks the papers of your guest and spoils the dinner."
Taganka is a middle- and working-class neighborhood of about 96,000 pensioners, laborers and intellectuals that lies next to several large factories and a meat processing plant. It was chosen for the pilot project because it represents such a broad cross-section of Moscow society, said Inna Svyatenko, the city's Duma deputy who introduced the informant bill.
"I'm a lieutenant colonel in the air force. In my line of duty, I am in charge of flight safety. But I also live in Moscow. I have two little kids, and I realize that our city has changed distinctly in the last 15 or 20 years. I used to walk to school every day. Now, I have a daughter in the sixth grade, and I have to walk her to school every day, holding her hand all the way," Svyatenko said.
"We've got locks on almost every door in Moscow. We're trying to introduce a system of video surveillance. Sixty percent of Moscow households have steel entry doors. But it will be impossible for us to live only in our apartments. We will have to step outside at some point. And to make our courtyards safe, there would have to be at least four policemen in every courtyard in Moscow. Our city would turn into a police state."
That, she said, is what started her thinking about making citizens themselves the police - or at least the eyes and ears of law enforcement.
"In almost every courtyard, there's a person or a group of people sitting on the benches, and they know exactly who comes and goes, who visits whom, who takes their children to school in the morning, who walks their dog With the theater hostage-taking, if the people in the neighborhood had been more attentive, they would definitely have noticed some armed people moving around, and they might have prevented this action."
The first citizens watch council will be housed on the bottom floor of an apartment building that is also home to the local police precinct.
Anna Barsutskaya, a 69-year-old grandmother of three who is helping lead the effort, acknowledges that it's a return to the past. And what, she asks, is wrong with that?
"Not all things were bad from the past. At least everybody had a job, and everybody was sure of tomorrow," she said. "We're not trying to poke our nose into the private affairs of people. But if we see a stranger, if we see an unknown face renting a flat here, we would like to find out who it is. And if there's a concern, we will seek the help of the police."
That not everyone appreciates the new inquisitiveness already is obvious. Barsutskaya said she got a telephone call recently from a man with "a very coarse voice" and a vague accent, who told her that police had just searched an apartment based on information she had provided.
"He burst into invectives, calling me a snitch, a spy and a despicable person. His speech was peppered with criminal jargon," she recalled nervously. "He then continued: 'You probably hope to strike it rich by ratting on people. Instead, we will make a solid oak coffin for you, old rat. And we will bury you at a good cemetery. You will have to pay for being an informer. Informers must be killed.'"
Barsutskaya tried to sound confident, but she was quaking a little.
"I will not allow someone to terrorize me for simply doing my civic duty," she said. "But everybody knows that there are plenty of people in Moscow who have got something to hide from the law enforcement bodies. And Taganka is not an exception in this respect. Such people will stop at nothing."
In the courtyard outside, where about a dozen residents sat quietly in the gloomy midday breeze, most seemed willing to give the project a try.
Larisa Grishchenko, 41, said three young women suddenly moved into the apartment formerly inhabited by her ex-husband and have given confusing information about his whereabouts, saying only that he is in an unspecified mental asylum. Perhaps a watch council could help ascertain her ex-husband's safety, she said.
"I have a neighbor who drinks heavily, and this happens on a daily basis. There's mayhem, there's [noise] - why should this kind of thing not be reported? My personal opinion is I'm not against these public watch councils," said another neighbor, Vladimir Alexy, 42.
But Yelena Shubina, a 31-year-old homemaker, interjected: "Of course, if they start reporting unobjective information to the police, that won't be good either. There are some people who are totally consumed by envy, and they report everything about their neighbors to the police, whether it's useful or not."
Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
West Wing Pipe Dream
Beyond yellowcake: Dissecting the over-hyped threat of those aluminum tubes.
By Tim Dickinson
July 28, 2003
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2003/31/we_489_01.html
Lost in the now radioactive State of the Union scandal is the fact that the attempted procurement of African uranium wasn't the only false claim the president uttered that night about Saddam's nuclear aims. The 19 words that followed the now-infamous "16 enormously overblown" ones have proved to be every bit as untrue, and the intelligence underlying the claim nearly as shoddy.
"Our intelligence sources tell us," President Bush told to the nation on January 28, "that he [Saddam] has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." The claim, paired with the alleged uranium buy, painted a damning picture of Baghdad's atomic ambitions.
The truth is far less frightening. Saddam did indeed attempt to purchase some highly-refined aluminum tubes. But they were not, as alleged by the Bush administration, to be used in a uranium-enriching centrifuge; rather they were intended to be used in the production of conventional rockets -- at least according to the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency, the closest thing to an impartial authority in this case.
What's more, this was well known at the time Bush delivered his address. Indeed, two weeks before the State of the Union, the IAEA said that the tubes "were not directly suitable" for uranium enrichment. Months earlier, the Department of Energy had reached the same conclusion -- as had intelligence experts at the State Department.
So why did the President allege a nuclear use for the tubes? According to Greg Thielmann, who directed the office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research until September 2002, "This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude. It's top-down use of intelligence; 'We know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers.'"
Here, a timeline of how the aluminum tubing allegation became a lynchpin in the case against Saddam Hussein -- and how that claim ultimately unraveled.
September 8, 2002 The Bush administration leaks word to The New York Times' Judith Miller and Michael Gordon that Saddam Hussein has repeatedly tried to acquire aluminum tubing "specifically designed" for a nuclear weapons program. Officials told the Times reporters that they believed the tubes were to be used as components of a centrifuge needed to enrich uranium. Unnamed Bush officials cite the "diameter, thickness and other technical properties" of the tubes in their assessment.
-- From the Source: Read the Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/international/middleeast/08IRAQ.html
Later the same day, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice appears on CNN's Late Edition, saying the aluminum tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs."
-- From the Source: Read the CNN transcript of Rice's appearance http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/iraq.debate/
September 8: Tag-teaming for the administration on NBC's Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney says that Saddam Hussein "is trying, through his illicit procurement network, to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium -- specifically aluminum tubes."
-- From the Source: Read the Meet the Press transcript of Cheney's appearance http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/meet.htm
September 9: State Department spokesman Richard Boucher tells reporters: "They've tried to buy the specialized aluminum tubing that's needed for centrifuges. They're trying to separate out nuclear material. When are they going to succeed? And how long do you wait to find out if they have or have not?"
-- From the Source: Read the transcript of the White House briefing http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2002/13344.htm
September 12: Making a case for pre-emptive war, President Bush tells the United Nation's general assembly, "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." The same statement appears, verbatim, in the White House's "Saddam Hussein Fact Sheet."
-- From the Source: Read the text of the president's speech http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/12/politics/12AP-PTEX.html
September 13: In the first public indication of ambiguity about this intelligence, The New York Times reports "some experts in the State Department and the Energy Department" have raised questions as to whether the tubes were actually intended for conventional artillery. "Other, more senior, officials" the paper reports, "insisted that this was a minority view among intelligence experts.
"'This is a footnote, not a split,' a senior administration official said.'" -- From the Source: Read the Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/international/13ARMS.html
September 19: Testifying before the House International Relations Committee, Powell says: "You have been reading stories about these aluminum tubes. There may be a debate; some say in the newspaper today, about whether they're for centrifuges or for something else. The fact of the matter is that he is going after this kind of technology, so his intention has not changed."
-- From the Source: Read the transcript of Powell's testimony http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa81814.000/hfa81814_0f.htm
September 23: The Institute for Science and International Security -- an independent organization whose nuclear research on Iraq has been quoted by the White House -- releases a report calling the aluminum tube intelligence ambiguous, citing dissenting views from senior scientists in the Department of Energy.
"The debate over the purpose of the tubing left some dissenters perplexed.
'Always the same answer, no matter what the objections were,' one said. Inevitably, this situation led to speculation. Did the CIA have information about the tubes it was not sharing to protect important secrets? Or was the CIA arguing a view not really based in the facts? The recent statements emanating from the CIA suggest that it is not as certain about the intended purpose of this shipment as first stated.
...
ISIS has learned that U.S. nuclear experts who dissent from the Administration's position are expected to remain silent. The President has said what he has said, end of story, one knowledgeable expert said." -- From the Source: Read the ISIS report http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/aluminumtubes.html
September 24: In a white paper from Downing Street, the British government says of the aluminum tubing: "There is no definitive intelligence that it is destined for a nuclear programme."
-- From the Source: Read the British intelligence dossier http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page275.asp
October 2: The National Intelligence Estimate (a highly classified synthesis of the work of six intelligence agencies) issues its key points on Iraq's possible nuclear program. A portion of the document, declassified in July 2003, says that "most agencies" believe the attempt to purchase the aluminum tubes "provides compelling evidence" that Hussein is attempting to enrich uranium.
By "most" the NIE specifically means four of the six agencies. Dissenting are the Department of Energy, and the State Department's INR, which makes this eye-popping assessment: In INR's view Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapon program. [emphasis added] -- From the Source: Read the declassified National Intelligence Estimate http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/reports/2002/nie_iraq_october2002.htm
October 5: Knight Ridder Newspapers reports: "Several senior administration officials and intelligence officers who spoke under the condition of anonymity assert that the decision to publicize one analysis of the aluminum tubes and ignore the contrary one is typical of the way the administration has been handling intelligence about Iraq."
October 7: Speaking in Cincinnati, Ohio, President Bush says:
"Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." -- From the Source: Read the text of the president's speech http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html
December 2: Responding to a question about Iraq's claim that it attempted to procure the tubes for conventional weaponry, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says: "I will say this is something that the President has said publicly, that Iraq did, in fact, seek to buy these tubes for the purpose of producing, not as Iraq now claims conventional forces, but for the purpose of trying to produce nuclear weapons. And so it's, on the one hand, mildly encouraging that Iraq would now admit to what it's been doing. But on the other hand, a lie is still a lie, because these -- they sought to produce these for the purpose of production of nuclear weapons, not conventional." -- From the Source: Read the transcript of the White House briefing http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021202-6.html
December 19: Colin Powell holds a news conference, during which he repeats the claim:
"We also know that Iraq has tried to obtain high strength aluminum tubes, which can be used to enrich uranium in centrifuges for a nuclear weapons program. The Iraqi regime is required by Resolution 1441 to report those attempts. Iraq, however, has failed to provide adequate information about the procurement and use of these tubes.
Most brazenly of all, the Iraqi declaration denies the existence of any prohibited weapons programs at all." -- From the Source: Read the transcript of Powell's news conference http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2002/16123.htm
January 9, 2003: Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reports that the "aluminum tubes sought by Iraq in 2001 and 2002 appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets: "While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for it."
-- From the Source: Read the text of El Baradei's report http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n002.shtml
In response, a senior Bush official tells The New York Times, "I think the Iraqis are spinning the IAEA."
-- From the Source: Read the Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/international/middleeast/10ALUM.html
January 23: Answering a question from New York Times reporter Michael Gordon following a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz tries to downplay the IAEA report:
"Gordon: Given that we're talking about matters of war and peace, does the administration plan to make a further report and provide intelligence information to address these concerns stated by the IAEA in its public report, and to buttress its claims that Iraq has resumed the production of weapons of mass destruction? And if not, is this because of targeting concerns, sources and methods, or do you simply not have reliable information that would stand up in a public forum on this?
Wolfowitz: I think the short answer, Michael, really is there is a lot of evidence; as the evidence accumulates, our ability to talk about it undoubtedly will grow. But we don't have a lot of time; time is running out." -- From the Source: Read the transcript of Wolfowitz's comments http://www.pentagon.mil/news/Jan2003/t01232003_t0123cfr.html
January 24: Updating the intelligence on the ground, the IAEA tells The Washington Post that "It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium, but you'd have to believe that Iraq deliberately ordered the wrong stock and intended to spend a great deal of time and money reworking each piece."
The newest batch of tubes Iraq tried to purchase "actually bear an inscription that includes the word 'rocket,' according to one official who examined them," the Post elaborates.
-- From the Source: Read the Post article http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0124-08.htm
January 28: In the State of the Union, Bush follows the infamous uranium claim with the aluminum allegation:
"Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide." -- From the Source: Read the text of the State of the Union address http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/print/20030128-19.html
January 29: U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte replies to a reporter's question about the disputed use of the tubes:
"Are we convinced that those tubes were designed and were intended for enrichment of uranium? The answer is definitely, yes." -- From the Source: Read the transcript of Negroponte's comments http://www.un.int/usa/03_011.htm
January 30: Defending the administration's claims about the aluminum tubes, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says: "The president stands by every word he said."
-- From the Source: Read the transcript of the White House briefing http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030130-34.html
January 30: In a statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ambassador Negroponte says of the aluminum tubes: "We believe their characteristics are not consistent with a rocket program and are intended for nuclear centrifuges."
In the same committee hearing, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, responded to a questing by Senator Joe Biden (D-Delaware):
"Armitage: On the question of why we spend so much time on things that are difficult to prove, I don't know, perhaps, particularly on the aluminum tubes we miscalculated. Clearly there's a difference of opinion in the intelligence community which we came up and briefed forthrightly and, indeed, deliberately.
Biden: I agree, you did.
Armitage: Well, the reason we did it deliberately was to show you we're not playing hide-the-bacon here, there is a difference of opinion. I believe ... that the view is shifting on this more to the side that this has a relationship to nuclear activities rather than rocket motors. But perhaps we miscalculated, and I take your comments as a sign to, as we used to say in the Navy, KISS, keep it simple, sailor, go with your strong points." -- From the Source: Read the transcript of Armitage's testimony (Microsoft Word format) http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/ArmitageTestimony030130.doc
February 5: Secretary of State Colin Powell, laying out the Administration's intelligence about Iraqi WMD before the UN Security Council, gives a balanced assessment: "By now, just about everyone has heard of these tubes, and we all know that there are differences of opinion; there is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts and the Iraqis themselves argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher."
-- From the Source: Read the text of Powell's presentation http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300.htm
A slide from Powell's accompanying presentation, however, gives a rather one-sided view:
-- From the Source: View all the slides http://www.state.gov/p/nea/disarm/
February 11: Before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee CIA Director George Tenet testifies:
"Iraq has established a pattern of clandestine procurements destined to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. These procurements include but go well beyond the aluminum tubes that you have heard so much about.
...
Now aluminum tubes are interesting. And I know there is controversy associated with it. Except that when you look at the clandestine nature of the procurement and how they have tried to deceive what's showing up, and then you look at the other dual-use items that they're trying to procure, we think we have stumbled onto one avenue of a nuclear weapons program. And there may be other avenues that we haven't seen, but that he is reconstituting his capability is something that we believe very strongly." -- From the Source: Read the transcript of Tenet's testimony (PDF format) http://intelligence.senate.gov/0302hrg/030211/tenet.pdf
March 7: The IAEA says it finds the Iraqi claim that the tubes were intended for conventional rockets credible: "Based on available evidence, the IAEA team has concluded that Iraq's efforts to import these aluminium tubes were not likely to have been related to the manufacture of centrifuges and, moreover, that it was highly unlikely that Iraq could have achieved the considerable re-design needed to use them in a revived centrifuge programme."
El Baradei adds: "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq."
-- From the Source: Read the text of El Baradei's report http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n006.shtml
March 9: In an interview on CNN's Late Edition, Powell says: "The issue of the centrifuges -- and I know that Dr. ElBaradei has said he doesn't see any evidence that the centrifuges, the aluminum tubes, were being used for centrifuges -- but we still have an open question with respect to that and we see more information from a European country this week that suggests that that is exactly what those tubes were intended to be used for. Our CIA believes strongly, and I think it's an open question."
-- From the Source: Read the CNN transcript of Powell's appearance http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/09/le.00.html
March 10: The Institute for Science and International Security issues a follow-up report:
"A critical question is whether the Bush Administration has deliberately misled the public and other governments in playing a 'nuclear card' that it knew would strengthen public support for war.
For over a year and a half, an analyst at the CIA has been pushing the aluminum tube story, despite consistent disagreement by a wide range of experts in the United States and abroad. His opinion, however, obtained traction in the summer of 2002 with senior members of the Bush Administration, including the President.
The administration was forced to admit publicly that dissenters exist, particularly at the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories. This dissent is significant because the DOE has virtually the only expertise on gas centrifuges and nuclear weapons programs in the United States government." -- From the Source: Read the ISIS report http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iraq/al_tubes.html
March 16: Back on Meet the Press Cheney says: "I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past."
-- From the Source: Read the Meet the Press transcript of Cheney's appearance http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/cheneymeetthepress.htm
March 19: War begins.
June 9: In a retrospective of the aluminum claims, Newsweek reports that the aluminum tube claims had been doubted early on within the intelligence community:
"The strongest evidence that Saddam was building a nuke was the fact that he was secretly importing aluminum tubes that could be used to help make enriched uranium.... At the CIA, Tenet seems to have latched on to the tubes as a kind of smoking gun. He brought one of the tubes to a closed Senate hearing [in September 2002]. But from the beginning, other intelligence experts in the government had their doubts. After canvassing experts at the nation's nuclear labs, the Department of Energy concluded that the tubes were the wrong specification to be used in a centrifuge, the equipment used to enrich uranium. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) concluded that the tubes were meant to be used for a multiple-rocket-launching system. (And Saddam was not secretly buying them; the purchase order was posted on the Internet.) In two reports to Powell, INR concluded there was no reliable evidence that Iraq had restarted a nuclear program at all. 'These were not weaselly worded,' said [Greg] Thielmann, [who recently resigned from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research]. 'They were as definitive as these things go.'" -- From the Source: Read the Newsweek article http://www.msnbc.com/news/919753.asp
June 30: The New Republic reports: "Many of the intelligence analysts who had participated in the aluminum-tubes debate were appalled. One described the feeling to TNR: 'You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum really is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie.'"
-- From the Source: Read The New Republic article (pay) https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20030630&s=trb063003
July 2: Speaking at U.C. Berkeley, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D.-California) takes Bush and Cheney to task:
"This administration took part fact and part supposition -- subjective information delivered to them by the intelligence community -- and they shaped it to reach a preconceived conclusion for the use of force.
...
I am deeply disturbed that I didn't know at the time that the aluminum tubes ... could possibly be used in gas centrifuges, but also in vacuum cleaners. We were told definitively that they were for gas centrifuges. The administration cherry-picked information that bolstered the case" -- From the Source: Read the Berkeley release on Tauscher's speech http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/02_tauscher.shtml
July 11: Condoleeza Rice, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, defends the aluminum claim, saying it was written into the National Intelligence Estimate:
"The NIE ...has the yellowcake story in it, had the aluminum tube story in it. Now, if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or to me.
...
The president of the United States went up to give the State of the Union on the basis of information that was in his National Intelligence Estimate and that everybody thought to be true." -- From the Source: Read the transcript of Rice's comments http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030711-7.html
July 18: Asked about the dubious claims in the State of the Union speech, a senior administration official tells The Washington Post: "The president is not a fact-checker."
-- From the Source: Read the Post article . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13744-2003Jul18.html
What do you think?
mailto:backtalk@motherjones.com?subject=Backtalk: West Wing Pipe Dream
-------- war crimes
Rwanda Is Said to Seek New Prosecutor for War Crimes Court
July 28, 2003
New York Times
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/international/africa/28TRIB.html
THE HAGUE, July 25 - With the quiet support of the United States, the Rwandan government has been campaigning to have Carla Del Ponte replaced as chief prosecutor for the tribunal dealing with the mass killing in Rwanda in 1994, Western diplomats and tribunal officials have said in recent days.
They said Rwanda was furious that Ms. Del Ponte had been investigating several senior civilian and military members of the present Tutsi-led government for reported atrocities at the time of the bloodshed.
As many as half a million Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were believed to be killed in the Hutu-led slaughter that lasted three months. But Tutsi troops who subsequently seized power are believed to have killed more than 30,000 civilians in reprisals.
Until now, all those indicted have been Hutu, and Ms. Del Ponte has often denounced Rwanda for obstructing her efforts to investigate crimes by Tutsi. But she has insisted that the tribunal's mandate is to deal with atrocities on both sides and that she must continue investigating to safeguard the court's credibility and to ward off future revenge killings.
Now Rwanda has apparently won support from the United States and Britain in trying to separate Ms. Del Ponte from the tribunal, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania. The decision is up to the United Nations Security Council, which must debate the issue before Sept. 15, when her four-year mandate ends.
On Monday, she will meet with Secretary General Kofi Annan. Her mandate as prosecutor for the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal is expected to be renewed. But several diplomats said that both Britain and Rwanda were pressing for a resolution to create two separate prosecutors, effectively dismissing Ms. Del Ponte from the Rwanda tribunal.
"We and others have been heavily lobbied by the Rwandan government complaining about Del Ponte, saying her work has lagged behind because she is too busy in The Hague," said a diplomat from a Security Council member country.
But tribunal officials contended that Rwanda wanted her replaced to try to block several pending indictments of members of the government. Both the United States and Britain insist that they want all investigations to end by next year, and British diplomats have said that will mean dropping the Tutsi investigations. The United States, apparently concerned about stability in troubled central Africa, has privately pressed Ms. Del Ponte in recent months to drop these investigations and let the Rwandan government itself deal with them, court officials said.
Some human rights advocates and court officials fear that such a move is tantamount to granting impunity. "Rwanda has had nine years to deal with such cases, and it has not done a significant job," said Alison des Forges, a specialist in Rwandan affairs at Human Rights Watch.
Tension between Rwanda and the court is not new. Rwandan and other human rights groups have said the whole institution, not just the prosecutor's office, has made slow progress and suffered from numerous management problems, varying from the incompetence of judges and administrators to shortages of translators and prosecutors. Court staff members said many problems had been remedied in the past year.
But even human rights advocates, critical of the court, said that Rwanda had long resented the tribunal and its ample funding and that it had boycotted its work. Tribunal investigators in Arusha said the Rwandan government had regularly intimidated witnesses and refused travel documents for anyone suspected of cooperating with the tribunal in cases linked to crimes by Tutsi. Last year, it imposed such broad travel restrictions, even for witnesses in Hutu crimes, that the tribunal had to suspend hearings in three trials.
When Ms. Del Ponte complained to the Security Council about Rwanda's obstructions last July, the Council took six months to respond and issued what the court viewed as a mild reprimand.
Laurent Walpin, the tribunal's former director of investigations, said that among the numerous problems, he found the "erratic cooperation with Rwanda" the most difficult. To appoint a new prosecutor, with investigations due to close next spring, he said, "makes no sense at all now."
"You could have made that case a few years ago, but now it would only bog things down," he said.
It is still unclear when and how the Council will vote. Some countries, including the United States, are believed to be weary of having a public confrontation with Ms. Del Ponte. People close to her have said that the fiercely independent prosecutor may quit if her removal from the Rwanda court threatens to undermine her credibility.
One proposal is to renew her mandate for both tribunals for at least one year to allow her to conclude all ongoing investigations, even those linked to Tutsi officials. Ms. des Forges said it would be a serious mistake if the Rwanda tribunal prosecuted no Tutsi-linked crimes. "It would undermine the value of the tribunal and make the whole operation look like victors' justice," she said.
----
Lawyers sue Blair over war
By Richard Galpin
BBC Athens correspondent
Monday, 28 July, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3101697.stm
Top lawyers from Greece filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague on Monday against senior UK officials.
They want to indict Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior members of the UK government and military for allegedly breaching international law by attacking Iraq.
The lawyers, from the Athens Bar Council, say they have compiled a dossier of "strong evidence" against the officials, including more than 20 alleged war crimes.
They include the killing of Iraqi civilians, depriving the population of drinking water in cities such as Basra, the destruction of food supplies and the bombardment of residential areas.
The allegations are based on dozens of reports about the conflict, printed in newspapers and broadcast on television.
The Bar Association said the alleged crimes breached the statute of the International Criminal Court.
International Criminal Court logo The ICHR has rejected a string of cases over Iraq Among those accused with Mr Blair are Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, who recently retired as Chief of Defence Staff.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court received the dossier, saying the contents would be reviewed.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will now decide whether the case falls within his jurisdiction.
If he thinks it does, a panel of judges must also give approval before an investigation can begin.
Heinous crimes
The British Government has always stressed it acted within the law during the conflict.
But a senior Greek lawyer, who helped draw up the lawsuit, said it would be difficult for the British prime minister and others to defend themselves against the charges.
She alleged that heinous crimes have been committed which should not go unpunished.
The Greek lawyers announced in May their intention to take legal action.
They said the war in Iraq breached international treaties such as the Charter of the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions and the ICC's own Statute.
However, the ICC has already rejected almost 40 cases over the war in Iraq.
----
U.N. to replace war court attorney
July 28, 2003
By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030727-104304-5201r.htm
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will tell Carla del Ponte at a meeting today that he wants to replace her as chief prosecutor for the court trying genocide and war crimes cases from Rwanda, a U.N. source said.
Miss Del Ponte is in charge of prosecutions at both the Rwanda tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, and at the Hague-based court trying war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.
Mr. Annan's decision to recommend that the roles be split follows criticism of Miss Del Ponte's work on the Rwanda tribunal and the perception of African member states that the Arusha court is playing "second fiddle" to its European counterpart, according to diplomats at the United Nations.
Miss Del Ponte, who is based in The Hague, will be asked to continue her role at the court there.
Mr. Annan was scheduled to meet with Miss Del Ponte today and will tell her "he wants to separate the two jobs, and appoint a new prosecutor for the [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda]," a U.N. source who requested anonymity told UPI over the weekend.
Chief U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard had no comment on the matter.
Florence Hartmann, Miss Del Ponte's spokeswoman, also did not want to comment ahead of the meeting today, saying only that separating the jobs would "undermine the authority, independence and credibility of the tribunals."
The Rwanda tribunal began work in 1995, the year after the country's ruling Hutu elite orchestrated the massacre of hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis and their politically moderate Hutu allies.
Miss Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney general, was appointed chief prosecutor for both tribunals in 1999, succeeding Louise Arbour of Canada for a four-year term that is up for renewal in September.
Mr. Annan's recommendation has to be approved by the 15-member Security Council, which set up both tribunals. But the U.N. source said the secretary-general had already held informal consultations, and that none of the five veto-wielding permanent members had objected to the plan. "There is consensus on the council," the source said.
Another U.N. diplomat, also unwilling to be named, said four or five non-veto nations on the Security Council were uneasy about the idea. They "are worried that [the move] will do more harm than good," the diplomat said. They "are saying, more or less, 'we don't understand [why this should happen].' "
The Rwandan government has been unhappy with Miss Del Ponte for more than a year, since she announced that the tribunal would seek to prosecute members of the mainly Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Army for crimes committed during the genocide.
The RPA is the armed wing of the now-ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, and was responsible for killing "thousands of civilians, in the process committing war crimes and crimes against humanity," according to the global rights watchdog, Human Rights Watch.
The RPF government struck back at Miss Del Ponte, preventing witnesses from traveling to the tribunal and withdrawing other forms of cooperation.
The Rwandan government wants her replaced "not for reasons of efficiency or effectiveness," said Miss Del Ponte's spokeswoman, but rather because she was being too effective. "They want to stop the investigation of the RPF," she said.
Although Miss Del Ponte has been lauded for her work on the tribunals, some observers suggest that her blunt personal style and lack of diplomatic and political skills left her with few allies as criticisms of her role in Arusha grew.
"It is a really tough job," said one lawyer who has dealt with her, "but she has not made things easier for herself.
"She is politically tone deaf," the lawyer, who is a critic of the tribunals, went on. "Unlike [her predecessor] she never took the time to stroke officials at the U.N., or to build relationships with any of the permanent five [Security Council members]."
But at the United Nations, Miss Del Ponte's critics and defenders were unanimous that it was not about personality.
"Everyone agrees it is not personal," the U.N. diplomat said. "The objective is to get the best justice for the victims of these crimes."
•William M. Reilly in New York contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Congress' 9/11 Report Raises Credibility Questions for National Security Adviser
July 28, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Intelligence-Rice.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The congressional report on pre-Sept. 11 intelligence calls into question answers that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice gave the public last year about the White House's knowledge of terrorism threats.
It's a fresh credibility issue for the adviser whose remarks about prewar Iraq information also have been questioned by members of Congress.
President Bush's adviser told the public in May 2002 that a pre-Sept. 11 intelligence briefing for the president on terrorism contained only a general warning of threats and largely historical information, not specific plots, the report said.
But the authors of the congressional report, released last week, stated the briefing given to the president a month before the suicide hijackings included recent intelligence that al-Qaida was planning to send operatives into the United States to carry out an attack using high explosives.
The White House defended Rice, saying her answers were accurate given what she could state publicly at the time about still-classified information and that Bush retains full confidence in Rice.
Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, endorsed Rice's work Monday. And Rice's spokeswoman, Anna Perez, said her boss' statement was accurate because the information about a possible Osama bin Laden-backed explosives attack in the United States ``does not constitute a specific warning. It is in fact general with no when, how or where.''
The Sept. 11 congressional investigators underscore their point three times in their report, using nearly identical language to contrast Rice's answers with the actual information in the presidential briefing.
The president's daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001, contained ``information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of bin Laden supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives,'' the report stated.
A footnote to that passage then quotes what Rice told the public at a May 16, 2002, news conference.
Rice ``stated, however, that the report did not contain specific warning information, but only a generalized warning, and did not contain information that al-Qaida was discussing a particular planned attack against a specific target at any specific time, place, or by any specific method,'' the footnote said.
At the same May 2002 press briefing, Rice also said that ``I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile.''
But the congressional report states that ``from at least 1994, and continuing into the summer of 2001, the Intelligence Community received information indicating that terrorists were contemplating, among other means of attack, the use of aircraft as weapons.''
The report says that Rice and other top officials, including Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, weren't told of the intelligence and concluded the information was ``not widely known'' even in the intelligence community.
White House officials defended Rice's answers.
``Dr. Rice's briefing was a full and accurate accounting of the materials in question without compromising classified material that could endanger national security,'' National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack said.
Perez said Rice, during her May 2002 briefing, did mention that U.S. intelligence received specific threats against U.S. interests in April and May 2001 but said the focus at that time was principally on overseas targets.
``She did not avoid specifics about she could talk about. She was pretty specific,'' Perez said.
More recently, Rice's explanations about what the White House knew about Iraq also have been questioned by members of Congress and by Democrats seeking the presidential nomination.
But Goss, the Intelligence Committee chairman, said Monday night he believes Rice has been honest in her answers and served Bush well and that some of the recent criticism in Congress stems more from some lawmakers' frustratiuon at not getting full access to information from the NSC about terrorism and Iraq.
``I don't think there is anything in the report that casts any shadows at all on Dr. Rice's credibility,'' Goss said. ``I think she has served the president very well. She is more than a capable person, she is a brilliant person.''
Rice told the press several weeks ago that Bush's State of the Union message never would have included any mention of Iraq shopping for uranium in Africa ``if we had known what we know now.''
But Stephen Hadley, Rice's deputy, disclosed last Tuesday that two CIA memos and a phone call from CIA Director George Tenet had persuaded him to take a similar passage about Iraq and uranium out of a presidential speech three months before the State of the Union address.
Hadley said he had forgotten about the CIA's objections by the time the State of the Union was being crafted in January.
Hadley said one of the memos casting doubt on the intelligence was sent to Rice. She doesn't recall reading it, the NSC's spokesman said. Hadley said he didn't consult Rice on the matter.
In regard to Sept. 11, Rice said in the May 2002 press conference that intelligence reports prior to the attacks had focused on ``traditional hijacking.''
But in its first hearing last September, the congressional inquiry emphasized that the intelligence community had produced various reports over the years suggesting that terrorists might use airplanes as weapons.
In 1998, the government obtained information that a group of unidentified Arabs planned to fly an explosive-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center. A month later, intelligence agencies obtained information that Osama bin Laden's next operation could possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport.
``It shouldn't have been a shock to anybody that the people would take airplanes and make them weapons of mass destruction, or at least local destruction,'' Sen. Bob Graham, the inquiry's co-chairman, said last week.
-------- immigration / refugees
Immigrants Fear Deportation After Registration
Number of Mideast, Muslim Men Expelled Rises Sharply
By Nurith C. Aizenman and Edward Walsh
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 28, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54307-2003Jul27?language=printer
Andre Aniba acknowledges he hasn't always played by the rules. In 1998, the former pastry chef came to the United States from Tunisia on a three-month tourist visa. He has lived here ever since.
But when Congress passed legislation two years later that allowed illegal immigrants to apply for permanent residency, Aniba quickly sent in the proper forms. Early this year, when the government called on visitors from 25 nations that are considered havens for terrorists to register with immigration authorities, he dutifully appeared.
To his horror, Aniba, whose application to work as a chef at a Maryland restaurant was pending, was told he would be deported.
His experience was hardly exceptional. With little public notice outside immigrant communities, the government is moving to deport the largest number of visitors from Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries in U.S. history -- more than 13,000 of the nearly 83,000 men older than 16 who complied with the registration program by various deadlines between last September and April.
When they showed up, they were found in violation of immigration laws -- even though, like Aniba, many were already participating in the government-sponsored program to become legal residents.
"The sheer numbers are mind-boggling," said Sohail Mohammed, an attorney in Clifton, N.J., who handles many of the cases and says Muslims are being unfairly singled out in the tightening of immigration procedures after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "We could end up deporting almost as many Muslims in one year as we have in the last 10. And to me that shows that we're not administering our immigration laws fairly."
To Aniba, now 27 and living in Rockville, the frustration is more personal. "It's like [the United States] said to me, 'Yes, come here. Get a green card.' And then suddenly said, 'Oh, wait! I changed my mind,' after I had gone through all that hassle and expense and waited more than two years for my application to go through," said Aniba, who agreed to speak only on condition that his nickname of Andre be used to avoid jeopardizing his deportation case. " . . . It's unfair and it's discrimination."
Middle Easterners still make up a very small percentage of the 150,000 to 180,000 foreign nationals deported annually; the overwhelming majority are Mexican. Yet even if many of the 13,000 men facing deportation proceedings persuade judges not to expel them, government officials agree that the number of Middle Eastern and Muslim men forced to leave probably will dwarf totals from previous years.
Deportations of people from the same Middle Eastern and largely Muslim countries totaled about 1,300 annually in recent years. They reached about 2,800 in the year after the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the 25 nations on the list are Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Tunisia, and one non-Muslim nation, North Korea.
The dramatic rise in deportations is a side effect, not an objective, of the registration program, said Bill Strassberger, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
"The goal was to register individuals from these particular countries. . . . I don't know that anyone expected that we would have that many visitors who were here unlawfully," he said. "And any time an immigration officer comes into contact with someone who is unlawfully present, they do have a responsibility to place that person in deportation proceedings."
Strassberger described the program as the first step in establishing a new entry and exit system under which all visitors to the United States eventually will be required to register. He said visitors from the 25 countries covered in the initial stages of the program are considered "higher risk" because people from those countries have been linked to terrorist organizations.
"Since 9/11, the country is at a higher alert," he said. "We have to take extra precautions, and that would include monitoring the arrival, departures and travels of individuals from countries that have an active terrorist organization presence that poses a threat to us."
But Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the policy "is being used as almost a deportation trap. I think it's causing a lot of fear and apprehension. It creates a sense of being besieged. There are heart-wrenching stories of whole communities being decimated."
Muslim and Arab American advocates also charge that those costs have not been matched by corresponding benefits in the war on terrorism. They note that government officials have said the registration program, and an associated program to track visitors as they enter and leave the United States, have netted only 11 men with possible links to terrorism.
"The next Mohamed Atta is not going to register," said Arlington lawyer Tariq Syed, referring to the leader of the airplane hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center. Instead, Syed said, the registration program has snagged people who were trying to comply with the law.
Aniba agreed. "Why are they doing this to us?" he asked. "When they asked me to come register, I did. Now I'm being punished."
When they signed up, some visitors were discovered to be in the United States illegally, and have been deported or ordered to return home. Others appear to have committed technical infractions of immigration law such as paperwork errors or missed filing deadlines on their visa applications.
But many had previously applied for permanent residency under the same provision as Aniba -- a since-expired 2000 law that allowed illegal immigrants who paid a $1,000 fee to seek a green card while living in the United States.
That law had a catch: It did not protect applicants from deportation if they drew the attention of immigration authorities before their green cards were approved. Because so many immigrants rushed to apply before the law's April 2001 deadline, their green cards have been delayed by huge backlogs at the Labor Department, which must approve employer sponsorships, and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Now they are in a race against time -- pleading with immigration judges to postpone a ruling on whether they should be deported until their green cards come through. The judges, however, face pressure from the immigration system's chief judge to avoid clogging immigration courts by issuing a final ruling on each case within eight months of its first hearing.
"That timetable is in direct conflict with the time it takes to get an immigrant visa petition processed," Falls Church immigration lawyer Antoinette J. Rizzi said.
Kamal Nawash agreed: "I'm down to the last 90 days with all my clients. There are not a lot more excuses I can use." Nawash is a Northern Virginia lawyer and a Republican candidate for the state Senate.
Many of his clients have told him that if they lose their cases, they will go into hiding rather than allow themselves to be deported.
"They say if they go back now, they'll be even worse off than when they came here," Nawash said. "Any money they managed to save they had to spend on legal fees, which came to thousands of dollars."
Aniba, whose lawyer got his next deportation hearing pushed back to late September, still has a chance of squeaking through.
Less fortunate is Ahmed Nahaf, 25, a former travel agent from Egypt living in Parsippany, N.J. He overstayed his tourist visa about two years ago and does not have a pending application for a green card.
His best option was to take a judge's offer to leave the country "voluntarily" by September, rather than be officially deported. Immigration attorneys say many clients in similar positions are making that choice because it leaves the possibility of applying for a waiver of the three- to 10-year ban on reentering the United States that illegal immigrants face. Illegal immigrants who have been deported cannot appeal.
Still, that is slight consolation, Nahaf said. Unable to find employment in Cairo, he came to the United States to support his six younger siblings and his parents, who are nearing retirement age at home. He has found only odd jobs here -- the last at a Dunkin' Donuts. But they have paid enough to allow Nahaf to supplement his father's small salary as a clerk in a government office and to enable the family to save money for his sisters' weddings.
Now he is struggling to plan his next move. "It gives me bad headaches," he said. "In Egypt there is no good work, and it's expensive to live. But I have a responsibility to my family. So what can I do?"
-------- prisons / prisoners
Study Finds 2.6% Increase in U.S. Prison Population
July 28, 2003
The New York Times
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/national/28PRIS.html
The nation's prison population grew 2.6 percent last year, the largest increase since 1999, according to a study by the Justice Department.
The jump came despite a small decline in serious crime in 2002. It also came when a growing number of states facing large budget deficits have begun trying to reduce prison costs by easing tough sentencing laws passed in the 1990's, thereby decreasing the number of inmates.
"The key finding in the report is this growth, which is somewhat surprising in its size after several years of relative stability in the prison population," said Allen J. Beck, an author of the report. Mr. Beck is the chief prison demographer for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the statistical arm of the Justice Department, which releases an annual study of the number of people incarcerated in the United States.
At the end of 2002, there were 2,166,260 Americans in local jails, state and federal prisons and juvenile detention facilities, the report found.
Another important finding was that 10.4 percent of black men ages 25 to 29, or 442,300 people, were in prison last year. By comparison, 2.4 percent of Hispanic men and 1.2 percent of white men in the same age group were in prison.
The report, which was released yesterday, found that this large racial disparity had not increased in the past decade. But Marc Mauer, the assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a prison change research and advocacy group, said that with the number of young black men in prison remaining so high, "the ripple effect on their communities, and on the next generation of kids growing up with their fathers in prison, will certainly be with us for at least a generation."
Mr. Beck, Mr. Mauer and other experts said the growth in the prison population last year, despite the efforts by some states to reduce the number of inmates, was a result of the continuing effect of draconian sentencing laws passed in the 1990's when the states could afford to build more prisons and politicians competed to sound tough on crime.
Mr. Beck said increases in inmates in several of the largest states contributed to most of the national increase. Those states included California, Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania, he said. In Florida, he said, local judges used their discretion under the tougher laws to sentence more people convicted of felonies to prison rather than probation or some other program.
Alfred Blumstein, a leading criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said it was not illogical for the prison population to go up even when the crime rate goes down.
For one thing, Professor Blumstein said, some crimes considered victimless are not counted in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual report on the crime rate, including drug crimes, gun possession crimes and immigration offenses.
Another reason, Professor Blumstein said, was that it has become increasingly clear from statistical research that "there is no reason that the prison count and the crime rate have to be consistent." The crime rate measures the amount of crime people are suffering from, he said, while the prison count is a measure of how severely society chooses to deal with crime, which varies from time to time.
Mr. Beck said he did not believe the sizeable increase in the prison population last year was the start of a trend back to the big increases of the 1980's and 1990's, when the number of incarcerated Americans quadrupled. States do not have the money to build more prisons now, he said, and the push by a number of states to reduce inmate populations will have some effect on the numbers.
Among the states that have eased sentencing laws in the past year are Michigan, which scrapped mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, and Kansas, Texas and Washington. Several states, including Kansas and California, have new laws mandating drug treatment rather than prison for nonviolent drug offenses.
Although many advocates of prison change have blamed drug arrests for the significant growth in the prison population, the report found violent crimes responsible for 64 percent of the increase in the number of men in state prisons from 1995 to 2001. Violent crimes also accounted for 49 percent of the increase in the number of women in state prisons in those years. Professor Blumstein said that figure was unusual because women have generally been convicted of drug and property crimes.
In total, 49 percent of inmates in state prisons last year were serving time for violent crimes, the report said. Twenty percent were serving time for drug offenses, 19 percent for property crimes, and 11 percent for public-order offenses, like drunken driving, parole violations and contempt of court.
But in the federal prison system, which with 163,528 inmates is now larger than any state system, 48 percent of the growth in the number of prisoners from 1995 to 2001 was accounted for by drug crimes and only 9 percent by violent crimes.
The number of inmates in federal prisons for gun crimes increased by 68 percent from 1995 to 2001, as Congress, President Bill Clinton and President Bush pushed to federalize some illegal gun possession cases.
In addition to 1.4 million Americans in state and federal prisons in 2002, 665,475 people were in local and county jails and 110,284 were in juvenile facilities, the report said.
California had the largest number of inmates, with 162,317 followed closely by Texas, with 162,003.
Louisiana had the highest rate of incarceration, with 794 inmates per 100,000 residents. Maine and Minnesota tied for the lowest incarceration rate, with 141 inmates per 100,000 residents.
--------
Number Of Prisoners Rises as Crime Drops
Associated Press
Monday, July 28, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A53979-2003Jul27?language=printer
America's prison population grew again in 2002 despite a declining crime rate, costing the federal government and states an estimated $40 billion a year at a time of rampant budget shortfalls.
The inmate population in 2002 of more than 2.1 million represented a 2.6 percent increase over 2001, according to a report released yesterday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Preliminary FBI statistics showed a 0.2 percent drop in overall crime during the same span.
Experts say mandatory sentences, especially for nonviolent drug offenders, are a major reason inmate populations have risen for 30 years. About 1 of every 143 U.S. residents was in federal, state or local custody at year's end.
"The nation needs to break the chains of our addiction to prison, and find less costly and more effective policies like treatment," said Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas American Civil Liberties Union. "We need to break the cycle."
Others say tough sentencing laws, such as the "three strikes" laws that can put repeat offenders behind bars for life, are a chief reason for the drop in crime. The Justice Department, for example, this year ordered Bureau of Prisons officials to stop sending so many white-collar and nonviolent criminals to halfway houses.
Yet the cost of housing, feeding and caring for a prison inmate is about $20,000 a year, or about $40 billion nationwide using 2002 figures, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes alternatives to prison. Construction costs are about $100,000 per cell.
Even as these costs keep climbing, the federal government is tackling a giant budget deficit and 31 states this year are cutting spending -- most often across all programs -- to deal with shortfalls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"The prison population and budget figures, taken together, should be setting off alarm bells in state capitols," said Jason Zeidenberg, director of policy and research for the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on ending reliance on incarceration.
Drug offenders now make up more than half of federal prisoners. The federal penal system, which has tough sentencing policies for drug offenses, is the nation's largest at more than 151,600 -- an increase of 4.2 percent compared with 2001.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
EPA Will Reconsider Enforcement Policies
Lawsuit Spurs Retreat on Clean Air Act Provisions
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 28, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54110-2003Jul27?language=printer
Just when it appeared that the nation's manufacturers and refineries had won a major relaxation of air pollution rules, the Bush administration late last week agreed to reconsider provisions of the new regulations in response to legal pressure from state attorneys general and environmental groups.
The decision represents an extraordinary retreat by the Environmental Protection Agency, which had announced "final" revisions to the Clean Air Act's "New Source Review" enforcement policies last New Year's Eve that would enable tens of thousands of smokestack plants and refineries to update or expand their facilities without having to install expensive anti-pollution equipment, as they now are required to do by law.
EPA officials and industry advocates said the new rules would encourage plant improvements and investment, provide greater regulatory certainty and reduce dangerous emissions.
But nine northeastern states ranging from Maine to Maryland and led by New York Attorney General Eliot L. Spitzer (D) immediately filed suit claiming the administration's rule-making far exceeded its legislative authority and would neutralize one of the few effective programs for combating industrial pollution and dirty air. The EPA announced Friday evening that it had agreed to review six aspects of the new rules, while stressing that this "does not mean that EPA had decided to change any aspect of the rule at this time."
The reconsideration process will include a 30-day public comment period and a public hearing. "Even though we don't agree with the petitioners and believe we provided ample opportunity to comment, we believe public comment is an integral part of the New Source Review process, so we've allowed them some additional time," Lisa Harrison, an EPA spokeswoman, said yesterday. "That does not mean we are reconsidering all portions of the rule at this time."
Environmental groups and some Democratic critics of the EPA hailed the announcement and said it would embolden efforts to try to derail the administration's three-year effort to weaken clean air regulations governing aging coal-fired industrial plants and utilities and refineries that are a source of health-threatening pollutants. Northeastern states are concerned about the rule changes because they blame much of their air pollution on utilities and other industrial sites in the Midwest that spew smog and acid rain-forming pollution into easterly winds.
"I think the significance of this announcement is that the Justice Department looked at the case and realized they were very likely to lose in court because the rule changes are flatly illegal," Frank O'Donnell of the Clean Air Trust said yesterday. "We think the rule changes would just illegally grant exemptions from the Clean Air Act that would allow smokestack industries to pollute more."
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D), one of the plaintiffs, said the EPA's concession "shows that EPA is heeding the drumbeat of outrage and anger about its sell-out to energy special interests.
"But the key question will be whether EPA has really heard the message and changes the substance, not just the form, of its misguided, destructive new NSR program."
Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), a Democratic presidential candidate and strong critic of the EPA, said he would offer an amendment this week to pending energy legislation to block the administration from making states go along with the final rules unless the EPA can show that they would be more effective than current law in reducing air pollution. A similar measure offered by Edwards earlier this year failed by four votes.
Environmentalists have disputed EPA analyses showing that the rule changes would help reduce emissions. They cite Abt Associates Inc. studies, commissioned by the watchdog group Environmental Integrity Project, showing that plant pollution would increase under the new rules. Eric Schaeffer, who heads the watchdog group, said, "I'm hoping [the Friday announcement] is a sign they're going to look at the underlying rule itself and make some changes if they can't show it won't increase emissions."
The Clean Air Act requires new plants and utilities to install the best available pollution control technology. However, older plants and refineries are exempt unless they make improvements to extend a plant's life and thereby create a "new source" of emissions.
During the Clinton administration, federal and state authorities sued more than 50 power plants in 12 states and scores of refineries nationwide.
The final rules announced Dec. 31 would allow industrial plants to upgrade or expand their facilities -- and possibly increase their emissions -- without the threat of lawsuits and without having to add new anti-pollution equipment.
The changes, for example, would set higher thresholds for the amount of pollution that could be released by calculating emissions plant-wide instead of for individual pieces of equipment. The EPA would let many facilities set new baseline pollution levels at the highest pollution level of any two consecutive years over the past 10 years, thus allowing some to exceed their current air pollution levels.
The EPA is considering separate rule changes that would benefit older coal-fired power plants, but those proposals were not affected by last week's announcement
-------- ACTIVISTS
As Trial in Taped Beating Nears End in Los Angeles, Groups Join to Prevent Repeated Riots
July 28, 2003
The New York Times
By NICK MADIGAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/28/national/28INGL.html
INGLEWOOD, Calif., July 27 - As a verdict nears in the trial of two police officers charged in the videotaped beating of a 16-year-old, about 1,500 so-called peace ambassadors, many of them current or former gang members, are preparing to fan out in this city of 120,000 to spread the word that violence accomplishes nothing.
The riots in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992 remain a searing memory here, and many people say they are determined to prevent such unrest from happening again.
"We've learned from the last two times that burning things down doesn't help," said Bill Burgess, a former gang member who is coordinating the peace ambassadors for a community group called the Stop the Violence: Increase the Peace Foundation. "It just makes things worse. We're still rebuilding from those riots."
The volunteers have been meeting for months, being trained in conflict resolution by social services workers, peace advocates and the police.
In Inglewood, just east of Los Angeles International Airport, the effort to keep the peace has thrown gang members, community and human-rights advocates, churches, the police and a Department of Justice task force into an alliance that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable.
"It's an extraordinary partnership," said Steve Goldsmith, director of the Centinela Valley Juvenile Diversion Project, a nonprofit organization. The idea, he said, is not only to promote calm should the jury acquit the officers but also to peacefully address issues like gang violence and the use of force by the police.
In the case at issue here, Officer Jeremy Morse, who is white, was seen picking up Donovan Jackson, an African-American teenager who was handcuffed and lying face down, by his collar and the seat of his pants and slamming him onto the trunk of a police car. Officer Morse then punched Mr. Jackson in the face.
The encounter occurred on July 6, 2002, after Mr. Jackson and his father, Coby Chavis, stopped for gas in Inglewood. The police said that they were questioning Mr. Chavis about an expired tag on his Ford Taurus and that Mr. Jackson had ignored a command to sit quietly in the back of the patrol car.
Officer Morse, who was fired from the force, was charged with assault under the color of authority. His colleague, Officer Bijan Darvish, who remains on the force, was charged with filing a false report.
After a seven-day trial, the jury began deliberating on Thursday and could deliver a verdict Monday.
Repeated showings of the videotape of the beating raised unhappy memories here of the Rodney King case. The acquittal of four officers in Mr. King's beating set off the 1992 riots. The rioters' mantra was "no justice, no peace."
The Jackson case also brought to mind more recent incidents in Los Angeles, such as that of a homeless black woman who was shot to death by an officer because, he said, she was holding a screwdriver in a threatening manner, and of an African-American actor who was shot nine times at a Halloween party after he pointed a fake gun at a police officer. In Riverside, east of Los Angeles, a young black woman sleeping in her car with a gun in her lap was shot to death by officers who had been unable to wake her. The officers were cleared in all three cases.
In Inglewood, where more than 90 percent of residents are black or Hispanic, several hundred residents marched on City Hall after the Jackson incident to demand an overhaul of the police department. But some of the furor was dissipated by town-hall meetings and 40 days of prayer vigils. Community groups plan more prayer on the day a verdict is reached.
Peace ambassadors like Reina Carrillo, a former member of the Calle 18 gang who is now director of the Inglewood Peace and Fairness Coalition, say they will pass out fliers urging people to remain calm, to report to "peace sanctuaries" - a half-dozen local churches - if they feel the need to vent their anger, and to attend a prayer vigil at City Hall.
It does not "make sense to burn your own community, to loot," said Ms. Carrillo, 24, who said she was arrested three times as a teenage gang member and once accidentally shot a bystander in the leg in a fight with another gang.
"But we have ignorant people who want free TV's, free furniture," she said. "They want to go out and riot over this stuff, when they don't even know the young man. You can have a crazy life when you're young, but sometimes you have to change."
Ms. Carrillo, who is of Mexican and Creole descent, said racial issues between blacks and whites still get in the way of daily life here. "If it had been a black officer and a black child, it would have been a whole different thing," she said, referring to the Jackson beating.
But times have changed, she and others say, and the virtual certainty of violence may be a thing of the past.
"It's a cultural shift from one that espouses `no justice, no peace,' which is essentially a threat, to one that advocates peace and justice," said Khalid Shah, executive director of the Stop the Violence group, which was established here in 1989. "We received scores of calls from people who worried that what happened in '92 would happen again. So we wanted to do something that would set the tone for peace - before the verdict, not after."
On July 7, Mr. Burgess and others say, a large group of gang members met to discuss, among other things, how to respond to an acquittal in the Jackson case, and opted to try to avoid rioting.
"It's not going to happen," said Darien Jackson, 35, who works in a clothing store on Market Street and who is unrelated to Donovan Jackson. "The gangs know the cops are prepared. They know the cops are coming. They've got some common sense too."
----
Israeli Troops Shoot to Stop 'Fence' Protest
Mon July 28, 2003
(Reuters)
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3169171
ANIN, West Bank - Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets Monday to break up a protest against Israel's construction of a security fence in the West Bank, wounding five pro-Palestinian activists, witnesses said.
An American protester was struck in the leg at close range during the clash near the West bank village of Anin and was taken to hospital, Israeli demonstrator Yonatan Pollak said.
The other four protesters were treated at the scene after being struck in the back and stomach, he said. He did not give their nationalities.
The troops opened fire after about 300 protesters gathered on both sides of the barrier and tried to tear down a gate in the fence.
Israel says it needs the fence to keep out suicide bombers.
Palestinians fear the barrier, due to cut deep into West Bank territory, is intended to unilaterally set the borders of their envisaged state.
The fence is expected to be on the agenda when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meets President Bush in Washington Tuesday. Bush has described the fence as a "problem."
----
Police fire rubber bullets at fence protesters
7/28/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-07-28-mideast_x.htm
JERUSALEM (AP) - Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at Palestinian demonstrators protesting an Israeli security barrier in the West Bank on Monday, and police found the body of a soldier they suspect was kidnapped and killed by Arabs.
The protest came ahead of a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Bush on Tuesday. The two will discuss how to move ahead with the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan that calls for a Palestinian state by 2005.
About 200 people - 140 Palestinians and 60 foreign supporters - protested at the security fence 10 miles west of the West Bank town of Jenin on Monday.
Several tried to cut or push through the fence, and Israeli soldiers fired rubber bullets and tear gas, dispersing the crowd. One of the foreigners was wounded in the leg and taken to a hospital. There were no arrests.
The security fence is a major sticking point between Israelis and Palestinians. Israelis say the barrier, which is still being constructed, is needed to stop militants from entering Israel to carry out attacks.
The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported on Monday that Israel would offer to freeze construction of a section of the fence that drives deep into the West Bank, but a government spokesman called the report "speculations."
"The prime minister will explain to President Bush the need for the fence, which is only security-related and is not supposed to create a political border," Sharon aide Avi Pazner said.
The barrier sweeps into Palestinian areas of the West Bank to encircle Jewish settlements, and Palestinians say the project amounts to a land-grab that cuts them off from agricultural fields, towns and jobs.
Also, Israeli police on Monday found the body of a soldier who had been missing for a week. Hundreds of police, soldiers and volunteers had been searching for him, and the investigation focused on suspicions he was kidnapped and killed by Arabs.
The body of Oleg Shaichat, 20, who disappeared July 21, was found buried in northern Israel, said police spokesman Gil Kleiman.
Security officials have warned they have intelligence warnings of militants' intentions to kidnap Israeli soldiers. "We are talking about a murder with nationalist motives," said Yaakov Borovski, northern region police commander.
Shaichat's disappearance followed the kidnapping of an Israeli taxi-driver by Palestinians on July 11. The cabbie was freed by Israeli commandos, and officials said main Palestinian militant groups were not involved.
The soldier was last seen by a fellow hitchhiker traveling in a car near the biblical village of Cana in the Galilee, on his way to his home in a nearby Jewish suburb of Nazareth, Israel's largest Arab city.
His gun was missing when he was found, Israel Radio reported. No public ransom demands or claims of responsibility have been made in the case.
In Gaza City, about 400 people protested peacefully, calling for the release of all 7,700 Palestinians in Israeli jails, many for alleged roles in terror attacks.
The prisoners have become a top rallying point for Palestinians. Israel has released about 250 prisoners and is preparing to release a reported 600 more in coming days. Palestinian officials call for a wider mass release.
The main Palestinian militant groups declared a cease-fire on June 29 after nearly three years of violence, but progress on the road map has been slowed by disagreement between Israel and the Palestinians over what should be the next step.
Both sides were hoping the combination of Sharon's visit with Bush on Tuesday and a meeting last week between Bush and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas would help break the impasse. Bush has called strongly for progress in the peacemaking.
In conciliatory steps ahead of Sharon's summit with Bush, Israel pledged to withdraw from two additional West Bank towns, and on Sunday dismantled three West Bank roadblocks. Israel has already pulled troops out of parts of Gaza and the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
Sharon's government says the steps would demonstrate to Bush Israel's determination to move ahead with the road map and encourage the president to push for concessions from the Palestinians.
"We hope for pressure on the Palestinians to do what they need to do and what they committed to do," Pazner said.
The road map calls for other Israeli moves - such as a complete freeze on construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and a dismantling of all the outposts erected throughout the West Bank since 2001. Israel is also supposed to gradually withdraw from the autonomous areas it has seized.
Sharon's position is that taking any further steps is too risky while Israel still faces the threat of attack, meaning that first the Palestinians must disarm militant groups as called for in the road map.
----
There always have been those who stymied liberty
By DAVID HUNTER
July 28, 2003
Knox News
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/opinion_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_364_2139990,00.html
pictureIf I wore a hat, I'd take it off for James M. Cardwell, whose comments recently appeared in the letters to the editor section of this newspaper. It was a clarification of a misunderstanding of growing proportions - the ludicrous notion that members of the ultraconservative, slogan-chanting, my-country-right-or-wrong crowd are the direct heirs to the principles espoused by the founders of the United States of America.
Nonsense! If the conservatives of that day, the loyalist Tories of the 13 colonies, had won out, we'd all be singing "God Save the Queen" and having afternoon tea. The people who rose up against the British were not members of the status quo; they were men promoting a radical, new doctrine about the individual liberty and dignity of all human beings and would have been hanged by the conservative Tories had they lost.
Thomas Paine, author of "Common Sense," the document that helped fuel the American Revolution, was a freethinking journalist who certainly would not have been welcomed among the neo-Tories in today's White House, where dissent is equated with treason. He minced no words in his call for Americans to stand up in open defiance of the age-old and accepted idea that monarchs reigned by the will of God.
From the very beginning, the Tories and their ilk have feared liberty and free speech. In 1789 - using a threat from the French as an excuse - Congress, in an attempt to short-circuit the Bill of Rights, passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which essentially gave the president free rein to seize, hold and deport aliens. It also decreed that citizens who dared "write, print, utter or publish" any "false, scandalous and malicious writing" that might bring Congress or the president "into contempt or disrepute" could be fined and thrown in jail. The prosecutors made up the definitions to the transgressions as they went along.
During World War I, the Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) - again using outside threats as an excuse - were passed by the spiritual descendants of the Tories. Those acts made it illegal to "utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the government, with the definition of what constituted such offenses once again left to the prosecutors. It was Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, who rammed those measures through. Tories come in all guises.
Again in 2001, Congress succumbed with little protest, this time to demands from U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft - who used the very real danger from terrorists - as an excuse to extort exceptional new powers for government agents. It was called the USA Patriot Act this time around, but it was little different from the earlier measures.
Essentially, the Patriot Act gave the federal government unparalleled authority to snoop for offenses that are as broadly defined and vague as those used in previous times. A terrorist is what the prosecutors choose to call a terrorist, and a conspiracy is what they decide it is. Guess what? Ashcroft wants even more power.
We should have learned by now that the Constitution is not a set of suggestions to be followed only when it's convenient. It is the only difference between liberty and tyranny by the few. From day one, the Tories and their spiritual descendents have been trying to tell us that liberty is too dangerous for the common people.
And liberty is dangerous. Our very openness leaves us vulnerable to attacks that totalitarian governments don't have to worry about. Terrorists undoubtedly will strike again because the religious fanatics behind that movement of hatred despise individual liberty as much as the Tories ever did. And, when it comes, it will be no less horrible than the last time.
Still, we have a choice - to live with the risks of liberty and remain a free people who tell the Tories what to do or pretend we don't see what's going on and let them do as they will. Make no mistake, the enemies of liberty are as dangerous now as they were in 1776 - maybe more so because technology makes spying easier than ever. And, as always, they are trying to rob us of our personal freedom to save us because they know what's best for the masses.
As for myself, I've thrown my lot in with the radicals, people like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Patrick Henry and John Hancock. Do I hear an amen?
David Hunter, who writes this column for The News-Sentinel, is a free-lance writer and former Knox County sheriff's deputy.
You can write him at P.O. Box 1124, Powell, TN 37849.
His e-mail address is ursus333@comcast.net.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.