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NUCLEAR
Niger scoffs at notion Iraq sought uranium
China has 20 ICBMs that can hit US: Pentagon
Scientists Still Deny Iraqi Arms Programs
'Solid Progress' Cited in U.S. Hunt for Iraq Arms
IAEA: Uranium compounds in Tuwaitha 'not dangerous'
Radiation Doses of Hiroshima Survivors Confirmed
Victim of U.S. bomb test breaks silence
N. Korea Arms Talks Appear Near
State Dept. Sees North Korea as Ready for 6-Way Negotiations
Ambassador: N. Korea Backs Nuclear Talks
Russia may resume nuke tests
US scraps nuclear weapons watchdog
Aberdeen radiological waste site set to be cleaned up
Bush Accepts Blame for African Uranium Charge
Bush Denies Claim He Oversold Case for War
Clinton-style amnesia returns
Bait and switch / The neocon case for war in Iraq
U.S. Shifts Rhetoric On Its Goals in Iraq
Bush Continues National Emergency With Respect to Iraq
MILITARY
Now we pay the warlords to tyrannise the Afghan people
Fighting Rages in Capital As Team Arrives in Liberia
Army sold us guns, say rebels
Blair rules out war decision inquiry
Blair Stands Firm on Iraq Despite a Tumble in Polls
Payments for Perle
Boeing Disputes Lockheed Lawsuit
Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows in Iraq
U.S. Says China Is Stepping Up Short-Range Missile Production
Pentagon says China refitting missiles to hit Okinawa
Failed 'Plan' in Colombia
Iceland ready to form army if US pulls out
Security Curtain Raised Along EU's New Eastern Front
Poles Bid Uneasy Farewell to Troops Bound for Iraq
U.S. secretly negotiating with Iran
U.S. investigates claim of reporter in Iraq being roughed up
Bremer: U.S. Could Quit Iraq Next Summer
Elections in Iraq a Possibility Next Year, Bremer Says
U.S. LAUNCHES MILITARY TRAINING [of Iraqis]
Anti-US cleric rallies recruits for Islamic army
Informant to pocket $30 million for leading U.S. troops to Saddam's sons
Palestinian Boy Saves Lives Of Four Israelis
Israeli MPs pass bill stopping Palestinians getting citizenship
U.S. House's DeLay Bonds With Israeli Hawks
Turkey Curtails Military's Political Power
Links of Saudis to Charities Come Under Senate Review
US turns its sights back on Syria
Army sold us guns, say rebels
Mutineers claim first scalp
China and Russia Urge Space Arms Ban
CIA 'questioned UK uranium claim'
Convicted Spy Led FBI To Papers Buried in Parks
Poindexter to Leave Pentagon Research Job
Annan Warns of World 'Crisis'
U.S. Offers Resolution to Approve African Force for Liberia
U.S. LIKELY TO MAINTAIN SINAI FORCE
US struggles to cobble together troop force
Pentagon goes to Congress as war costs mount
On-and-Off Unit Rotations Leave Families Boiling
The usual mangled speech but Bush is let off the hook
U.S. Seeks War Crimes Exemption for Liberia Peacekeepers
Serbian mayor gets life sentence for war crimes
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Panel to Meet With CIA, FBI on 9/11 Report
Suit Challenges Constitutionality of Powers in Antiterrorism Law
Seizure of Business Records Is Challenged
New Passenger Screening Plan
Surveillance Proposal Expanded
Agency Tackles Visa-Program Threat
Australia demands U.S. retracts airline attack threat
Sanctions Resistance Detailed
Fears Persist of Terrorism Links at Scuba School
ENERGY AND OTHER
Ireland gives 300 MW wind farm green light
ACTIVISTS
Librarians across the country chafe
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- africa
Niger scoffs at notion Iraq sought uranium
July 31, 2003
By David Harrison
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030730-093811-1641r.htm
ARLIT, Niger - There was nothing to see for 21/2 hours as the tiny six-seater flew across the southern Sahara - just an unbroken expanse of flat desert and the occasional sandstorm.
Then it came into view: a vast complex of neatly carved quarries, trucks bumping around in clouds of gray dust, and flat-topped sandstone slag heaps. It was the uranium mines of Arlit, 500 miles from Niger's capital, Niamey.
For nearly 40 years, these remote mines have quietly produced uranium, bringing two new towns, jobs, hard currency and hope to the world's second-poorest country. Yet the mines are also at the center of an international dispute over the justification for war in Iraq, and an unprecedented rift between Britain and the United States.
It was to Niger and its mines that Saddam Hussein sought uranium to develop nuclear weapons in the 1990s, according to claims made by U.S. and British intelligence agencies. Those assertions were challenged last month by Joseph C. Wilson, a retired U.S. diplomat who visited Niger last year at the request of the CIA.
Writing recently in the New York Times, Mr. Wilson said he spent eight days there "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people; current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place."
The White House acknowledged that its contentions were based on forged documents, but Britain insisted that it had additional information from independent sources to support the assertions.
The British claims provoked surprise, disbelief and denials from senior executives and workers with whom we spoke at the two mines: Somair, run by Niger and France, and Cominak, a joint venture among Niger, France, Spain and Japan. Most of the 1,500 workers - almost all of whom are from Niger - are convinced British Prime Minister Tony Blair is lying.
"We were amused and a bit puzzled when we first heard about this," said Bernard Debacque, the production director at Somair. "We wondered what it was all about. It is impossible for anything to go missing from here. Everything is strictly controlled."
Explosives and mechanical diggers are used to extract the matte-black uranium ore from open-cast and underground mines. The ore is taken to nearby factories, where it is ground into small pieces, treated with sulphuric acid, filtered and turned first into a solid yellow substance and then into a fine yellow powder. The yellowcake, as it is called, then is packed into hermetically sealed metal drums for export.
The drums bear the name of the mine and the date. Each drum is also given a number. "That way, if any were to go missing it would be obvious," said Mr. Debacque.
The drums from Somair, which weigh up to 280 pounds each, are taken by road in a convoy of trucks to Parakou in Benin. There, they are loaded onto trains and taken 250 miles to Cotonou, from where they are shipped to France. The cargo is guarded by police all along the route, and the papers are checked at least five times.
Serge Martinez, Somair's director general, dismissed suggestions that uranium could be stolen or lost en route as "the stuff of science fiction." He said: "Yellowcake is very heavy. You cannot just pick up a drum and take it away, and you need a lot to do anything useful with it."
Mr. Martinez said that in the 40 years since extraction began at Arlit, there had been not a single case of uranium being lost or stolen. Nor could he see how uranium could be sold illegally to Iraq, because all movement of uranium is monitored closely by the companies and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"It is checked again and again - in Niger, in Benin and in France. If any were to go missing, it would be known very quickly. We are not talking about moving consignments of peanuts."
Other significant obstacles would confront a dictator such as Saddam trying to get his hands on uranium from Niger. The yellowcake exported from the West African country is 75 percent uranium, but the metal is not enriched and would need to undergo expensive, high-technology processing before it could be used to make a nuclear bomb. There is no evidence that Saddam had such technology.
Each 1,000 tons of uranium ore yield roughly 9 to 13 pounds of yellowcake for export. Saddam would need hundreds of tons of yellowcake to supply enough uranium to make nuclear weapons, making any illegal movement of such a sizable consignment even more conspicuous.
Andre Bosse, head of the factory at Somair, said that it might have been possible for Niger to sell uranium to Saddam before 1985, but since then all production of yellowcake has been controlled by the French, and it was "simply impossible" for it to happen without their knowledge.
Executives at the other company, Cominak, agreed that the Niger government had no possibility of selling uranium to Saddam or anybody else because of French control.
A group of mine workers said they felt that Britain and the United States had used Niger in their efforts to win public backing for a war because they knew it was a poor, weak country that could not fight back.
"France controls the uranium here, but Britain and America would never dare suggest that France had given uranium to Saddam because that would cause a war," said one engineer.
Others spoke of their disappointment and surprise that Britain, a country well-respected in this former French colony, had become involved in "America's lies." "They are lying together," said Mahaman Kadri, an environmental officer at the open-cast mine.
Added a colleague: "We expect that from America, but we would have thought that Britain, with its history and its knowledge of African countries, would have known better. This affair has done a lot of damage to Britain's image." Mr. Blair, the mine workers suggested, cannot have his yellowcake and eat it.
In the capital, Niamey, it had been hard to find anybody who gave the British claims about a Niger-Iraq connection any credence. Most dismissed the assertions as a crude attempt by the intelligence services to justify the war, and said the people of Niger are more concerned with feeding themselves than paying attention to superpower politics.
Hama Hamadou, the prime minister, called on Mr. Blair to produce the evidence he claimed to have. "Our conscience is clear. We are innocent. We have never sold uranium to Iraq," he said. "We have never discussed uranium with Iraq."
Rabiou Hassane Yari, Iraq's minister of mines and energy, said the government had received no official complaint from Britain. "It's a dishonest accusation," he said. "In some ways, it has helped put Niger on the map, but it's sad and bizarre that we are caught in the middle of this.
"The Americans have apologized for what they did. It would be nice if Britain could do the same."
-------- china
China has 20 ICBMs that can hit US: Pentagon
Press Trust of India
Washington, July 31, 2003
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_326132,00050001.htm
China has 20 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) capable of targeting the US and this number could increase to around 30 by 2005, a Pentagon report on Chinese military power says.
The report also says that China is modifying short-range mobile missiles to target American forces in Okinawa and is sharply increasing the number of missiles aimed at Taiwan.
"While China professes a preference for resolving the Taiwan issue peacefully, Beijing is also seeking credible military operations. Should China use force against Taiwan, its primary goal likely would be to compel a quick negotiated solution on terms favourable to Beijing", the report says.
It warns that "while seeing oportunity and benefit in interactions with the United States, primarily in terms of trade and technollogy, Beijing apparently believes the United States poses a significant long-term challenge."
China now has deployed 450 short-range missiles and the force wil grow by more than 75 missiles a year.
China puts its military budget at $20 billion a year, but the Pentagon estimates it actually at $45 to $65 billion.
The Pentagon notes that the new Chinese White Paper "continued to reference indirectly the U.S. presence in the region in stated concerns over increased regional military alliances, missile defences, and 'certain countries' that sell weapons to Taiwan.
The paper also mentions other more general regional security concerns--South Asia, Afghanistan and the Korean Peninsula--and, for the first time, mentions global and regional terrorism as a major security concern."
-------- iraq / inspections
Scientists Still Deny Iraqi Arms Programs
U.S. Interrogations Net No Evidence
By Walter Pincus and Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5497-2003Jul30.html
Despite vigorous efforts, the U.S. government has been unsuccessful so far in finding key senior Iraqi scientists to support its prewar claims that former president Saddam Hussein was pursuing an aggressive program to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, according to senior administration officials and members of Congress who have been briefed recently on the subject.
The sources said four senior scientists and more than a dozen at lower levels who worked for the Iraqi government have been interviewed by U.S. officials under the direction of the CIA. Some scientists have been arrested and held for months, others have made deals in return for information and at least one has agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq.
No matter the circumstances, all of the scientists interviewed have denied that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program or developed and hidden chemical or biological weapons since United Nations inspectors left in 1998. Several key Iraqi officials questioned the significance of evidence cited by the Bush administration to suggest that Hussein was stepping up efforts to develop new weapons of mass destruction programs.
The White House, for instance, has cited the case of nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi, who recently dug up plans and components for a gas centrifuge that he said he buried in 1991 at the end of the Persian Gulf War. The White House has pointed to the discovery as a sign of Hussein's continuing nuclear ambitions, but Obeidi told his interrogators that Iraq's nuclear program was dormant in the years before war began in March.
The sources said Obeidi also disputed evidence cited by the administration -- namely Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes that various officials said were for a new centrifuge program to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Obeidi said the tubes were for rockets, as Iraq had said before the war.
CIA analysts do not believe he has told the whole truth, said one Bush administration official. Obeidi has left Iraq under CIA auspices after being arrested briefly by U.S. Army troops.
Jaffar Dhai Jaffar, who once was jailed by Hussein for not working on the nuclear program and later came back to head it in the 1980s, was also interviewed recently by CIA personnel outside Iraq, and he, too, denied the nuclear program had been restarted.
Bush administration officials have hoped that extensive debriefings of former top officials of Hussein's government would provide some of the backing for its prewar assertion that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States. So far, the United States has discovered no undisputed physical evidence that Hussein had stocks of chemical or biological weapons or was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.
David Kay, the CIA's representative in Iraq to coordinate the search for weapons of mass destruction, returned to Washington this week and met with President Bush on Tuesday. Kay is scheduled to appear today before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Administration officials said they expect Kay to tell the senators there have been no breakthroughs but that progress is being made in understanding Hussein's weapons programs and research that could be associated with them. The United States is still interviewing lower-level Iraqi security and intelligence officials associated with the programs, but the searching of alleged weapons sites has all but halted, officials said.
Bush indicated yesterday that he still expects evidence of weapons of mass destruction to surface in Iraq. He said Kay described a complex process that includes the need to "analyze the mounds of evidence, literally the miles of documents that we have uncovered."
"It's going to take awhile, and I'm confident the truth will come out," Bush said.
As described by government officials and their families, the United States has used aggressive tactics to find and question key Iraqi scientists. Amir Saadi, Iraq's 65-year-old chief liaison with United Nations weapons inspectors since last year, has been held incommunicado since his voluntary surrender in Baghdad to U.S. military police more than three months ago, according to his wife, Helma.
The night before he gave himself up, Saadi saw himself listed on BBC satellite television as one of the men being sought by U.S. forces. In a recent interview at her home in Baghdad, Helma Saadi said that he told her, "I want to surrender. I want to cooperate. It will be just a matter of a few hours, and I'll be back."
Just hours before his April 12 surrender, Saadi gave a television interview to a German television reporter during which he said, "There were no weapons of mass destruction, and time will bear me out." It is the same sentiment he sent to U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix in a message that arrived at U.N. headquarters on March 19.
Saadi's surrender encouraged the wife and daughter of Gen. Hossam Amin, head of Iraq's National Monitoring Directorate, to get him to surrender, and he, too, has not been heard from since, Helma Saadi said.
Helma Saadi said her husband was a chemical engineer who worked on Iraq's rocket programs, not chemical weapons. He served in the military during his career and reached the rank of general, though after the Gulf War he was acting minister of oil and later minister of industry. After his retirement in 1994, when she said his position went to a Baath Party member, he was given the honorific title of science adviser to Hussein. She described that as a "way of keeping him and others on the payroll even after retirement and using them when needed."
Since her husband's arrest, Saadi said she has had no official notification of where he is being held, although she believes it is somewhere near Baghdad International Airport. She has had one communication with him, a June 15 letter delivered by the Red Cross that stated: "Today the Red Cross visited me and I was happy just to talk to someone. I am in good health and being treated correctly . . . love and kisses, Amer."
Helma Saadi believes he is being kept in solitary confinement, because he said in his letter he was glad to have someone with whom to talk. U.S. sources familiar with the process say Saadi may have knowledge of Hussein's chemical weapons program, and perhaps is being held to give testimony about that. His wife said she suspects her husband is being held out of sight because "he is telling the truth. . . . They have realized there are no weapons of mass destruction and the quagmire they have created. They want to hold someone as a scapegoat."
After hiring a lawyer, Helma Saadi sent a written request to L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq. She did not receive an answer from Bremer to that letter or to one sent more recently. She did receive a response to a letter she sent asking whether her husband could be represented by a lawyer. On June 27, Col. Marc L. Warren of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, assigned to Bremer's office, said her husband's status "is being investigated" under the Geneva Conventions to see whether he is entitled to prisoner of war status or some other category.
Meanwhile, former government officials, scientists and professionals are still being arrested.
Family members of Abdel Ilah Hameed, the former Iraqi minister of agriculture, were interviewed in Beiji and described his arrest. Hameed, a native of Hussein's home town, Tikrit, tried twice to surrender after he saw how U.S. troops were searching all homes, according to his son, Usama. On April 15 and 16, he was turned back by U.S. officers at checkpoints, although one took his name after the second attempt.
On April 22 at 3 a.m., soldiers backed by helicopters overhead knocked down the door, searched the house and took Hameed away, leaving his two older sons in plastic handcuffs that had to be cut away by a younger brother, Usama said. They have had no direct contact with their father since.
Two weeks ago, a professor whose expertise is satellite communications and who is the father of an Iraqi interpreter employed by Bremer's office was seized, according to another employee. "Coalition snatch-and-grab guys busted their door in at 2 AM and turned the house upside down for an hour, then hauled him off in handcuffs," this employee wrote in a message home. The wife told a friend that the troops did not say the reason for the arrest, and it took a day for other U.S. officials to find that the man was being held at the airport and being interrogated.
Sullivan reported from Baghdad.
--------
'Solid Progress' Cited in U.S. Hunt for Iraq Arms
July 31, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq-Weapons.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An adviser to the CIA hinted Thursday that U.S. and coalition personnel were close to a breakthrough in the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
David Kay, the agency's special adviser for the weapons search, said ``solid progress'' was being made and that Iraqi scientists involved in the weapons programs are ``collaborating and cooperating.'' He also said searchers were using documents from Saddam Hussein's regime in the search.
``The American people should not be surprised by surprises,'' Kay said, echoing a remark made moments earlier by Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Kay spoke with reporters after he and Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, head of the Pentagon search team, gave a closed-door briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee. He and Dayton were to meet later Thursday with the intelligence panel, also in a closed session.
Kay, a former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations, said new evidence has been uncovered about how the Iraqis misled U.N. inspectors.
``The active deception program is truly amazing once you get inside it,'' he said. ``We have people who participated in deceiving U.N. inspectors now telling us how they did it.''
The weapons of mass destruction were the Bush administration's main argument for the war in Iraq, but none has been recovered. Questions have been raised about the quality of the prewar intelligence and whether it was manipulated to help make the case for war.
The questions have grown with the administration's acknowledgment that a reference in President Bush's State of the Union speech on Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa was based on discredited intelligence.
Kay, Roberts and Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., all urged patience in the search.
``We are determined to take this apart and every day I must say we are surprised by new advances that we are making,'' Kay said.
He said details about the search won't be released until three criteria are met: ``multiple Iraqis'' who are willing to talk about the weapons program, several documents are uncovered about the weapons and physical evidence of the program is obtained.
``We do not want to go forward with partial information that we have to retract afterward,'' he said. ``We're building a solid case that will stand, and we welcome international scrutiny of that case after we have the evidence assembled.''
--------
IAEA: Uranium compounds in Tuwaitha 'not dangerous'
By LYN RESURRECCION TODAY
Nation & Science Editor
Please send your comments or feedback to newsfeedback@abs-cbn.com
Thursday, July 31, 2003
ABS-CBN World
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/abs_news_body.asp?section=World&oid=29556
VIENNA, Austria - The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that the nuclear material inspected near the Tuwaitha complex near Baghdad "does not pose a health or environmental danger" and is "not sensitive from the proliferation point of view."
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei released last week the agency's July 14 report to the UN Security Council regarding its inspection of Location C Nuclear Material Storage Facility near Tuwaitha chemical laboratories. The inspection mission was held from June 7 to 23 following media and environmental groups' reports of looting nuclear and radioactive materials near Tuwaitha complex.
"The nuclear material inventory at Location C Nuclear Material Storage Facility consists of low-enriched, natural and depleted uranium in various chemical forms, and was last verified in December 2002," he said.
The IAEA inspection team, which verified the materials based on the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, estimated that at least 10 kilos of uranium compounds could have been dispersed from the two buildings inspected. But it said that "the quantity and type of uranium compounds dispersed are not sensitive from a proliferation point of view," meaning they cannot be used in making nuclear bombs.
However, ElBaradei said he will request the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to recover the dispersed material and return it to the Location C Nuclear Material Storage Facility and place it under the IAEA safeguards.
Asked to explain the possible danger to people of the dispersed uranium materials, Melissa Fleming, IAEA senior information officer and spokesman, told Today in a seminar in Vienna that "natural or low-enriched uranium does not pose a health or environmental danger."
She said in the interview that "any form of radiation sickness would most likely be from a radioactive source and not from these materials."
Fleming added that "all sensitive nuclear materials were removed from Iraq in the early 1990s. . . Inspectors visited these sites regularly and saw that they were kept in place by the Iraqis."
What is "of concern," she said, are the more than 400 radioactive sources that were stored at the site which "could be dangerous to human health if the shielding was broken" because these are of the type that could be potentially used as "dirty bomb."
Dirty bombs are not nuclear weapons and generally would not cause massive destruction, but they could spread radioactive particulates over wide areas, according to the IAEA Bulletin. Although few people, if any, would die shortly after exposure to radiation from a dirty bomb, it could cause panic or terror because of fears of radiation. Common radioactive materials, such as those used in medicine, industry and scientific research, could fuel dirty bombs.
Late last month Greenpeace returned a large canister (the size of a small car) of yellow cake to Tuwaitha. The canister was found abandoned in an open field in a nearby village.
The environmental group expressed fear that the looting of the nuclear materials after the US and Britain invasion of Iraq could cause "radioactive crisis."
The IAEA report said the inspection team found that some safeguard seals applied to the two buildings after the December 2002 inventory had been removed. The buildings contain uranium compounds, including yellow cake, which is a concentrated oxide of uranium formed in the milling of uranium ore.
The team's initial assessment showed that most of the interference with the inventory had taken place in Building 1 of the storage facility, with only minor interference in Building 2.
"In Building 1, many containers were missing, many others were emptied and a large floor area was covered by uranium compounds," ElBaradei's report said.
However, the material on the floor was recovered and repackaged into new containers. The recovery was done according to material type to make it possible to compare the recovered material against the inventory.
"The uranium compounds were reverified, many of the containers that were initially missing have been subsequently recovered," the report said.
In Building 2, one drum of yellow cake was missing, but the report said that its contents, which appeared to have been dumped onto the floor near to where the drum was originally placed, were recovered.
It added that the contents of two containers of ammonium-diurinate waste were also found on the floor and were recovered.
-------- japan
Radiation Doses of Hiroshima Survivors Confirmed
REUTERS UK:
July 31, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21688/story.htm
LONDON - New research into the level of radiation that Hiroshima survivors were exposed to has confirmed that the figures used to calculate cancer risks from radiation are correct, scientists said yesterday.
A week before the 58th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the publication of the research should ease fears about whether the survivors' radiation doses may have been underestimated.
Most estimates of cancer risk and safe levels of exposure to radiation sources ranging from nuclear plants to X-rays are based on data from survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so it is vital that the doses of exposure are correct.
"These findings provide, for the first time, clear measurement validation of the neutron doses to survivors in Hiroshima," Tore Trasume, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who headed the research team, said in a report in the science journal Nature.
Survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 were exposed to two types of radiation - gamma rays and neutrons.
"The risks are pretty much what we thought they were," Mark Little, of Imperial College London who commentated on the research, said in an interview.
Scientists extrapolate from the data to determine how safe radiation is at low doses. Cancer risk is estimated by correlating the incidence of cancer in groups of survivors with the dose they received.
"So if you don't know the dose, or if it is uncertain, that feeds into uncertainties on the risk estimates," Little said.
"It as safe as we thought it was," he added.
----
Victim of U.S. bomb test breaks silence
By TAKUYA KARUBE
Kyodo News Japan Times
Thursday, July 31, 2003
http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030731b3.htm
After years of silence, a Japanese former fisherman exposed to radiation during the 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific has written a book that tells his own story of that almost forgotten incident.
"I can't avoid writing about it, now that half of my fellow crew members have quietly passed away because of exposure to radiation," said Matashichi Oishi, one of 23 former crew members of the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5), which was showered with radioactive ash in the wake of the test.
"The incident has been forgotten all too soon," Oishi said. "I feel very sorry for them because their miserable deaths were largely ignored by society."
Oishi, 69, was among the first people to be accidentally exposed to radioactive fallout from a nuclear weapon and made up his mind to write his book ahead of the 50th anniversary of the bomb test.
He said it was also important for him to put his experiences in writing so that younger generations could hear the truth from someone who was actually on the boat.
On March 1, 1954, Oishi, then 20, and fellow crew members aboard the wooden trawler were showered by a cloud of radioactive ash while tuna fishing 160 km east of the thermonuclear bomb test site on Bikini Atoll.
"A light like a lurid sunset suddenly appeared in complete darkness. Then white ash continued to fall for several hours. I did not know what was going on," Oishi said, adding that he has never forgotten the sight.
It was later confirmed that not only were the Fukuryu Maru and its crew contaminated by ash but also the tuna they brought back to Japan and fish caught by many other ships in the area.
The ship, from Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, is believed to have been in international waters about 60 km outside the prohibited zone, but the crew had no knowledge that the bomb -- code-named "Bravo" -- would be detonated in the predawn hours of that day, a bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
Six months after Bikini Atoll, radio operator Aikichi Kuboyama became the world's first hydrogen bomb victim. His death marked the effective start of Japan's antinuclear movement, leading to the first world conference on atomic weapons in Hiroshima in August 1955.
But when Oishi and the others were released from a Tokyo hospital in May of that year, they felt they never wanted to be in the public spotlight again.
"We believed that saying we had been bombed would not bring us any long-term benefit," he said. of being branded as a victim of radiation from then on, we wanted to start a new life.
"To protect our lives and families from social discrimination against bomb survivors, we had no choice but to maintain a distance from the incident," he said.
He also said that the then-whopping $2 million the U.S. offered each crew member as a gesture of sympathy stirred envy among local people.
Oishi, who wanted to remain incognito, finally left Yaizu for Tokyo in November 1955. For the next 30 years, he maintained his silence.
Unlike atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the government has not recognized the 23 fishermen as victims of a nuclear bomb and has continued to exclude them from relief measures under a domestic law.
The number of publications about Bikini Atoll is also incomparably smaller than those that deal with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were also not written by people who were on the ship, and the majority only cover the short period between when the blast took place and when a political settlement was reached in January 1955.
Oishi's book -- "The Truth of the Bikini Incident," grecently published by Misuzu Shobo Publishing Co. -- sheds light on both his personal history and developments since the political settlement. At 263 pages, it is rich in detail and also reproduces diplomatic documents showing how Japan and the U.S. dealt with the incident tactically in the context of the Cold War.
"My anger is not only directed at the U.S. but also at the Japanese government," Oishi said. "I really detested the U.S. when I was exposed to the bomb's radiation. But that doesn't mean that I hate the American people.
"What has irritated me more all these years is the way I and my fellow crew members were neglected by the Japanese government in its handling of the incident," he said. "Japanese authorities did their best to go hand-in-hand with U.S. officials to hush up the incident and maintain cordial relations with Washington."
Oishi, who runs a laundry at his home in Tokyo's Ota Ward, started jotting down notes for the book about five years ago while still working at his business.
He said he came to feel he had to write a book that would give a comprehensive overview of the incident, particularly after he had begun to give talks to schoolchildren. The more he spoke about the incident, the more he realized people knew almost nothing about it.
"Children, of course, did not know anything. But their parents and teachers were also not so familiar with the incident," he said.
After being treated successfully for liver cancer in 1993, Oishi started to feel he had a mission to pass down as much knowledge as possible about the incident to future generations, given that many of the crew members could not now talk about their experiences.
-------- korea
N. Korea Arms Talks Appear Near
Pyongyang Seems to Accept U.S.'s Multilateral Format
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10751-2003Jul31.html
North Korea appears to have accepted a plan to engage in multilateral talks over its nuclear weapons programs, clearing the way for the administration to formally provide its solution for ending the crisis, U.S. officials said yesterday.
For months, North Korea and the United States have bickered over the format of any talks, with Pyongyang demanding one-on-one sessions and the United States insisting on a forum that includes China, South Korea, Japan and possibly Russia. The apparent breakthrough was announced yesterday by the Russian Foreign Ministry, and U.S. officials said they expected talks will be held in September, likely in Beijing.
In the administration's most recent counteroffer on the format of the talks, it told North Korea it would unveil a proposal to end the standoff if South Korean and Japanese officials were present. North Korea had floated its own proposal during a brief meeting with U.S. and Chinese officials in April, and the administration quickly rejected it.
The prospect of new talks will require U.S. officials to settle on a strategy for persuading the North Koreans to give up their effort to produce nuclear weapons. The issue has deeply split the administration, with some officials urging an aggressive approach that offers North Korea few incentives to give up its weapons while others are pushing to offer a multilateral guarantee that North Korea, if it agrees to back down, will not face an unprovoked attack.
The tough approach was outlined yesterday by Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton in a speech in Seoul, in which he denounced North Korea as a "hellish nightmare" and emphasized a new plan to interdict shipments of missiles and weapons of mass destruction that he said "will send a clear message to dictators like [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Il." Appearing to make the case for regime change, the speech mentioned Kim -- who is treated as a near deity in North Korea -- nearly 40 times and repeatedly attacked the "tyrannical rogue leader."
Bolton is close to the Defense Department and Vice President Cheney's office and sometimes does not see eye to eye with the rest of the State Department. "I hope the North Koreans understand who John Bolton is," said one official, who expressed concern over the diplomatic implications of so directly targeting the North Korean leader on the eve of possible talks.
Last month, North Korea said it had successfully reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods to separate out the plutonium necessary to fashion several nuclear weapons. The dispute over the format stems from the Bush administration's conviction that bilateral agreements with North Korea are doomed to failure because North Korea always breaks them. Officials believe it will be more difficult for North Korea to violate an agreement if it is also made with its closest neighbors, including China, its chief patron.
Indeed, U.S. officials also have feared that if the administration appears to be negotiating with North Korea, it could give the impression it is giving in to blackmail. That stance has annoyed other countries with a stake in the outcome. "We have to have a large picture of the final settlement," said one Asian diplomat who has worked closely with the administration. "Whether they call it negotiations or not is a matter of taste."
Yet one approach under consideration would promise North Korea that all the other nations at the table could jointly provide assurances of nonaggression, as the first stage of a larger discussion on future economic and political relations. North Korea has long demanded that the United States sign a nonaggression pact, but appearing to give in to that demand is opposed by some key members of the administration.
Another proposal, circulating among National Security Council staff members, would call on North Korea to take the first step in terms of declaring what weapon programs it has and then offering to eliminate them.
Some officials believe the administration should also dangle carrots, which could include energy assistance, development aid, participation in international financial institutions, removal of sanctions and normalization of relations. But those incentives would also be tied to specific progress by North Korea on other issues, such as human rights.
At the other end of the spectrum are officials who want to stake out a hard ground in the talks, telling the North Koreans that if they fail to comply with U.S. demands, they will face a tightening noose, including seizures of their trade in missiles and weapons, a crackdown on their drug and smuggling operations, and sanction at the United Nations.
The prospect of new talks was revealed when the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying the North Korean ambassador had said his country supported "six-sided talks with the participation of Russia on resolving the current complex situation on the Korean Peninsula."
State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher suggested that President Bush learned of the North Korean's willingness to accept the new format in a phone call Wednesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao. China, anxious over the stalemate between North Korea and the United States, has played a key role in brokering an agreement on a format.
Boucher said the administration is "very encouraged" by the development. "At this point, it looks like the North Koreans are moving toward accepting the president's approach of multilateral talks to resolve the issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons program."
But some U.S. officials were more skeptical, noting that North Korea has not yet officially said it has given up on meeting one-on-one with U.S. officials during the multilateral talks. A similar demand by North Korea shortened a planned three-day session in April to one day of formal talks.
Special correspondent Joohee Cho contributed to this report.
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State Dept. Sees North Korea as Ready for 6-Way Negotiations
July 31, 2003
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/international/asia/31CND-NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, July 31 - North Korea now appears to be ready to talk to the United States and four other nations about its nuclear weapons program in what could be a significant diplomatic thaw, Bush administration officials said today.
The North Korean government has long insisted on one-on-one talks with Washington on nuclear issues, but the Bush administration has always rejected that idea, saying it would not give in to what it called "blackmail."
So if North Korea has indeed shifted its stance, and if the shift is more than momentary, the way could be open for talks that would include not only diplomats from Pyongyang and Washington but representatives from China, South Korea, Russia and Japan as well. There was no immediate word on where or when these new talks might take place.
News of the development came somewhat indirectly from Moscow. There, North Korea's ambassador to Russia, Pak Ui Chun, told Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov today that North Korea now supports "six-sided talks with the participation of Russia on resolving the current complex situation on the Korean Peninsula," the State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, told reporters this afternoon.
Mr. Boucher said the Bush administration was "encouraged, very encouraged" by the development.
President Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, hinted that China's leaders may have had a role in North Korea's apparent shift. He noted that President Bush talked on Wednesday with President Hu Jintao of China and thanked him for his attempts to persuade North Korea to take part in multi-nation talks. He said the White House remains in close contact with the Chinese, South Koreans, Japanese and Russians.
"We hope that North Korea is willing to agree to multilateral talks," Mr. McClellan said at a White House briefing. "It is important that we continue to move forward and that North Korea once and for all end its nuclear weapons program."
News of the apparent shift by the Pyongyang government came hours after John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, condemned the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, as a "tyrannical dictator" who presides over a country that is "a hellish nightmare." Mr. Bolton delivered his speech in Seoul.
It was not immediately clear whether the timing of Mr. Bolton's strongly worded speech was a just a coincidence. In the past, communications between the United States and North Korea have been marked by unpredictability and bellicose language.
Mr. Boucher suggested that Mr. Bolton, who has been in South Korea for a few days, might not have been informed of the very latest developments on North Korea. "I'm sure he's been updated by now," Mr. Boucher said.
Like Mr. McClellan, Mr. Boucher ndicated that the Chinese had been a major player in persuading the North Koreans when he said that Bush administration officials have been in close touch with their Chinese counterparts for days.
"What I would say at this point is we're encouraged, we're very encouraged by indications that North Korea is accepting our proposals for multilateral talks," Mr. Boucher said.
North Korea's insistence on one-on-one talks seemed to soften, albeit slightly, in April, when North Korea met in Beijing with officials from China as well as the United States.
China has long been North Korea's ally. But American diplomats have said it is in China's long-range interests to have stability on the Korean Peninsula, a factor that may have led China to try to persuade North Korea.
The United States has been demanding the dismantling of North Korea's uranium- and plutonium-based nuclear weapons programs, especially since North Korea acknowledged to last October that it had secretly begun the uranium-based program.
North Korea has long been one of the poorest, most isolated countries on earth. President Bush has repeatedly said that the United States and other country are eager to help North Korea toward prosperity and friendship, if only the North Koreans will behave like a responsible nation.
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Ambassador: N. Korea Backs Nuclear Talks
July 31, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-North-Korea.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- North Korea's ambassador to Russia said Thursday his country supported multilateral talks to ease tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear program, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
North Korea has previously said it would be willing to participate in multilateral talks only if it first has one-on-one talks with the United States -- a condition the Bush administration has rejected, saying other countries, including South Korea and Japan, should also be involved.
But North Korea's ambassador to Russia said it would support multilateral talks, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said North Korea is ``making active efforts'' toward multilateral talks, suggesting no agreement has been made.
In the past, North Korea has rarely announced major policy shifts through low-ranking officials such as ambassadors.
The Russian Foreign Ministry statement said Ambassador Pak Ui Chun, during a meeting with Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov, said his leadership instructed him to express North Korea's support for multilateral talks with the participation of Russia.
``As instructed by his leadership, the ambassador said that North Korea supports conducting six-sided talks with the participation of Russia on resolving the current complex situation on the Korean Peninsula and is making active efforts toward their realization,'' the statement said.
The Foreign Ministry statement expressed ``satisfaction at this constructive decision by Pyongyang.''
Russia, which has been on the sidelines in the nuclear standoff between the United States and North Korea, is eager to play a high-profile role on the Korean peninsula, an economically important region.
Earlier Friday, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in Tokyo that North Korea had not agreed to a U.S. proposal for multilateral talks.
``The key now is to get South Korea and Japan, and ultimately Russia and others, a seat at the table,'' Bolton said. ``Those with a direct stake in the outcome must be part of the process. On this point, we will not waver.''
Earlier, North Korea and the United States traded harsh criticism, with Bolton describing the communist nation as a ``hellish nightmare'' and the North accusing Washington of ``all sorts of lies and plots.''
In remarks likely to infuriate North Korea, Bolton described the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, as a ``tyrannical dictator'' and criticized its human rights record and weapons exports.
``While he lives like royalty in Pyongyang, he keeps hundreds of thousands of people locked in prison camps with millions more mired in abject poverty, scrounging the ground for food. For many in North Korea, life is a hellish nightmare,'' he said.
The nuclear dispute flared in October, when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted having a secret program to enrich uranium for building nuclear weapons in violation of international agreements.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press correspondent Christopher Torchia in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
-------- russia
Russia may resume nuke tests
By Vladimir Radyuhin,
JULY 31, 2003
The Hindu
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/08/01/stories/2003080103601400.htm
MOSCOW. Russia may end its 13-year-old moratorium on nuclear weapons tests if the U.S. resumes nuclear testing.
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said today Russia would honour its self-imposed ban on nuclear testing only as long as other nuclear powers do not stage nuclear blasts.
He was clearly referring to U.S. moves to resume production of nuclear bomb components and refurbish its nuclear test site in Nevada.
"Russia has assumed a number of very serious restrictive international obligations and has not been holding nuclear tests for many years now," Mr. Putin said on a visit to Russia's main nuclear centre in Sarov on Thursday. ":We intend to honour our commitments in the future as well, but only under certain obligatory conditions, one of the main among them being a similar compliance of other nuclear powers with their commitments."
For his part, the Russian Atomic Energy Minister, Alexander Rumyantsev, said today that "Russia's nuclear arsenals are fully combat ready and all its weapons are top-notch and capable of overcoming different (defence) systems."
Russia has not tested nuclear weapons since 1990 when it declared a unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing. Russia has also ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, whereas the U.S. Congress has refused to approve the treaty, even though the U.S. did sign it.
However, after the U.S. launched a $2.5-billion programme to rebuild the industrial machinery of nuclear warhead production in 2001, the Russian Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, last year announced plans to renovate Russia's only nuclear test range on the Novaya Zemlya island beyond the Arctic Circle.
The U.S. administration's draft budget proposal for 2004 calls for spending $500 million on building new plutonium cores for nuclear warheads, restarting production of tritium and increasing the readiness of the Nevada Test Site.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
US scraps nuclear weapons watchdog
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday July 31, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1009497,00.html
A US department of energy panel of experts which provided independent oversight of the development of the US nuclear arsenal has been quietly disbanded by the Bush administration, it emerged yesterday.
The decision to close down the national nuclear security administration advisory committee - required by law to hold public hearings and issue public reports on nuclear weapons issues - has come just days before a closed-door meeting at a US air force base in Nebraska to discuss the development of a new generation of tactical "mini nukes" and "bunker buster" bombs, as well as an eventual resumption of nuclear testing.
Ed Markey, a Democratic congressman and co-chairman of a congressional taskforce on non-proliferation, said: "Instead of seeking balanced expert advice and analysis about this important topic, the department of energy has disbanded the one forum for honest, unbiased external review of its nuclear weapons policies."
Neither the NNSA - part of the department of energy - nor the 15 panel members returned calls seeking comment yesterday.
The NNSA advisory panel is made up of academics, retired officials and business leaders.
Although federal law requires regular open meetings and publication of its reports, the energy department has not convened the panel since May 2002. Its reports have not been released.
The statute establishing federal advisory committees requires their dissolution to be officially gazetted in the federal register but, according to Mr Markey, the NNSA panel was disbanded by a simple email to its members.
Daryl Kimball, the head of the independent, Washington-based Arms Control Association, said: "This will make the department of energy and the NNSA even more opaque. It will be all the more difficult to understand what they are planning to do."
Hawks in the Pentagon and the energy department are pushing for the development of tactical nuclear weapons with yields of less than 5 kilotons and hardened "bunker buster" nuclear bombs, designed to penetrate deeply buried targets, where enemy leaders or weaponsmay be hidden.
According to the leaked agenda for the Omaha meeting in early August, Pentagon and energy department officials will discuss how to test small numbers of these new weapons, and whether this will require a break from the moratorium on nuclear tests.
Critics argue that the new weapons will blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear arms, and trigger a new arms race.
"The Bush administration is considering policy changes that will alter the role of nuclear weapons in national defence," Mr Markey said. "Given the importance and sheer complexity of the issues raised ... why was the only independent contemplative body studying nuclear weapons disbanded - and disbanded in such a surreptitious fashion?"
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
Aberdeen radiological waste site set to be cleaned up
July 31, 2003
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20030730-093802-3727r.htm
EDGEWOOD, Md. - The Army is set to begin a multimillion-dollar cleanup on land contaminated by radioactive waste at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, even as officials work to destroy more than 1,600 tons of mustard agent stockpiled there.
Base officials held three meetings last week to update residents on their efforts to clean the radiological waste yard and the site of the mustard agent stockpile.
The site on the Edgewood peninsula was the East Coast collection point for Army radioactive medical and research waste in the 1950s and 1960s. Until the early years of World War II, it also stored canisters of mustard agent and other dangerous chemical weapons.
The Army is spending millions every year to clean up the toxic legacy of the military research and testing site.
The Environmental Protection Agency has a list of priority cleanup sites on the Edgewood peninsula, including a 1,621-ton mustard agent stockpile, dumps of old chemical weapons, lab leftovers and radiological waste.
Restoration workers at the proving ground's former radioactive waste processing facility are set to begin the first phase of a long-term cleanup that will take years to complete and cost millions.
The proving ground collected waste from East Coast Army sites and prepared it for deep-sea dumping, a designated disposal method during the 1950s and 1960s, said Don Green, an environmental scientist at the Aberdeen base.
Mr. Green said the $1.9 million first phase of the cleanup will remove about 11,000 cubic yards of soil on the 3.1-acre site, which is contaminated by cesium-137 and arsenic. Contaminated soil will be removed, tested and sorted, with contaminated dirt shipped to Envirocare, a low-level radioactive waste handler in Utah, he said.
A study outlining options to clean deeper contamination in the soil and groundwater will be finished later this year, Mr. Green said.
It's expected to cost $6.9 million to clean the Edgewood landfill, while the radioactive waste facility cleanup could cost about $6.6 million, Mr. Green said.
Since the installation began destroying its stockpile of mustard agent, a banned carcinogenic blistering agent, in April, it has been beset by minor problems.
Workers are destroying the stockpile by mixing the mustard agent in a large tank with hot water to break it down into treatable, less-dangerous byproducts.
To speed up the destruction timetable by a year, the Army retooled the robotic plant that was being built, creating a smaller plant that uses workers instead of a fully automated assembly line. Workers reach inside separately vented gloveboxes to empty the 1-ton containers of the agent. The containers are then closed and later shipped to Rock Island, Ill., to be destroyed.
In the past couple of months, the retooling has led to a power outage and low-level releases of vapor.
Members of the Maryland Citizens Advisory Committee, which has worked closely with the Army on chemical agent destruction, said they haven't received any phone calls from concerned residents.
Joseph Lovrich, site project manager of the destruction plant, said the plant is operating round-the-clock and had destroyed about 71 tons of mustard agent. He said no agent has been released outside the plant.
-------- us politics
Bush Accepts Blame for African Uranium Charge
Story by Steve Holland
REUTERS USA:
July 31, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21689/story.htm
WASHINGTON - After weeks of blaming others, President Bush for the first time accepted responsibility today for making a now-discredited charge that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.
"I take personal responsibility for everything I say," Bush said when asked about the disputed claim during a wide-ranging White House Rose Garden news conference.
Bush also denied exaggerating the Iraqi threat in the runup to the war as some Democrats have charged and said his decision to go to war was based on "good, sound intelligence" that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.
"I'm confident history will prove the decision we made to be the right decision," he said.
It was Bush's first formal solo news conference since March, the eighth of his presidency, and came shortly before he departs on Saturday for what amounts to a month-long vacation at his Texas ranch interspersed with various official and fund-raising events.
A main focus of the news conference was the chaotic situation in Iraq, where U.S. troops are dying daily three months after major combat operations were declared over, where the hunt for weapons of mass destruction is so far fruitless, and where Saddam Hussein remains at large.
The claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a nuclear weapons program was made by Bush in his State of the Union address last January as evidence that Iraq represented a threat to the United States.
In recent weeks the claim has been discredited as being based partly on forged documents, and in the uproar that followed, Bush and his top aides blamed CIA Director George Tenet for failing to head off the 16-word line in the speech.
Deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley accepted a White House share of the blame but Bush had declined to take personal responsibility.
'CREDIBILITY GAP'
His acknowledgment represented an attempt to put the issue to rest as Democrats claim Bush has a "credibility gap."
He defended national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who has drawn fire for letting the claim into the speech.
"Dr. Condoleezza Rice is an honest, fabulous person and America is lucky to have her service, period," he said, as Rice watched with other top aides nearby under the shade of a tree.
On the hunt for Saddam himself, Bush said U.S. forces were "closer than we were yesterday, I guess."
Bush had said in the pre-war period he was convinced Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but now said he was confident Saddam had a "weapons program" and that the truth will come out as mounds of seized documents are analyzed.
"It's just going to take a while," he said.
Bush is under strong pressure to produce evidence of weapons of mass destruction since he cited it as the main cause for war. He was briefed about the search this week by David Kay, who is leading the search for the U.S. military.
He acknowledged that he needed to produce the evidence.
"In order to, you know, placate the critics and the cynics about (the) intention of the United States we need to produce evidence. And I fully understand it, and I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe: that Saddam had a weapons program," he said.
He predicted that as Iraqis become less fearful of a return of Saddam to power, "we will gain more cooperation in our search for the truth in Iraq."
Bush spoke as Americans are increasingly uneasy about the U.S. military deployment in Iraq, with 50 U.S. troops killed in hostile action since May 1.
"The American people are proud of our armed forces and we are grateful for their sacrifice and their service in fighting the war on terror," he said.
Bush urged patience as the United States seeks to develop a freer society in Iraq. "Even our own experiment with democracy, it didn't happen overnight. I've never expected Thomas Jefferson to emerge in Iraq in a 90-day period. And so this is going to take time," he said.
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Bush Denies Claim He Oversold Case for War
July 31, 2003
New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/international/worldspecial/31PREX.html
WASHINGTON, July 30 - President Bush today rejected criticism that he had exaggerated the urgency of going to war with Iraq and said American forces were "on the hunt" for Saddam Hussein.
But at his first full-scale news conference in nearly five months, Mr. Bush also took responsibility for the first time for an assertion in his State of the Union address about Iraq's nuclear weapons program that turned out to be based on questionable intelligence. He had initially suggested that the fault for including the assertion rested with the C.I.A.
"I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course," Mr. Bush said. "I also take responsibility for making decisions on war and peace. And I analyzed a thorough body of intelligence, good, solid, sound intelligence that led me to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Asked in several ways whether he had oversold the threat from Iraq to justify the war, Mr. Bush said that he remained confident that banned weapons would be found, and that there had been a well-documented case even before he took office that Mr. Hussein had biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
"And in order to placate the critics and cynics about intentions of the United States, we need to produce evidence," Mr. Bush said. "And I fully understand that. And I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe: that Saddam had a weapons program."
It was only the ninth formal news conference of his presidency. Mr. Bush has made clear that he dislikes the sessions and does not think they are a good way of communicating with the public. It was called by the White House at the last minute this morning after weeks of pressure from reporters, including a bellowed request directed at the president by Bill Plante of CBS News after the president's appearance in the Rose Garden on Tuesday with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.
White House officials said Mr. Bush had no particular news to disclose, although he suggested that he was considering legislation or a Constitutional amendment to codify that marriage can take place only between a man and woman. But the session, held in the Rose Garden, gave Mr. Bush a chance to promote his domestic and foreign policy record as the presidential race begins to heat up and as he prepares to head to his ranch in Texas for a month starting on Saturday.
Mr. Bush began the session with a statement about progress in Iraq, in the fight against terrorism and in strengthening the sluggish economy. Then, for more than 45 minutes, he fielded questions on a wide array of topics. The president said the threat from Al Qaeda remained real, noting that the United States had information that the terrorist organization might again try to hijack airliners, perhaps an international flight.
"I'm confident we will thwart the attempts," the president said.
Mr. Bush said he did not know how close American forces were to capturing Mr. Hussein, whose two sons were killed in a gun battle with troops last week.
"Closer than we were yesterday, I guess," Mr. Bush said. "All I know is we're on the hunt."
Mr. Bush got one question about his statement in the State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium in Africa, a statement that turned out to be based on intelligence that the C.I.A. had warned the White House might be unreliable. He was specifically asked if Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, whose office helped go over the speech, should be held responsible for the inclusion of the assertion. "Dr. Condoleezza Rice is an honest, fabulous person," he said, with her standing not far away. "And America is lucky to have her service. Period."
Speaking this evening on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," Ms. Rice said, "I certainly feel personal responsibility for this entire episode. What I feel most responsibility for is that this is detracting from the very strong case the president has been making."
Mr. Bush defended his tax cuts as effective in helping the economy despite the continued rise in unemployment and the surge in the federal budget deficit. He pledged to follow through on his plan to provide $15 billion over five years to combat AIDS in some of the world's poorest nations, later drawing fire from some advocacy groups that said the financing levels he was supporting for next year were inadequate.
He reiterated his commitment to a United States role in bringing peace to Liberia. But he did not respond directly to a question about whether that role would include the use of American ground troops, and said American participation in general would depend on a number of factors, including the departure of President Charles G. Taylor of Liberia and the enactment of a cease-fire between Mr. Taylor's forces and Liberian rebels.
Mr. Bush disclosed that he had spoken this morning to President Hu Jintao of China about North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and said he was urging the European Union and Russia to join the United States in sending a clear message to Iran not to build a nuclear weapon.
Throughout the session, his first extended encounter with reporters since March 6, before the war with Iraq, Mr. Bush appeared unruffled and well prepared for the occasionally sharp questions. He parried them with what has become a familiar blend of explanations, saying the threat from Mr. Hussein, for example, had been well established by the United Nations and previous administrations.
But a number of his statements, especially on the economy, drew criticism from Democrats and other critics of his administration.
Mr. Bush said the three tax cuts he had signed into law since taking office were a "job creation program" and that the tax bill he signed in 2001 had helped make the recession of that year "shallow."
Democrats noted that the unemployment rate has risen to 6.4 percent from 4.1 percent since Mr. Bush took office and that the economy has lost 2.5 million nonfarm jobs in that period. At the same time, they said, the federal budget has gone from surplus to deficit, with more red ink likely for years or decades to come.
"We cannot create jobs and put our nation back on the path of economic growth until President Bush abandons his failed economic plan," said Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. "The president's budget-busting tax cuts have done little if anything for the majority of American families."
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Clinton-style amnesia returns
July 31, 2003
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33851
WASHINGTON - The source of the mysterious amnesia that struck so many Clinton officials when scandals broke last decade may finally be known. It's apparently something in the White House water, for convenient bouts of forgetfulness have now spread to Bush officials.
It seems everyone's drawing a blank in the State of the Uranium scandal.
We now know from an old memo surfaced by the CIA that National Security Adviser Condi Rice was explicitly warned to drop from any presidential speeches the dubious charge that Iraq was shopping for uranium in Africa.
Rice's deputy, Steve Hadley, and Bush's chief speech-writer, Mike Gerson, got the same Oct. 6 memo from Langley.
The day before, Hadley got another CIA memo advising the White House against taking stock in the British version of the uranium tale, because it, too, was unfounded.
Yet three months later, President Bush spread the canard in his nationally televised State of the Union speech.
Hadley, who was supposed to vet the key speech for bad intelligence, claims he just plum forgot the CIA's earlier written warnings, which were followed up by several calls from the CIA director. It was a highly unusual move for the head of the nation's spy agency, but apparently not the least bit memorable for the heretofore no-name aide on the other end of the phone.
"I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue," Hadley only now confesses, after the memos surfaced and long after the nation was fooled into believing Iraq posed an exigent threat to America.
Well, what about his boss Rice? She got at least one of the memos he did. Why didn't she recall the warnings? Surely they discussed the CIA's concerns.
"Not that I can recall," said Hadley, taking another big gulp from Lethe.
OK, then how about the president? He edited drafts of the speech, and ultimately broadcast the discredited uranium reference to the world. Surely he knew there were reservations.
"He has no memory of that," his spokesman Dan Bartlett claimed, adding that he didn't even remember that the same line was deleted from the final draft of his Cincinnati speech on Iraq.
Just before the State of the Union, Rice aide Bob Joseph, a neocon nuke expert keen on keeping the uranium charge in the speech, got an earful of objections from top CIA analyst Alan Foley. Surely he remembers concerns were raised.
"He has no memory of it," Bartlett said.
Yoinks! That just leaves speech-writer Gerson, the guy who actually penned the radioactive line in the speech. He looks like a walking encyclopedia.
But the nerd doesn't remember a damn thing.
"He had no recollection of the memo," Bartlett maintained. "He did not recall the memo during the State of the Union process."
Can't recall? No recollection? That brings back memories, doesn't it? How many times did we hear Clinton officials feign amnesia during scandals?
Congress needs to hold televised hearings to jog these Bush officials' rusty memories. Let's see if Hadley, Rice, Gerson, Joseph and others stick to their story of communicable amnesia under oath and under the glare of the klieg lights.
And while they're at it, lawmakers should subpoena the CIA for the memos (the White House would merely claim executive privilege). They are several pages long, and no doubt reveal a lot more than the White House is telling.
Or perhaps Congress wants to roll over for this White House again, like it did before the war when it granted an over-reaching commander in chief blank-check authority to drag the nation into a bloody foreign quagmire under false pretenses - heaping more shame on the Constitution's framers. Is it also now willing to abdicate its oversight role over that same rogue branch of government?
The ball is in the Republican leadership's court. It controls the game on the Hill. Will it continue to punt away the truth?
----
Bait and switch / The neocon case for war in Iraq
July 31, 2003
Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.majority.com/news/startribune1.html
In an appearance Tuesday before a skeptical Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz declared that "the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the war on terror." That same refrain has begun to pop up in statements by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- as well as the neoconservative thinkers and writers who provide the intellectual framework for this administration's approach to foreign and defense policies. It begins to get down to the bedrock rationale for going to war in Iraq.
Strands of that rationale have been around for years, but they weren't given public emphasis -- not in the 2000 presidential campaign and not in the prewar debate about whether to invade Iraq. If you piece together those strands, the rationale, prewar, went like this:
Saddam Hussein is a brutal tyrant who routinely thumbs his nose at the United States. His interest in weapons of mass destruction -- if not his possession of them -- is well-established, meaning he may become a threat to the United States and its friends at some point. Moreover, he is in violation of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions. The United States can make a case for ousting him by military force -- a case that can't be made for any other Middle East leader. So Saddam's the guy.
Removing Saddam will do a number of positive things. In his place the United States and friends can build a peaceful, prosperous, democratic, secular state in Iraq. That in turn will be a powerful catalyst for promoting change and reform throughout the Islamic world. Oppressive, corrupt regimes will become vulnerable because people across the region will want what the Iraqi people now have. And Islamic reform is key to removing the conditions that breed terrorism.
There's also what is called the "flypaper" or "magnet" effect, to which Bush spoke with his famous "Bring 'em on" statement. The idea is that the presence of tens of thousands of American military personnel on the ground in Iraq will make them a magnet for terrorists from around the world. It will pull terrorists away from Israel and the United States to Iraq, where U.S. forces can safely engage them in full-fledged combat and defeat them.
Those American forces also are likely to embolden reformist elements next door in Iran, threatening the rule of the oppressive, America-hating mullahs. On the other side of Iraq, in Syria, terrorist groups such as Hezbollah are likely also to get the message that they'd best behave, lest they too get whacked by the Americans.
That's the neocon theory, and there is evidence that pieces of it are indeed working. But pieces are not: Witness the warning that also came Tuesday of a new airliner hijacking threat in the United States and overseas. Note also that in his appearance before the Senate committee, Wolfowitz and others declined repeated efforts by frustrated Democrats and Republicans to estimate the cost of occupying Iraq, how long it might take or even how many troops it might require.
"Oh, come on now," responded Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the ranking Democrat. "Does anyone here at the table think we're going to be down below 100,000 forces in the next calendar year? When are you guys starting to be honest with us?"
The larger question is why those guys weren't honest with Congress and the American people before the war started. Why did they focus almost exclusively on the supposedly imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction? Why not lay out their far more nuanced, ambitious neocon theory about projecting American values into the Middle East and thus beginning a regional transformation? Wolfowitz has said the WMD rationale was chosen for "bureaucratic" reasons; it was the one factor everyone could agree on.
But other neocon writers hint it was for a different reason: They knew they couldn't sell their vision -- not to traditional conservatives, as George Will has made clear; not to most liberals, and not to the nonideological middle which would balk at the cost in dollars and human life. So they gussied up the "imminent threat" posed by Iraq's WMD programs and rode that argument into war.
The neocon theory is interesting and complex. It's like a new theory for solving a scientific question. New theories need grueling examination by peers who try to knock holes in them before they are accepted as the basis for action. They also need to be explained, patiently and with precision, so the public can know what it is being asked to purchase with the lives if its kids and its money.
The neocon foreign policy agenda got neither a thorough vetting nor public explication -- because its authors apparently thought the American people wouldn't understand it or wouldn't buy it. Instead, the neocons pulled a classic, and very arrogant, bait and switch. Sooner or later, they're going to pay for it.
----
U.S. Shifts Rhetoric On Its Goals in Iraq
New Emphasis: Middle East Stability
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10756-2003Jul31.html
As the search for illegal weapons in Iraq continues without success, the Bush administration has moved to emphasize a different rationale for the war against Saddam Hussein: using Iraq as the "linchpin" to transform the Middle East and thereby reduce the terrorist threat to the United States.
President Bush, who has mostly stopped talking about Iraq's weapons, said at a news conference Wednesday that "the rise of a free and peaceful Iraq is critical to the stability of the Middle East, and a stable Middle East is critical to the security of the American people."
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday that "the battle to secure the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the global war on terror, and those sacrifices are going to make not just the Middle East more stable, but our country safer."
And Vice President Cheney, in a speech last week, said Iraq "will stand as an example to the entire Middle East" and thus "contribute directly to the security of America and our friends."
In an interview yesterday, a senior administration official expanded on that theme, saying the United States has embarked on a "generational commitment" to Iraq similar to its efforts to transform Germany in the decades after World War II.
The Bush aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, outlined a long-term strategy in which the United States would spread its values through Iraq and the Middle East much as it transformed Europe in the second half of the 20th century. As outlined, the U.S. commitment to Iraq and the Middle East would be far more expansive than the administration had described to the public and the world before the Iraq war.
"The great goal for the United States after 9/11 is worthy of a country of the importance and the power of the United States," the adviser said. "That goal is to see the spread of our values and to understand that our values and our security are inextricably linked, much as they were in Europe, but they are also linked in the Middle East."
The vision described by the official represents a change in the administration's emphasis in describing the U.S. purpose in Iraq. Before the war, Bush at times stressed the limits of the mission, promising to "remain in Iraq as long as necessary and not a day more." At that time, Bush justified the conflict largely by asserting the need to strip Hussein of chemical and biological weapons and disrupt his nuclear ambitions.
The notion of a free Iraq as a catalyst for change in the region is not new. In a Feb. 26 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Bush said: "A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions."
More recently, in a speech in London a month ago, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice compared the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to Pearl Harbor. Rice urged Europeans to expand on the defeat of Hussein's government by turning "to the Middle East with the same vision, determination and patience that we exhibited in building a united transatlantic community after 1945."
While that notion was low on the original list of reasons for war, it has largely replaced the "weapons of mass destruction" as justification.
The newly emphasized rationale is not as clear as the emphasis on the threat Hussein represented. Though the United States seeks to transform the Middle East, some key allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have resisted democracy.
The Bush adviser spoke of an open-ended commitment to Iraq as the United States helps to build its economy and its infrastructure. "When we're talking about resources, this is something that isn't going to be firm for years out into the future," the aide said.
The official drew an extended analogy, comparing the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to Pearl Harbor, and the difficulties in Iraq to the occupation of West Germany between 1945 and 1947. "That was a generational commitment to Europe, because the only way the United States believed that we could actually make certain that Americans were not going to fight in European wars again was to make certain that Europe was democratized and prospered," the adviser said. "In a sense, what 9/11 did was to give the United States the same kind of impulse toward the Middle East. . . . You really have to have a transformation of that region if we're not to have terrorists stalking the American people for generations to come."
In a crucial departure from the analogy, the official did not envision a decades-long military presence in Iraq such as the half-century presence in Germany necessitated by the Cold War.
The official said Europeans understand that "if we're ever to make the Middle East a different place than it is, you're going to have to see a transformation of the Middle East and an addressing of the freedom deficit. It's a long-term project, but I think it would be a mistake to think that it's going to be the U.S. military that's going to do it or the United States alone that's going to do it."
The official said that in the short term, the administration expects the number of nations contributing troops to the Iraq occupation to grow from the current 16 to 30 or more over the next "couple of months."
"Much as a different Germany becomes a kind of linchpin for a Europe in which you will not have war, a different Iraq becomes a kind of linchpin for a different Middle East out of which these ideologies of hatred would not come," the official said yesterday.
"The reason I make the historical analogy is, it means it has to be a generational commitment. You can't say after a year, 'Well, this is hard.' You have to stay with it."
--------
Bush Continues National Emergency With Respect to Iraq
Continuation notice cites continued instability in Iraq
31 July 2003
U.S. State Department
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2003&m=July&x=20030731181136namfuaks0.694668&t=usinfo/wf-latest.html
President Bush has continued for one year the national emergency with respect to Iraq, citing continued instability in the country, as well as the need to "ensure the establishment of a process leading to representative Iraqi self-rule."
Former President George Bush first imposed sanctions on Iraq on August 2, 1990.
Following is the text of the Federal Register notice:
(begin text)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
July 31, 2003
NOTICE
CONTINUATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY WITH RESPECT TO IRAQ
On August 2, 1990, by Executive Order 12722, President Bush declared a national emergency with respect to Iraq pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706) to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States constituted by the actions and policies of the Government of Iraq -- the Saddam Hussein regime. By Executive Orders 12722 of August 2, 1990, and 12724 of August 9, 1990, the President imposed trade sanctions on Iraq and blocked Iraqi government assets. Additional measures were taken with respect to this national emergency by Executive Order 13290 of March 20, 2003. Because of the continued instability in Iraq, the United States and Coalition partners' role as the temporary authority in Iraq, and the need to ensure the establishment of a process leading to representative Iraqi self-rule, the national emergency declared on August 2, 1990, and the measures adopted on August 2 and August 9, 1990, and March 20, 2003, to deal with that emergency must continue in effect beyond August 2, 2003. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to Iraq.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE, July 31, 2003.
(end text)
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Now we pay the warlords to tyrannise the Afghan people
The Taliban fell but - thanks to coalition policy - things did not get better
Isabel Hilton isabelh@compuserve.com
Thursday July 31, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/comment/story/0,11447,1009459,00.html
Diehard defenders of military intervention in Iraq argue that it's too soon to carp, that time is required to restore order and prosperity to a country ravaged by every type of misfortune. Time, certainly, is needed, but is time enough? If the example of Afghanistan is anything to go by, time makes things worse rather than better. More than 18 months after the collapse of the Taliban regime, there is a remarkable consensus among aid workers, NGOs and UN officials that the situation is deteriorating.
There is a further point of consensus: that the deterioration is a direct consequence of "coalition" policy. Some 60 aid agencies have issued a joint statement pleading with the international community to deploy forces across Afghanistan to bring some order. While waiting for the elusive international cavalry, they have been forced to reduce operations in the north, where the warlords fight each other, and in the south, where the "coalition" forces try to fight the Taliban. Privately, many aid workers fear that it is too late. Even if the political will existed, foreign troops may no longer be in a position to restore order. To do so would require going to war with the warlords themselves.
The warlords, of course, as friends of the "coalition", are also part of the government. They have private armies, raise private funds, pursue private interests and control private treasuries. None of these do they wish to give up. All of them threaten the long-term future of Afghanistan, the short-term prospects of holding elections, the immediate possibilities of reconstruction and the threadbare credibility of Hamid Karzai's government.
It is not Karzai's fault. He is a prisoner within his own government: a respected, liberal Pashtun who nominally heads a government in which former Northern Alliance commanders - and figures like the Tajik defence minister Mohammed Fahim - hold the real power.
In the country that is fantasy Afghanistan - or the Afghanistan of western promise - a national army is being created which represents all ethnic groups, and elections next year will produce a representative, democratic government. In real Afghanistan, Fahim does not want to admit other ethnic groups to his army, which could create the conditions for a future civil war.
The new national army is supposed to be 70,000-strong. Last year, only 4,000 men were trained. The new recruits were vetted for Taliban connections and drug trafficking, but not for past human rights abuses. The defence ministry is a Tajik fiefdom; arms and cash, including British taxpayers' money, continue to be funnelled to the warlords; and senior UN officials have publicly doubted whether the elections will happen at all.
The funds offered to Afghanistan for reconstruction have been slow to arrive and less than promised, but aid agencies argue that the most urgent problems are not primarily a question of money. The bad news is that they are, therefore, not problems money will solve. What is needed is a fundamental change in the power structure. But this continues to be supported, on grounds of security, by both the British and the US governments.
There is money in Afghanistan, but it is in the wrong hands. Local warlords control local roads and exact crippling tolls that impede trade. Karzai is not able to exact the remittance of this money to Kabul.The government therefore, depends on funds from outside, part of which it uses, in turn, to buy off the warlords. At no stage of this dismal process do funds trickle down to the people of Afghanistan. The only dependable source of revenue for many returned farmers is the opium poppy.
Two million refugees have returned to Afghanistan, encouraged by the UNHCR and their weary host countries. For many this has been a tale of woe. There are few jobs; poverty and hunger continue.
Development and reconstruction experts agree that postwar reconstruction should begin with security and include the early encouragement of labour-intensive infrastructure projects which help the country and put wages into the pockets of those who need them. But this has not been applied in Afghanistan. Security never came because, when the Taliban fell, the US would not agree to the deployment of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) outside Kabul. Why? Because the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was already planning the invasion of Iraq and did not want men tied down in peacekeeping.
The Pentagon prefers to pay the warlords to run the country outside Kabul, dressing up the exercise with a loya jirga in which 80% of those "elected" were warlords. Washington sources report that when Karzai appealed to Rumsfeld for support to confront one of the most notorious warlords, Rumsfeld declined to give it. The result has been that reconstruction is crippled, political progress is non-existent and human rights abuses are piling up.
Even straightforward reconstruction projects fail to bring maximum benefit to the Afghan people. To give only one example: road repair could be an opportunity to spend money usefully and to provide employment. But on the key road from Kandahar to Iran, which had not been repaired for 30 years, the central government failed to gain the cooperation of local powers. The stalemate was resolved when the repair contract was awarded to a US firm that brought in heavy machinery instead of using local labour.
What progress there has been is now threatened. The proportion of girls in school - never more than half - has begun to decline again: girls' schools have been attacked, and girls threatened and harassed on their way to classes.
A Human Rights Watch report published on Tuesday documents crimes of kidnapping, rape, intimidation, robbery, extortion and murder, committed not in spite of the government but by its forces - by the warlords and their police and soldiers, who are paid, directly and indirectly, by US and British taxpayers.
The British have been shipping cash to Hazrat Ali, the head of Afghanistan's eastern military command and the warlord of Nangahar, who worked with the US at Tora Bora. His men specialise in arresting people on the pretext that they are Taliban supporters and torturing them until their families pay up.
If paying warlords had been an emergency measure, there would be room to hope that it would no longer be necessary once elections were held and a legitimate government in place. But this is a policy the consequence of which is that there is unlikely to be long-term peace or a democratic government.
The promised election date is less than a year away. The choice is to allow these local tyrannies to be painted over by a voting exercise conducted for propaganda purposes, or to challenge the warlords. Is Nato, which takes over ISAF in August, really prepared to do so? Somehow I doubt it.
-------- africa
Fighting Rages in Capital As Team Arrives in Liberia
Reuters
Thursday, July 31, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4999-2003Jul30.html
MONROVIA, Liberia, July 30 -- Liberian rebels and forces loyal to President Charles Taylor fought fiercely for control of two key bridges in the capital today as residents in the country's second-largest city counted bodies after battles there.
With Liberia's two biggest cities now gripped by fighting, a long-awaited multinational reconnaissance mission arrived in the capital, Monrovia, where it is scheduled to study the logistics of deploying as many as 3,000 West African peacekeepers.
Aircraft engine trouble initially forced the mission to turn back, but it resumed later.
Taylor's military commanders in Monrovia said fighting raged around New Bridge and Gabriel Tucker Bridge -- gateways to the heart of a city besieged for 12 days by Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD, a rebel group that wants to remove Taylor from the presidency.
"From this afternoon, heavy fighting has been going on around the two main bridges. We have been fighting for four hours, but LURD forces are using heavy weapons," which are hitting civilian areas, one commander said by telephone.
He said at least five civilians had been wounded. Mortar rounds killed at least one person today. Residents in the port city of Buchanan said fighting between another rebel group and Taylor's troops left dozens of bodies in the streets.
The rebel group Movement for Democracy in Liberia seized Buchanan on Monday, tightening the noose around Taylor, a former warlord indicted for war crimes by a U.N.-backed court. He is under U.S. pressure to step down.
"There are bodies all over the place. Dozens of people have been killed," one Buchanan resident said by telephone. "The wounded are on the streets, and there is no way to treat them."
Another resident said the dead were being carted away in wheelbarrows when it was safe to retrieve them.
West African countries have pledged to send in peacekeepers, but the deployment has been hobbled by haggling over who should fund the mission and concerns about the fighting. About 1,500 Nigerian soldiers are on standby to go in as a vanguard force.
Many Liberians say the United States should intervene to save Liberia, which was founded for freed American slaves in the 19th century. The United States appears reluctant to commit troops, although three U.S. warships are on their way to Liberian waters.
-------- arms sales
Army sold us guns, say rebels
July 31 2003
By Jason Gutierrez Manila
AFP
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/30/1059480406260.html
Muslim separatists waging an insurgency in the southern Philippines said yesterday that they bought weapons from the military, confirming an allegation by soldiers who launched a failed revolt against the Government.
There was, however, no wholesale "collusion" between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the military and it was likely that only individual solders were selling weapons to the guerillas, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said.
About 300 renegade soldiers took over a commercial and residential complex in the financial centre of Makati on Sunday.
They booby-trapped the area and demanded President Gloria Arroyo and other top officials resign for alleged corruption in the military. After a day-long stand-off, they surrendered peacefully.
The rebels accused Dr Arroyo's Government of selling weapons to the MILF, the communist New People's Army and the Abu Sayyaf kidnap gang in a bid to prolong their insurgencies and get more military and financial aid from the United States.
Weapons previously recovered from rebel camps overrun by troops in the south were marked with "DND arsenal", the mutineers said, indicating they came from the Department of National Defence.
The Government has denied the accusation, but Dr Arroyo created a commission on Monday to investigate the allegation. Military spy chief Brigadier-General Victor Corpuz resigned yesterday to calm restiveness within military ranks and ensure that there would be no cover-up.
"We understand through our simple inquiry that these firearms come from the (Government) arsenal," Mr Kabalu said.
"There's no direct links between the MILF and the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines). We do buy firearms and ammunition, not necessarily from the AFP (directly)," he said.
He said that in the southern Philippines, where the MILF has been waging its guerilla war for the past 25 years, weapons are "a prime commodity, very much in demand.
"We do not bother ourselves to determine the source of the materials".
-------- britain
Blair rules out war decision inquiry
July 31 2003
The Age
By Peter Fray
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/30/1059480412729.html
British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday ruled out an independent inquiry into the decision to go to war in Iraq and declined to answer questions about the suicide of a British weapons expert that has rocked his Government's credibility.
Mr Blair refused to be drawn on whether he would resign if weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, but said his appetite for power had been "undiminished" by more than six years in office and recent events.
On the eve of becoming Britain's longest-serving Labour prime minister, Mr Blair's public support has crumbled recently after the failure to find Saddam Hussein's weapons stockpile and the David Kelly affair.
Recent polls have shown the Tory opposition consistently in front of the Government for the first time since Labour came to power in 1997.
The Prime Minister used his final monthly news conference before the summer to describe the decision to attack Iraq as "right and justified" and asked war sceptics to defer judgement until the Iraq survey team searching for weapons reported its findings.
He said questions about the death of British weapons expert David Kelly were best left to a judicial inquiry by Lord Hutton, which is due to begin tomorrow.
But he agreed that events surrounding the outing of Dr Kelly as the source of a BBC report that alleged the Government had "sexed up" its Iraq dossier could change the Government's relations with the media.
"I think there are issues there for both sides of the political culture," he said. "Perhaps when the Hutton inquiry has finalised its judgement and published those, that debate can take place in a more informed way.
"There are things for us both (the Government and the media) to reflect on."
On the Government's damaging row with the BBC, Mr Blair said: "All we ever wanted was an incorrect story corrected."
In a confident, 75-minute performance, Mr Blair continually tried to deflect attention from Iraq and the Kelly affair towards the Government's economic and public sector achievements.
Mr Blair said he planned to continue as prime minister up the next election, which is expected in 2005. "There is a big job to do," he said. "My appetite for doing it is undiminished."
--------
Blair Stands Firm on Iraq Despite a Tumble in Polls
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 31, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5001-2003Jul30.html
LONDON, July 30 -- Prime Minister Tony Blair today acknowledged opinion polls showing he faced a steep decline in public trust following accusations that his government exaggerated intelligence claims about Iraq's weapons.
"People need to know that what we did in Iraq was right and justified, and that's a case that we have to not just assert but prove over time," he told reporters, in his first news conference since the controversy over Iraq became a full-fledged political crisis.
But he insisted that Britain and the United States had been right to take military action to overthrow former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, saying the vast majority of Iraqis were "overjoyed" to be rid of the old government. And he said the issues that truly mattered to British voters were domestic. "The public in the end will judge us on the economy, the health service, schools, crime," he said. "Those are the big issues for the public."
Many analysts had depicted this as Blair's day of reckoning before a hostile press corps loaded with tough questions about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and the apparent suicide of a British weapons expert. But by most accounts here, the prime minister emerged 75 minutes later unscathed, unbowed and with his self-confident demeanor intact.
This weekend marks the sixth anniversary of Blair's ascent to the premiership -- making his the longest-serving Labor Party administration in British history. Blair made clear today that he intends to stand for a third term in the next election, which many analysts predict will be held in 2005. "There's a big job of work still to do, and my appetite for doing it is undiminished," he said.
Blair's government has been locked in a bitter dispute with the BBC over reports, first broadcast on BBC Radio, that officials knowingly exaggerated claims that Iraq could launch chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of an order. Blair heatedly denied the allegation, but the conflict worsened. Officials leaked the name of David Kelly, a Ministry of Defense weapons expert, as the source of the reports, and then Kelly was found dead, apparently having taken his own life, after testifying before a parliamentary committee.
Blair's poll ratings have fallen, and left-wing critics within his own party have called for him to step down. Political analysts view Blair's top aide, Alastair Campbell, and Defense Secretary Geoffrey Hoon as likely candidates for resignation.
Blair sought to deflect questions on the Kelly matter by saying he would withhold comment until an independent public inquiry was completed. A preliminary hearing will be held on Friday. "I totally understand there are very legitimate questions to be asked and answered, but that should be done in the context of the inquiry," he told reporters.
Asked whether he should have called a halt to the conflict with the BBC before it escalated, Blair did not back down. "All we ever wanted was an incorrect story corrected," he said.
Still, he added, "There are issues there for both sides of the political culture to look at, both the media and politicians. There are things for us both to reflect on."
The news conference took place a few hours before President Bush held his own at the White House. The questions here were a bit more pointed, but the answers were equally feisty and occasionally laced with rueful humor.
Blair urged the public and the press to await research by the new Iraq Survey Group of inspectors who are hunting for weapons of mass destruction. "Look, I may be wrong about this, but I think people will come to a considered view after a period of time," he said, adding that the real debate between himself and his opponents was deeper than the Iraq issue.
"A lot of people, including, frankly, a lot of people in the media, don't really believe there is a threat arising from terrorism and weapons of mass destruction," he said. "They think it's a convenient construct politically or something. I just tell you absolutely, passionately, that I believe this is the security threat of the 21st century, and if we don't deal with it, then at some point we'll rue the consequences."
Asked to comment on the BBC's reporting, Blair smiled widely before declining to take the bait. "Well that's very tempting, but I've learned to resist temptation," he replied.
-------- business
Payments for Perle
by Ari Berman,
July 31, 2003
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030818&s=berman
An odd thing happened in February when a European television station approached Richard Perle for an interview. Millions of antiwar protesters had rocked the globe a week prior, and the station badly wanted Perle, as chairman of the influential Defense Policy Board, to articulate the Pentagon's Iraq policy. But Perle, as he continues to do today, demanded a fee. Though startled by the request, the news station violated its strict no-pay policy for interviews and obliged the chairman.
The station's experience was not unique. During and after his chairmanship, Perle used his insider status to demand fees for appearances on a number of foreign broadcasts, which included British, Canadian, Japanese and South Korean television. While paying interviewees is common practice in some countries, a number of media outlets made exceptions for Perle. "We did pay Perle because of his position [in a] prominent advisorship to the Secretary of Defense," says a European correspondent who, like most journalists interviewed, requested anonymity because of network discomfort at publicly discussing payment policies. Fees ranged from under $100 to $900--minor sums to someone like Perle, but federal regulations covering officials in his capacity make no distinctions based on amount.
Nor is this the first assertion of dubious dealings by Perle. In the past few months, The New Yorker and the New York Times have both raised serious questions about whether Perle has used his government post for private gain. Perle heatedly denied suggestions of impropriety regarding the broadcast payments. "There is no law, regulation or ethics guideline that would preclude my being compensated for articles, speeches or interviews," he said. "When I agreed to serve on the Defense Policy Board I agreed to its rules and I abide by them. I couldn't care less how many of your left wing friends you can quote, by name or anonymously, in support of standards of conduct that would be far more restrictive than anything in the current rules and regulations."
According to the Pentagon, all thirty members of the Defense Policy Board--which advises the Defense Secretary--though unpaid, are considered "special government employees" (SGE) and are banned from using their public office for private gain. Meetings are confidential, and board members obtain classified intelligence, receive security clearances and file internal financial disclosures that only the Defense Department views.
Several current or past officials with knowledge of the Defense Policy Board raise concerns about Perle's requests for payment. "It's naïve to say [TV stations] weren't more interested in Perle because he was chairman," says Barry Blechman, a Democratic appointee to the board. "If [TV] says we want the chairman and from that basis he wanted a fee, it would be prohibited." Blechman also notes that "it would never occur to me to charge for interviews." Harold Brown, another member of the board and former Defense Secretary under President Jimmy Carter, said Perle was "monetizing his reputation." Larry Korb--an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and now director of national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations--labeled Perle's actions "a problem."
Though a sympathizer has described Perle as "not a financial creature," a correspondent says that when he approached Perle's assistant for an interview he was immediately asked, "Do you know there's a fee?"
In some of his past interviews on television, Perle attempted to skirt legal problems by declaring that he was appearing as a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Often though, he has discarded that disclaimer. Regardless of how Perle presents himself, journalists say that he is paid because of his working knowledge of Pentagon strategy. "When we break the rules, it's for heavy-hitting individuals like Richard Perle," a Japanese news producer explains.
A typical Perle appearance came on April 4, 2003, on Canadian Television's morning news show, Canada AM, for which--according to a CTV news producer--Perle was paid $900. The host introduced Perle as a lead architect of Iraq policy and "one of the closest advisers of Donald Rumsfeld and a member of the influential Defense Policy Board." In the interview, Perle described the war in Iraq as certain to be "a quick war by any standards" and asserted that "we will find weapons of mass destruction when the people who know where they are are free to talk to us." On May 29 he was invited back and was paid for discussing Bush's Middle East policy.
Not all international media seemed comfortable with Perle's juggling act. "Nobody would pay a member of the Defense Policy Board for an interview [in Germany]," says Jan-Cristoph Wiechmann, a correspondent for the German magazine Stern. "It would, in fact, be considered a scandal."
Federal laws place restrictions on the behavior of SGEs like Perle. Regulations Code 5 CFR 2635.702--barring the use of public office for private gain--also warns of the "appearance of government sanction," and cautions against using public standing "in a manner that could be reasonably construed to imply that his agency or the Government sanctions or endorses his personal activities." Section 5 CFR 2635.807 bans SGEs from receiving money for speaking on matters in which the SGE "has participated or is participating personally and substantially" for the government. "Experts have to make a livelihood," a government ethics specialist explained, "but they're prohibited...if there's a nexus between public and private."
Perle's high-profile articulation of Administration strategy blurs this line. Before the Iraq war, members of the Defense Policy Board acted as unofficial spokesmen for the Pentagon, with Perle charging networks while aggressively promoting the DOD stance. "It's misleading to be charging money [for] selling policy," says Bill Allison of the Center for Public Integrity. "It creates the problem of asking to profit off of your government connection."
Said Perle: "The suggestion that being paid for work I do is somehow an abuse of my role as a member of a government advisory board is the sort of slander I expect from The Nation which, since the collapse of regard for the vision of its founders, and the paucity of ideas to replace it, has been reduced to impugning the character of those whose ideas have prevailed over yours."
Financial controversies are familiar to Perle. In early March in The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh exposed how one of his holdings, Trireme Partners, sought to benefit from an Iraq war. A week later, the Times reported that Global Crossing hired Perle to help win Pentagon approval for the telecom company's sale. Subsequently, Representative John Conyers, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, requested that the DOD's Inspector General investigate Perle's conduct. On March 27 Perle resigned his chairmanship of the board, but he remains a member. The DOD, responding to Conyers's letter, initiated an investigation, promising its findings by July 11. So far, Conyers has heard nothing. "These new revelations about Richard Perle are shocking but not surprising," Conyers told The Nation. "From his involvement with Global Crossing to this new information about speaking fees, Perle has only fueled speculation that he may be using his government position for private financial gain."
----
Boeing Disputes Lockheed Lawsuit
Jul 31, 2003
(AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BOEING_CONTRACT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BETHESDA, Md. -- Boeing Co. claims in a court filing that it did not engage in racketeering or violate antitrust rules by allegedly using internal documents obtained from rival Lockheed Martin Corp. to win an Air Force rocket launch contract.
Boeing filed a motion Thursday seeking to dismiss a lawsuit Lockheed Martin filed in June, alleging that Boeing used Lockheed trade secrets provided by a former Lockheed employee to win the $1.88 billion contract in 1999.
Lockheed sued Boeing and three of the Chicago-based company's former employees in U.S. District Court in Orlando, Fla. The lawsuit alleges Boeing and the employees broke federal and Florida racketeering and antitrust laws.
In the motion, Boeing says it didn't engage in racketeering or use the Lockheed documents to try to monopolize the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Program, or EELV.
Boeing spokesman Dan Beck said the Lockheed documents weren't used to gain an edge in the contract competition. Advertisement
"These claims have no relation to the underlying events and are an improper attempt to twist the facts into something they are not," he said.
Lockheed Martin declined to comment on the motion.
The EELV contract to launch satellites was eventually split between Boeing and Lockheed, but Boeing was given the majority of the launches - 21 to Lockheed's seven.
But after an investigation, the Air Force last week banned Boeing indefinitely from bidding on satellite launching contracts. It also took away seven satellite launches because of the company's use of Lockheed's records.
Former Boeing executives Kenneth Branch and William Erskine face federal conspiracy and other charges in federal court in Los Angeles. They and a third Boeing worker, Larry Satchell, who has not been charged criminally, are all named in Lockheed's lawsuit.
Boeing CEO Phil Condit apologized for the employee's actions in a full page ads run in several major newspapers in June. The company's 78,000 defense workers halted work for four hours Wednesday to undergo ethics training, Beck said, and Boeing has hired a former U.S. senator to review the incident and determine what internal changes are necessary.
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NATIONAL SECURITY
Some of Army's Civilian Contractors Are No-Shows in Iraq
BY DAVID WOOD
Newhouse News Service
July 31, 2003
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/wood080103.html
WASHINGTON -- U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said.
Months after American combat troops settled into occupation duty, they were camped out in primitive, dust-blown shelters without windows or air conditioning. The Army has invested heavily in modular barracks, showers, bathroom facilities and field kitchens, but troops in Iraq were using ramshackle plywood latrines and living without fresh food or regular access to showers and telephones.
Even mail delivery -- also managed by civilian contractors -- fell weeks behind.
Though conditions have improved, the problems raise new concerns about the Pentagon's growing global reliance on defense contractors for everything from laundry service to combat training and aircraft maintenance. Civilians help operate Navy Aegis cruisers and Global Hawk, the high-tech robot spy plane.
Civilian contractors may work well enough in peacetime, critics say. But what about in a crisis?
"We thought we could depend on industry to perform these kinds of functions," Lt. Gen. Charles S. Mahan, the Army's logistics chief, said in an interview.
One thing became clear in Iraq. "You cannot order civilians into a war zone," said Linda K. Theis, an official at the Army's Field Support Command, which oversees some civilian logistics contracts. "People can sign up to that -- but they can also back out."
As a result, soldiers lived in the mud, then the heat and dust. Back home, a group of mothers organized a drive to buy and ship air conditioners to their sons. One Army captain asked a reporter to send a box of nails and screws to repair his living quarters and latrines.
For almost a decade, the military has been shifting its supply and support personnel into combat jobs and hiring defense contractors to do the rest. This shift has accelerated under relentless pressure from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to make the force lighter and more agile.
"It's a profound change in the way the military operates," said Peter W. Singer, author of a new book, "Corporate Warriors," a detailed study of civilian contractors. He estimates that over the past decade, there has been a ten-fold increase in the number of contract civilians performing work the military used to do itself.
"When you turn these services over to the private market, you lose a measure of control over them," said Singer, a foreign policy researcher at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington.
Replacing 1,100 Marine cooks with civilians, as the Corps did two years ago, might make short-term economic sense.
But cooks might be needed as riflemen -- as they were during the desperate Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. And untrained civilians "can walk off the job any time they want, and the only thing the military can do is sue them later on," Singer said.
Thanks to overlapping contracts and multiple contracting offices, nobody in the Pentagon seems to know precisely how many contractors are responsible for which jobs -- or how much it all costs.
That's one reason the Bush administration can only estimate that it is spending about $4 billion a month on troops in Iraq. White House Budget Director Joshua Bolten said this week he could not even estimate the cost of keeping troops in Iraq in fiscal 2004, which begins Oct. 1.
Last fall the Army hired Kellogg Brown & Root, a Houston-based contractor, to draw up a plan for supporting U.S. troops in Iraq, covering everything from handling the dead to managing airports. KBR, as it's known, eventually received contracts to perform some of the jobs, and it and other contractors began assembling in Kuwait for the war.
But as the conflict approached, insurance rates for civilians skyrocketed -- to 300 percent to 400 percent above normal, according to Mike Klein, president of MMG Agency Inc., a New York insurance firm. Soldiers are insured through the military and rates don't rise in wartime.
It got "harder and harder to get (civilian contractors) to go in harm's way," said Mahan, the Army logistics chief.
The Army had $8 million in contracts for troop housing in Iraq sitting idle, Mahan said. "Our ability to move (away) from living in the mud is based on an expectation that we would have been able to go to more contractor logistical support early on," Mahan said.
Logistics support for troops in Iraq is handled by dozens of companies, each hired by different commands and military agencies with little apparent coordination or oversight.
Patrice Mingo, a spokesman for KBR, declined comment. Don Trautner, an Army official who manages a major logistics contract with KBR for troop support in Iraq, said he knew of "no hesitation or lateness" by KBR civilian contractors. "There were no delays I know of," he said, making clear that he did not speak for other contractors.
-------- china
U.S. Says China Is Stepping Up Short-Range Missile Production
July 31, 2003
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/international/asia/31CHIN.html
WASHINGTON, July 30 - China has accelerated production of short-range ballistic missiles, not only to hold Taiwan at peril but also "to complicate United States intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict," the Pentagon said today in its annual assessment of the Chinese military. Advertisement
China has deployed about 450 short-range ballistic missiles with conventional warheads capable of striking Taiwan and is expected to expand that force by 75 missiles a year for the next few years, the report states.
By comparison, the Pentagon last year had counted 350 of the missiles in China's arsenal and had predicted 50 would be deployed each year.
China is also developing an advanced, medium-range version of the missile. If deployed, the report said, the missile could strike Japanese or American forces within an arc across the western Pacific as far away as Okinawa. The report said China had increased military spending to pay for accelerated missile production, a fleet of Chinese-made strike aircraft and warships purchased from Russia. China's strategy, the report said, is to prevail so quickly in any Taiwan crisis that the United States could not intervene effectively.
"While seeing opportunity and benefit in interactions with the United States - primarily in terms of trade and technology - Beijing apparently believes that the United States poses a significant long-term challenge," the report said.
Aware that China's overriding foreign policy objective remains the return of Taiwan, which China considers a breakaway province, the report states that a potential conflict in the Taiwan Strait is "the primary driver for China's military modernization."
"While it professes a preference for resolving the Taiwan issue peacefully, Beijing is also seeking credible military options," the report says. "Should China use force against Taiwan, its primary goal likely would be to compel a quick negotiated solution on terms favorable to Beijing."
The report with classified details, was delivered late Tuesday to Congress as required by law. An unclassified version was released today by the Pentagon.
The report - titled "Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China" - estimated that China's military spending could total up to $65 billion a year, the second-largest military budget after that of the United States.
Chinese military doctrine now emphasizes "surprise, deception, and shock effect in the opening phase of a campaign," the report states.
Among China's new weapons are purchases from Russia, the report said, including guided missile destroyers and diesel-electric powered attack submarines that could threaten American warships.
Outside experts on the Chinese military said it remained impossible to state with certainty China's military intentions.
Adam Segal, project director for a recent study by the Council on Foreign Relations on the topic, said that American policy makers must avoid underreacting or overreacting to a perceived Chinese military threat.
The council study said America's military was 20 years ahead of China's technologically and was likely to increase that lead. "But that ignores very specific situations, especially the Taiwan scenario, where China could cause real problems for the United States," Mr. Segal said in a telephone interview today.
He said China's goal "is not to invade Taiwan, but to use force to coerce Taiwan back to the negotiating table."
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Pentagon says China refitting missiles to hit Okinawa
July 31, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030730-105115-8410r.htm
China is modifying short-range mobile missiles to target U.S. forces in Okinawa and is sharply increasing the number of missiles aimed at Taiwan, according to the Pentagon's latest annual report on Chinese military power.
"Beijing has greatly expanded its arsenal of increasingly accurate and lethal ballistic missiles and long-range strike aircraft that are ready for immediate application should the [People´s Liberation Army] be called upon to conduct war before its modernization aspirations are fully realized," according to the report released yesterday.
The Chinese are working on a medium-range missile that will give Beijing the ability to launch attacks against the 25,000 U.S. troops deployed on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. The new missiles also will be able to hit Taiwan from bases farther inland from the Chinese coast, the report said.
Currently, all of China's short-range CSS-7 and CSS-6 missiles are deployed in the Nanjing military region, located across the Taiwan Strait from China.
The new CSS-6s will "employ satellite-aided navigation to enable attacks against both Okinawa and Taiwan."
China now has deployed 450 short-range missiles and the force will grow by more than 75 missiles a year, the report said.
Last year's report said China had 350 CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles within striking range of Taiwan and that the Chinese military was adding 50 a year.
The missiles pose "a growing and significant challenge ... to U.S. forces in the western Pacific, as well as to allies and friends, including Taiwan."
Regarding the threat to Taiwan, the report states that China could use "decapitation" attacks against the island using missiles, aircraft or an amphibious assault.
"China's efforts to develop coercive military options present challenges not only to Taiwan, but also to other countries in the region such as the Philippines and Japan," the report said.
China also is beefing up its long-range nuclear missiles.
Along with building new intercontinental ballistic missiles, China may abandon its pledge not to be the first to use nuclear arms in a conflict. Beijing is "reconsidering" how it would use nuclear weapons "against U.S. forces in the region," the report said.
The report also warns that China is building up its "information warfare" forces in preparation for a conflict over Taiwan, which President Bush has vowed to defend from Chinese attack.
Beijing has adopted a new strategy of what Beijing military planners call "assassin's mace" arms - advanced weapons designed for use against U.S. forces.
Current "assassins maces" that could trump advanced U.S. weapons include fighter bombers, submarines, antiship missiles, and mines that could attack U.S. aircraft carriers.
"Chinese doctrine continues to emphasize surprise, deception, and shock effect in the opening phase of a campaign," the report said.
China's military buildup has led the Pentagon to quietly build up its military forces in the Pacific in recent months. Attack submarines have been deployed in Guam, along with stockpiles of air-launched cruise missiles. Bombers also have been moved to the region to deal with either a conflict in Korea or possibly a war over Taiwan, defense officials said.
China continues to build up its military in utmost secrecy. Its military spending is estimated to be many times greater than the official estimate of $20 billion annually, the report said.
Based on observation of U.S. forces in the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, China has adopted an air-defense system called "Three Attacks and Three Defenses," that calls for attacking stealth aircraft, cruise missiles and helicopters and defending against precision bombing and missile strikes, electronic warfare and enemy reconnaissance, the report said.
China also watched U.S. Special Forces and increasingly mobile U.S. military forces operate in Afghanistan and Iraq, the report said.
The report states that China's leaders believe Communist Party rule would be undermined if the military loses a future war over China.
Strategically, China's communist leaders are using a Leninist approach in an attempt to influence "those who oppose and those who support China's interest's abroad."
"Once China's leaders make the distinction between friend and foe, they can develop and tailor [propaganda] themes to counter opposition and advance their overall agenda," the report said. "Moreover, such distinctions position China to reward 'friends' abroad, or alternatively, punish 'enemies' to enhance its own position in the balance of power."
The report, required by a provision of the 2000 defense authorization law, includes other details of China's buildup, such as:
•New fighter aircraft made indigenously as well as purchases of Russian Su-30 and Su-27 fighter-bombers.
•Purchase of eight new Kilo submarines from Russia, along with antiship cruise missiles for the subs. China also is purchasing two Russian Sovremeny warships.
•Development of advanced weapons, including lasers, radio-frequency bombs and anti-satellite weapons.
-------- colombia
Failed 'Plan' in Colombia
by Peter Clark
July 31, 2003
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030818&s=clark
Three years ago this summer, President Clinton signed a $1.3 billion spending bill for "Plan Colombia," aimed at curbing violence in Colombia and drug abuse in the United States. Don't expect festive anniversary celebrations this summer, though, in either the barrios and rural villages of Colombia or the overburdened drug rehab centers here. The Bush Administration has invoked the ubiquitous terrorism justification to try to keep this floundering policy going, but concerns are mounting.
The bulk of the 2000 aid package paid for helicopters and training for a Colombian counterdrug brigade, as well as spray planes to fumigate fields of coca, the raw ingredient in the cocaine that provides some of the guerrillas' funding. The policy objectives have not been met, but Congress has provided hundreds of millions of dollars more each year and extended the plan's mission.
Colombia is home to three groups classified as terrorists: the left-wing FARC and ELN guerrillas and the pro-government AUC paramilitaries. It took only eight months after 9/11 for Congress to expand US engagement from fighting drugs to "a unified campaign against narcotics trafficking [and] against activities by organizations designated as terrorist organizations." On the grounds of fighting terrorism, seventy Special Forces troops were sent to Arauca province in January to begin training Colombian soldiers to hunt down guerrillas and protect an oil pipeline partly owned by Occidental Petroleum.
This year, House Democrats have increasingly argued that there is no quick fix for the complex challenges facing Colombia but that military aid and aerial fumigation have made things worse. The facts are on their side. Today, the guerrillas and paramilitaries continue to participate in the drug trade and kill, kidnap and torture civilians, particularly in the Putumayo and Arauca regions targeted by US policy. Since last summer, an average of nineteen people have been killed every day for political reasons, compared with an average of fifteen each day during the year before Plan Colombia. The United Nations and State Department both report that Colombian security forces are still working with the paramilitaries and directly committing abuses of their own. Last year, the FARC killed nine local mayors and forced hundreds to resign, while the paramilitaries were responsible for most of the 184 assasinations of trade unionists--by far the highest rate in the world. The number of internal refugees increased sharply, with some estimates showing nearly a million people fleeing their homes during the three years of Plan Colombia.
The Justice Department reported in January that cocaine continued to be "widely available" in the United States. Efforts to combat drugs at the source have only managed to shift coca to new regions and back to old ones, as the law of supply and demand has kept total coca cultivation in the Andean region at around 200,000 hectares (540,000 acres) for fifteen years.
These and other concerns have made Colombia policy one of the most controversial aspects of the foreign aid bill in the House, where most of the Democrats, led by Congressman Jim McGovern, voted against military aid twice this year. Meanwhile, across the Capitol, no senators are publicly leading the charge against this policy the way the courageous Paul Wellstone did. It appears that this year, just as in 2002, there will be no Senate floor debate or vote on Colombia.
Yet pressure to respond to critics is growing. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's government has answered with recent reports of decreased violence and increased guerrilla desertions and the prediction that within twelve to eighteen months the guerrillas will be so battered they'll come to the negotiating table begging for a truce. The Bush team has begun to articulate an exit strategy: sustained high-level US involvement until September 2005, followed by the Colombianization of operations.
Any success in slowing the violence and weakening the illegal armed groups, while respecting human rights and tackling impunity, would certainly be welcome. But Bush and Uribe's increasingly hard-line approach is both inhumane and ineffective. Uribe's proposal to lift limits on the powers of the military, the desperation fomented among farmers whose legal and illegal crops are destroyed by herbicides, accusations that NGOs are guerrilla fronts, and the neglect of the ballooning internal refugee population are likely to estrange many Colombians from the government and generate recruits for the guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug gangs. Greater US participation in the war there will not defeat the formidable guerrilla groups, which have controlled parts of the countryside for years (a major US role in search-and-rescue operations has not been enough to free three Pentagon contractors taken hostage by the FARC in February). Negotiations that disarm combatants and bring to justice those who commit atrocities should be encouraged. But Uribe has offered the paramilitaries a peace accord that would pardon virtually all AUC members and allow them to keep land stolen from the displaced, while leaving other paramilitary factions to continue the dirty work.
Responding to Congressional concerns, defenders of the policy are employing language with a familiar ring to it. At a Senate hearing on Colombia in June, Southern Command's General James Hill described drugs as a "weapon of mass destruction" and warned that "corruption and instability create safe havens for not only narcoterrorists but also for other international terrorist organizations such as Hizballah, Hamas and Islamiyya al Gammat, which have support cells throughout Latin America."
True, the State Department does report that some of these groups are raising money in the tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. But that's far from Colombia and far from a good reason to continue aid to its abusive military. If the "war on terrorism" has moved to Latin America, the next step should be the suspension of aid to the Colombian armed forces because of their ongoing ties to paramilitaries listed as terrorists by the US government.
Only by steering this runaway policy toward greater support for Colombia's judicial system and other civilian institutions, the rule of law, and social and economic development--along with expanded drug treatment programs at home--can US policy-makers begin to create the conditions for security and democracy in Colombia.
-------- europe
Iceland ready to form army if US pulls out
By Judy Dempsey in Brussels
July 31 2003
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478617636&p=1012571727166
Iceland would be prepared to establish an army if the US withdrew its fighter aircraft based on the island as part of a 1951 defence agreement, according to senior Icelandic officials. Advertisement
The calls are likely to increase after Lord Robertson, Nato's secretary-general, on a visit this week to the island, failed to forge a compromise between Washington and Reykjavik on the aircraft issue.
The US, anxious to cut costs in Europe, says it no longer sees the need to have the F-15 and F-16 jets based in Iceland since the conventional threats of the cold war are over. Iceland insists that without the US it will have no security guarantees, which is why it may create its own army from scratch.
"Past Icelandic governments, politicians and the public have become too prone to think that a friendly government such as the US may indefinitely provide the security of the nation. This we cannot and must not assume," said Bjorn Bjarnason, Iceland's justice minister.
He added that it could be possible to build a national guard of between 500 and 1,000 people, with a reserve of 21,000. Iceland has a population of 280,000.
Military analysts said an attempt to create an army would make no sense if it was intended to compensate for the fighter aircraft. "These are two entirely different capabilities," argued Tomas Valasek, the director of the Brussels office of the Centre for Defence Information.
"Even if the US closes its naval station at Keflavik, I cannot see the US reneging on its security guarantee for Iceland. As a Nato member, Iceland is covered by article 5, in which any alliance member comes to the defence of another if attacked," added Mr Valasek.
Analysts suggested Iceland might also be using army idea as possible leverage with the US. Some Icelandic officials have hinted that the country might eventually join the European Union's defence and security mechanism. Were that to be the case, the EU would be in no position to extend a blanket security guarantee similar to that of Nato. It so far has no equivalent of article 5, nor does it have the military capabilities.
Nato says the problem for Iceland is a psychological and political one. Over the years it had been strategically important for the US because of its very large airspace in this part of the Arctic Ocean.
Despite that, Nato diplomats conceded the US had been tactless. "You don't make the announcement you want to pull out from a very pro-Nato and US country just before a general election," said one alliance diplomat.
"It is now time to do some very quiet diplomacy," he added.
----
Security Curtain Raised Along EU's New Eastern Front
Tightened Borders Draw Concerns About Impact on Neighboring Nations
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5420-2003Jul30.html
ON THE TISZA RIVER, Hungary
The edges of the European Union are about to shift east, to run down the middle of this winding river's gray-blue waters, where the affluence of the soon-to-be bloc of 25 nations will rub up against the poverty of the former Soviet Union.
It is here that Hungarian border guard Tibor Toth maneuvers a sleek new blue and white Quicksilver Cruiser on patrol. At his side is his commander, Capt. Attila Nagy, peering through binoculars. They are looking for anything out of the ordinary among the boaters and the swimmers off a sandy stretch of Ukraine, on the other side.
Patrolling this river border has until now consisted mostly of warning Hungarian boaters against drifting too far to the Ukrainian side, stopping swimmers from testing their mettle by trying for the opposite bank, or occasionally finding cartons of contraband cigarettes floating in waterproof plastic sacks.
But when Hungary joins the European Union May 1, this 150-yard-wide river will form part of the bloc's outer borders. It might prove a tempting back door for illegal migrants from Central Asia heading for London or Paris, for arms and drug smugglers, or even for a terrorist armed with a portable nuclear bomb.
The job of patrolling "will definitely be tougher, in all respects," Nagy said. But, he added: "We think we're ready."
Along the borders that the 10 nations scheduled to join next year share with non-EU countries, controls are being tightened, with new rules, new posts and new sensor equipment. What people inside the newly configured EU see as necessary frontier defense, many left outside see as the building of a "Fortress Europe." Added security for those inside the EU club means added inconvenience -- and perhaps added misery -- for those left out.
"People say there used to be the Berlin Wall -- now there will be the Schengen Wall," said Jozsef Beri, a gas station employee in Ukraine, referring to the 1995 "Schengen agreement" that allows for cross-border travel without passports between most EU states, but strict controls to enter them from the outside.
Beri, like many of those who make the crossing regularly between Hungary and Ukraine, is an ethnic Hungarian, whose family ties extend across the border. He has an aunt and several in-laws he sees often, but he worries that as the walls of Fortress Europe go up, Ukrainians -- even those with ethnic roots in Hungary -- will need visas to make a crossing that now requires only a passport.
"If we could only go over once a year, that would be terrible," he said, waiting in line as his car was searched by a border guard. "We don't have enough money in Ukraine to pay for lots of visas."
The European Union has been spending tens of millions of dollars to reinforce this particular stretch of border. Capt. Nagy showed a reporter the new equipment to outfit his guards -- a belt consisting of a gas spray, handcuffs, a 9mm pistol, a truncheon, and a walkie-talkie. There are now hand-held heat-sensing cameras that can detect a person at night a mile away, and, out in forests near the border, underground sensors that can detect anything from a heavy vehicle to a person trying to slip through.
The radar-equipped patrol boat is also new. "We used to have a boat that didn't have any equipment at all," Nagy said. "We couldn't really patrol at night, because we had to put the lights on, and it was loud."
At the Zahony bridge -- the main crossing between Hungary and Ukraine -- defenses have also been strengthened with EU money. The bridge was widened to create a truck lane, and there are computerized screening devices to read passports and license plates. There is a machine that scans the inside of trucks and senses body heat. There is a new warehouse -- built to EU standards -- to house and, if necessary, quarantine livestock and food coming across the border.
Vehicles crossing the bridge now pass between two six-foot-high cream-colored poles with radiation sensors mounted on top -- a change introduced after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
"Nuclear smuggling is not a problem here," said Deputy Col. Laszlo Gal at the bridge. "All the gates here have nuclear sensors. You can't get anything across."
Under EU rules, the new members -- which like Hungary are mostly former communist countries -- must also tighten their visa requirements for non-EU citizens, and in some cases that means clamping down on citizens of neighboring countries who have long enjoyed easy access.
In Poland, for example, that has meant new visa requirements for Ukrainians, Belarussians and Russians. In Hungary, the visa requirement has proved particularly problematic because of the large, ethnic Hungarian population in neighboring countries. About 1.5 million ethnic Hungarians live in Romania, 300,000 in Serbia and 200,000 in Ukraine.
Many of those in Ukraine cross the border each day as "petrol tourists," selling Ukraine's cheap gasoline and cigarettes in the town of Zahony, on the Hungarian side.
"Everyone is waiting to see what will happen," said Andreas Baka, a petrol tourist who is an unemployed ethnic Hungarian from Ukraine. He said he makes about 1,500 Hungarian forints in a day, compared to the 4,500 forints he receives each month in unemployment benefits at home. "I really hope the ethnic Hungarians can get the visas easier," he said.
"This is our only livelihood, because we don't get any social benefits," said Maria Kasco, a mother of two who was waiting in line at the border with her husband, Laszlo. "There are no jobs. There's nothing, nothing over there [in Ukraine]. It's really difficult. We are Hungarians. I don't even speak Ukrainian."
Under EU rules, Hungary cannot make special provisions to allow ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine or elsewhere to work in Hungary. But Hungary is trying to maintain ties with this group through various social organizations.
Many analysts question whether the EU, as it expands its frontiers, is creating new divisions on the continent -- between rich and poor, those reaping the benefits of EU membership on the inside and those left out -- that could create new tensions and potential instability.
"It's a huge issue," said Heather Grabbe, a researcher with the Center for European Reform, a research organization in London. "There's a lot of talk about 'Fortress Europe' and the feeling of being left out," she said. "That's one of the sad things about EU enlargement; it does have this exclusionary impact."
That effect could have far-reaching consequences, Grabbe and other experts said. At present, "out" countries Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus have per capita gross domestic products that are a small fraction of the average of the EU's current members. Each of the 10 new countries coming into the EU next year also has a lower per capita gross domestic product than the current members, but the average is about double that of the "outs."
Grabbe and others said the continuing exclusion of such countries as Ukraine, Moldavia and Belarus could help ensure that they remain far behind economically.
The question of exclusion goes to the heart of the still-unresolved debate within the European Union over where expansion should end. What, exactly, defines Europe? Is it 25 countries? 27? Or 45?
Russia, for example, considers itself part of Europe. But Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy sparked protests from many of his EU colleagues when he suggested, after meeting President Vladimir Putin, that Russia be admitted to the union.
Turkey considers itself European, and has been told it will be a candidate for membership if it meets certain conditions on human rights and democracy, but most of its landmass lies outside what geographers define as Europe. Also, if Europe is defined, as some would like, as countries that widely share Christian values, Turkey would be left out as a predominantly Muslim country.
The Balkans -- Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia, Croatia -- are considered European, sitting at the heart of the continent, and there is wide consensus that they will be offered admission once political stability is restored following the unrest and ethnic warfare of the 1990s. These countries have already signed special "association agreements," giving them trade access and other ties to the EU.
Bulgaria and Romania have been accepted for the next round of EU enlargement, tentatively scheduled for 2007. But analysts in Europe say that Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine have little chance of ever entering, being geographically farther away and economically and politically further behind. To assuage them, the EU has given these countries "partnership agreements," which allow them to have regular political talks with the EU and possible future trade ties.
Ukraine's president, Leonid Kuchma, has spoken of his desire for Ukraine to be admitted to the EU, with talks to start in 2007, and he has reportedly complained that the EU "is replacing the Iron Curtain with a paper curtain," referring to new visa requirements.
Among the travelers who come here for trading, and the border guards who speak with them daily, there is general agreement that Ukraine is too far behind the rest of Europe economically and politically to join the club. "We have to go very far down the road to get near the European Union, that's for sure," said Beri, the gas station attendant. "First, we have to make some order in our own country."
"The difference between Ukraine and Hungary is 40 or 50 years," said one of the Hungarian border guards. "But even 40 years ago, people in Hungary could live off the land. In Ukraine, most people are very, very poor."
He added, "The only thing we are jealous of is the price of their petrol."
----
Poles Bid Uneasy Farewell to Troops Bound for Iraq
Thu Jul 31
(Reuters)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=721&e=4&u=/nm/20030731/wl_nm/iraq_poland_dc
SZCZECIN, Poland - Poland bade an uneasy farewell to troops bound for Iraq Thursday with public support for their mission dwindling as Iraqi resistance takes an increasing toll on U.S.-led occupation forces.
Around 1,700 Polish troops will fly out over the next week to form the core of a 9,200-strong multinational force in a Polish-run zone in south-central Iraq, an area dominated by Shi'ite Muslims.
Shi'ite areas have generally been less restive than minority Sunni Muslim parts of Iraq, where U.S.-led forces have come under almost daily attack. But public faith in the mission is fast declining. President Aleksander Kwasniewski sought to rally the nation when he addressed the troops in the northwestern port of Szczecin, saying the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States had changed nature of global security.
"We cannot pretend this is not our business. The dramatic events of September 11 show we cannot sit on the fence," he said.
Kwasniewski staunchly backed the invasion to topple president Saddam Hussein, despite strong objections from key European Union allies, France and Germany. He now faces mounting public opposition.
A poll published this week by the CBOS agency showed 55 percent of Poles were against the deployment and 36 percent backed it. In June, 50 percent had supported the government's decision to join the U.S.-led occupation.
"People need more information," Kwasniewski said. "We are not going to Iraq for easy gains or for oil."
Some local media, which initially supported a Polish role in Iraq, have now become critical, saying that Polish troops were ill-equipped and were being dispatched merely to ease the burden on a stretched occupation force.
"Poland's sole role is to provide an alibi for the U.S. and Britain," commentator Piotr Amsterdamski wrote in top-selling daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
More than 50 U.S. soldiers have been killed in guerrilla attacks since May 1 when President Bush declared major combat over in Iraq.
-------- iran
U.S. secretly negotiating with Iran
July 31, 2003,
By Campbell Brown
NBC NEWS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/946772.asp?0cv=CA01
Watch Campbell Brown's exclusive report on the deal in the works to bring some key al-Qaida players to justice - for a price.
July 31 - The Bush administration is engaged in a secret dialogue with Iran to try to persuade Iran to hand over top al-Qaida operatives, U.S. officials told NBC News.
THE THREE OPERATIVES are among the most wanted members of al-Qaida:
- Abu Mussab al Zarqawi, an alleged poison expert who got medical treatment in Iraq.
- Sa'ad Bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's third-oldest son who is believed to be planning new al-Qaida operations.
- Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the al-Qaida spokesman famous for introducing bin Laden in a widely seen videotape after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Many U.S. officials believe that Iran is willing to turn them and other key al-Qaida operatives over to the United States or their home countries for a price: in exchange for members of an Iranian opposition group called the Mujahadeen al-Khalq, or MEK.
The MEK has been attacking Iran's Islamic government from Iraq and is now in Iraq under U.S. military control.
DEALING WITH 'AXIS OF EVIL'
A former member of President Bush's national security team says that despite the administration's reluctance to publicly engage a country the president called part of the "axis of evil," it's worth handing Iran the MEK. According to Flynt Leverett, "It is potentially a big enough payoff that the United States should, on grounds of its national interest, be willing to strike a deal."
In addition, some U.S. officials believe the MEK deserves to be handed over to Iran. The group is defined by the State Department as a terrorist organization responsible for killing U.S. military troops and civilians and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
The MEK was financed, armed and trained by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein until the war. But the group does have support in the United States from some lawmakers who say its members are freedom fighters who should have U.S. backing.
OPPOSING THE DEAL
Hawkish Republicans say under no circumstances should the United States negotiate with Iran while it's pursuing nuclear weapons. "We shouldn't do anything that makes it look as if we're recognizing, legitimizing, and favoring the regime in Iran," says foreign policy expert Michael Ledine of the American Enterprise Institute.
Thursday night White House officials said there is no deal and no "formal" negotiations.
Despite what may be going on behind the scenes, the Bush administration's public policy is Iran should hand over al-Qaida terrorists and expect nothing in return.
-------- iraq
U.S. investigates claim of reporter in Iraq being roughed up
The Japan Times:
July 31, 2003
http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20030731b6.htm
BAGHDAD (Kyodo) A senior U.S. military official said Tuesday the U.S. armed forces is investigating allegations that its troops assaulted and detained a Japanese journalist who was covering a raid on civilian houses in Baghdad.
Japan Press reporter Kazutaka Sato, 47, was beaten by U.S. soldiers while photographing civilian damage caused by a U.S. raid in Baghdad's Mansur district Sunday, according to Sato's colleague, Mika Yamamoto, who was on the scene.
Yamamoto said U.S. soldiers threw Sato to the ground, tied his hands and detained him for an hour.
According to Yamamoto, the soldiers beat up Sato after urging him not to shoot the scene and they did not give any reason why they were banning their reporting.
Yamamoto claimed the U.S. soldiers may have been trying to hide the bodies of civilians killed in the operation.
The senior U.S. military official said he personally believes the troops did not detain Sato, but authorities are currently investigating.
----
Bremer: U.S. Could Quit Iraq Next Summer
Two more U.S. soldiers are killed in new attacks. In Washington, Colin Powell OKs $30 Million to a tipster who led U.S. forces to Saddam Hussein's sons.
By Alissa Rubin and John Daniszewski
Los Angeles Times
July 31, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-073103iraq_lat,0,5427376.story
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The American administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, said today that the United States could relinquish control of the country by next summer, an accelerated timetable that would suit politicians both in the United States and Iraq.
But in a fresh reminder of the instability in Iraq, guerrillas staged two lethal attacks that killed two soldiers and wounded five.
In the first attack, gunmen ambushed a small group of troops at a checkpoint northeast of Baghdad late Wednesday, killing one soldier. A second soldier died when other attackers set off an apparent anti-tank mine along a well-traveled highway leading to Baghdad International Airport today at midday.
U.S. officials had expressed hope that such violence would diminish in the wake of last week's killings of Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusai, who were believed to be inspiring or directing attacks on Americans.
Meanwhile, the State Department announced today that it would make good on its pledge to pay $30 million for the tip leading to the two men.
The lump sum will go to one individual, spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington, but he refused to name the recipient or say whether that person is in Iraq or elsewhere.
The U.S. commander on the ground, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said in Baghdad that the latest deaths of soldiers will not weaken American commitment to stay in the country as long as it needs to, even as he acknowledged that "terrorists" related to Hussein's Baathist Party have been joined by foreign fighters in a country whose borders are still wide open.
"I'm not worried. I'm absolutely not worried. The coalition is strong. The successes going on across this country are remarkable. Why would we be worried?" he told reporters at a news conference.
Bremer, meanwhile, told an audience of Iraqi diplomats today at the nation's foreign ministry that "it is not unrealistic" to think that the country could hold elections by the middle of 2004.
Bremer, who had just returned from Washington where he briefed President Bush Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, has laid out a calendar for Iraq's transition to self-rule that some said could be regarded as optimistic.
"What are the steps that lead to a sovereign government? There are three: the creation of the Governing Council which occurred on July 13th ... the drafting of a constitution, recognized as legitimate by the Iraqi people ... and the election of a sovereign government," he said.
Bremer spoke at a ceremony to inaugurate the partially refurbished ministry building under a huge chandelier whose shattered glass bulbs had yet to be repaired from this spring's postwar looting. It was attended by more than 50 Iraqi diplomats as well as the U.N. special representative for Iraq, Sergio Viera de Mello.
"How long will this take? It is in the hands of the Iraqi people. But it's not unrealistic to think we would have elections by midyear 2004 and when that government is installed ... my job here will be over," said Bremer, who was guarded by a combination of uniformed military, special forces and secret service.
An Iraqi politician close to the country's new governing council said that the approaching U.S. elections in the fall of 2004 may be one factor motivating Washington to seek an earlier exit from Iraq.
"The key issue is that the Bush administration would like to produce some results for the American public," said the high-ranking staff member for the council. "They didn't find any weapons of mass destruction and if there's no elected government, no elections, no real democracy by the time of the 2004 elections, it would be a big, big debacle."
De Mello said in an interview this week that he saw much the same timetable-although he said it could stretch out.
The key to the timeframe is the period needed to draft a constitution. And that will depend on whether the members of a constitutional council are elected or appointed, said De Mello. "If they have an election for a constitutional assembly and then draft it, that could take until the end of 2004 or into 2005," he said.
On the other hand, if the council appoints the constitutional assembly and then holds a referendum on the constitution itself, the process could be completed more quickly.
The political questions are occurring against a backdrop of daily attacks on U.S. forces that have killed 52 American soldiers in hostile action since May 1, the date that President Bush declared the major phase of combat over.
Today's deadly explosion in Baghdad blew a M-113 armored personnel carrier onto its side. The blast rattled passing cars on a busy stretch of Highway 8 on the southern approach to downtown Baghdad at 12:19 p.m. White smoke poured from the stricken vehicle as two Humvees pulled up alongside. Within seconds of the blast, soldiers were leaping out of the Humvees to help pull out the M-113 crew.
Bright orange flames were visible through a jagged hole blown into the belly of the personnel carrier, on the front left undersection below the track commander's hatch. Both tracks had been blown off the vehicle.
The extent of damage indicated that the personnel carrier had struck an anti-tank mine; military officials did not disclose the type of mine involved.
As several soldiers helped injured crew members hobble to a waiting Humvee, others set up a perimeter along the median. They screamed at pedestrians to move back, gesturing with their M-16 automatic rifles.
Two soldiers aimed their weapons at a news photographer and ordered him to move back across the highway.
The land mine exploded on one of the busiest thoroughfares in Baghdad, at a junction where Highways 1 and 8 intersect in a maze of off-ramps and overpasses that some U.S. soldiers call the "spaghetti junction." The junction is heavily patrolled by U.S. military vehicles and has been cleared of some underbrush by U.S. forces in an attempt to reduce cover for insurgents.
About 10 minutes after the land mine exploded, the M-113 burst into flames, sending a pillar of black smoke into the bright blue midday sky. Hundreds of young men and boys gathered on both sides of the highway to stare at the flames. Several teenagers raised four fingers each and chanted "Arbaa! Arbaa!" - Four! Four! They insisted, with evident satisfaction, that four soldiers had died.
Times staff writers Robyn Dixon and David Zucchino contributed to this report.
----
Elections in Iraq a Possibility Next Year, Bremer Says
July 31, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council, struggling with questions about its legitimacy, could be replaced through general elections held within a year, Iraq's U.S. administrator said Thursday. Two American soldiers were reported killed as troops chased Saddam Hussein in northern Iraq.
L. Paul Bremer, a former diplomat and counterterrorism expert, said he believed a new constitution could be written and accepted by the Iraqi people in a referendum, followed by general elections by the middle of next year.
``It is certainly not unrealistic to think that we could have elections by midyear 2004,'' Bremer said while touring the partially refurbished Iraqi Foreign Ministry with members of the interim government he appointed on July 13.
``And when a sovereign government is installed, the coalition authority will cede authority to the government and my job here will be over.''
In the past, Bremer has said a government could be in place by the end of 2004. His optimism was surprising given that it took the Governing Council more than two weeks to agree on a presidency, its first order of business.
When the 25 members were unable to select a single president, they tried to come up with a three-member presidency before finally deciding on a nine-member team that will each hold the presidency for a month, council sources told The Associated Press.
The legitimacy of Iraq's government is key to rebuilding the country. On Wednesday, World Bank President James Wolfensohn said it was unclear whether the council had the legitimacy to receive international loans.
``Clearly a constitution and an elected government would constitute a recognized government, but what do we do in the meantime?'' Wolfensohn said during a one-day trip to Baghdad. ``It's a subject that needs interpretation.''
An elected government also would allay doubts among many United Nations members, who have been hesitant to send peacekeeping troops to an Iraq occupied and administered by the United States, which snubbed the international body by launching its war.
The United States said it had to go to war despite a lack of majority support on the U.N. Security Council because of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. So far, none have been found and Iraqi scientists insist they don't exist.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said members wanted a broader mandate in Iraq before agreeing to help pacify the still-violent country.
He said many U.N. member states felt that ``the imprimatur of the United Nations -- the legitimacy the United Nations offers -- is important.''
The United States would like international help in restoring peace to Iraq, where U.S. troops still come under attack daily.
A U.S. soldier was killed Thursday when his armored personnel carrier hit a land mine on the dangerous road from central Baghdad to the city's airport, the military said.
The mine exploded beneath an M113 armored personnel carrier, killing the soldier and wounding three others, the military said.
Earlier, the military reported the death of a soldier from small-arms fire northeast of Baghdad late Wednesday.
The deaths brought to 51 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in action since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1. So far, 166 American forces have been killed in the Iraq war, 19 more than in the 1991 Gulf War.
The assault late Wednesday against soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division happened 25 miles east of Baqouba, where U.S. troops have come under repeated assault recently, especially by mortar fire.
The town is in the so-called ``Sunni Triangle,'' a heavily Sunni Muslim area to the north and west of Baghdad where support for ousted dictator Saddam Hussein has been strongest and where U.S. forces have faced the most resistance.
Wednesday's death broke a period of relative peace. No U.S. soldier had been reported killed in combat in Iraq in more than 48 hours.
In Baghdad, Iraqis witnesses reported an attack on two U.S. trucks carrying unexploded ordnance to Baghdad International Airport for destruction. The witnesses said a rocket-propelled grenade was fired on one truck and the ordnance exploded. A U.S. armored vehicle could be seen burning on the road.
Witness Ali Khamid said he saw two U.S. soldiers taken away by helicopter and two others, faces covered, loaded into an ambulance. The military said it had no information on the incident.
U.S. forces have been conducting daily raids in search of Saddam, and said it was ``just a matter of time'' before he is caught.
``He's going to start making mistakes, and we're going to catch him,'' said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, a U.S. Army spokeswoman in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown. ``We estimate he's not staying more than four hours at the same place. But the man's been a master of hiding all his life.''
Lt. Col. Ted Martin said Saddam and his aides were running scared.
``It would not be a good idea for him to be stationary for very long,'' he said. ``Every time a helicopter flies over, I bet they shake.''
Bremer spoke during a tour of the Foreign Ministry building, which the United States has been helping to renovate after heavy looting and arson gutted the structure in the chaos that followed the U.S. military's entrance into Baghdad.
He told gathered Iraqi diplomats that the establishment of a new government would mark the end of his diplomatic career.
``Although that will mark my final retirement as a diplomat, it will mean that you, the diplomats of Iraq, will be going forward representing a fully sovereign government,'' he said.
In a hopeful sign, oil ministry and industry sources told Dow Jones Newswires that Iraq's Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline, at a standstill since April, is due to start pumping again in early August.
The pipeline, which runs from Iraq's northern oilfields to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, will pump 200,000 barrels a day, they said. The pipeline would increase Iraq's oil exports to at least 850,000 barrels a day, the sources said on condition of anonymity.
Iraq is producing about 1.3 million barrels of crude oil a day, compared with about 2.5 million barrels a day before the war.
----
U.S. LAUNCHES MILITARY TRAINING [of Iraqis]
Thu, 31 Jul 2003
Middle East Newsline
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/august/08_01_1.html
WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States is ready to launch training for Iraq's new military.
Officials said the training program will begin on Saturday. They said the program was delayed because of intense U.S. search-and-destroy operations of Sunni insurgents northwest of Baghdad.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, head of U.S. military in Iraq, said more than 11,000 people have expressed interest in enlisting for the new Iraqi army. Sanchez said on July 23 that the first battalion of the new Iraqi army would begin training within 10 days.
Officials said 12,000 Iraqis will be trained in 2003 for the new army. By the end of 2005, the Iraqi army will number 40,000.
----
Anti-US cleric rallies recruits for Islamic army
Stirrings of discontent grow in Shia south as fiery young leader claims force of 10,000
Jonathan Steele in Najaf
Thursday July 31, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1009240,00.html
Around 10,000 young men have come forward to join an "Islamic army" in the holy city of Najaf, according to Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiery cleric who is trying to become the unchallengeable leader of Shia opposition.
Mr Sadr has denounced the country's US-appointed governing council as a puppet. Opposition to the Americans in the Shia south remains largely peaceful, although volatile, but hints of potential trouble are growing.
Few cities welcomed the fall of Saddam Hussein more enthusiastically than Najaf, and few of its powerful clerical dynasties were more delighted than the Sadrs - Saddam had killed two of their ayatollahs.
In the narrow alleyways of the bazaar where virtually every woman wears a long black coat and headdress, scores of shops sell posters of the murdered ayatollahs, along with pictures of Iran's former leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who spent years in exile in Najaf. The city makes much of its money from visitors who pray at the burial shrine of Imam Ali, the founder of the Shia branch of Islam, or bring the bodies of dead relatives for interment in Najaf's holy ground.
At any time of the day, small groups of people from all over Iraq can be seen alighting from vans, carrying coffins draped in green into the shrine's huge courtyard. Farsi-speaking pilgrims from Iran wander past the street stalls which sell cold drinks and pictures of the imam.
It is in this devout environment that the 30-year-old Muqtada al-Sadr is taking advantage of the reputation of his father, Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, who was killed in 1999 along with one of Mr Sadr's older brothers.
Mr Sadr has been putting pressure on the Americans using the Shia tradition of mass demonstrations, of the kind which helped to bring down the Shah of Iran in 1979. In a recent sermon, held in the nearby mosque of Kufa, he urged volunteers to come forward and join an Islamic army. He called it the "army of al-Mahdi", the so-called "hidden imam" who disappeared in AD874 and is expected to return one day, like a messiah, to save the world.
In the following week's sermon, according to Mr Sadr's spokesman, Sheikh Aws al-Khafaji, the cleric was able to thank the 10,000 volunteers who had come forward.
Weapons
Exactly what kind of force Mr Sadr has in mind remains obscure, since he is wary of courting arrest by US forces. "I can't say what weapons the army will have," Mr Khafaji said. "It will not fight with sticks, and it is not just a large crowd of protesters. It is an army."
As a crowd of young men, many in Shia turbans, milled about in an anteroom, the spokesman added: "Muqtada wants them to get out of the cities, but not out of Iraq now. Having troops in the cities frightens people. For the time being Muqtada is not considering calling for jihad against the US occupation. We want to prove we are peaceful if they are peaceful."
Najaf's more senior clerics have kept quiet about Mr Sadr's activities, apparently out of respect for his father but perhaps also to avoid jeopardising their authority among the younger generation, which provides most of Mr Sadr's following.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani upholds the dominant Shia tradition of staying aloof from politics, although he issued a fatwa a month ago saying Iraq's new constitution had to be written by Iraqis who had been chosen by other Iraqis, rather than by the Americans. Ayatollah Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, who led an armed opposition group against Saddam from exile in Iran, has authorised his representative to join the country's new governing council.
But the Sadr family itself is split. Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr, Mr Sadr's second cousin, supports the governing council, although he turned down an invitation to join it.
"The Americans were able to achieve something - the fall of the regime - which we couldn't do after 30 years of bloodshed and prisons full of people," he said.
Declining to criticise Mr Sadr, he said: "Now the regime has gone, we see a lot of street demonstrations, some positive, some negative." In the nearest he would come to disagreeing with his radical relative, he added: "It's up to the government to form an army."
At the US marine base on the edge of Najaf, Colonel Christopher Conlin said Mr Sadr was "an immature kid, manipulated by others". He pointed out that there have been no fatal attacks on US troops in Najaf or any cities in the Shia south. He is also happy that the protests which racked Najaf last week have died down.
Nearly two weeks ago, several thousand people gathered in the city in response to a call from Mr Sadr on local TV claiming the Americans had surrounded his house and were about to arrest him.
Col Conlin said there had been more US troops on the streets only because of an unannounced visit by the US deputy secretary of state for defence, Paul Wolfowitz. He subsequently sacked the TV director for incitement and broadcasting untruths.
"There were no protests this weekend," the colonel added. "It was because the city's respected citizens and the town council told people not to do it. The last thing the other clerics want is having people create trouble."
Col Conlin said many people who attended protests last week were from the poor and largely Shia areas of Baghdad where Mr Sadr's father set up extensive mosque-based welfare systems in the 1990s, as Iraq was suffering from sanctions. They also included Sunnis bussed in from Falluja, Mosul and Tikrit.
Mr Sadr's murky relationship with Iran is also causing the US concern. He was given a high-level welcome in Tehran three weeks ago, although the Iranian authorities say they are trying to restrain him.
In the streets around the Imam Ali shrine, opinions of Mr Sadr are divided. Some deplore the splits in the Shia community.
"Most demonstrators are not from here," said Thu-al-fiqar Mohammed, who runs a mobile phone shop. "They see we have stability and order and are just trying to sow confusion."
"We want security, water and power," said Nuri Khadum, who was selling worrybeads from a handcart. "We don't want division. We want one Islam."
----
Informant to pocket $30 million for leading U.S. troops to Saddam's sons
By Barry Schweid,
Associated Press,
7/31/2003
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/212/wash/Informant_to_pocket_30_million%3A.shtml
WASHINGTON (AP) The Bush administration on Thursday approved payment of $30 million to the informant who helped troops find Saddam Hussein's two sons, the largest reward ever made under a U.S. program.
''It's actually for services rendered,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. ''It's a lump sum payment of $30 million.''
The informant's tip led to the death of Odai and Qusai Hussein in a firefight July 22 in a villa in Mosul in northern Iraq. For his protection the tipster was not identified by the government.
''We're being very careful about the individual's identity in every possible way,'' Boucher said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell gave final approval to the award of $15 million each for the sons.
Boucher said the informant had provided the critical piece of information that led to the brothers and ''took a risk in what is a very important development.''
The reward offered for Saddam is $25 million, and Boucher urged anyone who knows where he is to turn him in.
Neighbors of Sheik Nawaf al-Zaydan Muhhamad, an Iraqi with ties to Saddam, have said he tipped off coalition forces that Odai and Qusai were staying with him and his family. They said they became suspicious when his wife and their four daughters left the house early the morning of the shootings and did not return. Three hours after the women left, U.S. troops knocked on the front door and asked all those inside to come out. Muhhamad and his only son, Shalan, left with their hands on their heads, neighbors said. Coalition forces took them away.
Coalition forces are also searching for weapons of mass destruction. President Bush built his case for going to war on hidden arsenals, but in the three months since victory was declared none have been uncovered.
An adviser to the Central Intelligence Agency hinted Thursday that U.S. and coalition personnel were close to a breakthrough in the search.
David Kay, special adviser for the search, said there was solid progress and Iraqi scientists involved in the program were ''collaborating and cooperating.''
He also told reporters after talking in secret to the Senate Armed Services Committee that there was a ''truly amazing'' deception program to throw U.N. weapons inspectors off the trail.
''We have people who participated in deceiving U.N. inspectors now telling us how they did it,'' he said.
The U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division is hunting for Saddam with tanks, satellites and flying robots. The soldiers also are using more traditional, low-tech search methods. Patrolling soldiers and interpreters are collecting trips from residents.
Since the death of the sons there has been a surge of tips.
The CIA, meanwhile, has determined the latest audio message purportedly from Saddam in which he refers to the death of his sons is most likely authentic, according to a CIA official.
The tape was played on the Al-Arabiya satellite channel, which broadcasts across the Middle East, including Iraq.
Meanwhile, Bush extended for another year trade sanctions and the freezing of Iraqi government assets.
''The crisis that led to the declaration of a national emergency on August 2, 1990, has not been fully resolved,'' he wrote leaders of the Senate and House.
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinian Boy Saves Lives Of Four Israelis
"Allah took my son, and I tried to bring hope to families of other children," said the mother with a grieve-soaking heart
By Samer Khuwayera, IOL Correspondent
July 31, 2003
Islam Online
http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-07/31/article06.shtml
GAZA, July 31 (IslamOnline.net) - A dead Palestinian boy saved the lives of four Israeli children - including two Jews - after his mother donated his organs, in a new Palestinian humanitarian gesture towards Israelis.
Waleed Ouda fell off his house in the vicinity of Nablus 10 days ago, to be rushed to a nearby hospital - where modest medical capabilities were not enough to save his life.
The 11 -year-old boy was then referred to Schneider Children's Hospital in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, where death had the final say on Tuesday, July29 .
His family authorized the donation his organs after consulting the Mufti, with a perceived hope for values of life and peace.
"We want Israelis and Americans to know that while the Israeli army kills Palestinians we give life to Israeli children," Murad Aouda, one of Waleed's siblings, said with tears in his eyes.
With a grieve-soaking heart, the truly Muslim widowed mother said "Allah took my son, and I tried to bring hope to families of other children." Mohamed Shukri, another family member, told IslamOnline.net the "decision was taken for humanitarian considerations and a noble aim meant to save lives of children and bring happiness to their families."
"It is a message to the Israeli community; we are peace lovers, and not war mongers, " said Shukri, hoping "Israeli occupation forces would stop killing our children."
Waleed's heart and lungs was transplanted to a13 -year-old girl suffering from cystic fibrosis.
The functioning heart of the girl - an Arab Israeli named Kawthar Zughbi - was then transplanted to another11 -year-old girl from Um Al-Fahm.
One of Waleed's kidneys and his liver were given to an Israeli child, while the other kidney was to lease life into another.
This is not the first organ donation by a Palestinian to save the lives of Israelis.
In June 2001 , a Palestinian father who lost his life to the ongoing Israeli excessive use of force against armless Palestinians decided to donate his dead son's heart to a sick Israeli man.
Igal Cohen had been waiting for four months at Yetl Hashomeer hospital near Tel Aviv for a warm heart to save his life.
Commenting on the donation, a leading Muslim scholar had said it was religiously acceptable for Muslims to donate their body organs to non-Muslims.
"Muslims' donation of human organs as a gift or an act of alms-giving is considered Halal according to the consensus of Muslim Jurists," Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi, Deputy Chairman of the European Council of Fatwa, told IslamOnline.net at the time.
Mawlawi, a respected Muslim scholar, supported his words with the resolution released by the Association of the Islamic Fiqh Council in Mecca in1985 which permitted transplantation of human organs from one living person to another in order to save a person's life.
----
Israeli MPs pass bill stopping Palestinians getting citizenship
Thursday, 31-Jul-2003
Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/ai/Qmideast-israel-arabs.RNmq_DlV.html
JERUSALEM, July 31 (AFP) - The Israeli parliament voted Thursday for a bill which prevents Palestinians married to Arab-Israelis from obtaining Israeli citizenship despite accusations that the measure was racist and discriminatory.
A total of 53 deputies voted for the measure and 25 against. There was one abstention in the vote held on the last day before the parliament goes into a summer recess, a spokesman for the Knesset said.
Opposition and Arab MPs have condemned the measure as racist and discriminatory.
Left-wing MP Zeeva Galon said that the "shameful and unjust" measure would soil the parliament's reputation.
"It is a racist law which is contrary to human rights," she said.
The law disqualifies Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza Strip from gaining Israeli nationality through marriage and blocks the reunification of families split between Israel and the occupied territories.
The minister in charge of relations with parliament, Gideon Ezra, earlier defended the bill on the grounds that 30 Israelis had been killed by Palestinians who gained citizenship and residency rights through marriage.
"The phenomenon has spun out out control, with more then 100,000 Palestinians from Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza obtaining Israeli identity cards since the 1993 Oslo (autonomy) accords," Ezra told public radio.
The domestic security service Shin Beth weighed in on the debate, with its chief Avi Dichter advising MPs that the ban was "vital for Israel's security", the radio reported.
The Israeli Arab rights group Adalah said the new law "amounts to discrimination on the basis of ethnic or national belonging".
"The new law takes away constitutionally protected rights explicitly on the basis of ethnic or national belonging," said lawyer and Adalah general director Hassan Jabareen.
"While numerous Israeli laws discriminate against Arab citizens of the state, as they privilege one group -- the Jewish majority -- over the other, this law takes away rights. Thus the law is not only discriminatory, it is racist."
Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, considered a liberal within the governing coalition, has expressed unease about the measure.
"I would have preferred such a text was not needed, but there are security considerations we must take into account," he said.
The estimated 1.1 million Israeli Arabs in the Jewish state are Palestinians and their descendants who stayed on when Israel was established in 1948, unlike others who fled or were expelled from their homes.
----
U.S. House's DeLay Bonds With Israeli Hawks
The visiting lawmaker assures Jewish state of continued U.S. support. His conservative audience, however, still sees cause for concern.
By Megan K. Stack
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 31, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-delay31jul31,0,4461666.story
JERUSALEM - He delivered his words with the rolling cadence of a tent revival. He slipped the West Bank's Ramallah into a string of cities that included Auschwitz, Pyongyang and Damascus. He invoked Moses and Anne Frank. He mixed Old Testament language into the American civics class lexicon of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
"I come to you with a very simple message: Do not be afraid," House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) told a rapt crowd of Israeli lawmakers, yeshiva students and academics here Wednesday.
"We hear your voice call out in the desert, and we will never, ever leave your side."
They may be talking peace and Palestinian statehood in Washington, but DeLay is touring the Holy Land with a message for Israeli hawks: The war is not over, and the United States is Israel's brother in arms in a pitched battle against evil.
"Standing up for good against evil is very hard work - it costs money and blood," DeLay told a thronged hall in the Israeli parliament building. "But we're willing to pay."
One of the most prominent leaders in the group of so-called Christian Zionists who have grown in power in the post-Sept. 11 Bush administration, DeLay is a longtime friend to Israel. But his conservative audience still had plenty of cause to be nervous.
The U.S.-backed "road map" to peace is inching along. President Bush is pushing for a Palestinian state and a halt to Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was welcomed warmly at the White House last week.
All of this is anathema to many right-wing Jews - and also to many Christian Zionists, whose reading of the Book of Revelation fires a fervent devotion to Israel and a discomfort with Muslim claims on the Holy Land.
Instead of discussing reconciliation and compromise, DeLay lingered on apocalyptic images of battle and strife.
"There is no middle ground, no moderate position worth taking," he said. "We fight humbly and proudly together....
"Brothers and sisters of Israel, be not afraid. The American people stand with you, and so does our president."
"As I shook his hand, I told Tom DeLay that until I heard him speak, I thought I was farthest to the right in the Knesset," quipped Aryeh Eldad, a right-wing lawmaker from the National Union party.
Bush's attempts to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace have caused a growing schism between his administration and the Christian Zionists who form a significant minority of the Republican vote.
"I've noticed a lot of nervousness about the road map" among evangelical Christians, said John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute at the University of Akron and a monitor of religious influence on politics. "I've had a lot of people remark to me that they're very worried."
Christian Zionist organizations encourage - and even bankroll - controversial Jewish settlements that Washington frowns on.
The movement also opposes a Palestinian state on land that it believes was given to the Jews by God. But a few hours after DeLay spoke in Jerusalem, Bush told reporters in Washington that a Palestinian state by 2005 is a reasonable goal.
The contrast wasn't lost on right-wing Israelis, who noted the gap between DeLay and Bush.
"We went for the road map because of President Bush. We've been persuaded to make moves that in our eyes are dangerous," Israeli Public Security Minister Uzi Landau said. These fears "were embedded in the speech we just heard. This is refreshing."
Palestinian officials are watching Christian Zionists keenly too.
Green estimates that as many as 15 million Americans are at the core of the movement and that 15% of the U.S. electorate belongs to related evangelical churches.
The Christian faithful send "many millions of dollars" to Israel and its settlements, he said.
"I'm very worried about them," Palestinian legal advisor Diana Buttu said. "I know they're not at all happy with President Bush's stand on the road map, and I think they're going to come and rear their heads."
Peace is a Palestinian responsibility, DeLay told his audience. If the Palestinians suffer, it isn't Israel's fault, he argued.
DeLay has criticized the push for Palestinian statehood, but on Wednesday he kept quiet on that topic. A spokesman for DeLay said the House majority leader didn't think that it was the appropriate time to discuss a Palestinian state.
The lawmaker called on Palestinians to rise up against terrorism and said the United States would help them if they renounced such violence. While audience members murmured in agreement, DeLay scorned the idea that terrorism can be "negotiated away" and sneered at a "paper-thin cease-fire." He urged the isolation of the "pernicious enemy" Yasser Arafat and called Palestinian militants "so many desert scorpions."
Since Sept. 11, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has worked to link Israeli bloodshed from the Palestinian uprising to the attack on the World Trade Center.
DeLay too drew the comparison, assuring his listeners that Israeli security is integral to the U.S.-declared war on terrorism.
DeLay met a woman who lost her pregnant daughter in a bus bombing and visited the owner of a cafe bombed by Palestinian militants. He flew north to eat lunch with Israeli soldiers near the Syrian border. All the while, he assured Israelis terrorism is terrorism, and their war is his.
At the Knesset, DeLay walked away from the podium to an exuberant standing ovation. But beneath the applause was Israeli trepidation over the intentions of Christian Zionists.
On the one hand, the money is solid and the political support badly needed. But some rabbis have shunned the money. Christian Zionists believe that the establishment of Israel was the beginning of a prophesied slide into the battle of Armageddon, the return of Jesus Christ for a showdown between good and evil and the Rapture that will deliver Christians into heaven. Many of them believe the Jews of Israel are then destined for hellfire or conversion.
"They have a right to believe whatever they want," said Kevin Shurack, a 24-year-old yeshiva student who turned out for DeLay's speech.
"When somebody gives you a present," said a classmate, 19-year-old Avrami Schochet, "you have to thank them."
-------- mideast
Turkey Curtails Military's Political Power
By adopting reforms, country shows it values eventual place in EU over national tradition.
By Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 31, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-turkey31jul31,0,12212.story
ANKARA, Turkey - The Turkish parliament took another step in this country's quest to join the European Union by giving overwhelming approval Wednesday to a landmark package of reforms designed to significantly curtail the political power of the military.
On paper, at least, this represents a remarkable move in a country whose very existence is defined by the army. The modern Turkish republic was forged by military commanders from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and the army has steered most major political developments since.
"To be a general here is to be close to God," said political scientist Hasan Koni of the University of Ankara.
"The generals must be having nightmares."
But few things are as important to Turks these days as joining the EU.
Membership, Turks reason, brings economic prosperity, better jobs, enhanced democracy and the privilege that comes with being recognized as a solidly Western nation.
Turkey hopes to begin negotiations to enter the EU by the end of next year, but to do so it must bring its human rights and political policies closer in line with European standards.
Military commanders earlier this year registered their unhappiness with the campaign to join the EU and with measures that threatened to erode their time-honored authority.
The military has overthrown the government four times in the last four decades, most recently in 1997, when it pressured a pro-Islamic government out of office.
Today, another pro-Islamic government, under the auspices of the Justice and Development Party elected last fall, is running Turkey. But many analysts said the army is, above all, pragmatic and has recognized how broadly popular the notion of joining the EU is.
"We have passed that threshold of the military blocking" Turkey's pursuit of EU membership, said Murat Sungar, the Turkish diplomat who oversees his country's dealings with the EU.
The most significant measure in the reform package approved Wednesday involves the National Security Council, a military-controlled policymaking body that shadows the civilian Cabinet.
Its secretary-general - normally a four-star general - is often referred to as a parallel prime minister; his powers equal and sometimes exceed that of civilian ministers.
The reform package strips the National Security Council of executive authority and reduces it to an advisory body.
It also opens up the military budget to greater parliamentary scrutiny.
And it abolishes some laws curtailing freedom of expression and assembly.
Doubts remain among many Turks, and among their potential future European partners, on whether Turkey's civilian and military leaders will fully adopt the changes. Turkish bureaucrats often find ways to circumvent reforms and maintain the status quo.
"You often find here that it's give with one hand, take away with another," a European diplomat said.
While some here dismissed Wednesday's military reforms as superficial, others thought they marked a point of no return for Turkey's efforts to democratize, to join the West and to require the generals to account for the billions of dollars they spend annually.
"We have an overstated respect for the military here, and that psychology might play a role. But with this package, the members of parliament will have more courage," said Emin Sirin, a member of parliament with the ruling party.
"The military is going to have to explain things," Sirin said. "This is not going to be cosmetic at all."
----
Links of Saudis to Charities Come Under Senate Review
July 31, 2003
New York Times
TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN with DON VAN NATTA JR.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/national/31SAUD.html
A Senate hearing today exploring Saudi financing of terrorism will focus on several Muslim charities that are closely linked to members of the Saudi royal family, groups that are also cited in classified sections of a Congressional report on the September 2001 hijackings, according to law enforcement officials and others with knowledge of the document.
These sources said that a prominent Saudi figure also mentioned in the report is Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz, Saudi Arabia's powerful interior minister and a brother of King Fahd. They said the report concludes that senior Saudi government officials helped finance terrorist groups through charitable organizations and individuals.
Since shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, some Saudi charitable groups have been investigated by American and foreign law enforcement agencies. Several prominent Saudi officials and leaders of the groups have strongly denied that they finance terrorists and say these groups do legitimate humanitarian work.
Prince Nayef's responsibilities involve regulating Saudi charities, and for years he has denied that Saudi Arabia has been a benefactor of terrorism.
Among the Saudi charities that will be the focus of testimony before the Senate's Governmental Affairs Committee today are Al Haramain Charitable Foundation, the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Relief Organization. All four of these charities have denied any links to terrorist activities. It is unclear if these groups are named in the deleted parts of the Congressional report.
The White House's refusal to make the edited parts public has strained Saudi-American relations and renewed scrutiny of terror financing. A Saudi Embassy spokesman in Washington did not return a phone call yesterday seeking comment on Prince Nayef or the charities named in the report.
Today's hearing will include testimony from Rick Newcomb, head of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department, which administers economic and trade sanctions to further national security. Mr. Newcomb is expected to testify that former Vice President Al Gore arranged two meetings with Saudi officials, in 1999 and 2000, that threatened Saudi Arabia with severe sanctions if they did not staunch the flow of terrorist money from the country. The hearing is expected to explore why sanctions were not imposed even though federal officials believed Saudi Arabia continued to ignore the problem.
The hearings will delve into charges that Congressional staff members who worked on the report of the joint House and Senate intelligence committee investigating the 2001 attacks were pressured by the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. to classify information in the report about possible Saudi financial links to the attacks.
Al Haramain, which is based in Riyadh, has figured prominently in federal law enforcement investigations of Saudi sponsorship of terrorism for at least several years. It was banned from Kenya after the bombing of the American embassy there in 1998 because of law enforcement suspicions that it was involved in the attack. Last year, the Treasury Department froze assets of its Bosnian and Somali branches because of suspected links to terrorists, among them Wael Jalaidan, a Saudi Arabian identified as a terrorist sponsor in the report. In June, the Saudis said they would close all of Al Haramain's operations outside of Saudi Arabia because of concerns about lax financial controls and an abundance of non-Saudi employees in its foreign offices.
An American law enforcement official said that a continuing issue for the United States was whether Saudi Arabia was cooperating fully with the war on terrorism, another area that is addressed in the public and classified sections of the report. "Cooperation has improved considerably since the Riyadh bombings" on May 12, the official said, referring to the triple suicide bombings that struck western compounds in Riyadh. "But it's still not perfect."
For at least the last month, the Treasury Department and other federal agencies have been pressing Saudi officials to monitor closely bank accounts designated for relief aid to Palestinians, senior law enforcement officials said. The accounts in question are known in Saudi Arabia as "'Account 98" funds - the designation Saudi regulators use for money destined for Palestinian charitable works. Similar accounts exist for Saudi money intended for needy Muslims in other parts of the world, like Bosnia and Chechnya.
Prince Nayef oversees the Saudi Committee for the Support of Al Quds Intifada, which provides aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers through specially designated bank accounts. According to Arab News, a Saudi daily, a single telethon early last year raised about $112 million for Al Quds.
----
US turns its sights back on Syria
By Hooman Peimani,
July 31, 2003
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EG31Ak01.html
After a few weeks of American allegations and threats levelled against Syria, the Syrian Foreign Ministry launched its own counterattack against the United States on Monday. Accordingly, its spokesperson raised doubts about the real objective behind last week's killing of Saddam Hussein's sons. The Syrian move reflected the growing hostility between Damascus and Washington despite signs of improving relations in the months following the collapse of the Iraqi regime.
In her interview with a Lebanese television program, Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Buthaina Shaaban suggested that the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein might have been planned for a certain reason. She made the suggestion while speculating about the possibility of having the brothers apprehended. Thus, "the United States could have captured Saddam Hussein's sons alive". Based on that assumption, she added, "killing the pair in a US military raid in Iraq may have aimed at covering up Washington's past political dealings with the defunct regime".
Shaaban therefore speculated that Saddam's sons could have been knowledgeable about secret relations between Washington and Baghdad during their honeymoon in the 1980s. In particular, she referred to the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, which led to a devastating eight-year war. At that time, Washington encouraged Saddam to attack Iran - an open secret, given the extent of support the Iraqi regime received from Western, including NATO, states. As admitted by almost all of them in one form or another, they assisted the Iraqi war efforts by providing advanced weapons and by helping the Iraqis with their weapon development projects. A well-known example is the American, British and German involvement in their weapons-of-mass-destruction projects, especially the development of chemical weapons.
Syrian-US relations took a hostile direction right after the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq. At that time, the US accused the Syrians of providing to the Saddam regime military equipment (night vision goggles) and of providing a safe haven for senior Iraqi officials. The US then toned down it's anti-Syria statements as it heated up the war of words against Iran, which became the focus of the same types of accusations as Washington made against the Iraqi regime prior to the war. Increased diplomatic contacts between the US and Syria suggested an effort to de-escalate their hostility. US Secretary of State Colin Powel's June visit to Damascus created grounds for optimism about the end of a dangerous situation which seemed to have the potential to develop into a US attack on Syria as part of a plan for reshaping the entire Middle East.
There was a clear shift in Washington's propaganda campaign as Iran became its main target. Added to the two-decade-old allegations about Tehran's nuclear weapon program, the Iranian government was accused of harboring al-Qadea operatives and even of indirectly masterminding a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. The latter was a surprising accusation, given the growing multi-dimensional Tehran-Riyadh relations and last year's extradition by Iran to Saudi Arabia of the Saudi members of al-Qaeda arrested by the Iranian authorities as they escaped to Iran from Afghanistan.
In another surprising development, Syria regained its prominence in the American war of accusations about two weeks ago. US officials have since accused Damascus of active support of terrorists, of supporting the ousted Iraqi regime and of sheltering some of its members. In this regard, a good example is President George W Bush's speech on July 22. "Today Syria and Iran continue to harbor and assist terrorists", stressed the president. He added, "this behaviour is completely unacceptable and the states that support terror will be held accountable. This undermines the prospects for peace in the Middle East and betrays the true interests of the Palestinian people."
Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk as-Shara saw "Israeli hands" behind the change of American tone toward Syria, as he stated last Sunday. In fact, the US president made the remarks a few days before Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to Washington. Hence, while Israel could have influenced the Bush administration, the mounting US hostility is still well within Washington's original plan of dealing with "rogue" states one by one, which also serves Israel's interests.
Although Iran has been the favorite candidate for regime change through US military means, various factors have created practical barriers to that, and non-military measures to effect regime change have gained favor, at least for the time being. The factors range from a hostile international mood toward Washington to the US military being over-stretched to Iran's significant military power and its capability to expand any war beyond its border.
The increasing American casualties both in Iraq and in less-publicized Afghanistan is certainly encouraging the Bush administration to find ways to distract attention from that. However, this objective also serves another: "dealing" with Iran and Syria, as they are obstacles to the expansion and consolidation of US influence in the strategically important Middle East.
Given the current extensive commitment of the US military to many overseas operations, there is no realistic possibility of engaging in a war with Iran, which would be a major undertaking even if all other conditions were met. In such a situation, small and militarily/economically weak Syria seems an easier target for the US than large, rich and militarily far stronger Iran. Iran's potential capability to worsen the already poor security situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan makes a strong case for picking on Syria, at least as long as the present situation persists.
Dr Hooman Peimani works as an independent consultant with international organizations in Geneva and does research in international relations.
-------- philippines
Army sold us guns, say rebels
July 31 2003
By Jason Gutierrez Manila
AFP
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/30/1059480406260.html
Muslim separatists waging an insurgency in the southern Philippines said yesterday that they bought weapons from the military, confirming an allegation by soldiers who launched a failed revolt against the Government.
There was, however, no wholesale "collusion" between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the military and it was likely that only individual solders were selling weapons to the guerillas, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said.
About 300 renegade soldiers took over a commercial and residential complex in the financial centre of Makati on Sunday.
They booby-trapped the area and demanded President Gloria Arroyo and other top officials resign for alleged corruption in the military. After a day-long stand-off, they surrendered peacefully.
The rebels accused Dr Arroyo's Government of selling weapons to the MILF, the communist New People's Army and the Abu Sayyaf kidnap gang in a bid to prolong their insurgencies and get more military and financial aid from the United States.
Weapons previously recovered from rebel camps overrun by troops in the south were marked with "DND arsenal", the mutineers said, indicating they came from the Department of National Defence.
The Government has denied the accusation, but Dr Arroyo created a commission on Monday to investigate the allegation. Military spy chief Brigadier-General Victor Corpuz resigned yesterday to calm restiveness within military ranks and ensure that there would be no cover-up.
"We understand through our simple inquiry that these firearms come from the (Government) arsenal," Mr Kabalu said.
"There's no direct links between the MILF and the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines). We do buy firearms and ammunition, not necessarily from the AFP (directly)," he said.
He said that in the southern Philippines, where the MILF has been waging its guerilla war for the past 25 years, weapons are "a prime commodity, very much in demand.
"We do not bother ourselves to determine the source of the materials".
----
Mutineers claim first scalp with resignation of army intelligence chief
By Jim Gomez in Manila
July 31 2003
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/07/30/1059480404759.html
Quit . . . General Victor Corpus
The Philippine Army's intelligence chief resigned yesterday following a mutiny by junior officers and soldiers demanding reforms in the military.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo accepted the resignation of Brigadier-General Victor Corpus, who said he quit to ease restiveness among the country's soldiers following Sunday's failed, bloodless uprising.
His resignation was among the renegade troops' demands. They accused him of incompetence and involvement in a recent bombing in the southern Philippines to justify more military aid from Washington.
The mutineers, who are being interrogated at military intelligence headquarters in Manila, also demanded the resignation of the Defence Secretary, Angelo Reyes, and National Police chief, General Hermogenes Ebdane.
"The current political crisis is far from finished. There is still deep restiveness in the officer corps," General Corpus said in his resignation letter to Dr Arroyo.
"The putschists are asking for my resignation. Although I can honestly say that their accusation that I had a hand in the Davao bombing is without basis, I think that it is best for all that I get out of the picture."
The mutineers claimed that General Corpus was in the southern city of Davao in April when a bomb exploded on a crowded wharf, killing 16 people. They said he was either involved in the attack or was so incompetent he failed to detect and foil it.
General Corpus, a former communist guerilla leader, became the first military official to step down following Sunday's drama.
The largest Muslim separatist group in the Philippines has admitted buying weapons from the military, supporting further claims made by the soldiers.
"We understand through our simple inquiry that these firearms come from the [government] arsenal," Eid Kabalu, spokesman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been waging a guerilla war for 25 years, said yesterday.
As part of the corruption allegations, the MILF was cited as being among rebel groups to which the military leadership was selling arms.
Kabalu stressed however that he was "sure there was no collusion" between the Muslim rebels and the Government and that it was likely that only individual soldiers were selling guns and ammunition to rebels.
"All plotters will be brought to justice," Dr Arroyo vowed in a speech on Tuesday. She also promised to bring "unity and reconciliation with justice" within the military and named an independent commission to investigate the mutiny, to be headed by a retired Supreme Court justice, Florentino Feliciano.
Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse
-------- space
China and Russia Urge Space Arms Ban
July 31, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-space.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8251-2003Jul31?language=printer
GENEVA (Reuters) - China and Russia, with the United States clearly in their sights, said Thursday ``Star Wars'' dangers were growing and called for a quick start to talks on a treaty to ban weapons in space.
The two powers delivered their plea at a session of the United Nations-backed Conference on Disarmament just over a year after tabling proposals for a pact, to be known as PAROS, that have met with a cold reception from Washington.
``Dire developments augur ill for the issue of PAROS,'' Chinese disarmament ambassador Hu Xiaodi told the 66-nation forum, declaring that efforts were under way to ``control and occupy outer space.'' ``The risk of weaponization of outer space is mounting,'' he added, in remarks that sources close to his delegation said were aimed at the U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) system due to start up in September next year.
U.S. officials say NMD is purely defensive and intended to protect their country from missiles fired by ``rogue states'' and terrorists. The system does not envisage deploying weaponry in orbit round the Earth, they say.
NMD is promoted by the administration of President Bush as the successor to the mooted program of space-based missile defense, dubbed ``Star Wars,'' championed by then-President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
The new system, which would involve firing missiles out of the Earth's atmosphere from land-based sites, has been criticized by many countries, and by some U.S. scientists.
RUSSIA READY FOR PACT
Russia's ambassador, Leonid Skotnikov, told the Geneva disarmament forum Thursday that his country remained firmly committed to banning the deployment of weapons in outer space and wanted a moratorium while a treaty was negotiated.
``We are ready to take on such a commitment immediately as long as the leading space powers join in a moratorium,'' he said.
Skotnikov also called for renewed efforts to relaunch discussion on confidence-building measures on PAROS -- Preventions of an Arms Race in Outer Space -- that have been stalled for almost a decade.
Russia, he said, had started to take unilateral action to ensure openness and reduce fears about its own space activities by notifying in advance planned launches of probes, their purpose and their flight paths.
``We call on other countries which have space launching capabilities to join us and undertake all necessary measures for building confidence in outer-space activities,'' Skotnikov added.
In the past, Russia has accused the United States directly of obstructing discussion at the conference, which holds three sessions a year, on a new space accord.
Proponents of a pact, which include many European and nearly all developing countries, say it is vital to ensure that the 1967 treaty banning weapons of mass destruction in outer space is not undermined.
With the U.S. withdrawal last year from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with the old Soviet Union, they argue there is no reliable legal pact barring countries from using space for military purposes.
-------- spies
CIA 'questioned UK uranium claim'
Thursday, 31 July, 2003,
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3109993.stm
The search for weapons of mass destruction goes on in Iraq The CIA called into question UK claims in last September's dossier that Saddam Hussein was buying in uranium from Africa even before the document was published, it has been confirmed.
The Foreign Office in London - which made the admission - also said that, despite US concerns, Britain decided to go ahead and publish the claims because they believed their intelligence to be reliable.
A decision was therefore taken not to include the doubts expressed by America.
The news comes in the latest report by the Commons foreign affairs committee which has been investigating the way the government's case for war with Iraq was presented.
The MPs had asked Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to answer nine questions about the alleged supply of uranium by the African state Niger.
Responding, the Foreign Office said that it saw no need to include a "health warning" about the African element of the dossier - even though the CIA did not find it credible.
'Prudent'
In a statement the Foreign office repeated a past assertion that "the reference in the dossier was based on intelligence from more than one source."
But foreign affairs committee chairman, Labour MP Donald Anderson, said he believed it would have been "prudent" for the government to have included the CIA's concerns in September's dossier.
And he complained that the answers to the committee's questions were not as full as the MPs would have liked.
Despite US scepticism, President George W Bush referred to the uranium claims in his State of the Union speech in January.
Significant
Since then the Washington Post quoted White House officials as saying, in a statement authorised by the White House: "Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech."
In the speech, President Bush had said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
The UK claims were highly significant since Iraq had no civilian nuclear programme and an attempt to acquire uranium indicated that it was trying to make a nuclear bomb.
The claim was undermined by the International Atomic Energy Agency which said that it was based on forged documents.
Iraq is believed to have imported 200 tonnes of uranium from Niger in the 1980s.
----
Convicted Spy Led FBI To Papers Buried in Parks
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5065-2003Jul30.html
Convicted spy Brian P. Regan buried more than 20,000 pages of documents classified as top secret or higher and he intended to sell them to Iraq, Iran and other countries in "one of the largest espionage schemes in history," law enforcement officials said yesterday.
The trove of documents, CD-ROMs and videotapes, found in 19 locations by FBI agents after months of digging at state parks in Virginia and Maryland, contained detailed information about U.S. satellites, early warning systems and weapons of mass destruction, officials said.
Agents also unearthed a manual that officials said could have allowed Saddam Hussein or other enemies to evade U.S. spy satellites.
Regan, 41, a former Air Force intelligence analyst and father of four from Bowie, was convicted in February of trying to sell classified documents to Iraq and China. Only after his trial did authorities learn the full extent of the documents he admits taking from the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly.
"This is someone who was very focused and intended completely to harm our nation in the most significant way," Paul J. McNulty, the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, said at a news conference where officials displayed 10 boxes marked "top secret" and a green toothbrush holder in which Regan buried his own secret codes that recorded where the documents were stashed.
Federal officials detailed a complicated dig that involved dozens of FBI agents battling bugs and pouring rain as they forged through hilly terrain in Patapsco Valley State Park near Baltimore and Pocahontas State Park in central Virginia. The material was found in 19 locations -- 12 in the Virginia park and seven in the Maryland park -- starting in March and ending June 25. Regan had buried the documents over three years, ending in 2000.
The caches of documents were buried 18 inches deep, wrapped in garbage bags, lightweight plastic or Tupperware.
"It was horrible. There were mosquitoes, bugs, ticks, extremely hilly terrain, rivers, streams," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Haynes, a prosecutor on the case who accompanied agents.
FBI officials said Regan intended for a foreign intelligence service to recover the documents, and McNulty described Regan's activities as "what may have been one of the largest espionage schemes of all time."
Finding the classified documents proved difficult for even the FBI's best code-breakers. Officials said that while Regan was cooperative as agents debriefed him in prison, even he forgot the complex codes he used to record the locations of the buried packages. Some of the codes were found, at Regan's direction, in the toothbrush holder, which was buried near the sign for Exit 130A along Interstate 95 in Fredericksburg. Other codes were found in a buried purple saltshaker to which Regan directed the government along I-95.
It took agents about a month, with Regan's help, to break the codes before they started digging. The 12 packages buried in the Virginia park were found quickly, but the Maryland material was harder because it was so deeply encoded, FBI agent Steven Carr said. Regan, who is still being debriefed in prison, had to accompany agents three times to the Maryland park.
Jonathan Shapiro, an attorney for Regan, declined to comment.
As sensitive as the documents discovered in the parks were, officials acknowledged that Regan never made contact with any handler. And the news conference yesterday renewed the debate over prosecutors' decision to seek the death penalty for Regan as a major spy. At his trial, defense attorneys portrayed Regan as a failed would-be James Bond. The jury that convicted him spared him capital punishment, and he accepted a life sentence.
Preston Burton, a former federal prosecutor who was on the defense team for spies Aldrich Ames and Robert P. Hanssen, praised the government for locating the documents and said "anyone hoarding that amount of material has to be taken seriously."
But Regan is unlikely to stack up to more famous spies, Burton said, because in the end, his actions constituted only an attempt to betray the United States. "He was convicted of attempted espionage, and this sounds completely consistent with what the jury convicted him for," Burton said.
McNulty said Regan has told investigators that he planned to sell the documents for millions of dollars to Iraq, Libya, China and Iran.
Regan also intended to assert his innocence by saying that the holes he had dug were part of a game of "treasure hunt" he wanted to play with his children, McNulty said.
Regan's plot was foiled when he was arrested in August 2001 as he rode the shuttle between the ticketing windows and boarding gates at Dulles International Airport. He was on his way to Switzerland, and stashed in his shoes were the addresses for European embassies for Iraq, Libya and other nations. The government says he wrote letters to Hussein and Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi offering to sell top-secret U.S. intelligence reports. He demanded $13 million in Swiss francs for his information, writing that he had moved hundreds of pages of classified documents to a "hidden storage area."
"I feel I deserve more than the pension I will receive for all the years of service," Regan wrote of his job at the Reconnaissance Office, where he administered the Intelink Web site accessible only by the intelligence community. "The information I am offering will compromise U.S. intelligence systems worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Thirteen million is a small price to pay."
--------
Poindexter to Leave Pentagon Research Job
Project to Create Futures Market on Events in Middle East Caused Controversy
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10810-2003Jul31.html
John M. Poindexter, the retired rear admiral involved in the Pentagon's ill-fated plan to launch an online futures market for betting on Middle Eastern developments, will be leaving his job with a Defense Department research agency, a senior defense official said yesterday.
The departure had been demanded by lawmakers outraged over the notion that the Pentagon should set up a system enabling people to profit from predictions of terrorist attacks and other events. Poindexter, who has not spoken publicly about the initiative since it sparked a political firestorm Monday, has headed the office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) responsible for developing the trading program.
Since joining DARPA in January 2002, Poindexter also has been embroiled in controversy over a computerized surveillance project to collect information about potential terrorist threats by scouring financial, travel, medical and other databases. After critics blasted the project for potential invasions of privacy, lawmakers and the Defense Department placed limits on it.
The official said that Poindexter had not been asked to resign, but added that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior aides had agreed the onetime national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan -- and a central figure then in the Iran-contra scandal -- had become too much of a political lightning rod. Poindexter is "working through the details" of his resignation and "expects to offer" it within a few weeks, the official said.
"He realizes that it's become difficult for projects he's involved in to get a dispassionate hearing," the official said.
While Poindexter had supervisory responsibility for the futures project, others at the Defense Department also played important roles in shaping or approving it. But there was no word yesterday on their fate -- or the future of the Information Awareness Office that Poindexter has headed. News of Poindexter's resignation was first reported in yesterday's Wall Street Journal.
"The problem is more than the fact that Admiral Poindexter was put in charge of these projects," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said yesterday in a statement suggesting lawmakers may not be content to let the matter rest. "The problem is that these projects were just fine with the administration until the public found out about them."
But several involved with the futures trading plan defended it vigorously in interviews, saying the project's purpose has been distorted by critics and abandoned too quickly by top Pentagon officials unprepared to explain its value and nature. Sponsors saw it as a method of collecting information and insights useful to the Defense Department
The project, known as the Policy Analysis Market, was conceived by Michael Foster, a math and computer science specialist who joined DARPA in 2000 as a program manager, on temporary assignment from the National Science Foundation, according to several people familiar with the project's history. One of his models for creating a market that could help the Pentagon predict events was the political futures market at the University of Iowa, which has proven better than pollsters and pundits in predicting the outcome of presidential elections.
"DARPA is a relatively entrepreneurial organization," said Robin Hanson, an assistant professor of economics at George Mason University, whose work on futures markets also helped inspire Foster. "They give program managers a lot of discretion and a lot of ability to create new concepts, and then reward them heavily based on how they do."
According to a chronology prepared by the Pentagon, the go-ahead for the project came in the spring of 2001 from an unidentified official in the Defense Research and Engineering office. After inviting proposals in May 2001, DARPA awarded initial design contracts to two small firms -- Neoteric Technologies of Huntsville, Ala., and Net Exchange of San Diego, a 10-person business started in the early 1990s by economist John Ledyard, Hanson's thesis adviser at the California Institute of Technology.
While Neoteric took a comparatively conservative approach, Net Exchange decided on a more ambitious one, both in terms of technology and scope. Its original plan was to create a market that would try to anticipate major events not just in the Middle East but Southwest and Central Asia as well. The market also would be limited to intelligence analysts and others in the U.S. government.
But the idea of setting up an internal market ran into legal prohibitions against moving money among agencies funded under separate congressional appropriations. So Net Exchange devised a public market. It also narrowed the scope to eight countries in the Middle East.
Under the plan, much of the trading was to have centered on futures contracts based on general indices regarding the economic health, civil stability and military posture of these countries. To build the indices, Net Exchange contracted with the Economist Intelligence Unit, which specializes in country analysis.
Some "specific event" contracts also were to be written, covering the possibility of a terrorist attack, assassination or coup. But these contracts, which stirred the political outcry this week, were never meant to be the market's focus, said Charles Polk, Net Exchange's president.
"It was never billed as a market in terrorism," he said. "It was to be a market in the future of the Middle East."
In late 2002, Poindexter approved field testing of the plan, which envisioned registering traders today and starting trades on Oct. 1. Among those briefed on the plan as it developed were officials not only in DARPA but in intelligence agencies and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Polk said. But neither Rumsfeld nor his senior staff knew of the program before this week, according to a senior defense official, who said such small research programs do not normally receive such high-level attention.
Polk said he had heard no expressions of moral outrage in any of the briefings, although he did anticipate possible concerns being raised about some of the planned trading once the market went public. He said the market would not have traded in any events that were not being widely speculated about in news stories, government meetings or policy seminars. He also dismissed the idea that terrorists could have profited from the market, noting its relatively small planned size.
In May, the program came to the attention of two Democratic senators -- Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.) -- who saw it listed in a report on the programs being run by Poindexter's office. The senators could not discern much from the report. But a tip they received last week directed them to the program's Web site, which showed as trading examples the possibility of betting on the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat or the overthrow of Jordan's monarchy.
The senators called a news conference Monday to denounce the project as bizarre and morally repugnant, unleashing a torrent of similar criticism from other lawmakers and prompting Rumsfeld to cancel it. Hanson, reflecting on what went wrong, said one thing he would have done differently was post different examples on the Web site.
"They allowed the project to be distorted," he said of the effort's critics. "But it's still our fault for allowing them."
-------- un
UNITED NATIONS
Annan Warns of World 'Crisis'
July 31, 2003
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/international/31NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, July 30 - Secretary General Kofi Annan called publicly today for a rethinking of the international institutions that were largely sidelined during the Iraq war.
"Many of us sense that we are living through a crisis of the international system," he said. The war and more recent crises in Africa, he added, "force us to ask ourselves whether the institutions and methods we are accustomed to are really adequate to deal with all the stresses of the last couple of years."
Suggesting that some world leaders at the coming General Assembly should set aside time for basic discussions on these issues, he said, "if we are going to make preventive action, or war, part of our response to these new threats, what are the rules?"
"Who decides?" he added. "Under what circumstances? Did what happened in Iraq constitute an exception? A precedent others can exploit? What are the rules?"
In effect, three months after President Bush warned that the United Nations might become irrelevant, the secretary general turned a traditional midsummer news conference into a stump speech on the value of international institutions in general and the United Nations in particular.
At one point, recalling the bitter dismissals of the United Nations last winter, he said, with a bare hint of satisfaction, "I did warn those who were bashing the U.N. that they had to be careful because they may need the U.N. soon."
The remarks were made in a wide-ranging news conference during which Mr. Annan also indicated support for a new Security Council resolution on Iraq creating a broader international framework for restoring security and rebuilding political institutions. "If it does take a second resolution to get everybody to pull together to get it done, let's do it," he said.
He added: "If there were a United-Nations mandated force and there was an international effort to pacify Iraq, they would all feel more comfortable contributing to it. That also applies to reconstruction." There has been no indication from the United States-led occupation in Iraq that it is considering ceding political or military control.
--------
SECURITY COUNCIL
U.S. Offers Resolution to Approve African Force for Liberia
July 31, 2003
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/international/africa/31LIBE.html
UNITED NATIONS, July 30 - The United States introduced a Security Council resolution today that would authorize the peacekeeping force being assembled by West African countries to enforce the shaky cease-fire in Liberia.
The draft resolution is likely to create new momentum for an intervention that has been stalled by political opposition in Washington and by calls from African participants for more financial and logistical aid. Council diplomats indicated today that the measure was likely to win approval late this week or early next week.
Nothing in the draft indicates that Washington plans to take a leading role in the multinational force. President Bush said in his news conference, "The conditions that I laid out for the Liberian rescue mission still exist: Charles Taylor must go, a cease-fire must be in place, and we will be there to help" the force assembled by the Economic Community of West African States
One factor stalling the deployment of two battalions - about 1,500 troops - already committed by the Nigerians has been financial. The State Department has signed a $10 million contract with a California company to provide vehicles, tents, food and other logistical support, "which obviously the Nigerians have indicated is not enough," Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, told reporters today.
In Liberia, fighting continued today in both Monrovia, the capital, and Buchanan, the second-largest city.
One resident told Reuters that "dozens of people" had been killed and that the dead were being carried off in wheelbarrows during lulls in the fighting.
Under the draft resolution, the multinational force would begin the job, then hand off to United Nations peacekeepers, who would be deployed by Oct. 1. Several Council diplomats said it was unrealistic to expect the United Nations force to be ready before late fall.
The draft resolution also allows the current United Nations peacekeeping force in nearby Sierra Leone to use its equipment to airlift to Monrovia the first battalion of Nigerian troops. The Sierra Leone mission is also authorized to support the multinational force in Liberia "for a limited period."
The plan, United States and United Nations officials have said, is for Mr. Taylor to depart upon the arrival of Nigerian troops. Secretary of State Colin. L Powell said today, "While waiting for the forces to arrive, we are also pressing hard for a cease-fire."
A West African military team arrived in Monrovia to assess the situation. Festus Okonkwo, a Nigerian general leading the team, told Agence France-Presse that, "The peacekeepers should be here within days."
Three ships carrying about 2,000 American marines are a few days from Monrovia. But President Bush made it clear that if American support included ground troops, "The troop strength will be limited, and the time frame will be limited."
The draft resolution also calls for Mr. Taylor's resignation, but makes no mention of the chief rebel group, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, which has violated numerous cease-fires in the past two weeks while lobbing mortar shells into civilian neighborhoods.
Council members questioned both that omission and the inclusion of language giving the peacekeepers immunity from prosecution under the International Criminal Court. But the German envoy, Gunter Pleuger, predicted that any disagreements would be quickly resolved so that the troops could move in to Monrovia "as soon as possible."
-------- us
U.S. LIKELY TO MAINTAIN SINAI FORCE
August 1, 2003,
Middle East Newsline
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2003/august/08_01_2.html
CAIRO [MENL] -- The United States has signaled the likelihood that it will not reduce its military presence in the Sinai Peninsula.
U.S. officials have relayed the message to Egypt during discussions on bilateral military relations. The officials were quoted as saying that in wake of the war in Iraq there is no longer an urgent need to move troops from Sinai to other parts of the Middle East.
Last week, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher met Arthur Hughes, the commander of the U.S. peacekeeping force in Sinai. Later, Maher said the United States appeared likely to maintain its current troop level in the peninsula.
The United States has 960 troops in the Sinai, about half of the Multinational Force. The force monitors Egyptian and Israeli troop movements and seeks to ensure that the peninsula is largely demilitarized.
----
US struggles to cobble together troop force
By our international staff
July 31 2003
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478620076&p=1012571727162
If there were any doubt how important it is for the Bush administration to see international forces quickly begin to replace war-weary American troops in Iraq, this week's trip by General Richard Myers, the US military's top officer, to New Delhi put the White House's thinking on full view. Advertisement
Gen Myers insisted the rare visit had nothing to do with the US's request for 17,000 Indian peacekeepers, which would form a third international division in Iraq, and Delhi's resistance to do so without a United Nations resolution authorising such a deployment. Instead, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said, it was a long-scheduled meeting to discuss US-Indian military co-operation.
But whatever the general's explanation, Indian officia
----
Pentagon goes to Congress as war costs mount
By Peter Spiegel, Defence Correspondent, in London
July 31 2003
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478627517&p=1012571727162
When Lawrence Lindsey, then the White House's chief economic adviser, said in a published interview almost a year ago that he believed that the war in Iraq could cost anywhere from $100bn to $200bn (€88bn-€176bn, £62bn-£124bn), he was quickly admonished by his colleagues in the Bush administration. Advertisement
Mitch Daniels, then the budget director, just two days later called Mr Lindsey's estimate "likely very, very high", and subsequently said the war would probably cost between $50bn and $60bn. Just two months after Mr Lindsey made his remarks he was out of a job, with White House officials speculating that his war estimate was a big reason why he had been replaced.
As the 2003 fiscal year approaches its end, however, Mr Lindsey's prediction is looking more and more prescient. After securing a $79bn appropriation in April to fund both the military and reconstruction efforts in Iraq for this year, the Pentagon acknowledged this week that it would have to come back to Congress again for another round of Iraq-related spending, although officials furiously refused to estimate how much they might need.
But people who have been briefed on the Pentagon's budgeting process said that the Defense Department is burning through is funds so quickly - $3.9bn per month - that it will need a new supplemental appropriation as early as January. Indeed, in an interview with the Financial Times this week, Dov Zackheim, the Pentagon's comptroller, said the US military was expected to have spent $58bn of the $62bn it received in the April spending bill by the end of the year.
With such funds running short, experts who have studied Pentagon spending patterns believe that during the next round of budget requests the Bush administration could be asking for as much as they did just four months ago.
"Clearly there's going to have to be more money in 2004, and if we stay at today's levels it's probably going to have to be something like $50bn," said Steven Kosiak, the budget director at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "Even if you make a relatively optimistic estimate that we'll be able to bring down troops, it's going to still be in the tens of billions."
Mr Kosiak's estimates do not include the reconstruction side of the ledger, however. Joshua Bolten, Mr Daniel's replacement as White House budget director, said this week that those funds were similarly running low.
Through various sources - congressional appropriation, frozen Iraqi assets, and $800m in cash found inside Iraq - Mr Bolten said the US has secured $7.7bn for rebuilding efforts for 2003. But Paul Bremmer, the US administrator in Iraq, told Bush administration officials during his brief visit to Washington last week that he anticipated spending $7.3bn by the end of the year.
John Hamre, a former Defense Department budget director who oversaw the recent highly critical, Pentagon-backed report on Iraqi rebuilding, said on Thursday that he anticipated Mr Bremmer would need an additional $10bn to $15bn in 2004 in order to tackle the problems facing the country.
For its part, the Pentagon has remained tight-lipped. Mr Zackheim said the agency had assiduously refused to speculate on costs too far into the future because variables such as troop levels and fighting intensity could not be known with any certainty.
"We've been pretty consistent in our estimates in the last four months," Mr Zackheim said. "What I can't reassure [Congress] on is how long this will go on."
The continued high cost of the Iraqi operation is most directly tied to troop levels, since related expenses - particularly the high number of reservists who have remained activated for months, currently 197,000 or just 20,000 fewer than in the midst of the war - cost the most. The fact that so many supplies are still being transported by air has added to costs, as had construction and maintenance of facilities for more soldiers than anticipated.
US troop levels are likely to remain above 130,000 well into next year. Senior administration officials have acknowledged that more than 100,000 are expected to remain through to the end of 2004 as well, meaning little relief in sight for the high costs.
But even by Pentagon standards, some experts argue, the $3.9bn per month being spent is unusually high. Some of the money is probably going to support operations by non-US forces. But even accounting for that, Mr Hamre said, Iraq had become a pricy operation.
"A lot of people I know can't figure out why that number is so expensive," he said. "The pace of action is faster than we thought it was going to be, and the wear and tear is going to be higher. We're still bringing in a lot of stuff on airplanes and that's very expensive. But I can't figure out what we're spending $4bn a month on."
Additional reporting by Marianne Brun-Rovet in Washington
----
On-and-Off Unit Rotations Leave Families Boiling
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5033-2003Jul30.html
HINESVILLE, Ga. -- Tristan Goodro reads lots of big words now. He tears through the menu at a Mexican restaurant with ease.
"One chimichanga, rice and beans," Tristan, 7, says proudly.
Tristan was itching to show off when his dad, Michael Goodro, a military policeman with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, was scheduled to return home in April. Then it was June. Then July. Then August.
Michael Goodro and thousands more soldiers based here at Fort Stewart are still in the Middle East, their deployments stretching toward the one-year mark and exposing simmering pockets of discontent in military families facing the new realities of America's extended war against terrorism. The lengths of the deployments -- and, even more so, the on-again, off-again return dates -- have sparked unusually critical comments about their commanders from a few soldiers in Iraq and occasional protests at home.
The outcry has not gone unnoticed. Generals have held emotional, town-hall style meetings with military spouses and a new system of one-year rotations designed to give soldiers more "predictability" was announced last week. President Bush said at his news conference yesterday that he understood the family concerns. "They were getting mixed signals. . . . And now it's clear as to their rotation plan," he said. "As we rotate, we'll be changing the nature of the military configuration to have more of a capacity to move very quickly and to strike quickly."
The new rotation system gives many military spouses a sense of relief: At least they will now have a better idea of when their husbands or wives would be leaving and returning. The practical effect of the rotation decision is vast, touching on thousands of spouses, children, parents and grandchildren in every state. The numbers are staggering: 156,000 troops in Iraq and the surrounding area; a total of 368,000 troops on deployments of varying lengths in 120 countries around the world.
For all the comfort provided by the firmer return dates outlined in the new rotation plan, the blueprint also signaled the opening of a stark, new era: For the first time since the Vietnam War, being a military spouse will mean coping with the certainty of longer and lonelier stretches than many, especially the youngest soldiers and their families, ever imagined.
To some, particularly battle-hardened veterans whose fathers and grandfathers spent years away from home fighting in World War II and Korea, the uproar about the length of the Iraq deployments has been an embarrassing and unseemly spectacle.
"It's unfortunate that the 3rd ID got whipsawed on return dates . . . [but] get a grip, there's a war going on . . . suck it up," said retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who was the drug czar in the Clinton administration.
Fort Stewart, where about half of the 16,000 soldiers sent to Iraq have yet to return, has emerged as a flash point in the sometimes uneasy transition to the new paradigm of post-Sept. 11, 2001, military life. Recently, frustrated spouses protested the string of canceled return dates, waving signs and calling out to passing motorists just off base.
The emotions were stoked, in part, by a statement attributed to the base spokesman, Rich Olson, who was quoted as saying the soldiers would be in Iraq "indefinitely," a comment he says he never made. "The frustration of changing dates just caused a lot of people to go blow off steam," Olson said. "It takes Army families different amounts of time to accept that this is the norm. The soldier and his family have to understand what it is like to be in the military . . . these are open-ended engagements."
While some spouses have held protests, others have waged e-mail campaigns, trying to get the attention of Congress, the Pentagon and the media. One spouse, Cheryl Baker, wrote that soldiers feared being reprimanded if they spoke out, a worry that Fort Stewart officials insist is unfounded. Baker enclosed the comments of an unnamed 3rd Infantry Division soldier in Iraq, who said he had "the feeling that the government has abandon[ed] you, left you to rot."
Ashley Oesch, whose husband, Steve Oesch, is a 3rd Infantry Division military policeman, wrote: "My issue is our soldiers' MORALE and that they keep getting LIED to about their return dates. . . . This emotional roller coaster needs to end and our soldiers need to come home and rest."
Ashley Oesch is the "battle buddy" of Tristan's mother, Amy Goodro. Oesch and Goodro were vacationing together in Pensacola this spring when they got a call from Michael Goodro, saying he was inside one of "Saddam's palaces." He told them he had heard that he would be home in two weeks.
Amy Goodro was ecstatic. She and Oesch had been dieting and tanning for weeks in preparation for a big homecoming. They blasted back to Hinesville to make welcome-home banners and party plans. Goodro, a volunteer family readiness group coordinator, started calling the wives in her husband's company.
But not long after, there was another call. The company wasn't coming home after all. The process repeated itself three times: a happy call from Iraq or from company officials, party plans, crushing disappointment. Goodro and Oesch abandoned their diets. They sought comfort in the all-you-can-eat buffet lines, loading up on pizza and chicken wings.
"We make our banners, then it's 'Surprise, they're not coming home,' " Goodro said.
Through it all, Goodro kept a mostly sunny disposition and some of the gloomier wives resented it. When she called with another return date, which was later canceled, some were hostile.
Goodro usually gets her information about possible return dates from officials in her husband's company, which is now expected to be back by the end of September. But there is also a roiling network of rumor and speculation. An Internet chat room for Fort Stewart crackles with complaints. The strain of the deployments has frayed some marriages, Goodro said, leading to tearful confessions and angry reprisals.
Technology helps ratchet up the emotions, too. Olson said he has heard reports of families buying satellite phones and shipping them to soldiers in Iraq, a phenomenon that has been greeted less than enthusiastically by military officials, who already provide periodic 10-minute video conferences with family members and access to e-mail. A battlefield rumor can quickly turn into something very different once it has been passed to Hinesville and back.
"What Soldier A is telling Spouse A is sometimes entirely different than what Soldier B is telling Spouse B," Olson said.
But that does not change the thirst for information from the battlefront. Michael Goodro has even borrowed reporters' satellite phones to call his wife, who seldom goes anywhere without a cell phone.
Their house is filled with the presents Michael sends. Each gift seems to carry an implied message that Michael doesn't want to be forgotten, Amy Goodro, 27, said. But, she said, he has nothing to worry about: She knew what she was getting into when they married eight years ago.
She has accepted the life they've chosen -- however difficult it may be -- has learned to fill the days until he returns with errands and child-raising. Tristan has his ways of dealing with the absences, too. He loves to put on one of his daddy's helmets and play soldier with a decommissioned hand grenade they keep in the den.
"I'm going to be a soldier someday," he says.
This gets Amy's attention. She sits up straight and stares him down: "No, you're not."
Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report from Washington.
-------- propaganda wars
The usual mangled speech but Bush is let off the hook in rare press conference
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
31 July 2003
Independent Digital (UK)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=429148
It didn't reveal much, but the White House press corps were grateful for anything. George Bush's press conference yesterday was only the ninth he has held in 30 months of office and a offered rare chance for reporters to get to grips with the most disciplined, and arguably the most secretive, White House of modern times. Except that they didn't.
This ought to have been a tricky occasion for the President. His poll ratings are sagging, budget deficits are ballooning, jobs are vanishing and American soldiers are dying almost daily in Iraq. And not one of Saddam's alleged weapons has turned up. But in the end it was a breeze.
The main lesson to emerge from the 50-minute session, the first since the invasion of Iraq four months ago, was how easily the chief executive evaded any serious damage - and how the reporters made it easy for him to do so.
The Bush on display was familiar: a bit macho, a bit matey and condescending. On occasion he flashed that unappealing smirk, or a spark of temper when a trusted aide was challenged. For a man who does not like being asked to explain himself, he looked relaxed and in command not only of his audience, but also (by his own unexacting standards) of the English language.
There were the usual odd breakdowns in brain-mouth co-ordination. "I will never assume the restraint and goodwill of dangerous enemies when lives of our citizens are at work," he proclaimed during a chest-beating passage about pursuing the war against terrorism. On occasion he moved his hands silently groping for words. But the ones he finally came up with more or less did the job.
As usual, reporters did not follow up each other's questions. At one point Mr Bush was pressed on the dodgy pre-war intelligence (and the even dodgier use made of it) about Saddam's supposed weapons' programmes. Predictably, he launched into an answer about how much better the world off was without Saddam Hussein.
The reporter pressed him but Mr Bush cut him off, calling the next question - which was about gay marriage. The President, as only to be expected, didn't think it was a good idea. The chance to pin him down was gone.
From then on it was downhill all the way. We saw the truculent Bush ("Since I'm in charge of the war on terror, we won't reveal source and methods," he said of his refusal to declassify 28 pages of the congressional report on the 11 September attacks). Then there was the carelessly dismissive Bush ("I didn't expect Thomas Jefferson to emerge in Iraq in a 90-day period," he said of the shambles there).
The 43rd President is known to view journalists as a tiresome accompaniment to power. While this was only Mr Bush's ninth press conference, Bill Clinton had held 33 by this stage of his presidency, and Mr Bush's father an astonishing 61. If yesterday was anything to go by, he can risk a few more.
Bush Q&A
Why is Condoleezza Rice not being held accountable for the statement that the White House has acknowledged was a mistake in your State of the Union address regarding Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium? Also, do you take personal responsibility for that inaccuracy?
Bush: I take responsibility for everything I say, of course. And I analysed a thorough body of intelligence ... that led me to the conclusion that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power. America is lucky to have [Ms Rice's] service. Period.
How close is the US to capturing Saddam?
I can't say for sure whether our troops are closing in on Saddam. We're closer than we were yesterday. All I know is, we're on the hunt.
Were the links [with al-Qa'ida] exaggerated to justify war? Or can you offer us some definitive evidence that Saddam was working with al-Qa'ida terrorists?
Yes ... but it's going to take time to gather the evidence and analyse the mounds, ... the miles of documents we have uncovered.
Has the US has lost credibility by building the case for war on sometimes flimsy or, some have complained, non-existent evidence?
I'm confident that our search will yield that which I strongly believe, that Saddam had a weapons programme.
-------- war crimes
U.S. Seeks War Crimes Exemption for Liberia Peacekeepers
Thalif Deen,
Jul 31, 2003 (IPS)
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19489
UNITED NATIONS - Washington is asking that if its peacekeepers are sent to Liberia they be exempted from prosecution for war crimes in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The clause, included in a draft U.S. resolution proposed in the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, was condemned by the Coalition for the ICC, an umbrella group that worked to establish the court earlier this year.
''Insisting that peacekeeping forces should have immunity from international law and crimes as a condition to enforce international law is grotesque and irresponsible,'' said William R. Pace, convenor of the Coalition, Thursday.
''What is essential is to authorise international forces to enforce the ceasefire and to begin to save the lives of civilians and allow life to be breathed into a dying nation,'' he told reporters.
Pace said that many members of the group believe that the reign of violence and the criminal victimisation of civilian populations in Liberia deserved international community protection thousands of lives ago.
Coalition members believe that government and rebel military forces have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Liberia in contravention of the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute of the ICC and other international law, he added.
''It is therefore particularly disturbing that the proposed Security Council resolution from the United States government authorising a multi-national force ... includes a provision that would also violate these treaties and international laws,'' Pace said.
The proposed U.N. force, which is expected to be approved by the 15-member Security Council next week, is not likely to move into Liberia until the end of August or early September, primarily due to logistical reasons.
Since the deployment will be delayed, the Security Council is expected to simultaneously approve the creation of a regional peacekeeping force made up of troops from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told reporters Thursday that the proposed U.S. clause on war crimes by peacekeepers has never been included in U.N. peacekeeping resolutions.
''Besides, my own view, is that the kind of crimes that we are talking about have never occurred with U.N. peacekeepers -- they have never been anywhere near there,'' said Annan.
While Washington has been roundly condemned for not moving troops into the West African nation sooner, non-government organisations (NGOs) have criticised its draft resolution for various reasons.
Nicola Reindorp, Oxfam's U.N. representative, said Thursday the current draft risks being ''fatally flawed''.
''If Liberia's civilians are to be effectively protected, the draft resolution must be immediately amended."
Reindorp said that simply providing peacekeepers with a mandate to use force -- while critically important -- would mean little without clear and specific parameters on how that force should be applied.
''Peacekeeping missions risk failure when commanders do not have explicit Security Council directions about the steps they must take to adequately protect civilians,'' she said. ''The people of Liberia can't afford a vague mandate that lacks any guideposts for measuring success.''
Despite a public plea by Annan that the peacekeeping force in Liberia be led by the United States, U.S. President George W. Bush has indicated he will provide only logistical and financial support for such a U.N. mission.
''Any commitments we make would be limited in size and limited in tenure,'' Bush told reporters in mid-July.
The Washington-based Heritage Foundation, which has close political and ideological ties to the White House, warned the Bush administration last week to keep away from Liberia.
''U.S. troops, who are trained and equipped to fight and win wars, don't make good peacekeepers,'' wrote Heritage analyst Jack Spencer.
He said that a Liberian mission ''could drain hundreds of millions of dollars from the defence budget, and jeopardise other important national security requirements''.
Spencer described peacekeeping operations as ''quagmires that cost more than expected, especially when measured in American blood, and usually achieve very little in the long run''.
The 1,500-strong ECOWAS contingent, led by Nigeria, is hampered by financial and logistical problems even before it can get off the ground.
Washington, which is spending about 3.9 billion dollars every month in its military occupation of Iraq, has offered only 10 million dollars to the force, which will also include troops from Senegal, Mali and Ghana.
At a U.N. press conference Wednesday, Annan told reporters that West African leaders had made it clear that they would be prepared to send in troops only if they received financial and logistical support.
The nations have two battalions ready to go probably by early next week. ''From what I gather,'' said Annan, ''discussions are going on for them to get some assistance.''
Annan said the Nigerians have complained that the 10 million dollars offered by Washington is ''not enough''.
In anticipation of the problem, he told the Security Council last week that he should be authorised to advance money from U.N. peacekeeping funds to support the ECOWAS force. But the Council has not responded.
Annan is also planning to move at least one battalion from the U.N. mission in neighbouring Sierra Leone, which has troop strength of over 13,000, to Liberia.
The United States has also warned that its support will be conditioned on the departure of Liberian leader Charles Taylor before peacekeeping troops arrive in Monrovia.
Washington has two warships off the coast of Monrovia with a contingent of marines ready to evacuate Americans and foreigner.
In a report released Thursday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said stocks of food and fuel appear to be diminishing, making the situation critical in the Liberian capital.
OCHA said there were also reports of looting of commercial food stocks. ''The whereabouts of 9,000 tons of food in a U.N. World Food Programme warehouse remained unknown, and fuel shortages severely hampered the ability of humanitarian agencies to truck water supplies to those in need.''
----
Serbian mayor gets life sentence for war crimes
Friday August 01, 2003
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2003-daily/01-08-2003/world/w4.htm
THE HAGUE: A UN war crimes court on Thursday sentenced ex-Bosnian Serb mayor Milomir Stakic to life in prison for crimes against humanity and war crimes during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia but cleared him of charges of genocide.
The sentence was the longest handed down so far by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugsolavia.
"The accused Milomir Stakic is guilty of extermination, murder, persecutions, deportation," the court said. "Doctor Milomir Stakic is hereby sentenced to life in imprisonment."
But reading out the verdict, Judge Wolfgang Schomburg said: "Despite the comprehensive pattern of atrocities against non-Serbs in Prijedor, the trial chamber has not found this case to be a case of genocide, rather it is a case of persecution, deportation and extermination."
The court said the primary aim of the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia "was to displace the non-Serb population in order to achieve the vision of a pure Serbian state.
"This intent to displace a population cannot be equated with an intent to destroy it as such."
But it added: "Dr Stakic was one of the main actors in this prosecutorial campaign and the trial chamber is satisfied that he had the requisite intent to discriminate against non-Serbs."
Prosecutor Nicholas Koumjian said: "We are very happy with this sentence. It reflects the gravity of the crime and the role played by the accused."
Stakic, 41, was accused of being directly responsible for one of the darkest chapters of the Bosnian war, the infamous concentration camps of Prijedor where he was head of the so-called crisis staff that ran the Prijedor district after Bosnian Serb rebels overthrew the multi-ethnic authorities there.
Stakic went into hiding after being charged in 1997 but was handed over to the UN court after the fall of the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Panel to Meet With CIA, FBI on 9/11 Report
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4970-2003Jul30.html
In an effort to avoid a congressional confrontation over information contained in a report on the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the leaders of the Senate intelligence committee have asked CIA and FBI officials to meet with them by the end of the week to determine whether there are portions of the report that could still be declassified.
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the committee and one of President Bush's staunchest allies, said he believes "it could be possible" to release portions of the section without damaging national security or compromising ongoing investigations.
The section in question contains information about possible links between Saudi individuals, diplomats, officials and charities with some of the 9/11 hijackers and the al Qaeda terrorist network.
Roberts, who has studied the classified section, said "there are quite a few names" of individuals possibly under investigation that would preclude releasing the entire document. He said he wants to avoid the precedent of having the Senate vote to release the information, which it has the power to do under a regulation enacted in 1976, but has never used.
There is growing sentiment in the Senate to bring the issue to the floor. A decision to release the information would have to pass the intelligence committee after consultation with the White House.
Yesterday, a spokesman for Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he had collected the signatures of 44 senators supporting declassification, including Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas.
This week, intelligence committee member Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) said the pages "should be declassified after taking the necessary actions to protect sources and intelligence-gathering methods. The American people deserve to know this information that relates to the unprecedented September 11th terrorist attacks on our nation."
Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who was the ranking minority member of the committee when the report was being drafted by an unprecedented House-Senate panel, has called on the committee to set its release process in motion.
"This is a continuation of the pattern of the last seven months, a pattern of delay and excessive use of national security standards to deny the people the knowledge of their vulnerability," Graham said in a statement.
Bush said Monday that he would not declassify anything in a blacked-out 28-page section of the report, despite an unusual plea by Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, that the White House make the information public.
In an interview with Reuters yesterday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell again stated the administration's view on the matter: "It's closed," he said.
-------- courts
Suit Challenges Constitutionality of Powers in Antiterrorism Law
July 31, 2003
The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/31/national/31PATR.html
WASHINGTON, July 30 - The American Civil Liberties Union and six Muslim groups today brought the first constitutional challenge to the sweeping antiterrorism legislation passed after the Sept. 11 attacks, arguing that the law gives federal agents virtually unchecked authority to spy on Americans.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Michigan, seeks to have a major section of the law, the U.S.A. Patriot Act, declared unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the privacy, due process and free speech rights of Americans.
"We think the Constitution is really on our side," Ann Beeson, the civil liberties union's chief lawyer in the suit, said in an interview. "There are basically no limits to the amount of information the F.B.I. can get now - library book records, medical records, hotel records, charitable contributions - the list goes on and on, and it's the secrecy of the whole operation that is really troublesome."
Justice Department officials said they planned to review the lawsuit and had no immediate comment on it. The department issued a statement saying that the expanded law enforcement powers granted in the part of the act under attack, Section 215, had proved to be essential tools in fighting terrorists.
"The Patriot Act was a long overdue measure to close gaping holes in the government's ability, responsibly and lawfully, to collect vital intelligence information on criminal terrorists to protect our citizens from savage attacks such as those which occurred on Sept. 11, 2001," Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman for the department, said.
Civil liberties advocates and Justice Department officials said the suit, which names as defendants Attorney General John Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, was the first to challenge the constitutionality of the law. Congress passed the measure overwhelmingly six weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks in response to complaints from law enforcement officials that their pursuit of terror suspects was hampered by outdated and ill-conceived restrictions.
The lawsuit comes after months of increasingly sharp political debate in Washington and around the country over the act.
In May, Democrats beat back a move to extend the law past 2005, and last week, the House voted 309 to 118 to scale back a "sneak and peak" provision in the law that allows the authorities to conduct searches and seizures without immediately notifying the target of the investigation.
Among the plaintiffs is a group of Muslims affiliated with a mosque in Ann Arbor, Mich., who maintain that they have been unfairly questioned and singled out by the F.B.I, and that some associates have been imprisoned and deported.
But the plaintiffs acknowledged in the lawsuit that because of the secrecy provisions built into the Patriot Act, they "have no way to know with certainty" that the F.B.I. has used its expanded surveillance powers against them.
--------
Seizure of Business Records Is Challenged
ACLU and Arab American Groups File Lawsuit Over Element of USA Patriot Act
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4699-2003Jul30.html
The American Civil Liberties Union joined several Islamic and Arab American groups yesterday in filing a legal challenge to a key provision of the USA Patriot Act, which allows the government to seize business, library and computer records in terrorism investigations without publicly disclosing that it has done so.
The ACLU lawsuit, filed in federal court in Detroit, argues that the law violates free-speech rights and constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. The plaintiffs, including a Michigan Islamic group and an Oregon mosque, also allege in the lawsuit that they have been targeted for investigation by the FBI because of their ethnic and religious characteristics.
"Ordinary Americans should not have to worry that the FBI is rifling through their medical records, seizing their personal papers, or forcing charities and advocacy groups to divulge membership lists," said Ann Beeson, the ACLU's lead attorney in the lawsuit.
But Justice Department officials, who have characterized the Patriot Act as a crucial tool in the war against terrorism, said the provision criticized in yesterday's lawsuit is narrowly tailored and equipped with stronger legal protections than grand jury subpoenas.
The section has "a narrow scope that scrupulously respects First Amendment rights, requires a court order to obtain any business records and is subject to congressional reporting and oversight on a regular basis," Justice spokeswoman Barbara Comstock said in a statement. "It should be noted that criticism . . . frequently ignores what the provision actually includes."
The lawsuit comes amid mounting objections from advocacy groups, local governments and federal lawmakers to the Patriot Act, a broad anti-terrorism measure that was passed overwhelmingly by Congress less than two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. More than 140 cities and counties, in addition to legislatures in Alaska, Hawaii and Vermont, have passed resolutions condemning the Patriot Act. On Capitol Hill last week, the House voted 309 to 118 to roll back part of the law that allows the government to conduct secret "sneak and peek" searches of private property.
At issue in the ACLU lawsuit is a section focusing on "business records" that allows the FBI to seek production of "any tangible things" relating to a foreign intelligence or terrorism investigation, including "books, records, papers, documents and other items." Such requests are generally overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose activities are conducted in secret, and those required to comply are barred from disclosing that the request has been made.
The measure has provoked strong objections from booksellers and librarians, who view it as an unwarranted intrusion into citizens' reading habits, and from Arab American groups that believe it is aimed in large part at Muslims. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor, Mich., and the Islamic Center of Portland, Ore., both of which have ties to individuals who have been a target of terrorism investigations.
The groups complain that the provision's secrecy makes it impossible to know whether they have been the subjects of special record searches. "Because the orders are secret, there is no way to know for sure who has been a target," said Beeson, the ACLU lawyer. "That is one of the constitutional arguments against the law."
Both Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who are named as defendants in the lawsuit, have defended the government's use of the business-record provision and other parts of the Patriot Act. Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee in June that "grand juries have been able to subpoena business records for a long time," and the same should apply to terrorism investigators.
In another area of dispute with the administration's anti-terrorism tactics, the libertarian Cato Institute joined the liberal People For the American Way and four other groups yesterday in filing a brief challenging the detention of Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomb" suspect who is being held as an enemy combatant with ties to the al Qaeda network.
-------- homeland security
New Passenger Screening Plan
Revised program for air travelers would replace one that was seen as an invasion of privacy.
Reuters
July 31, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-na-screeners31jul31,0,678079.story
WASHINGTON - The Department of Homeland Security hopes to begin testing a revised air passenger screening program soon, after hundreds of complaints that the original proposals would be an invasion of privacy, officials said Wednesday.
The proposals for the new Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, known as CAPPS II, will be published in the Federal Register today so tests can begin to evaluate the system's speed, accuracy and efficiency.
The department suspended the development of the program about seven weeks ago after it drew fire from business travelers, civil liberties advocates and some lawmakers who feared that it gave the government too much license to pry.
Officials said the new proposals answer many of the concerns voiced after the initial plan was presented.
"The proposed program increases passenger security and strengthens civil aviation in our country, while respecting the privacy of persons affected by the system," said Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the department's chief privacy officer.
CAPPS II will take routine information that people provide when making reservations and run it against commercial databases to confirm a passenger's identity. It will comb watch lists and other national security data to determine if a passenger has any links to terrorist groups.
Under the new plan, information on the passenger will only be retained by the government for a few hours after travel is complete, rather than for 50 years as proposed in the initial plan.
In addition, commercial data providers who assist the government in confirming a passenger's identity will not be allowed to retain the information. CAPPS II will not use bank or credit data or medical records.
----
Surveillance Proposal Expanded
CAPPS II Would Look At More Air Passengers
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4978-2003Jul30?language=printer
A passenger-screening system designed to help capture terrorists could also be used to target people suspected of violent crimes, under a proposal approved by Department of Homeland Security officials.
Previously, government officials said the surveillance system known as CAPPS II would be used only to target potential terrorists and their allies -- limits intended to assuage concerns about the program's impact on privacy and civil liberties.
Plans called for using commercial information services to sort through demographic and marketing data to establish whether passengers are "rooted in the community." Classified government computers would then review passengers with questionable reports for signs of terrorist intent.
The new proposal shows that officials intend to use the system -- potentially the largest surveillance network created by the government -- more broadly to keep dangerous people off planes. That could include people wanted for domestic terrorism or violent crimes.
Anyone flagged by the system would receive extra screening or, in some circumstances, be detained.
A draft of a notice to be published in the Federal Register says "such information may be shared between law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security and appropriate action may be taken." The document was reviewed by White House officials and signed by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge several days ago.
The document is the latest turn in the belabored creation of CAPPS II, a system that Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta described a year ago as the "the foundation" on which all other, more public security measures depend.
Officials envision deploying CAPPS II -- short for the second-generation computer-assisted passenger pre-screening system -- to screen truckers, railroad conductors and other transportation workers.
Although officials had said CAPPS II would be operational by now, it has been delayed by questions about the proper technology and its potential intrusiveness.
Civil libertarians complained earlier this year when Transportation Department lawyers issued a proposal that left open the possibility that the government could collect and keep a wide variety of records for decades.
While critics conceded that the new proposal narrows the use and collection of personal information, they contended that it appears to expand the potential applications of CAPPS II.
David L. Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he worries that CAPPS II will become a "massive enforcement mechanism."
"It opens the door for invasive background checks on all citizens," Sobel said.
James X. Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said the change shows that officials will be always be tempted to expand the program's reach. "The system hasn't even been launched yet, and they're already thinking up other uses for it," he said.
Transportation Security Administration officials declined to comment on the proposal.
Homeland Security officials believe they have struck a balance between the protection of airplanes and the privacy rights of individuals. The system will be tested this summer and could be phased in beginning in the fall.
Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the agency's privacy officer, said the proposal is a significant improvement over previous plans because it limits the amount of information the government collects. The proposal would also give people a way to access records when questions arise about them.
"We have demonstrated we can both zealously defend the country and at the same time respect the liberties of the individual," Kelly said.
----
Agency Tackles Visa-Program Threat
Homeland Security Also Pledges to Reverse Plan to Cut Air Marshals' Funds
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5210-2003Jul30.html
The Department of Homeland Security took steps yesterday to address a new airline hijacking threat, saying that it would reverse an earlier decision to cut funding for the undercover air marshal program and review a program that allows some foreigners to enter U.S. airports without a visa.
Sources in the airline industry said they were told by government officials to expect the White House Homeland Security Advisory Council to end the program that waives U.S. visa requirements for certain foreign travelers. Industry sources said they were preparing for the program to end as early as next week.
President Bush said yesterday that intelligence about an alleged terrorist plot to hijack planes this summer on the East Coast or in Britain, Italy or Australia represents a "real threat" to the nation. The homeland security agency warned U.S. airlines last weekend that terrorists working in teams of five may try to hijack planes using "common items carried by travelers, such as cameras, disguised as weapons," according to the memo distributed to carriers.
"We do know that al Qaeda tends to use the methodologies that worked in the past," Bush said. "We have got some data that indicates that they would like to use flights, international flights, for example."
Bush said U.S. officials are in discussions with foreign governments and foreign airlines to address the latest threat, which details the most specific intelligence about an attack on aviation since the terrorist hijackings in September 2001.
The air security "information circular" that was issued by the Transportation Security Administration on Saturday suggests terrorists might try to exploit a loophole that allowed some 361,000 international travelers to fly to the U.S. without a visa last year because they were only passing through a U.S. airport on the way to an international airport outside the United States.
For example, foreign travelers might catch a flight in New Zealand that stops in Los Angeles and continues on to London. Those travelers do not need a U.S. visa because they are placed in a secure area of the Los Angeles airport, staffed by airline and U.S. customs and immigration agents to ensure that they do not leave the airport illegally.
The Department of Homeland Security said yesterday that it is considering eliminating the "transit without visa" program in light of the new intelligence.
"We are aware people would be willing to exploit the transit without visa program," said spokesman Brian Roehrkasse. The agency is reminding airlines to "provide adequate security processes for all passengers but especially those passengers traveling without visas."
Airline sources said the program's complicated logistics have long been debated among government officials. In the past, airline lobbyists always fought to keep the program in place. But that effort waned last week in the face of the latest terrorist threat.
"Airlines are not in a position to say, 'You absolutely, positively, have to keep this program going' when they don't know what the intelligence is," said one airline source familiar with the discussions.
Most major carriers, concerned about alarming travelers, declined to comment publicly on the changes. The terrorist alert comes at a time when passengers are beginning to return to the skies during the peak summer travel season.
The International Air Travel Association, which represents international airlines, said it supports the government's efforts to improve security but worries about the consequences of ending the transit without visa program.
"Many travelers will avoid those [transit] flights because of the hardship they will endure to get a visa," said Wanda Warner, spokeswoman for the organization. "This will cut deeply into the efficiency of many airlines' operations."
At Los Angeles International Airport, about 600 such "transit" passengers pass through the airport each day, according to airport spokesman Paul Haney. Miami International, San Francisco International and the New York area's JFK International and Newark International also handle a large number of connecting international flights. Washington area airports do not have transit passengers.
In another move to address the latest threat, the Transportation Security Administration reversed plans to cut some of the most security-sensitive flight missions for air marshals based in the Washington field office. An e-mail obtained by The Washington Post from an air marshal official directed all local marshals to cancel flight plans on trips that required an overnight stays at hotels because of "monetary considerations" just a day before the government informed airlines about the hijacking threat.
"We expect to fully fund those expenditures related to air marshal missions such as travel costs and per diems through the end of the fiscal year," said spokesman Robert Johnson. He said the agency will stick to a plan to cancel training for air marshals because the agency has a $900 million budget shortfall.
Senate Democrats outraged about cuts in the air marshal program held a news conference yesterday to denounce what they described as an example of the Bush administration's underfunding of Homeland Security.
"You can't protect the country on the cheap," Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). "There's a disconnect here -- a real dangerous disconnect."
-------- terrorism
Australia demands U.S. retracts airline attack threat
By Belinda Goldsmith,
July 31, 2003
MSNBC
http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters07-30-213924.asp?reg=PACRIM
CANBERRA, July 31 - Australia acknowledged on Thursday that it risked being used as a base for a September 11-style attack but demanded the United States corrects a public warning that it was also a possible target.
The government saw red last week when the U.S. Homeland Security Department named Australia, Britain and Italy as a possible target for suicide airliner assaults by the al Qaeda network. The U.S. was also named as a target.
Australian Attorney-General Daryl Williams said intelligence indicated the country could be used as a base for an attack on the United States or elsewhere, but said the new U.S. warning that it could be a target was ''not an accurate reflection of the intelligence.''
He was speaking on the sidelines of a 2003 Homeland Security Conference. Williams said U.S. authorities had promised Australia a correction to the advisory that warned the airline industry that al Qaeda was planning new suicide hijackings and bombings.
But the retraction comes at a potentially embarrassing time, with Washington already under fire for the accuracy of its intelligence.
Williams played down suggestions the new warning would undermine the public's confidence in intelligence gathered by either the Australian or U.S. governments.
Australia, which sent about 2,000 military personnel to fight in Iraq alongside U.S. and British troops, is holding an inquiry into prewar intelligence later this year.
The head of Australia's main spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), said the including of Australia in the Homeland Security list was a ''bureaucratic mistake'' because of someone misreading intelligence.
''It is important the particular advisory you are putting out accurately reflects the intelligence on which is based,'' ASIO's Director General Dennis Richardson told reporters.
ASIO briefed Australia's aviation industry last week on the new reported threats, but Williams said there was no need for Australia to increase its medium-level security alert as the fact civil aviation was mentioned was nothing new.
Australia has already boosted aviation security, putting armed guards on some domestic planes and seeking to extend this to some international flights and upgrading passenger screening.
----
Sanctions Resistance Detailed
Treasury Official Says Action on Saudi Groups Blocked
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 1, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10729-2003Jul31.html
The Treasury Department has sought economic sanctions for a number of Saudi groups tied to terrorism, an agency official told Congress yesterday, but has been stymied by the State Department and other government agencies.
R. Richard Newcomb, director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, told a Senate panel that an interagency national security committee -- including representatives from State, the Justice Department and other agencies -- has rejected his office's recommendations that certain charities and other entities be subject to sanctions for ties to terrorism. Newcomb was reluctant to name the organizations or say how many times his office had sought such sanctions, but senators demanded he provide a list by today.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and other members of the Governmental Affairs Committee said they want to find out whether economic sanctions or criminal investigations have been scuttled because the State Department sought to shield the Saudis for foreign policy reasons.
"I can't say whether it's because they were Saudi organizations," said Newcomb.
His reluctance to respond to all the committee's questions frustrated some senators, including Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) who insisted on a list of the groups Treasury had sought to impose sanctions against.
"It's not an easy question to get answered," said Specter.
Newcomb said there were many valid reasons the State Department and other agencies might block sanctions. For example, State might find it more effective to ask another country to seize an entity's assets. Or, he said, the CIA and FBI might object to sanctions because such a designation would compromise intelligence-gathering or an ongoing investigation.
The decisions are made by the National Security Council's Policy Coordinating Committee.
The panel's inquiry yesterday into Saudi sources of terrorism funding comes when many in Congress are demanding that the Bush administration declassify about 27 pages concerning the Saudis in a report released last week on intelligence failures preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Newcomb was asked specifically about the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a charity that is officially sponsored by the Saudi government, and an offshoot, the International Islamic Relief Organization.
The two organizations, which have offices in this country and around the world, were described by several witnesses yesterday as top charities financing the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and al Qaeda, and sources familiar with the classified version of last week's report said the World Assembly's activities are discussed in the portion involving Saudi Arabia.
Newcomb would say only that his office has been "looking at" those groups since the attacks.
Treasury officials said after the hearing that the State Department has not been obstructionist but instead had sought the most effective ways to curtail terrorism funding, and that sometimes it is best to hold off on sanctions.
The officials pointed to the treatment of al-Haramain, a worldwide charity based in Saudi Arabia that has been accused of funding terror groups: First, the United States worked with the Saudis and shut down al Haramain chapters in Bosnia and Kenya. Then, in June, Saudi officials said that al-Haramain offices outside the kingdom would close operations because their financial controls were insufficient.
Treasury General Counsel David D. Aufhauser, who chairs the interagency committee, said the United States had evidence that eight offices of al-Haramain "were underwriting the murder of innocents." Aufhauser said he traveled to Saudi Arabia and convinced the Saudis to close them -- a much more significant step that sanctioning them in the United States. He said he looks for "cooperation abroad that has real-world consequences and isn't merely politics."
John S. Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI's Counter-Terrorism Division, told the Senate panel he will meet with Saudi authorities in Jedda next week. He said he planned to press for more action on shutting down terror funding sources and to urge that the Saudis stop hiring defense lawyers for their citizens accused in terror-related cases, a practice Pistole characterized as "tantamount to buying off a witness."
He said al Qaeda's May 12 bombings in Riyadh jolted Saudi authorities who had previously provided little help to U.S. officials investigating the bombing of the USS Cole and the U.S. embassies in Africa. Until the bombings, "there was very limited cooperation from the Saudi government," he said. But with the attacks in Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda "seemed to be thumbing its nose at the royal family," and the Saudi rulers "see themselves in a struggle for survival at this point," he said.
As a result, they have for the first time allowed the FBI to interview Saudi citizens and examine evidence firsthand.
Terrorism expert Steven Emerson told the panel that in addition to facilitating the spread of money to terrorist groups, the Saudi government, though its embassy in Washington, has distributed textbooks fostering hatred of Christians and Jews to pupils in Saudi academies. Emerson said he has obtained books distributed to seventh-graders that teach "the curse of Allah be upon the Jews and the Christians;" that promote jihad, or holy war, to ninth-graders and that warn eleventh-graders, "Take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya" -- friends, protectors, helpers and the like.
The Saudi Embassy declined to provide witnesses for yesterday's hearing and did not return phone calls seeking comment.
----
Fears Persist of Terrorism Links at Scuba School
Few answers appear in the probe of students in Netherlands suspected of ties to Al Qaeda.
By Sebastian Rotella
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 31, 2003
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-scuba31jul31000428,0,6784229.story
AMSTERDAM - The guys around the scuba school laughingly called them the "Al Qaeda Diving Team."
But for law enforcement officials, it was no joke.
Late last year, Dutch counter-terrorism agents investigating a possible Al Qaeda recruitment cell grew interested in the school because a man suspected of recruiting terrorists had become a certified diver and studied to be an instructor there. Iraqi-born Kasim Ali was one of between 50 and 150 Muslim men who had taken classes in recent years with the same Tunisian instructor at the school in the city of Eindhoven, about 70 miles southeast of Amsterdam.
The student roster in Eindhoven heightened fears among investigators. In the past, captured Al Qaeda operatives have talked about plans to use scuba divers in attacks. As a result, the FBI did a canvass of dive shops and schools in the United States last year. Investigators worry that Al Qaeda-trained divers could plant explosives on the hulls of ships, act as seagoing suicide bombers or sneak aboard vessels and commandeer them for attacks.
"We've always been concerned about a maritime threat, and this adds credence to it," said a U.S. official familiar with the Eindhoven case. "We are in the process of tracking everything down."
Dutch and U.S. investigators learned that several of the students in the Eindhoven classes were suspected Islamic extremists.
An Algerian who was certified at the school and later deported by the Dutch was arrested in France in November along with an accused terrorist who had escaped from a Dutch jail, according to a U.S. official. Authorities in a non-European country are holding a third man, believed to be a Libyan who studied diving in Eindhoven, because of his ties to extremist violence, the official said.
There were also leads linking diving students with Al Qaeda network operatives who were convicted in Morocco of plotting maritime attacks on U.S. ships in the Strait of Gibraltar, the U.S. official said.
Months later, suspicions persist but there are few answers. Dutch prosecutors have not found evidence enabling them to allege that the diving classes were conducted with the intent to commit acts of terrorism, according to Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for the federal prosecution service.
Moreover, prosecutors were unable to convict Ali, the Iraqi-born diver, and 11 associates of charges that they formed a cell that recruited young Dutch Muslims for Al Qaeda's terrorist activities. Last month, all 12 were acquitted of charges of belonging to a criminal organization, assisting the enemy at a time of war and trafficking in drugs to finance their activities. Two defendants were convicted of possessing fraudulent documents. The prosecution has appealed the acquittals under Dutch law that permits a higher court to order a new trial.
The verdict and the mysterious diving classes exemplify the tension between gathering intelligence and building successful court cases. The verdict also illustrates the obstacles to fighting terrorism in the Netherlands, according to counter-terrorism officials.
Two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Netherlands still lacks strong anti-terrorism laws. Al Qaeda's fluid and elusive networks are active in the Netherlands and neighboring Belgium, exploiting traditions of political tolerance and old-fashioned court systems, according to European and U.S. counter-terrorism officials.
The prosecutors in the case involving the Iraqi-born diver, for example, tried to overcome limited legal tools by charging the defendants with aiding the enemy in wartime. A court, however, firmly rejected the argument that Dutch involvement in Afghan peacekeeping operations put the Netherlands in a state of war with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
It was the second defeat of a major prosecution of accused Islamic terrorists here: In December, a court cleared four men charged in an alleged Al Qaeda plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris. In both cases, judges were reluctant to accept copious evidence gathered by the Dutch intelligence service, known as the AIVD, which balked at revealing its sources.
In response, the Justice Ministry has proposed legislation making it a crime to conspire to commit a terrorist offense and to recruit for the Islamic armed struggle. The government is also considering reforms making it easier for intelligence agents to present evidence in court.
Investigators remain keenly interested in the diving students, according to the U.S. official. But were the classes a concerted effort to train aspiring terrorists as divers, or was it all an innocent coincidence that investigators blew out of proportion?
Intriguingly, two of the world's busiest ports are in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Antwerp, Belgium, each a short drive from Eindhoven.
"Underwater demolition is not easy," the U.S. official said. "But it could be a lot of things. It's not just blowing up a boat, or blowing up yourself. There are different scenarios."
To safeguard against any potential threat, Dutch law enforcement has shared information about the divers with investigators from other countries.
"We took it seriously," said De Bruin, the spokesman for the federal prosecution service. "Since Sept. 11, 2001, we are cooperating with agencies all over the world to prevent attacks by Al Qaeda. You may presume that in this matter we are also cooperating with agencies around the world."
Because of Al Qaeda's flair for imaginative and unorthodox violence, scenarios such as an assault by scuba divers on a U.S. or European port no longer seem farfetched to authorities. Or to people like Bill Megens, the owner of the Safe Dive School in Eindhoven where the suspects studied.
"There is a very interesting parallel you could draw to the flight lessons taken by the 9/11 group," said Megens, who has cooperated energetically with law enforcement. "I'm very afraid I've made a mistake in judging people. But as a diving school, we can't turn people away because they are Islamic."
The investigation has centered on classes taught by the Tunisian instructor, Wahid Gomri, who got his certification at the Safe Dive School. Dutch investigators have interviewed the school's staff at length about Gomri and his students, making several return visits this year, according to Megens. But Gomri has not been charged.
Citing Dutch law, De Bruin said he could not discuss Gomri's status in the investigation, and Gomri did not respond to a request for an interview. He recently gave a brief interview to Dutch television in which he insisted that he has no ties to terrorism.
Gomri was born in 1968, according to officials. Megens said the Tunisian first came to study at the Safe Dive School about 10 years ago after he arrived in the Netherlands and applied for political asylum, a common route to legal status here.
About seven years ago, Gomri decided to become an instructor and won certification at the Eindhoven school, which is affiliated with the U.S.-based Professional Assn. of Diving Instructors, Megens said. Because of the chilly climate and the expense involved, his persistence in taking outdoor classes was impressive, according to Megens.
"He got his certification in nine months," Megens said. "That's incredibly fast for Dutch standards."
During that period, Dutch intelligence agents came to the school to ask questions about Gomri but he ultimately became a legal immigrant, Megens said. Soon the Tunisian began renting equipment at the school to teach his own summer classes for Arabic speakers at lakes around the Netherlands, Megens said.
Gomri was friendly and likable, Megens said.
Unanswered Questions
"I know him very well," Megens said. "I trust him 98% that he is an honest citizen of Europe. But I have a few big questions for which I don't have answers."
One question is money. Although he was a recently arrived refugee, Gomri paid about $8,000 for his accelerated certification course, Megens said. He later rented expensive scuba diving suits, tanks and other gear on a regular basis, Megens said. The Tunisian instructor always paid on time, though he haggled for lower prices, Megens said.
About a year and a half ago, Gomri purchased a bulk order of about $7,000 worth of suits and equipment with funds that came to the school via a bank transfer from India, Megens said. That long-distance transaction attracted the attention of investigators, he said.
The pupils who came with Gomri to the school to pick up gear spoke little Dutch or English. They often said they were visiting from countries such as Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, according to Megens. Others were from North Africa or were locals from Eindhoven, according to Megens and officials. Many students arrived during the summer, studied with Gomri and then returned to North Africa or the Middle East, according to officials.
Despite the Netherlands' tranquil image, Eindhoven has been a hotbed of Islamic extremism.
Mounir Motassadeq, a Moroccan recently convicted in Germany of helping a terrorist cell in Hamburg plan the Sept. 11 attacks, attended an Islamic seminar in 1999 at Eindhoven's Al Fourkhan mosque along with other associates of the Hamburg plotters. The mosque shares a complex with a Saudi-connected Muslim cultural organization known as Al Waqf al Islami that promotes fundamentalism, according to authorities.
Some of the diving students and the men who went on trial on charges of terrorist recruitment attended the mosque, officials said.
Rising Suspicion
Gomri's classes began in the late 1990s and were busiest during 2001, Megens said. After the Sept. 11 attacks cast suspicion on Muslim men worldwide, the staff at the dive school grew more curious. They noted that the Sept. 11 hijackers and other terrorists had gathered information on activities that suddenly seemed ominous: things like crop dusting and obtaining licenses to haul toxic waste.
Somewhat uneasily, Megens bantered with Gomri and his students about terrorism.
"After 9/11, we called them the Al Qaeda Diving Team," Megens recalled. "We had fun about it with them. We all laughed. But we also wondered."
About two years ago, Gomri told Megens that he had traveled to Saudi Arabia and hoped to start a dive school there with a Saudi friend, Megens said. The Tunisian finally left Eindhoven about a year and a half ago, saying he had plans to teach diving in Britain, according to Megens.
In January, Dutch agents came to Megens and asked for help investigating the diving classes. The police showed him photos of Arab-looking men in scuba diving suits.
The initial list of Gomri's pupils compiled by instructors for police contained 150 names, De Bruin said. But Megens estimates that the number of students was closer to 50 or 60. The actual number appears to be somewhere between the two extremes, the U.S. official said.
Gomri has remained in telephone and e-mail contact from Britain with people at the diving school, Megens said. He returns periodically to the Netherlands, according to the U.S. official.
Gomri is exasperated by the suspicions, according to Megens. Gomri argues that, if he were a terrorist, he would not have chosen a U.S.-affiliated school where about half the instructors work in Dutch law enforcement, Megens said.
Megens' fascination with the mystery led him to organize an experiment. With the approval of port police in Rotterdam, he and fellow instructors simulated a clandestine underwater approach to a moored cargo ship.
The dark waters and deafening engine noise made it difficult for experienced divers to maneuver. A comparative amateur strapped with heavy explosives - and probably battling stress and fear - would have even more trouble, Megens said.
But recent history shows that malicious intentions can overcome technical limitations, he said.
"If you are driven by fanaticism, maybe that makes you stronger than you think," Megens said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Ireland gives 300 MW wind farm green light
REUTERS IRELAND:
July 31, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/21690/story.htm
DUBLIN - The Irish government has given state-owned peat supplier Bord na Mona and its partner Hibernian Wind Power (HWP) the green light to build a 300 megawatt wind farm in the western Irish county of Mayo.
The planned 300 million euro ($342 million) plant - expected to be completed by 2010 - would comprise 192 wind turbines with a total capacity of up to 300 MW and would be one of the largest land-based wind farms in Europe.
"Bord na Mona has got the initial permission and hopefully we can start construction by autumn next year," Brian Ryan of HWP, a unit of Ireland's Electricity Supply Board, told Reuters today.
The permission, granted by Mayo County Council for a period of 10 years, carries a number of conditions relating to factors such as environmental impact and proximity to existing homes and these would have to be carefully assessed, he said.
It was premature to comment on a supplier for the wind turbines, he said, adding: "We have an open mind."
HWP already runs several wind farms in Ireland using units supplied by Denmark's Vestas VEST.CO and Germany's Enercon.
The Mayo wind farm, if it goes ahead, could provide enough energy to supply some 200,000 homes - around seven percent of Ireland's electricity requirement.
The Irish government aims to have 1,250 megawatts of green energy on line by 2010. To date, wind power has made the most progress, with nearly 200 MW of capacity in place, the Irish Wind Energy Association said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Librarians across the country chafe under USA Patriot Act restrictions;
groups file lawsuit
JUDITH KOHLER,
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 31, 2003
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/07/31/national1303EDT0586.DTL
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- To Priscilla Hudson, public libraries are society's great equalizer, a place where anyone can go to learn regardless of their economic, social or political background.
So she doesn't much like Big Brother peering over their shoulder.
Hudson, manager of Boulder's main library, is among a number of librarians nationwide who oppose a provision in the USA Patriot Act that gives authorities access to records of what people check out from libraries or buy from bookstores.
The law is why Boulder librarians have lately been purging their files on patrons every week, not every couple of months. And experts say other libraries are doing similar things.
"Boulder is truly right in line with what other libraries are doing," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the American Library Association in Chicago.
The Justice Department says the Patriot Act, put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is crucial in the war on terrorism. Critics say it gives the government too much power.
Attorney General John Ashcroft defended the USA Patriot Act at a news conference Thursday, saying subpoenas of business or library records are subject to greater scrutiny by judges under the anti-terrorism law than those issued under regular criminal investigations.
Ashcroft also said the Justice Department is required by law to report details of its use of these powers, which are classified, twice a year to Congress.
"So you have both the legislative branch of the government and the judicial branch of the government making sure that there aren't abuses," Ashcroft said.
Also on Thursday, Sen. Russ Feingold introduced legislation that would limit the FBI's ability to gather library, bookstore and other records under the act.
The Wisconsin Democrat, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act, said it makes sense to give authorities some access, but "we can protect both our nation and our privacy and civil liberties."
The previous day, the American Civil Liberties Union and several Islamic groups filed a lawsuit in Detroit against using the act to let FBI agents monitor the books people read.
The ACLU also said that under a provision of the law, librarians can't tell the patron that the library has given the records to the government, and would be legally bound to secrecy forever.
Even before the lawsuit, librarians across the country had been waging their own form of protest.
The Santa Cruz, Calif., library is shredding its sign-in sheets for using the computers more often, Caldwell-Stone said. Other libraries have posted signs warning patrons that federal authorities may review their records.
The Montana Library Association passed a resolution saying it considers parts of the Patriot Act "a present danger to the constitutional rights and privacy rights to library users." Privacy rules there are so strict that Montana librarians must get children's permission before telling their parents what they're reading.
"More so than in other Western states, we have a real privacy feel to our Constitution and also our Montana code," said John Finn of Great Falls, head of the library association.
Government officials emphasized that the act allows the government to obtain "business records," which they said could include library records, though the act makes no mention of libraries.
Caldwell-Stone said libraries cooperate when presented with a search warrant for records. But she said the Patriot Act allows authorities to seize "any relevant tangible item" in an investigation without having to show probable cause that a crime was committed.
Forty-eight states have laws protecting library patrons' privacy, Caldwell-Stone said. The other two, Hawaii and Kentucky, have opinions by their attorneys general upholding the right.
"What the First Amendment protects and what goes on in your head isn't a basis for punishing you," she said.
John Suthers, U.S. attorney in Colorado, said he appreciates the concerns, but said the Patriot Act deals with business records and doesn't specify libraries and bookstores.
The law says the FBI cannot investigate a U.S. citizen on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment, he said. Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock also said that part of the law requires court approval to obtain records.
Libraries and book stores across the country, however, support changing the law to make sure they aren't targeted. A book store in Montpelier, Vt., will purge purchase records for customers who ask.
The Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, one of the country's largest independent book stores, won a fight last year to protect a customer's privacy. The Colorado Supreme Court refused to order the store to turn over purchase records in a drug investigation.
The justices said records of what a person reads are constitutionally protected, and police must show a compelling interest in seeing them.
Tattered Cover general manager Matt Miller said because of business considerations, the store isn't purging its records like the Vermont store.
"We certainly respect stores and libraries that choose to handle records in the way they do," Miller said. "We spent two years trying to protect customers' privacy and First Amendment rights. It remains an integral part of our philosophy."
On the Net:
American Library Association: http://www.ala.org
Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov
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