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NUCLEAR
Iran Denies It's Building Nuclear Bomb
Iran: Nuke Program Homemade and Peaceful
Survivors Say Koizuimi is Not Listening
N. Korea Questions U.S. Sincerity on Nukes
N.Korea Criticizes U.S. - S.Korea Military Drills
Russia: North Korea Sets No Conditions on Talks
Vandenberg AFB Minuteman III launch on Hiroshima day
No boost for missile defense
'Dr Strangeloves' meet to plan new nuclear era
Radioactive groundwater
Vote Scheduled on Contract by Strikers at A-Plant
Lawmakers Step Lightly Along a Nuclear Tightrope
Senators question costs of rebuilding Iraq
Gore Criticizes Bush's Leadership on Iraq
MILITARY
African Peace Force Gets Warm Welcome in Liberia Streets
Iraq's weapons bothered scientist
Iraq war's 20,000 wounded civilians ignored - group
At Least 8 Die in Car Bombing at Jordan's Embassy in Baghdad
Iraq's oil booty will only pay part of rebuilding costs
To Mollify Iraqis, U.S. Plans to Ease Scope of Its Raids
Goodwill towards British melts in Basra as power cuts keep heat on
U.S. Considers Reducing Its Role in Iraq
US Says Troops Unlikely to Guard Baghdad Embassies
Israel Frees 330 Prisoners; Palestinians Dismiss Gesture
Israel pleases few with prisoner release
Joy, Anger Greet Prisoner Release
Kurdish rebel leader warns Turkey of war if talks fail
'We Have Nothing to Hide'
Turkey Attempts to Limit Role of Military
Female Suicide Bombers Unnerve Russians
Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
U.S. Clamps Secrecy on Warnings Before 9/11
Largest-ever mass grave may be discovered in eastern Bosnia
We need rules for war
Masters of deceit
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ashcroft Orders Tally Of Lighter Sentences
F.B.I. Warns of Ways to Hide Weapons
Ashcroft Orders Tally Of Lighter Sentences
Muslim, Arab Residents Meet With FBI
Moussaoui Requests More al Qaeda Interviews
U.S. Is Inspecting Overseas Airports for Missile Threats
Group Linked to Al Qaeda Seen Behind Jakarta Blast
OTHER
Monkeys immune to Ebola virus after fast-acting injection
Green tea a cup full of health
ACTIVISTS
Release Ordered For Iran Protesters
Activists commemorating atomic bomb drop ticketed for chalk use
City remembers nuclear horror
Local peace activists remember Hiroshima
What have we learned since Hiroshima?
'I have denounced violence ...
Father of dead soldier claims Army coverup
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- iran
Iran Denies It's Building Nuclear Bomb
August 7, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=2&u=/ap/20030807/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran on Thursday rejected reports that it was close to building an atomic bomb, insisting its nuclear program was locally developed merely to produce electricity.
``Allegations that Iran was working with other countries in order to attain nuclear technology are sheer lies,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Asefi was reacting to a report in Monday's Los Angeles Times that Iran ``appears to be in the late stages of developing the capacity to build a nuclear bomb.''
The newspaper -- citing previously secret reports, international officials, independent experts and Iranian exiles -- said Iran has made use of technology and scientists from Russia, North Korea, China and Pakistan to bring it closer to building a bomb than Iraq ever was.
``Iran's nuclear technology has been developed by Iranian scientists and is just for civilian and peaceful use,'' Asefi was quoted as saying. He called the Times' report ``irresponsible.''
The United States has accused Iran of running a clandestine nuclear weapons program and wants the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare Tehran in violation of the nonproliferation treaty.
On Wednesday, Iran said it would not surrender its nuclear power-generating program, as U.N. experts held talks with Iranian officials aimed getting Tehran to allow unrestricted inspection of its nuclear facilities.
``The Islamic Republic of Iran will not give up nuclear technology as a basis for legitimate power, `` state television quoted President Mohammad Khatami as saying.
Khatami said Iran had no desire for nuclear weapons the United States accuses it of seeking, ``because we cannot use such weapons based on our Islamic and moral teachings.''
A three-member legal team from the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, met Iranian government officials this week to discuss an additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that would allow inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities without notice.
Khatami hinted Iran may sign the protocol ``if the world recognizes'' his country's right to the peaceful use of nuclear technology.
Iran has always said it would agree to unfettered inspections if it is granted access to advanced nuclear technology as provided for under the nonproliferation treaty. Tehran says Washington is keeping Iran from getting that technology.
--------
Iran: Nuke Program Homemade and Peaceful
August 7, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran denied on Thursday that nuclear scientists from Pakistan, North Korea and other countries had helped its atomic program and reiterated that its nuclear aims were confined to civilian purposes.
The LA Times newspaper reported earlier this week that Iran was on the verge of being able to produce atomic weapons thanks largely to clandestine assistance from Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea.
``This paper's claim about Iran's cooperation with other countries for obtaining nuclear technology is a sheer lie,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
``This report is irresponsible and is an obvious misuse of professional journalism,'' the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday flatly denied that Pakistan had provided any help to Iran's nuclear program. Iran is known to have imported some uranium from China in the early 1990s and Russia is helping Iran complete its first nuclear energy reactor in the southern port of Bushehr.
Iran insists that it has no intention of building nuclear weapons and says it merely wants to use nuclear technology to generate electricity.
``Iran's nuclear technology has been developed based on Iranian scientists' efforts and it is purely for civilian and peaceful purposes,'' Asefi said.
``Iran has openly announced that nuclear weapons have no place in its military and security doctrine and we basically believe that obtaining weapons of mass destruction is immoral, inhuman and against religious beliefs,'' he added.
Tehran is under pressure to allow snap inspections of its nuclear facilities to allay concerns that they could be diverted to military uses.
A team from the International Atomic Energy Agencyheld talks in Tehran this week to encourage Iran to agree to the tougher inspections.
Officials from Iran's pro-reform government have said they have a positive view about agreeing to the tighter checks but hard-liners in Iran are staunchly opposed. They argue no-notice inspections would be tantamount to allowing Western nations to spy on the Islamic Republic.
-------- japan
Survivors Say Koizuimi is Not Listening
Hiroshima Excerpts
By ADAM LEBOWITZ
August 7, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/lebowitz08072003.html
Mayor of Hiroshima Akiba Tadatoshi's words at the 6 August ceremony were, as the Japan Times reported, a cutting philippic against current US foreign policy:
"The world without nuclear weapons and beyond war that our hibakusha (survivors of the atomic attack) have sought for so long appears to be slipping deeper beyond a thick cover of dark clouds that they fear at any minute could become mushroom clouds spilling black rain(NPT) is on the verge of collapse. The chief cause is U.S. nuclear policy that, by openly declaring the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear strike and calling for resumed research into mini-nukes and other so-called usable nuclear weapons, appears to worship nuclear weapons as God."
Undercurrents run deep here, however: The rebuke was for Prime Minister Koizuimi Junichir, wearing a pained visage in front-row attendance at the Hiroshima ceremony. Although in part suffering from the mid-summer heat, his tv persona suspiciously resembled the disgruntled smirk George Bush wore at Clinton's inauguration. And well it might have been as he was forced to listen further:
(Akiba:)"The problem is not only nuclear weapons. The world moves as if there were no UN and Japanese Constitutions, its rudder lost and moving from post- to pre-war periods 'War is peace' say the Americans and British as they moved to attack Iraq A war that kills women, children, the elderly, those without crime, that destroys nature with its radioactivity and does not disperse for millions of years"
This year's ceremony commemorated the 58th year since the city was destroyed in the world's first nuclear attack; a middle-aged couple from Iraq, both doctors, lay flowers at the foot of the monument. The gesture resonated well with the citizens of the city well-aware of "rekka-uran" (depleted uranium). It has not been a good year for neither constitutions mentioned above: 15 May--anniversary of the 1932 assassination of PM Inukai by military cadets--saw the approval in committee of the Yuji Hoan law effectively giving the US control of the Japanese military; 4 July--heretofore Japan's official Dependence Day--came passage of the bill dispatching troops to Iraq.
Akiba: "The government of the country with the unique distinction of suffering nuclear attack has a special domestic and foreign obligation. To declare assistance for all sufferers of radiation throughout the world, to work sincerely towards a nuclear-free Asia, to offer a new fundamental declaration of 'Neither to produce, nor to maintain, nor to allow the use of' nuclear weapons."
Of those critical of his administration's rush to support America's "war for peace", Koizumi responded after the ceremony to a reporter's question, "It's all a matter a matter of perspective. It's very important to cooperate with the US to guarantee peace in Japan." He is of course speaking of the specter of North Korea; the missile-shield cooperation plan is on the table. Will it be followed by Japan's own deployment of nuclear weapons? Chief of Staff Fukuda Takeo intimated last spring this possibility (also a pet ploy of Tokyo's own Le Pen, Mayor Ishihara Shintaro), and despite or perhaps encouraged by the mild admonitions from within his party he affirmed this stance once more albeit obliquely, actually saying that nuclear weapons would not be necessary if all countries decided not to maintain them. The Asahi Shinbun newspaper noted this a sarcastic response to Akiba's peace declaration above.
It is necessary to remember that PM Koizumi fresh out of university was secretary to Fukuda's father former party chief Takeo, and that the above Yuji-Hoan law cementing the US-Japan allied relationship was proposed--and rejected--over 20 years ago by Koizumi's father and Fukuda Takeo. This kind of "all in the family" cronyism also serves as partial explanation why Japan's "Self Defense" Forces are soon on their way to Iraq. In essence, it was a personal promise to GW Bush resulting from the chemistry that has developed between the two; personal wealth erases many cultural barriers, evidently.
All in all, Koizumi's insistence upon "No More Hiroshima's" in his ceremonial speech has something of a hollow ring these days, working as he does from a different semantic angle. Eminently flexible, the written Japanese can represent words both in syllables without reference to symbolic meanings; in his speech, Hiroshima comes to mean the idea of nuclear attack erasing the particulars of time and place (Lisa Yoneyama's "Hiroshima Traces" from U of California Press gives the whole story). This stance is of course morally defensible, but it in fact is based upon Jim Crow reasoning when used by the current administration: Any smaller country outside the US-sphere of influence is not allowed weapons, and if they are on the road to acquisition are open to attack.
Last night on News 23, progressive journalist Chikushi Tetsuya talked of heat, the heat of Hiroshima city in August, the heat of flame around the stone tomb interring the names of those who died in the initial blast and the hibakusha who pass away in the past year--average age, 79 years old--include this year six American POW's held in Hiroshima, the arson attack by a disgruntled, unemployed university student who set flame to thousands of folded-paper cranes symbolizing peace contained in one of the monuments, and of course the heat of the bomb blast itself. It is important to remember this heat, he assured us, because too many decisions concerning the nuclear threat are made in the safe, secure confines of air-conditioned caverns.
Until last year, it was the custom of the Prime Minister to attend a special meeting of hibakusha survivors, giving them the opportunity to voice their concerns to high politicos. It is a kind of heat that the current prime minister evidently cannot stand because he has excused himself for two-year's running. "He is not listening to us," appealed hibakusha representative Kaneko Kazushi to the Health and Welfare Minister standing in the PM's stead.
Adam Lebowitz teaches at Nihon University and has lived in Japan for 12 years. He can be reached at: noriko-adam@tokai.or.jp
-------- korea
N. Korea Questions U.S. Sincerity on Nukes
August 7, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Koreas-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea on Thursday questioned the United States' sincerity in resolving a standoff over its nuclear programs as China sent a top diplomat to Pyongyang to prepare for talks on the issue.
Pyongyang said a planned U.S.-South Korean military drill on Aug. 18-29 ``leaves us skeptical about the U.S. willingness to discard its hostile policy.''
The annual Ulchi Focus Lens military exercise consists mostly of computer-simulated war games. North Korea routinely condemns such drills as rehearsals for an invasion.
Last week the communist country agreed to a meeting with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea to discuss the nuclear dispute, despite earlier insisting on bilateral talks with the United States.
No date or venue has been announced, but North Korea said Monday that the talks will begin soon in Beijing.
On Thursday, China sent Wang Yi, one of its vice foreign ministers, to North Korea to discuss arrangements for the six-nation talks, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
No other details were given.
North Korea's closest ally, China has said it is willing to host the talks as soon as possible. It hosted a meeting between Washington and Pyongyang officials in April.
Also Thursday, South Korean police detained 12 anti-U.S. protesters who barged into a U.S. military shooting range near the border with communist North Korea.
Chanting ``We oppose war on the Korean Peninsula!'' they burned U.S. flags, then clamored into the facility and climbed onto a tank, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.
The nuclear standoff with North Korea began in October, when U.S. officials said Pyongyang acknowledged having a uranium-based nuclear weapons program. The program violates a 1994 agreement with Washington.
U.S. officials believe North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs and can make several more in a matter of months. Washington wants Pyongyang to end the programs.
There are about 37,000 American troops stationed in South Korea, a key U.S. ally.
--------
N.Korea Criticizes U.S. - S.Korea Military Drills
August 7, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north-usa.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Thursday annual joint war exercises between the United States and South Korea raised doubts as to whether Washington would soften its hostility toward the communist state ahead of key diplomatic talks.
North Korea's Foreign Ministry spokesman made the comment just days after Washington and Pyongyang said they had agreed to hold crucial six-country talks to resolve a standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.
The United States, which will hold computer simulation drills with South Korea from August 18 to 29, has 37,000 troops in the South. The U.S. forces bolster the South's military, which is about two-thirds the size of North Korea's 1.1 million-strong force.
``The adventurous war game is aimed at steadily intensifying tensions on the Korean peninsula and, eventually, making a pre-emptive attack on the DPRK and attaining sinister strategic goal of the U.S. in Northeast Asia,'' said a statement by the North Korean Foreign Ministry.
``This leaves us skeptical about the U.S. willingness to discard its hostile policy toward the DPRK and make a policy switchover,'' said the statement, published by the North's state-run KCNA news agency.
DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
North Korea blames U.S. hostility for its decision to scrap a series of international non-proliferation pledges in a quest to build nuclear weapons.
Pyongyang is particularly exercised by President Bush, who labeled North Korea part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and Iran.
The Ulchi Focus Lens drills, conducted annually for the past three decades, involve computer-simulated war games to test U.S. and South Korean commanders' readiness for emergencies on the peninsula.
North and South Korea remain technically at war, because the 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty.
North Korea routinely demands the withdrawal of the U.S. troops from the peninsula. On Thursday, North Korea said a U.S. pull-out would ``lead to the peace of Korea, the security of the Korean nation and its independent reunification.''
The prospect of fresh negotiations -- expected either this month or in September -- comes after months of tension following Washington's announcement last October that Pyongyang had disclosed it was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program.
--------
Russia: North Korea Sets No Conditions on Talks
August 7, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-russia.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - North Korea has put forward no conditions for taking part in six-country talks on its nuclear arms program, a senior Russian diplomat said in remarks released by the Foreign Ministry Thursday.
The talks, intended to end a nuclear standoff between Washington and Pyongyang, are to take place soon in Beijing and bring together the two Koreas, Russia, the United States, China and Japan.
``The North Korean side has put forward no conditions and to my understanding Pyongyang is interested exactly in six-way talks,'' Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov said in comments to Japan's NHK television, posted on the ministry's Web site.
The prospect of fresh negotiations comes after months of tension following Washington's announcement last October that Pyongyang had disclosed it was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program.
Pyongyang had previously insisted on bilateral talks with the United States. Washington had rejected that option, demanding North Korea dismantle its nuclear weapons programs first and insisting that concerned neighbor states take part.
``As far as bilateral issues are concerned, which some countries may discuss, the multi-side format is suitable for it,'' Fedotov said. ``But I repeat, there have been no conditions made by DPRK (North Korea).''
Pyongyang has said it wanted a one-on-one meeting with U.S. diplomats during the talks.
Moscow, sidelined during the first round of negotiations in April when officials from North Korea, China and the United States met in Beijing, was the first to hear from Pyongyang about its agreement to hold six-way talks.
Fedotov refused to rate chances of success of the forthcoming meeting, expected to take place this or next month, saying the toughest part had not begun yet.
``The most difficult stage will come when these talks begin. And it is hard to expect any quick success. All parties will apparently need to be extremely patient, display constructive approaches and readiness to listen to the other side,'' he said.
Sketching out Russia's views, Fedotov said the main task of the talks should be to guarantee that North Korea's nuclear program is totally peaceful at the same time as making sure that it receives economic aid it is likely to be promised.
He said Pyongyang should be given security guarantees it is seeking and suggested the Korean peninsula might need a ``roadmap'' -- like the one worked out for the Middle East -- to make sure all parties involved stick to their obligations.
The nuclear crisis escalated early this year when North Korea expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted a mothballed reactor at Yongbyon north of Pyongyang.
-------- missile defense
Vandenberg AFB Minuteman III launch on Hiroshima day
Missile test termed success
By Janene Scully
Lompoc Record
Times Staff Writer
Aug. 7, 2003
http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2003/08/07/news/news08.txt
VANDENBERG AFB - In the first of two launches from here within seven days, a Minuteman 3 missile rose into the early morning sky Wednesday on a routine data-gathering mission.
The missile blasted off at 2:06 a.m., climbing into Central Coast skies from an underground silo on north Vandenberg Air Force Base.
A base spokeswoman called the test a success. Military officials tracked the weapon's three dummy warheads as they traveled toward targets 4,200 miles southwest of the base on the Kwajalein Missile Range in the central Pacific Ocean.
The launch involved a combined task force from the 341st Space Wing, Malmstrom AFB, Mont., the 576th Flight Test Squadron and the 30th Space Wing.
Capt. Ed Mendones, 576th Flight Test Squadron, served as launch director while Lt. Col. Anthony Blaylock, the 576th's commander, was mission director for this launch.
Vandenberg routinely conducts missile tests to gather data on the weapon's accuracy and reliability.
The base's next launch occurs Tuesday evening, when a Pegasus rocket will ferry a Canadian scientific satellite to space.
The air-launched rocket will take off from the airfield at Vandenberg about 6 p.m., and drop the rocket over the Pacific Ocean, where the booster's first stage will fire at approximately 7:10 p.m.
Staff writer Janene Scully can be reached at 739-2214 or by e-mail at janscully@pulitzer.net
Aug. 7, 2003
--------
No boost for missile defense
Even the Pentagon admits the program is in trouble
By Fred Kaplan
Aug. 7 - SLATE.COM
http://www.msnbc.com/news/949005.asp?0dm=C18PO
If the generals in charge of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency followed the wispiest trail of logic, they would have slashed the program and moved on to more promising pursuits long ago. This month brings yet another bit of news ( for earlier bits, click http://slate.msn.com/id/2079062/ and http://slate.msn.com/id/2083470/ ) indicating not only that the program has scant chance of producing a workable missile-defense system, but that its managers know of its dim prospects.
THE LATEST FLASH, from the Aug. 1 edition of the trade journal Defense News, is that the agency has suspended one of the program's most crucial components on the grounds that the technology it involves is "not mature enough" to fund.
The component is called the space-based kinetic-energy boost-phase interceptor, a name that sounds too esoteric to deserve notice (and, indeed, no mainstream paper seems to have picked up on the report of its suspension), but in fact the news is a bombshell.
The missile-defense program - for which President Bush is spending $9.1 billion next year alone, with steady increases planned in future years to infinity - envisions, ultimately, a three-layered system. The boost-phase interceptors will shoot down enemy missiles in the first three or four minutes after they've been launched, as they ascend through the atmosphere into the edge of outer space. The "midcourse-defense interceptors" will fire at the missiles during the 20 minutes that they arc across the heavens. The "terminal-defense interceptors" will shoot down the missiles that survive the earlier layers in their final minutes of flight, as they plunge back down to earth toward their targets.
CRITICAL COMPONENT
Of the three layers, boost-phase intercept (BPI) is the most important - and, theoretically, the easiest. An enemy missile is most vulnerable at this stage. It hasn't yet separated from the rocket booster, so it's very large. The booster's engines are still blazing, so it's a highly "visible" target to a wide variety of sensors (optical, radar, or heat-seeking). And it's moving relatively slowly.
The key limitation to BPI, even on a theoretical level, is that the anti-missile interceptor has to be fairly near - preferably, right above - the enemy's launch site. But if it can be well-positioned, this is the layer where the pickings are ripest.
In fact, many discussions of multilayered defenses assume that the later layers will be devoted mainly to mopping up the few missiles that the boost-phase interceptors missed. To put it another way, without BPI, the other layers will almost surely be oversaturated even by a relatively "small" attack.
Late last year, officials from the Missile Defense Agency told industry reps that they planned to start pursuing a space-based interceptor in 2004. It is this plan that the agency has now decided to suspend indefinitely.
The whole missile-defense program is a very high priority for President Bush and for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (who has been a major proponent of space-based defenses for a decade). Bush decided last December to start deploying anti-missile missiles next year - 10 ground-based interceptors in Fort Greeley, Alaska (for midcourse defense), with another 10 fielded in 2005, and more soon after. As a prelude to that decision, he announced that the United States would no longer observe the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, precisely to let him deploy those interceptors and conduct tests of other interceptors at sea and in outer space. (The ABM Treaty prohibited all these activities.)
NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME?
But the question now becomes: If boost-phase intercept is grinding to a halt, what is the point of moving ahead so quickly, and expensively, on the rest of the program?
It may be no coincidence that the Pentagon suspended work on BPI shortly after the release of a massive, technically detailed study by the American Physical Society - one of the world's pre-eminent physicist organizations - which concludes that boost-phase intercept is a lot more complicated than anyone has previously grasped.
There are three ways to do boost-phase intercept. The most direct is to base the anti-missile interceptor on a satellite orbiting in space. When sensors (some of them also based in space) detect the launching of a missile, the interceptor is fired; it darts toward the missile, homes in on the booster's engine, and smashes into it, destroying it with pure kinetic force.
However, the APS study kicks some serious sand in this scheme. First, an adequate BPI defense will require several hundred satellites and interceptors because the satellites (and this is the Pentagon's assumption as well) must be low-orbiting. This means that, unlike high-orbiting geosynchronous satellites, they will not be positioned over the same patch of Earth at all times. Therefore, several satellites will be needed to cover one patch continuously. And, since nobody can predict which nation or terrorist will launch a nuclear missile - or from where - many, many more will be needed to provide continuous coverage of several patches. The APS calculates that more than 1,000 would be needed to provide enough coverage to intercept a single enemy missile. This may be an exaggeration; many spots of Earth can fairly safely be excluded as possible launch sites. Still, several hundred satellites would need to be in orbit, even under quite relaxed assumptions, considerably more than the U.S. space program's present launch rate could accommodate.
Second, the study notes that liquid-fuel missiles burn out in four minutes, solid-fuel missiles in three. Subtract from that the half-minute or so it will take to confirm a missile launch, and a boost-phase interceptor doesn't have much time to reach its target. The interceptor will have to be very fast and very agile. Both characteristics will require it to carry much fuel, which requires it to be quite large - larger than an ICBM, the study calculates, and able to accelerate four times as quickly. "Such interceptors have never been built," the study notes, "and would push the state of the art." They would also require fairly enormous satellites to carry them.
The Missile Defense Agency is conducting very early research into a space-based laser, which would get around some of these problems. However, such a laser is at least 20 years away; not a single component of it remotely exists today. The APS study also points out that the atmosphere would dissipate the focus of a laser beam, and thus drastically reduce its ability to destroy an ascending missile. A laser's range is also much shorter than a kinetic interceptor and so would require still more satellites.
GROUND TO A HALT?
On a more mundane level, the Pentagon does have research programs on ground-based and ship-based BPI, which are not affected by the suspension of space-based BPI. However, the APS study calculates that a terrestrial interceptor would have to be very close to the launch site, in some cases just a few dozen miles away. This might be feasible if the likely launcher were North Korea (the interceptor could be placed in South Korea or on an Aegis cruiser in the Sea of Japan), but even then - assuming permission would be granted - the interceptors and the ship would themselves be vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike.
In short, even the most apparently straightforward aspects of a missile-defense system are turning out to be hugely - perhaps insuperably - complex, expensive, and operationally dubious. And the APS doesn't even get into the issues of "battle management" (how to convey signals from the early warning sensors to the weapons, how to fire the weapons, how to determine whether the target was hit, and thus whether more weapons need to be fired). Nor, more seriously still, does it outline the complications of dealing with an enemy that's resourceful enough to fire more than one missile.
At what point does someone calculate that the whole project is so drenched in fantasy that it isn't worth the trouble of getting it started?
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
'Dr Strangeloves' meet to plan new nuclear era
Julian Borger in Bellevue, Nebraska
Thursday August 7, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1013690,00.html
US government scientists and Pentagon officials will gather today behind tight security at a Nebraska air force base to discuss the development of a modernised arsenal of small, specialised nuclear weapons which critics believe could mark the dawn of a new era in proliferation.
The Pentagon has not released a list of the 150 people at the secret meeting, but according to leaks, they will include scientists and administrators from the three main nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos, Sandia and Livermore, senior officers from the air force and strategic command, weapons contractors and civilian defence officials.
Requests by Congress to send observers were rejected, and an oversight committee which included academic nuclear experts was disbanded only a few weeks earlier.
The purpose of the meeting, at Offutt air force base, only became known after a draft agenda was leaked earlier this year, which included discussions on a new generation of low-yield "mini-nukes", "bunker-buster" bombs for possible use against rogue states or organisations armed with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
The session will also debate whether development of the weapons will require the White House to end the US moratorium on nuclear testing declared in 1992.
Major Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We need to change our nuclear strategy from the cold war to one that can deal with emerging threats."
He said the administration remained committed to the test moratorium (the US has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but has pledged to observe it). But he said: "The meeting will give some thought to how we guarantee the efficacy of the [nuclear] stockpile."
While insisting that it has no plans to resume testing, the administration has asked Congress for funds for a project that would cut down the amount of time it would take for the cold war-era test site in Nevada to start functioning again.
Yesterday, a steady stream of men in summer suits and uniforms arrived at Omaha airport, to be met by welcoming parties of air force officers and taken to the Offutt base, 10 miles to the south in the small town of Bellevue.
The lushly-landscaped base, where the grey shell of a B-52 bomber has been mounted behind a screen of fruit trees, sits atop a labyrinth of high-tech bunkers from where strategic command is poised, 24 hours a day, to fight a nuclear war. It inspired the setting for the 1964 film Dr Strangelove. It is where President George Bush was flown on September 11 2001, when it was thought that the terrorist attacks could be part of a sustained onslaught on the US.
The place and time of the Offutt meeting is infused with apparently unintended historical irony. The visitors arrived on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and the last will be leaving on Saturday, the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki. The B-29 planes which dropped those nuclear bombs, Enola Gay and Bock's Car, were both built at Offutt.
The use of those weapons marked the beginning of the cold war and the first nuclear age. Today's meeting, many observers believe, could mark the start of a second.
"This is a confab of Dr Strangeloves," said Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association, a national non-partisan membership organisation dedicated to working for arms control.
"The fact that the Pentagon is barring the public and congressional staff from this key meeting on US nuclear weapons policy suggests that the administration seeks to discuss and deliberate on its policies largely in secret."
The uncanny echoes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not go unnoticed by a handful of Catholic protesters from Iowa who have gathered at Offutt to mark the anniversaries for the past 25 years.
Blasphemy
Father Frank Cordaro, the leader of the protest group, said: "This is an American blasphemy to life and to God. They are going to violate another treaty by developing small nuclear weapons. We had made the promise not to do these weapons, but this sole superpower is just ignoring the non-proliferation treaty. That's madness."
Today's meeting traces its origins to a report by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP) published in January 2001 as the Bush administration took office. The report argued for a "smaller, more efficient, arsenal" of specialised weapons. Some deeply buried targets, it argued, could only be destroyed by "one or more nuclear weapons". Only by developing these new weapons could the US maintain its deterrent, it said.
Paul Robinson, the head of the Sandia weapons laboratory, who is attending the Offutt meeting, believes that America's new adversaries would be more successfully deterred if the line between conventional and nuclear weapons was blurred.
Senior jobs
He argued in a recent commentary in the Albuquerque Tribune that "military strategy is evolving to consider combinations of conventional and/or nuclear attacks for pre-emption or retaliation."
Many of the NIPP report's authors went on to take senior positions in the administration, including Linton Brooks, head of the national nuclear security administration which oversees new weapons projects, Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defence for intelligence.
The report became the basis for the administration's Nuclear Posture Review in late 2001 which contemplated the use of nuclear weapons pre-emptively against rogue states, to destroy stockpiles of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
The officials involved in compiling both documents will play a prominent role at Offutt, but scientists and officials with dissenting views have not been invited.
"I was specifically told I couldn't come," a congressional weapons expert said.
Greg Mello, the head of the Los Alamos Study Group, a watchdog organisation, said: "There will be tonnes of contractors there from the weapons labs and the weapons plants. Contractors can come, but Congress can't."
The Pentagon insists that today's meeting is technical rather than policy-making, but critics are concerned that it is being used to build up momentum behind the development of the weapons, despite opposition from Congress.
"I'm suspicious that further down the road, they're going to say 'this was decided at Offutt', or 'this comes out of the recommendations at Offutt', a congressional staff member said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- connecticut
Radioactive groundwater
Findings at Connecticut Yankee may spur a new form of cooperation
By MATTHEW HIGBEE,
Middletown Press Staff
08/07/2003
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=9968364&BRD=1645&PAG=461&dept_id=10856&rfi=6
HADDAM -- Concentrations of a dangerous and long lasting radioactive particle in Connecticut Yankee's groundwater will likely spur a level of coordination among state and federal regulators not yet seen in the young history of nuclear power plant decommissioning.
While regulators may differ as to how the fouled aquifer is best measured, they are on the same page when it comes saying who is most qualified to clean it up: Mother Nature.
Under a state mandate issued in March 2001, Connecticut Yankee began including tests for "hard to detect" radioactive particles, or HTDs, in its quarterly groundwater monitoring program. Since the first batch of samples showed up at the lab, test wells near the domed reactor building have detected significant levels of the Strontium 90, a potent isotope that mimics calcium in its love for bones.
Absorbed by plants which are eaten by cows that produce the milk we drink, the element, which has a 30-year half-life, has been widely dispersed by decades of nuclear weapons testing and the Chernobyl meltdown -- physicists say future archeologists will be able to date people who lived during the nuclear era by testing for traces of Strontium 90 in their skeletons.
At high concentrations in bone marrow, Strontium 90 bombards nearby cells and poses a huge cancer risk.
Federal officials say a detectable level of Strontium 90 in the soil and water around nuclear power plants is unusual. The element has failed to turn up at either Maine Yankee or Yankee Rowe, the two other shut-down plants in New England undergoing decommissioning. Lab technicians working on samples drawn from Haddam Neck, however, have identified three wells with concentrations that exceed the federal drinking water standard of 8 picocuries per liter.
A picocurie is a tiny fraction of curie, a standard unit for measuring low levels of radiation.
Water from one of the wells has tested as high as 18 times the federal standard.
Although federal law charges the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with overseeing the cleanup of closed nuclear plants, Haddam Neck may soon be a test case for a negotiated pact it signed last fall with the Environmental Protection Agency.
The memorandum of understanding calls for the NRC to consult with the EPA at sites where groundwater pollution exceeds federal drinking water standards, even after all the NRC requirements have been met in the license termination plan, the blueprint used for decommissioning.
"Even though the (Connecticut Yankee) license termination plan has been approved, there is no agreement on how much remediation should be done," said Brian Littleton, of the EPA office of radiation in Washington, D.C. "This site very probably will be the first implementation of the MOU."
Driving the need for this memorandum, EPA officials say, is fundamental difference in the way the two regulators assess radioactive pollution at nuclear sites. While the EPA measures each contaminant in fouled water against an allowable standard, the NRC takes what could be considered a more holistic approach.
Using a model called the "resident farmer scenario," the NRC requires companies like Connecticut Yankee to clean their soil and water until it is safe enough for a family of subsistence farmers.
In this scenario, the fictional farmers are expected to raise crops and livestock at the site, and draw all their drinking water from under the soil of the former nuclear reactor.
Between the covers of the license termination plan are many pages of equations used for calculating things like how some left-behind radiation might make its way into a person through a Haddam Neck grown potato.
Before it has met the NRC cleanup standards, Connecticut Yankee must show that all plant-related radiation remaining in the potential pastures, crop fields, vegetable gardens, and drinking water, would dose the resident farmers with no more than 25 millirems per-year, which is less than half the radiation put out by a dental x-ray.
Using its own calculations, Connecticut Yankee has proposed that it could leave behind Strontium 90 concentrations of 251 picocuries per liter in the groundwater, 31 times the federal drinking water standard, and still meet the NRC guidelines. NRC official Ron Bellamy says this level has not been approved.
Connecticut Yankee officials said they would continue working with the NRC.
"We do have to meet their criteria," said Kelley Smith, Connecticut Yankee spokesperson.
Bellamy also said that if the radioactive water pushed Connecticut Yankee's gauges above the 25-millirem-per-year dose limit, then the company could elect to remove this "pathway" from the calculations.
Not factoring in contaminated groundwater into the resident farmer model was justified, Bellamy said, "if everyone agrees that this water is not potable and therefore you had to go to a municipal water supply."
Steadfast in their commitment to holding Connecticut Yankee to the federal drinking water standards, EPA officials said methods for lowering the levels of Strontium 90 would come out of a joint effort with the NRC.
"That's something we hope to have a dialogue about. But right now that dialogue hasn't really happened," said Marvin Rosenstein, EPA branch chief in the office of ecosystem protection.
To contact Matthew Higbee, call (860) 347-3331 ext. 223, or email mhigbee@middletownpress.com.
-------- new jersey
Vote Scheduled on Contract by Strikers at A-Plant
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
August 7, 2003
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/nyregion/07OYST.html
TRENTON, Aug. 6 - Striking electrical workers at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station have reached a tentative contract agreement with the plant's management and are scheduled to vote Thursday on whether to end their 76-day walkout, according to company officials.
The plant's 220 electricians walked off their jobs May 22, after negotiations between the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1289 and AmerGen Energy broke off over the company's proposal to eliminate 20 jobs.
Officials for AmerGen, which bought the plant two years ago, and Exelon Nuclear, which operates it, say Oyster Creek is overstaffed and must trim its payroll and reduce its restrictive work rules in order to remain competitive. But union officials say that the company has already reduced the work force to 450 from 1,000 and that further cuts would pose a safety hazard by forcing employees to perform jobs for which they are not properly trained.
Neither union leaders nor company officials would discuss details of the tentative agreement today, saying that they wanted to wait until after striking workers vote on the plan on Thursday. If the pact is approved, workers will return to their jobs on Monday.
The plant has remained in operation throughout the strike, with supervisors and employees of other Exelon plants taking on the duties of the striking workers.
The strike comes at a pivotal moment for Oyster Creek, which opened in 1969 and has to apply to be recertified by the end of next year. The plant has received generally favorable safety ratings from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and has largely avoided the kind of public opposition that has surrounded the Indian Point plant in Westchester County in recent years.
But the age of the Oyster Creek reactor and the growing population of the communities near the plant, in Lacey Township on the Jersey Shore in Ocean County, has led some community activists to call for the plant to be closed.
-------- new york
POLITICAL MEMO
Lawmakers Step Lightly Along a Nuclear Tightrope
August 7, 2003
The New York Times
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/nyregion/07NUKE.html
ALBANY, Aug. 5 - Advertised on lawn signs, posters and fliers across the northern suburbs, it has become a cause célèbre since the Sept. 11 attacks shook the nation's security. "Close Indian Point," the advertisements say.
Over the last year, a growing number of local politicians, environmentalists and residents have taken sides in the debate over the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River, with many saying that the only way to make the plant safe from terrorists or other menaces is to shut it down.
But the three most powerful elected officials in New York State - Gov. George E. Pataki, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator Charles E. Schumer - have not jumped on the shutter-the-plant bandwagon. Nor, for that matter, have they argued to keep it open. Instead, all three have adopted carefully nuanced positions, saying only that the plant must be made safer.
Indeed, the question of what to do about Indian Point has become an especially thorny one. Senator Schumer, who has a seat on the Senate energy committee, has remained relatively quiet about the matter.
Senator Clinton has frequently challenged the safety of emergency plans and questioned security arrangements, but, unlike the plant's hard-line opponents, she has not determined that adequate safety plans are impossible and that the two reactors should be shut.
The governor, meanwhile, has done a verbal tap dance around the issue that would make Gregory Hines proud. After two years of study and debate, he says he has still not determined whether closing the plant would be the best course. He has pointed out, however, that radioactive fuel would remain at the site even if the plant were to close. He has also expressed, through his press secretary, a preference for phasing out the plant over time if it can be done safely, and if another energy source can be found.
The delicately constructed positions of the statewide officials are a reminder that the complications of closing a nuclear plant go far beyond fervent and visceral emotions.
They also reflect the success that Entergy Corporation, the plant's owner and a major campaign donor, has had in winning the debate in Washington and Albany, even if it has been losing the fight near the plant.
Aides to all three politicians say they have been swayed by Entergy's argument that simply shutting down the plant will not rid the region of the threat of a radiation leak, since 935 tons of spent fuel would remain on the site for many years. All three are also worried about how New York City and the suburbs will replace the 2,000 megawatts of electricity the plant produces. Plant opponents dispute both arguments, saying that the electricity could easily be replaced, and that the nuclear hazards would decline rapidly after a shutdown.
Entergy says replacing Indian Point would also mean more political fights over building gas-fired plants, which would produce more air pollution than nuclear plants.
"Nobody is willing to propose the harsh alternatives to Indian Point as a road map to dealing with this issue," said Larry Gottlieb, a spokesman for Entergy Nuclear Northeast.
Still, Governor Pataki, a third-term Republican, and the two senators, both Democrats, have not gone so far as to say that the plant should stay open. One reason is the political reality that city and suburban voters, who fear another terrorist attack, often sway statewide races.
And while it is easy to call for the plant to close, especially for local politicians, it is difficult to explain to ordinary voters that closing the plant may not make it much safer from attack than it is now, but will cut off an important electricity source, which provides 20 percent to 40 percent of the power in the city and its northern suburbs.
"The complexity comes in on some of the more scientific arguments, and that becomes harder to communicate," said Lee Miringoff, the director of polling at Marist College. Speaking of the three statewide officials, he added, "They are trying to be sensitive to the issue, but are, in a sense, walking a tighter rope than local assemblymen and congressmen, whose rank-and-file constituents are all in the area."
Of the three officials, Senator Clinton, a Democrat, has been the most outspoken on the issue. She criticized the Bush administration's decision two weeks ago to approve the plant's emergency and evacuation plans, which an expert hired by the governor last year and most local officials have deemed unworkable. She has also called for better measures to guard the plant against attacks, and has sponsored legislation to improve security at nuclear plants across the country.
Yet on the issue of Indian Point's closing, an aide said, Senator Clinton has opted to take an unpopular, pragmatic position. "This is a safety and security issue," said a spokeswoman, Jennifer Hanley. "This is not a political issue."
The normally omnipresent and loquacious Senator Schumer has kept a low profile in the debate, urging increased security around the plant, but shying away from taking a position on whether it should be closed.
"It never should have been built so close to a population center," said his spokesman, Phil Singer, "but it is there, and until a long-range plan that meets the many competing needs can be developed, we need to focus on the safety of the plant, because the fuel rods, which present perhaps the greatest danger, are going to be there whether the reactors are operating or not."
Both senators deny the assertion by some opponents of nuclear power that their positions have been influenced by campaign contributions. Entergy and its political action committee have given $106,750 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee since 1999, according to Federal Election Commission records. Both senators received $1,000 donations from the company in 1999, and Senator Clinton received $2,000 in the year 2000.
Entergy has also given to Governor Pataki's campaigns - $16,000 from the Entergy Corporation Political Committee-New York since July 2001, the year the company bought Indian Point from the state's Power Authority and Consolidated Edison. The company has also hired Mr. Pataki's old law firm, Plunkett & Jaffe, to lobby the Pataki administration.
Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Westchester County Democrat and a leader of the campaign to close the plant, said Mr. Pataki had long supported Entergy's Indian Point project, agreeing to sell Entergy the state's nuclear power plants as part of a deregulation plan and helping the company get a favorable tax rate. A judge recently ruled that the Pataki administration had also allowed the company to operate with an outdated permit for the Indian Point cooling system, which environmentalists argue kills large numbers of fish in the Hudson.
"For better or worse, what you could say is that the governor, from the day he became governor, has consistently supported the continued operation of Indian Point," Mr. Brodsky said. "Everything else that the Pataki administration argues is just spin."
Riverkeeper, an environmental group leading the effort to close the plant, has mounted a media campaign for 18 months accusing the governor of hiding from the controversy.
"If the governor provided leadership on Indian Point, no one would be singing his praises more than Riverkeeper," the executive director, Alex Matthiessen, said.
During the election last year, Mr. Pataki avoided taking a position on closing the plant, appointing an expert, James Lee Witt, to study emergency and evacuation plans. After Mr. Witt issued a report in January condemning the plans, the governor remained publicly circumspect on the question of closing the plant.
In the spring, he said he was worried that shutting down the plant would not reduce the threat of a radiation leak. And last week, he said he remained undecided on the issue, even after the Bush administration's decision to approve the emergency plans. Instead, he has said that Mr. Witt's report raises serious questions the Bush administration needs to answer if the plant is to remain open.
On Friday, he sent a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency secretary, Michael Brown, criticizing the agency for failing to address "fundamental questions" that he, Mr. Witt and others have raised about security at nuclear power plants.
He did not elaborate on what those questions were, however.
Lisa Dewald Stoll, Mr. Pataki's press secretary, meanwhile, accused the plant's opponents of engaging in a "partisan attack" by trying to "bait" the governor into taking what may be an unpopular position in New York's suburbs. Aides to Mr. Pataki portray Mr. Brodsky as a Democrat seeking headlines and note that Riverkeeper was founded by a prominent Democrat, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Riverkeeper's ads on television and radio and in print have urged people to tell Mr. Pataki that they want the plant closed, linking him to an issue the federal government must decide. They do not mention the senators.
Mr. Pataki aides see the campaign as a orchestrated political attack. But the plant's opponents argue that only Mr. Pataki, as a Republican governor, has the influence that is needed with the Bush administration to turn off the reactors.
They assert that Mr. Pataki is raising the partisanship issue to divert attention from his support for Entergy and the Bush administration's policies favoring nuclear power.
"The attempt to turn this into a partisan dispute is typical of the governing strategy of this administration when they don't have a substantive answer - attack people in the most bitter and personal way and challenge their motives," Mr. Brodsky said.
Pataki aides say that this is nonsense, and that Mr. Pataki has quietly been pushing the Bush administration to toughen its standards for emergency plans.
"Those engaged in political attacks on this issue should be ashamed of themselves," a Pataki spokeswoman, Suzanne Morris, said in a statement on Tuesday.
-------- us politics
Senators question costs of rebuilding Iraq
Lawmakers say Bush must be upfront about U.S. commitment
By Vince Crawley
Navy Times staff writer
August 07, 2003
http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=0-292243-2109629.php
What price victory in Iraq? The Pentagon is spending nearly $4 billion per month to rebuild the war-torn nation - more than $125 million per day, an amount that could stretch to $45 billion over a full year.
In human terms, 248 Americans have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom through July 31, at least 166 by hostile fire.
Yet, three months after President Bush's May 1 declaration of victory, prominent senators from both parties warn that success remains far from certain and the mission could quickly get mired in self-doubt, leading to economic and political disaster worldwide.
Because of "bureaucratic inertia, political caution," and "unrealistic expectations ... we do not appear to be confident about our course in Iraq," Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., told senior Pentagon witnesses at a July 29 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. Lugar, the committee chairman, recently visited Iraq and warned that the Bush administration has not been upfront about the costs and long-term commitment needed to build a new Iraq from the ground up after more than 30 years of oppressive Baathist rule.
"Our national sense of commitment and confidence must approximate what we demonstrated during the Berlin airlift," Lugar told Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
That self-confidence, Lugar said, included "a sense that we could achieve the impossible despite short time constraints and severe conditions, risk and consequence."
Although Iraq is rife with tales of U.S. military successes, the overall mission "continues to hang in the balance," Lugar said. "If we succeed in rebuilding Iraq, it will set off a positive chain of events that could usher in a new era of stability and progress in the Middle East. By contrast, failure could set back American interests for a generation."
Wolfowitz spoke for well over half an hour, giving an eloquent opening statement that described his recent four-day trip to Iraq. He said reconstruction is far ahead of efforts in Bosnia and Kosovo at comparable early stages of those missions. And he painted a wide-ranging picture of long-suffering Iraqi citizens who continually thank the Americans for ousting Saddam Hussein.
Wolfowitz said the Pentagon spent $30 billion on military operations in the 12 years after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to keep Saddam in check. Yet he noted that Congress recently cut $200 million in funding for an Iraqi civilian defense force that is desperately needed to guard facilities such as the hospital where three U.S. soldiers were killed by a grenade attack in late July.
"It is much better to have Iraqis fighting and dying for their country than to have Americans doing the job all by themselves," Wolfowitz said.
Joshua Bolten, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, acknowledged that the Pentagon will likely spend nearly $4 billion per month in Iraq for at least several more months.
"That's roughly what we're spending now," Bolten said. "Looking out over the immediate term, we don't have any reason to expect a dramatic change in that number, but I wouldn't want to predict beyond the next couple of months, because the situation is so variable."
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., insisted the Bush administration provide an estimate of Iraqi military occupation and reconstruction costs for 2004.
"What the devil are you going to ask us for?" asked Biden, senior Democrat on the foreign relations committee. But Bolten said the White House would take months to let the situation unfold before asking for extra money for the Iraq mission costs, "simply because we don't know what they will be."
"Does anybody here ... think we're going to be down below 100,000 forces in the next calendar year?" Biden replied. "Raise your hand, any one of you."
Neither Wolfowitz nor Bolten did so. Nor did Gen. Jack Keane, acting Army chief of staff, who also took part in the hearing.
Biden said it is reasonable to predict that Pentagon costs in Iraq would be at least $2.5 billion per month in 2004.
Wolfowitz said there is no way to give an honest assessment for next year. "To suggest that this is an issue of honesty really is very misleading," he said.
"It is a suggestion of candor," Biden said. "You know there's going to be at least 100,000 American forces there for the next calendar year and you're not asking us for any money."
Wolfowitz said details of a supplemental budget request would come "when we think we can make a reasonably good estimate of what will get us through the whole year."
----
Gore Criticizes Bush's Leadership on Iraq
August 7, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Gore.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Emerging from the political shadows, former Vice President Al Gore upbraided President Bush on Thursday for pursuing a divisive, ideologically narrow agenda and misleading the nation on issues from Iraq to the economy.
The 2000 presidential nominee delivered the major policy address amid calls from some Democratic quarters for Gore to change his mind and join the crowded field of nine White House candidates. He tried to end that kind of talk with a simple declaration: ``I am not going to join them, but later in the political cycle I will endorse one of them.''
The Democrat who won the popular vote but lost the electoral tally in a disputed election used the 35-minute speech to offer a biting critique of Bush's policies, and argue that the nation is headed in the wrong direction.
``Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country, and that some important American values are being placed at risk, and they want to set it right,'' Gore told an audience at New York University.
Gore credited Bush for deposing Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, but he said the administration's unilateral approach to the war against Iraq has put American troops at excessive risk, alienated allies and is leaving the United States to foot the full reconstruction bill.
``Too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments and historic mistakes that have put them and our nation in harm's way,'' Gore said.
His comments came on the same day two U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq, bringing to 55 the number killed in combat since Bush declared major fighting ended May 1.
Echoing the recent criticism from several of the Democratic presidential candidates, Gore said the administration launched the Iraq war under false pretenses, including claims that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was poised to provide terrorists with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Bush also used secrecy, false impressions and ``a systematic effort to manipulate facts'' to promote his tax cuts and provide a rationale for withdrawing from arms control and environmental treaties, said Gore. He called the federal budget deficit, projected at $455 billion, ``an emerging fiscal catastrophe.''
Members of the Bush administration ``feel as if they already know the truth and aren't very curious to learn about any facts that might contradict it... The members of their ideological coalition are true believers in each other's agendas.''
In Crawford, Texas, where Bush is vacationing, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan dismissed Gore's criticism, saying, ``I think the American people know the president's commitment to the security of the United States and to winning the war on terrorism, our economic security.''
Gore addressed some 600 members of the liberal activist group Moveon.org, which earlier this year held an online presidential primary in which Howard Dean, a staunch foe of the war, finished first. Gore drew the loudest applause and a standing ovation when he called for Bush to rein in Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
He complained that Ashcroft was responsible for ``gross abuses of civil rights'' under the Patriot Act enacted after the terrorist attacks, and faulted Rumsfeld for a Pentagon surveillance plan that he said was ``right out of George Orwell's '1984.'''
Gore, who has been teaching at UCLA and two universities in his home state of Tennessee, delivered his last policy speech nearly a year ago when he expressed his misgivings about the war against Iraq.
His New York speech came a day after former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo urged him to join the Democratic presidential primary, complaining that all that emerged from the current field was ``babble.''
At least one presidential contender, former Vermont Gov. Dean, praised Gore's speech.
``I thank Vice President Al Gore for standing up to this administration and using his position as a respected leader in our party to speak about truth, integrity and real compassion -- three values that are sorely lacking in this White House and administration,'' Dean said in a statement.
On the Net:
Moveon.org, http://www.moveon.org
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
African Peace Force Gets Warm Welcome in Liberia Streets
August 7, 2003
The New York Times
By SOMINI SENGUPTA with THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/africa/07CND-LIBE.html?hp
MONROVIA, Liberia, Aug. 7 - For the first time since they arrived at the main airport here on Monday, Nigerian peacekeepers moved out into the city today and were mobbed by thousands of hopeful residents desperate for an end to the armed conflict. As several armored personnel carriers, military trucks and jeeps loaded with about 150 Nigerians moved through the streets, the war-weary residents danced around the vehicles, punching the sky with their fists in celebration and chanting, "We want peace! We want peace!"
About 20 government soldiers, dressed in flip-flops and T-shirts, rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles strapped to their torsos, were similarly exuberant.
"New Liberia! New Liberia! New Liberia!" chanted the soldiers, members of an army that has been holding off a final push by rebels against this city, the last bastion of the embattled president, Charles G. Taylor.
This was the first day of the peacekeepers' deployment beyond the perimeter of the airport though it was unclear what missions they planned to undertake. Under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States, a West African bloc known as Ecowas, the peacekeeping force is here to help bring an end to the armed conflict and to restore the flow of food, water and medicine.
The Nigerians will be part of a total peacekeeping force of 3,250 that will include soldiers from several other West African countries, as well. One of the group's first tasks will be to help guarantee a smooth exit for President Taylor, who has promised to step down and leave Liberia.
Mr. Taylor, who is accused of crimes against humanity by a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal in neighboring Sierra Leone, has said he would hand over power to his vice president next Monday but has not specified when he would leave the country. Nigeria has offered him a safe haven.
The United States has sent 2,300 marines in three ships to waters off Liberia but has not publicly defined whether or how many American soldiers it will deploy onshore.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has so far authorized up to 20 members of the Marine Corps task force to go ashore to begin their work at the headquarters of the Nigerian battalion, but fewer than 10 landed by helicopter on Wednesday, officials said.
About 80 other American military personnel are already in Liberia guarding the American Embassy and assessing food and medical needs and security in this West African nation, officials said.
The American contingent remained out of sight today and was apparently meeting with Liberian government officials.
As the 150 Nigerians made their foray into the city today, about 400 of their colleagues remained behind at the airport, which they have commandeered as their base of operations. The last of the 776-strong battalion is expected to arrive from their staging post in Sierra Leone by the end of the day, officials said.
In addition, a second battalion from Nigeria was being made ready for deployment, assisted by American contractors hired to help equip and train those forces, in particular to prepare their armored vehicles for duty, a Bush administration official said.
Monrovia residents said today that they hoped the Nigerians would move quickly to secure the port in the city's north, which is under the rebel control. Until the most recent rebel push on the city began last month, the port had been one of the main conduits of supplies for the city's inhabitants.
"We want a free port!" the crowds insisted.
Pentagon officials on Wednesday cautioned that the American Marine deployment was deliberately kept small and should not be seen as the vanguard of an armed American peacekeeping force.
Officially, the task of the Marine contingent is a "liaison mission" to help the initial members of the peacekeeping battalion.
One American military officer said they would "be our eyes and ears on the ground, helping us understand what the international peacekeeping force needs."
In particular, the Marines will help coordinate the efforts of contractors to provide logistical help to foreign troops as they build up their forces. The marines will also coordinate work like reopening the port when the violence ceases, officials said.
President Bush, speaking on Wednesday with reporters at his Texas ranch, said the small force of marines was "all part of determining what is necessary to help" the international peacekeepers. In turn, Mr. Bush said, that international force is "to go in and provide the conditions necessary for humanitarian relief to arrive, whether it be by sea or by air."
The president emphasized that a primary condition for a broader deployment of American troops - the departure of President Taylor - had not been met. In the past, Mr. Bush has also said that a cease-fire must be firmly in place before American peacekeepers would be deployed. Cease-fires have been repeatedly declared, only to be broken.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who joined President Bush in Texas on Wednesday, said he was pleased at the progress of the West African peacekeeping force.
"The Nigerians showed up in good order, and more forces are arriving," he said. "And they're starting to establish a sense of security and, I think, put hope back in the hearts of the Liberian people."
-------- britain
Iraq's weapons bothered scientist
August 07, 2003
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030806-092217-6064r.htm
LONDON - The British weapons inspector who committed suicide last month over an intelligence flap remained convinced that Iraq had continued developing a biological-weapons program until the regime was toppled by U.S.-led coalition forces, according to a close colleague.
The weapons expert, who was buried yesterday afternoon in an English country churchyard, also believed that Iraqi scientists possessed the know-how and materials to construct a radiological weapon known as a "dirty bomb."
The death of David Kelly, who slit his wrist last month after he was exposed as the source for a British Broadcasting Corp. report on British intelligence on Iraq, has been used by critics of Prime Minister Tony Blair to support their claim that he misled the British public.
Meanwhile, a top aide to Mr. Blair apologized Tuesday for comparing the dead Iraq weapons inspector to Walter Mitty, a fictional fantasizer.
The suicide of the scientist days after he appeared in front of a parliamentary panel investigating whether the case for war in Iraq was exaggerated has turned into a test of the Blair government's credibility.
Mr. Blair's official spokesman, Tom Kelly, apologized for linking the scientist, a respected government weapons inspector who made dozens of trips to Iraq, to the fictional daydreamer, the creation of American author James Thurber.
In two interviews with BBC reporters, the scientist was reported to have expressed doubt on Mr. Blair's claim that Iraq could have launched nonconventional warheads within 45 minutes of any order to do so.
It is now emerging that Mr. Kelly was firmly convinced that Saddam Hussein's regime did present a serious threat.
The scientist died only two days before he was due to fly to Iraq to join the secretive Iraqi Survey Group, which is seeking to amass evidence for the coalition leaders' assertion that Iraq had biological-, chemical- or nuclear-weapons programs.
"I spoke to him by phone on his return from Iraq and four days before his death," said Terry Taylor, a former British colonel who was a chief nuclear inspector in Iraq and worked closely for years with Mr. Kelly, who led the biological team.
"I didn't detect any change in his view on the Iraqi biological program," Mr. Taylor said in an interview. "He and I both believed they had a hidden program, and I detected no change is his fundamental view."
Mr. Taylor, who now heads the Washington office of the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies, was speaking after attending a high-powered conference of international warfare specialists at Saclay, near Paris.
Mr. Kelly was laid to rest in southern England's midsummer heat after a moving ceremony yesterday, attended by British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and the judge who will hear evidence on the circumstances of his death.
Mr. Kelly had played key roles in getting first the Soviets and, years later, the Iraqis, to reveal key elements in their biological-weapons programs, Mr. Taylor said.
"We managed to break the Iraqis over their secret and illegal biological program in March 1995 - and David must take a lot of credit for that," he said.
-------- iraq
Iraq war's 20,000 wounded civilians ignored - group
By Andrew Cawthorne,
Aug. 7, 2003
Reuters
http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters08-07-020037.asp?reg=MIDEAST
LONDON - Around 20,000 civilians were wounded in the Iraq war and the U.S.-British occupiers are ignoring their suffering, a research group said on Thursday in what it termed the first study of the conflict's casualty toll.
''The maimed civilians of Iraq have been brushed under the carpet,'' the Iraq Body Count (IBC) said.
The Anglo-American group of academics and peace activists chided U.S. and British postwar administrators for failing to set up programmes for the wounded or pay them compensation.
''A sizeable if as yet unknown proportion of Iraqi families will contain a relative whose life was ended or put on hold by the U.S. or British forces,'' it said in a report seen by Reuters prior to publication on its website, www.iraqbodycount.net.
''Even if only in self-interest, the U.S. and UK administrations should be putting the needs of the injured at the very heart of its strategy to 'win hearts and minds'.''
The report, titled ''Adding Indifference to Injury,'' said the IBC had calculated civilian casualties known so far as between a minimum of 16,439 and maximum 19,733.
Incomplete information about casualties meant that the maximum figure was likely to be a closer approximation to the real total and might itself be an under-estimate, it said.
The IBC's figures were based on media reports and counting projects from independent investigators up to July 6.
The group has also for months been publishing a running total of estimated civilian deaths from the Iraq war, with its latest calculation a minimum of 6,086 and a maximum of 7,797.
The IBC said the U.S. and British military's reluctance to calculate the number of civilian wounded was inexcusable.
''There is indeed a possibility that not every death can be accounted for,'' it said. ''Injuries are another matter. The injured are alive, perhaps receiving treatment, and the cause, nature and extent of their injuries will appear in medical, official, and informal records.''
The need for investigation and assessment ''is particularly urgent, for many of the injured may still be suffering and their condition may be improved if we act promptly,'' it added.
The United States and Britain have repeatedly said their forces tried to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, but have declined to give any estimates.
A spokesman for Britain's Ministry of Defence said it was impossible to say whether the IBC estimate was accurate.
''The conflict was aimed at minimising civilian casualties,'' he said. ''But it's very difficult to assess figures.''
The spokesman said U.S. and British efforts to bring about an Iraqi administration and resurrect infrastructure, including medical facilities, would benefit the wounded. Compensation claims should be taken up with the interim authority, he added.
The occupiers' only attention to wounded civilians has been in high-profile cases like Ali Ismaeel Abbas, the 12-year-old boy airlifted out for medical treatment after losing both arms, or limited care from some units after battles, the IBC said.
That has left the wounded relying on vandalised and depleted Iraqi hospitals and ''a few charities and aid agencies, which have struggled against U.S. obstruction to gain a foothold for their work with the sick and injured,'' the report said.
Twenty thousand injury compensation claims at $10,000 each would cost the occupiers $200 million -- less than the United States spends every two days on the occupation, the group said.
''What excuse can the U.S. possibly have for declining this opportunity to do some good for those who desperately need it (and for whose hurt it is responsible), and in the process, win back some of that ''goodwill'' it has lost in Iraq and much of the world?''
----
At Least 8 Die in Car Bombing at Jordan's Embassy in Baghdad
August 7, 2003
New York Times
By ROBERT F. WORTH
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/worldspecial/07CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 7 - A powerful car comb detonated today outside the Jordanian Embassy in the western part of the capital, killing at least 8 Iraqis and wounding more than 30, military and Iraqi officials said.
The blast took place soon after 11 a.m., when a bomb inside a car just outside the main gate blew a U-shaped hole 20 feet wide in the embassy's brick wall and destroyed at least six cars that had been parked in front.
In an unrelated attack today, United States soldiers whose Humvees were parked outside a store in central Baghdad encountered a homemade bomb, a military spokeswoman said. A fierce gunbattle broke out with the unidentified attackers, and the spokeswoman said at least two American soldiers were seriously wounded.
The two attacks came a day after two soldiers from the First Armored Division were killed in a gunbattle with unknown attackers in Baghdad's Al Rasheed district, military officials in Baghdad said. That attack took place at about 11 p.m., officials said. An interpreter was also wounded, officials said.
In the embassy attack, four of the dead were Iraqi police officers, said Amir Naeef, the chief of police for the western part of Baghdad, and some of the others may have worked at the embassy.
Although American soldiers often patrol the area, no Americans were wounded, said Lt. Col Eric Nantz, of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spoke to reporters at the scene shortly afterward.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of United States ground forces in Iraq, said at a news conference that the attack was "the worst on a soft target" since Baghdad fell to American forces on April 9.
There were few witnesses to the attack, and it was not immediately clear whether the car was moving or not when the bomb went off, Lieutenant Nantz said. The Iraqi police are looking into the possibility that it was a suicide attack, Mr. Naeef said.
The motive for the attack was also a mystery. Until now, the violence has been directed at United States soldiers or those working with them. There have been no serious attacks in the neighborhood around the embassy, Colonel Nantz said.
But Mr. Naeef said a written threat was delivered to the embassy on Wednesday, tossed out of passing car near the embassy's front gate. He declined to give any specifics about what the letter said or the people who delivered it.
Residents near the embassy, which is on a broad two-lane boulevard in an upscale area, said they emerged from their houses to see several cars burning, and dozens of bloodied people lying in the street.
"I heard a terrible explosion and went to the floor," said Mohammed Fadhil Abbas, 28, who lives about 300 yards from the embassy. "I went outside and saw smoke and flames everywhere."
Mr. Abbas and other local people carried some of the wounded people to cars and took them to hospitals, he said.
"It took me three or four minutes to return to my mind," Mr. Abbas said. "I saw people with terrible wounds, blood all over."
Two hours after the attack, relatives of the wounded stood weeping in the main hallway at Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad, about a mile from the embassy, where many of the injured were taken.
The explosion left bits of car wreckage and human remains scattered hundreds of yards around the embassy, and could be heard for miles away. Only a few twisted shards of axle and wheel remained from the car that had held the bomb.
Within an hour of the blast, hundreds of Iraqis were gathered across from the embassy, where United States soldiers and Iraqi police officers struggled to keep the crowd back.
Rumors circulated quickly about the motive for the attacks. Many said it was in retaliation for Jordan's decision to give sanctuary to Saddam Hussein's daughters Rana and Raghad, who arrived in that country last week.
"No one wants those who were killing our people to be sheltered in another country," Mr. Abbas said. "What happened today is the responsibility of King Abdullah of Jordan."
But in other attacks here, many bystanders insisted that Americans were somehow to blame. Some said United States military helicopters had been on the scene during the explosion, and said they had fired missiles at the embassy.
----
Iraq's oil booty will only pay part of rebuilding costs
Security concerns slow the move to turn on the valves. Other money will be needed to pay for basic services.
By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor
August 07, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0807/p02s02-woiq.html
WASHINGTON - An act of sabotage that damaged a gasoline pipeline near Tikrit in northern Iraq last week highlights one reason oil may not provide the deep pockets for Iraq's reconstruction that some had predicted.
As in other aspects of Iraq's road to peace, security remains a key factor in determining when the country's oil industry will recover. But security remains tenuous, meaning total production may be only substantial enough to pay for base-line services, leaving the US and other countries to foot a bigger bill than expected when it comes to rebuilding the war-torn country.
"Production is coming back and that's a good sign, but it should not obscure the fact that even what they're estimating for the initial rehab is not going to be enough," says Robert Ebel, director of the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Meanwhile, increased uncertainty over Iraq's oil supply, and the near-term ability to pump up exports, are factors in rising oil prices that are now nearing prewar highs, analysts say.
Iraq's oil production is expected to return to prewar levels - of about 2.8 million barrels daily - by next spring under an industry rehabilitation plan approved recently by American and Iraqi authorities. That plan calls for the US to pay $1 billion of the $1.6 billion initial refurbishing costs - much more than some supporters of an Iraq invasion estimated when they said rebuilding could be self-financing.
Even after production returns to prewar levels, oil revenues will probably only be able to pay part of Iraq's operating expenses - such as government salaries. Iraq needs $20 billion just to keep services at bare-bones levels, a UN official said recently. But revenues from oil and whatever other income the country can muster - such as repatriation of frozen assets held overseas - is likely to provide no more than $15 billion.
'Pat on the back'
That scenario helps explain why officials now say oil revenues won't play much of a role in financing the country's reconstruction for years to come - and why the success of an international donors' conference set for October is increasingly crucial.
Overall, rebuilding Iraq could cost as much as $100 billion over the next few years, says Paul Bremer, Iraq's American administrator. US spending of $1 billion a month is likely to continue for a while, other US officials say. In any case, Iraq is likely to need at least $5 billion from donors just to keep existing services running next year, says the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Ramiro Lopez da Silva.
Daunting realities should not obscure the positive side of what has happened so far in Iraq's oil industry, some say. The vast oil fields in the north and south of the country - which sit atop the world's second-largest oil reserves - were not torched during the war as was feared. And oil exports have recently resumed. At about 1 million barrels a day, total production is still well below prewar levels.
The Iraqis should get a "pat on the back" for their ingenuity in keeping oil flowing in difficult conditions following the first Gulf War, says Mr. Ebel. But he adds that the need for spare parts and some serious looting of installations since the war mean "it will take billions just to get [the country] back into shape."
Faster than gas from a guzzler
Iraq has earned as much as $20 billion a year from oil, but its peak production years were in the late 1970s, before the Iran-Iraq War. Getting Iraq to produce 3.5 million barrels a day - akin to its distant glory days - could take years and cost more than $30 billion, experts say.
Right now the US is focused on a return to the prewar production of 2.8 million barrels a day, and officials realize security is the key. "The insecurity in and around the oil fields and installations is still a big concern," says Jim Burkhard, at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Cambridge, Mass.
The contrast between overly optimistic prewar assumptions and reality on the ground has led to two things, Mr. Burkhard says. First, crude oil prices are back to about $30 a barrel. Second, talk of Iraq paying for its own reconstruction has disappeared faster than gas from a guzzler. "The short-term difficulties in getting production to prewar levels has led to this abrupt de-emphasizing of oil as the answer," he says.
Burkhard says the amount of looting in Iraq's oil installations surprised some oil analysts. As a result, any act of sabotage or sign of security problems will take both a psychological toll and cause material setbacks.
With Iraq struggling to maintain an export flow of about 700,000 barrels a day - compared to 2.2 million barrels prewar - continuing security problems could be the rehab plan's Achilles heel.
----
To Mollify Iraqis, U.S. Plans to Ease Scope of Its Raids
August 7, 2003
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/worldspecial/07RAID.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 6 - The American military, in a major revision of strategy, has decided to limit the scope of its raids in Iraq after receiving warnings from Iraqi leaders that the raids were alienating the public, the top allied commander said today.
In its search for Baath Party operatives and other friends of the former government, the American military has carried out large sweeps, some of which have rounded up hundreds of Iraqis.
But Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the chief commander of allied forces in Iraq, said in an interview that the military had virtually exhausted the gains from this approach and that continuing it could be counterproductive.
"It was a fact that I started to get multiple indicators that maybe our iron-fisted approach to the conduct of ops was beginning to alienate Iraqis," General Sanchez said, referring to military operations. "I started to get those sensings from multiple sources, all the way from the Governing Council down to average people."
The change in approach comes at an important juncture for the American-led coalition, which is striving to maintain the support of an Iraqi public that has had to struggle with erratic power supplies, high unemployment and rampant crime and which, despite the disorder, has not always been reassured by the presence of American troops.
American forces have mounted major operations, like one in mid-July that sought to break up a possible insurgent offensive. That operation involved 143 raids across Iraq. General Sanchez said last month that almost 700 loyalists of the old government and criminals were detained and that 64 of these proved to be "high-value targets."
But Iraqis have complained that during these raids too many of those rounded up by American troops were not Baath Party operatives but ordinary citizens. They say the American tactics have been too aggressive and not sensitive enough to Iraqi culture and traditions.
American commanders said they decided to revise their approach after concluding that the number of attacks against American forces had subsided somewhat and that Iraqis were providing more intelligence, a development that American officers say will enable them to take more of a "precision approach" in planning their operations to capture or kill Saddam Hussein and former ranking officials from his government.
But the new American approach also reflects a recognition that widespread raids could unintentionally be creating a reservoir of support for the insurgents or even spurring revenge attacks by ordinary citizens.
General Sanchez said: "After we declared an end to major operations we quickly realized that there was a noncompliant element out there that was very willing to conduct ops against us to kill us and therefore we had to go out there and do these big sweeps.
"Unquestionably, I think, we created in this culture some Iraqis that then had to act because of their value systems against us in terms of revenge, possibly because there were casualties on their side and also because of the impact on their dignity and respect," he said.
The general added that Iraqi leaders who supported the allies had indicated they understood the goal of the American raids, but that some had expressed concern over their effects on the Iraqi population.
Their message, he said, has been that "when you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family."
General Sanchez said the message from the Iraqis was that in doing this, you create more enemies than you capture.
In the interview, General Sanchez revealed other steps that he was taking to try to improve security. To reduce the risk to allied planes, the allies are beginning a new program to buy shoulder-fired surface-to air missiles from Iraqis. The Americans are offering $500 a missile but have yet to buy any. The missile threat has prevented the allies from reopening the Baghdad airport.
But developing a new approach that eschews large sweeps and relies more on cooperation with Iraqi tribal leaders, clerics and politicians is central to the new strategy.
The American military deployment has gone through several phases. Initially, the Americans were welcomed by many Iraqis. The biggest threat to order seemed to be looting and crime, including robberies by some of the tens of thousands of prisoners that Mr. Hussein freed last year.
But organized attacks began to increase in June. There are about 9,000 former Iraqi military officials who are barred from serving in the new Iraqi military or taking other government jobs because they were senior Baath Party officials. Nobody knows for sure how many are fighting the Americans, but the resistance is believed to number in the thousands. After the upsurge in attacks, American forces mounted a series of big raids.
In recent weeks, the average number of attacks against allied troops has gone down. One senior military aide said that the number of attacks currently averaged about a dozen a day or even a bit less - about the same number that occurred during the middle of June and half the number that allied forces faced in early July, when enemy attacks were on the rise and allied commanders were worried about keeping open the supply lines from Kuwait.
With the attacks on American forces seemingly declining, United States officials think the time is right to change their approach as they try to increase the number of Iraqi police and develop a parallel Iraqi internal security force.
Under the new approach, American forces might withdraw from towns that are quiet and leave the policing to the Iraqis. When a raid is conducted, American troops will be encouraged to carry out a "cordon and knock" procedure in which a home is surrounded and the troops seek permission to enter accompanied by an Iraqi representative, instead of breaking down the door.
When the Americans want to search mosques they will first send in Iraqis working with them. But American troops will not shrink from mounting raids in the locations of their foes that can be pinpointed.
This amounts to a type of approach used by the 101st Airborne Division in its administration of the northern city of Mosul, and by the British in their administration of the southern city of Basra. The tougher approach has generally been used in the troubled Sunni areas in central Iraq and around Baghdad.
"Instead of finding whole areas and taking them down there will be more precision," a senior allied officer said. "You will see more information operations and more dialogue with tribal leaders and clerics."
The need for change in the Baghdad area was advocated by Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the new commander of the First Armored Division, which is deployed in the Iraqi capital. He recently sent General Sanchez a memo in which he recommended that his division focus less on maintaining a constant presence in the capital and more on gathering the intelligence for planning and executing raids.
"During the initial 90 days of our mission, it was important to establish a widely recognized presence in Baghdad in order to restore civil order," General Dempsey noted in his July 30 memo. "We are now at a transition point. I define that transition point as moving from presence as a goal to precision as a goal."
General Sanchez made a similar point about operations not just in Baghdad but in all of Iraq.
"We are in fact at a critical point," General Sanchez said. "The need for us to preserve the support of the Iraqi people that are lined up behind the coalition right now is important."
To do that, he said, it is important to minimize the adverse effects of American military raids on the average Iraqi citizen.
----
Goodwill towards British melts in Basra as power cuts keep heat on
COLIN FREEMAN IN BASRA
Thu 7 Aug 2003
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=852882003
MEZHER Kherallah, Basra's new deputy governor, arrived at work in a foul temper yesterday. There had been no electricity at his home for 48 hours and in the suffocating heat of a Gulf summer night, sleep without air conditioning was impossible.
"My nerves are broken because I haven't slept properly for two days while the electric is off," he growled, rubbing a bleary eye. My wife and children are suffering too. It is just one nightmare after another."
Basra is not so much baking right now, as steaming. It is the hottest month of the year, when temperatures in the southern Iraqi port soar to 55C and beyond.
Sometimes the heat is dry, but every few days, a front of humid air from the Gulf blows into town turning it into one vast outdoor sauna.
There could not be a worse time for a power and fuel crisis. Thanks to a combination of sabotage, looting and sheer overuse, the city's aging electricity network crashed on Monday, in turn limiting the capacity of the plants that supply water and petrol. For the last three days, life here has got progressively hotter, slower and tetchier.
Outside Mr Kherallah's private office, a queue of cars for petrol snake round the government building to a garage nearly three kilometres away. "I've been queuing since 8pm last night," snarled Abdul Ruzak, 40, a taxi driver. Every car you see here has done the same - we have families to feed. Cut the ears off the British. We wish Saddam was back."
Maybe, like Mr Kherallah, it was just lack of a decent night's sleep but the town's deputy leader takes such comments seriously. But Mr Kherallah fears another month or two like this and the existing goodwill towards the British may vanish. "I am paranoid about attacks starting. We have promised people solutions to everything, and that is the only reason they have kept quiet. I am terrified they'll start to lose their tempers in this heat, with no electricity, water or petrol."
At the offices of the coalition provisional authority, the British themselves remained relaxed. The present problems were a "blip" they said, caused not by the electricity getting worse, but actually getting better.
Spokesman Steve Bird said "It is a Catch-22 situation. Recently the electricity supply has improved, but as a result people start using more appliances, and of course, the air conditioning as the weather gets hotter. That has meant the back-up power supply has been used, and on this occasion it became over-burdened. We're trying to fix it now."
Improvements are on their way, officials insist. Patrols along the electricity lines have been stepped up, to stop looters and saboteurs. Pilfering and smuggling of state-owned petrol supplies - a major problem - has been curbed by a tough crackdown that saw 30 arrests. But work on the long term modernisation of the electricity network may not start until the end of the year.
Senior CPA official Ian Pickard was blunt. Expectations were raised unrealistically high by the rhetoric that came from Washington before the war.
For some, though, the official frankness sounds like an attempt to move the goalposts.
Sharuk Latif, one Mr Kherallah's workers said "The Americans in Baghdad say it's because they're getting attacked that improvements are slow. The British aren't getting attacked here, so why can't it be faster?"
----
U.S. Considers Reducing Its Role in Iraq
Thu Aug 7
By BARRY SCHWEID,
AP Diplomatic Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030807/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq_2
WASHINGTON - The steady loss of American troops and a terror bombing at the Jordanian Embassy may prompt the Bush administration to revise the U.S. security role in Iraq, shifting some responsibility to emerging local forces.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, at a news conference, said the United States intends to use "whatever techniques are appropriate" against followers of Saddam Hussein and other anti-American fighters, some of whom have crossed into the country.
But, he said Thursday, "it may be what you want to do is to stand back a little bit more and let Iraqis who have started to create forces, protect installations."
That way, Powell said, "you don't need a coalition military organization protecting that installation."
"We have to be nimble, flexible, (make changes) as the situation changes," he said.
Two U.S. soldiers were wounded in a fierce gunbattle Thursday in central Baghdad. On Wednesday night, two American soldiers were killed in a firefight in the Al Rashid section of the capital.
The deaths brought to 55 the number of U.S. troops killed in combat since May 1, when President Bush declared major fighting over.
Outside the Jordanian Embassy on Thursday a powerful car bomb exploded, hurling vehicles in the air and killing at least 11 people, including a woman and two children, morgue officials said. More than 50 people were wounded in the blast.
Powell said he had telephoned Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher of Jordan to express his regrets over the loss of Jordanians and innocent Iraqis who happened to be on the street going about their business.
Powell said, however, "the terrorists need to know we will not be deterred."
"We intend to not stay any longer than we have to, but we will stay long enough to make sure that we allow the Iraqi people... to put in place a representative form of government," he said.
In the meantime, Powell said, more nations were contributing peacekeeping forces while Iraqi police and security units can be built up to guard facilities "and not tie up coalition forces doing that."
The death of Saddam Hussein's two sons does not, by itself, resolve the security situation, Powell said. And neither would resolving the fate of the deposed president.
"There are still individuals within Iraq, leftover Baathists, Fedeyeen, - there are some coming in from outside - who are determined to deny the Iraqis their desire for peace and a better life for a new country," he said.
----
US Says Troops Unlikely to Guard Baghdad Embassies
Thu Aug 7, 2003
By Charles Aldinger
(Reuters)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&e=4&u=/nm/20030807/ts_nm/iraq_usa_embassies_dc_1
WASHINGTON - American troops are not likely to take over protection of foreign embassies from Iraqi police in Baghdad, the United States said on Thursday after a deadly truck bombing outside the Jordanian Embassy there.
"It is far more likely that Iraqis will guard embassies of other nations in Baghdad," Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz told reporters at the Pentagon in response to questions.
"As you know, we have roughly 33,000 Iraqi police on duty in Iraq -- several thousand in Baghdad -- and that is the way to address the problem. That is internal security provided in Iraq by Iraqis," added Schwartz, director of operations for the U.S. military's Joint Staff.
He spoke at a news briefing hours after the truck bomb exploded outside the Jordanian compound guarded by Iraqi police, killing at least 11 people, wounding 65 and strewing gutted cars and body parts across the street. Five Iraqi policemen were reported to be among those killed.
Schwartz said the United States was training Iraqis to guard sites such as water and power plants previously protected by U.S. troops.
No Americans were killed in the bombing, but the 148,000 U.S. troops in Iraq face almost daily attacks.
"The notion here is to have Iraqis defend those installations that they are capable of doing," Schwartz said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, at a separate briefing, said: "Maybe what you want to do is stand back a little bit more and let Iraqis, local officials ... protect installations so that you don't need a coalition military organization protecting that installation."
Acting Defense Department spokesman Larry Di Rita told reporters that it was virtually impossible to defend against such attacks on "soft" targets except to actively seek out those who are fighting the American presence.
"You really don't defend against it. You stay on offense," Di Rita said.
"I think it is interesting that this clearly was an action targeted at innocents," Schwartz added. "And we have, obviously, the presence of terrorists in Iraq, along with the Baathists that have resisted us and foreign fighters and so on. And so the truth is that this is a complex environment."
Schwartz held out the possibility that Ansar al-Islam, which he called an al Qaeda-related group, was involved.
"I think the one organization that we have confidence that we know is in Iraq and in the Baghdad area, is Ansar al-Islam. And it is unknown whether this particular organization was associated with the events of this morning. Perhaps that will become clearer as we go down the road."
Schwartz indicated that despite the toll caused by the bombing, a large organization was not necessarily responsible.
"Ten or 20 people is more than adequate to accomplish what occurred this morning with the Jordanian embassy," he said. (Additional reporting by Will Dunham)
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Frees 330 Prisoners; Palestinians Dismiss Gesture
August 7, 2003
New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/middleeast/07MIDE.html
TARQUMIYA CHECKPOINT, West Bank, Aug. 6 - Israel released today more than 330 Palestinian prisoners who were hugged, kissed and hoisted onto the shoulders of friends and relatives who greeted them at checkpoints in the West Bank and at the crossing point into the Gaza Strip.
Israel was not required to make the releases under the Middle East peace plan known as the road map, but it said it hoped to help the sputtering peace negotiations. It had the opposite effect. Palestinian leaders - and even those freed - described it as a hollow gesture, since most of the prisoners had only a short time left to serve, or had not been charged at all. The Palestinians said they would not be satisfied until Israel freed most or all of the roughly 6,000 Palestinians who remain imprisoned. But many have been directly involved in violence against Israelis, and Israel has said that it will not release such prisoners.
"Israel should release those serving life sentences, not people like me," said Ahmed Ghnamat, who had three months left on a five-and-a-half year sentence for manufacturing explosives for Hamas, the militant Islamic group.
Surrounded by family members, Mr. Ghnamat, 24, said that he did not want a big celebration, and that he was thinking of his brother Abdel Rahman Ghnamat, who is serving a life sentence for leading a Hamas cell that killed several Israelis.
Securing the release of prisoners has been a top priority for the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel had intended today's release to bolster his standing among his people. But Palestinian officials cited their disappointment over the lack of more releases as the main reason that Mr. Abbas postponed a meeting today with his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon.
In recent weeks, violence has been at its lowest levels since the fighting began almost three years ago, though shortly after the prisoners stepped out of Israeli vehicles into freedom at the northern end of Gaza, a Palestinian fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in southern Gaza, damaging a house but causing no injuries, the Israeli military said.
During the weeks of relative calm, Israelis and Palestinians have each taken limited steps to put the peace plan into effect, but the new efforts seem to have underlined mutual frustration, not eased it. Israel continues to say that a crackdown on Palestinian terrorist groups is the most important element for moving the plan forward; the Palestinians respond that their security forces cannot yet act in the West Bank while Israeli forces have control there. But recently, American officials have indicated they want to see Mr. Abbas become stronger and that they are unlikely to press him very hard for action against groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
In the meantime, there has been no letup in the daily recriminations. Today's events drove home the point.
Here at the Tarqumiya checkpoint, in a valley outside the West Bank city of Hebron, some Palestinian prisoners fell to their knees and kissed the steaming black asphalt as they emerged from buses that delivered them from Israeli prisons.
Muhammad al-Asafra, a 38-year-old member of Islamic Jihad, was mobbed by dozens of supporters from his home village nearby.
They had filled a truck and arrived waving the black banner of his faction, which like Hamas, opposes the existence of Israel and has carried out many of the suicide bombings in Israeli cities and towns.
Mr. Asafra had served more than four years; only 40 days remained of his sentence. He was convicted of taking military training to serve Islamic Jihad.
"Israel wanted to create a big noise with this," he said.
Israel had demanded that the prisoners sign a pledge to "refrain from hostile activity" against Israel. But Mr. Asafra said it had no meaning. "We signed the paper only to satisfy Israeli public opinion," he said.
Today was the largest of several prisoner releases by Israel in the past few months, and brought the total number of those freed to almost 600. Another 100 Palestinians jailed for common crimes, like being in Israel illegally, will be freed soon, Israel says. Israel says it could let more prisoners go if peace talks progress, but emphasizes that it is not obligated to do so.
"Releasing prisoners is something that is not part of the road map," said Arnon Perlman, an Israeli government spokesman. "It is something we are doing unilaterally as a trust-building measure."
"At the same time, the Palestinians are not doing what they took upon themselves to do in the road map, which is true and continuous activity against the terrorist infrastructure," he said. Still, progress is indeed being made. Israel has pulled back troops in the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem in the West Bank, but the soldiers still ring most West Bank cities. The army has removed some checkpoints, but still maintains dozens. Troop withdrawals and the lifting of checkpoints are part of the road map.
The Palestinians have installed a prime minister in Mr. Abbas, and the Palestinian security forces have prevented some terrorist attacks against Israel, moves that are part of the political reforms and security steps set out in the peace plan. In addition, the leading Palestinian factions declared a truce June 29 that is largely holding. This step was not part of the road map.
Hisham Abdul Razeq, the Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs, said Palestinian disappointment on four issues led to the cancellation of today's meeting between the prime ministers.
In addition to the prisoner issue, Palestinians oppose the barrier Israel is building against West Bank Palestinians. They demand Israeli troop withdrawals from all Palestinian cities in the West Bank, and seek freedom of movement for the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, he said.
----
Israel pleases few with prisoner release
While hundreds of Palestinians were let go Wednesday, thousands are still in jail.
By Ilene R. Prusher
The Christian Science Monitor
August 07, 2003
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0807/p07s02-wome.html
TARQUMIYEH, WEST BANK - Their families waited for them for five hours in the beating sun, and when the freed Palestinian prisoners arrived, the men beat bongo drums and the women beat their tongues against the roofs of their mouths in joy.
But as families here welcomed more than 100 of the 339 prisoners released by Israel Wednesday, what resonated most strongly was the debate among Palestinians over how to receive the confidence-building measure aimed at trying to prepare a path back to the road map to Middle East peace.
As they waited at this crossing outside Hebron for brothers and sons and fathers to arrive, some Palestinians applauded the release as an encouraging step forward. Many others, however, dismissed it as an inadequate move that represented just another rotation in the revolving door of Palestinians going in and out of Israeli jails.
"I don't believe in peace or in the cease-fire," says Ibrahim Baradaye, an unemployed father of four with a wispy black beard, as he waited to receive one of his three brothers from an Israeli prison. "There is no peace between Muslims and nonbelievers. My brother was due to be released in 40 days anyway, and so they release him instead of the men who have been in prison for a long time. The release of prisoners is only for propaganda - it's just cosmetic."
A foot away, a man eavesdropping on Mr. Baradaye grows frustrated with his pessimism. "Why don't we accept what they offer?" snaps Bilal Ghenaidi, a Hebron shopkeeper the same age as Baradaye. Mr. Ghenaidi, a slim man with a freshly shaven face, was waiting for his younger brother, Islaam, a member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. "If this step is followed by other steps, it's a good step!"
The release of Palestinian prisoners is a goodwill gesture by the Israeli government that comes amid a broader, U.S.-backed bid to take advantage of the "hudna," Arabic for temporary cease-fire, to lure Israelis and Palestinians back to peacemaking after the violent breakdown of talks in September 2000, the start of the second intifada. The hudna is due to expire at the end of September, and some here say it will be extended only if the scope and frequency of confidence-building measures on both sides continue and the relative lull in violence holds.
Leading Palestinian officials have rejected Israel's prisoner release as insufficient both in numbers and in terms of the type of prisoners. On Monday Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dismissed the prisoner release as worthless and a "deception," telling reporters at his Ramallah compound: "They say they are going to release 400, and then they turn around and arrest 800."
A middle-aged mother with two sons in jail - one of them to be released Wednesday and the other serving five life sentences - echoed Mr. Arafat's gripe. "When they release some, they just arrest some more," says Sara Ahmed Ighnimat. "But the rain starts with just one drop."
Still, whether Wednesday's shower could spill over into greater change in the Middle East remains far from certain.
Palestinians say that Israel must release much greater numbers of the approximately 6,000 detainees in its jails. Of them, about 785 Palestinians are held in administrative detention, meaning they are held without charges or a trial, says B'Tselem, one of Israel's leading human rights organizations. Among those held in administrative detention, which B'Tselem says is illegal, 161 were to released Wednesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for his part, is taking on the risk of alienating some of his own right-wing constituents by letting Palestinian prisoners go before their sentences are served. Many Israelis who have lost family members in terrorist attacks are vehemently opposed to releasing prisoners who might go out and resume anti-Israel violence.
Lack of agreement over the scope of the prisoner withdrawal led Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to pull out of talks which had been set to be held Wednesday with Mr. Sharon. The meeting was to focus on ways to resume discussion of the road map, introduced by President Bush, which proposes to end the violence against Israel and create a Palestinian state by 2005.
All of the prisoners being released had to sign a document promising not to be involved in any further anti-Israel activities. Anyone refusing to sign would not be released, an Israeli army spokesman said. Some of the Palestinians waiting here said some of their incarcerated relatives refused to sign the document, and were therefore turned down for release.
"My brother refused to sign, and for sure, he shouldn't have," said Zeinab Khakhour, who came to receive another relative. "The resistance should continue."
Many of the Palestinians being released expressed ambivalence over their decisions to sign. As Abdel Mageed al-Amer descended from the bus, a group of Arabic television reporters circled around him. He is a spokesman for Hamas, which does not recognize Israel and has vowed to resume operations against Israel in the future. "I feel humiliated that I signed this paper," Mr. Amer says. "I'm still under occupation. For sure, we respect our signatures, but our goals are bigger than all these pledges."
Israeli officials say they cannot understand why the release of prisoners, not specifically outlined in the road map, has raised more ire than enthusiasm. "This is not part of the road map. This is a Israeli gesture and we didn't have to do this," says Daniel Seaman, the director of Israel's Government Press Office.
"We do expect the Palestinians to improve the atmosphere and the general situation. It's a shame that they have to use this moment to raise the level of disappointment, and that they're using this as another way to dampen the spirit and the excitement of moving forward."
The incremental easing of Israeli restrictions on Palestinian territory are just beginning to be felt. Ghenaidi, the Hebron shopkeeper, is willing to give it a chance. "There is a little improvement after the hudna. Instead of six checkpoints between Ramallah and Hebron, now we have three. But "if conditions are not eased further," including the release of more prisoners, "there is a fear the hudna will collapse."
----
Joy, Anger Greet Prisoner Release
Palestinians Accuse Israel of Empty PR
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25732-2003Aug6.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 6 -- The Israeli government released 335 Palestinian prisoners today, a move hailed by Israel as a goodwill gesture and assailed by Palestinians as a public relations sham.
The freed prisoners -- a small fraction of the thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli jails -- were bused to three Israeli military checkpoints on the edge of the West Bank and a crossing into the Gaza Strip this afternoon, where they were met by knots of emotional family members.
At the Beitunia military checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah, Mahmoud Dagher, 30, hugged the 6-year-old son who was less than a year old when Dagher went to prison.
"I have been in prison 51/2 years, and I was supposed to be released only in 16 days," said Dagher, who said he was imprisoned for his activities with the Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas. According to the Israeli Prison Service, Dagher originally was scheduled to be freed this November.
Dagher was dismissive about his release, however, saying his freedom was only granted because "Sharon wants to fool the public opinion." That sentiment about the motives of the Israeli prime minister was widely echoed among Palestinians today.
"This is very nominal when you release a few hundred people," said Ziad Abu Amr, a member of the Palestinian Authority cabinet, adding that many of the prisoners "were about to be released from Israeli jails anyway."
Sharon's chief spokesman, Arnon Perlman, called criticism of the prisoner release "a bizarre situation -- we're doing something out of good will."
"We're taking a unilateral step as a trust-building measure because of our commitment to try and move things forward," Perlman said in an interview.
The two sides' differences reflected what has become a battle of recriminations over the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map." Although the release of Palestinian prisoners is not formally part of the road map, it has become one of the most contentious of several issues dividing Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, has sought the release of prisoners as a confidence-building measure. Palestinian militant groups have demanded a wholesale handover of prisoners in return for the three-month cease-fire they declared on June 29.
Palestinian officials say that the vast majority of more than 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons are being held for political reasons and that only 330 have been convicted of violent crimes. But Israeli officials say the overwhelming number of jailed Palestinians have been linked to violence and are either awaiting trial or are being held as "administrative detainees" because evidence of their guilt cannot be made public in court.
However, in what officials have portrayed as a concession to the Palestinian Authority, Israel has announced planned prisoner releases several times, starting more than a month ago. Sharon's cabinet voted two weeks ago to release 540 prisoners, and today Palestinian officials criticized Israelis for releasing only 335.
Palestinian officials also complained that many of those freed were common criminals or had just a few days or weeks left in their sentences.
"This is a public relations move that's going to anger Palestinians," said Saeb Erekat, a former top Palestinian negotiator.
"I don't see this as a goodwill gesture," said Nisham Nubani, 34, who said he had spent nine months in prison under administrative detention. "A goodwill gesture would have been the releasing of maybe 2,000 prisoners at least. . . . They never charged me. Like all administrative detainees, they say that the reason of detention is a threat to the security of the area."
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported today that the Israeli military had arrested 320 Palestinians since the cease-fire among Palestinian militant groups was announced -- almost the same number as the Israeli government released today.
In the West Bank city of Jericho, meanwhile, Israeli forces conducted a raid for the first time in months. Soldiers, backed by armored vehicles and helicopters, shut down neighborhoods and imposed curfews for 41/2 hours this morning, said Erekat, who lives in Jericho. He said nine Palestinians were arrested.
An Israeli military spokesman had no comment on the reported operation.
Staff researcher Samuel Sockol in Beitunia contributed to this report.
-------- mideast
Kurdish rebel leader warns Turkey of war if talks fail
Thursday August 07, 2003
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2003-daily/07-08-2003/world/w9.htm
DIYARBAKIR: Jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has warned Turkey of renewed warfare if it sticks by its refusal to negotiate to end nearly two decades of conflict, a pro-Kurdish newspaper reported on Wednesday.
In remarks carried by the Internet edition of the 'Ozgur Politika' daily, Ocalan said his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) would wait until September 1 to see whether Turkey was ready to sit down and talk with rebels.
"If (Turkey) does not change its attitude, they (PKK rebels) will take care of themselves. Roads will be blocked, fighting will break out, the tourism industry will collapse," he said.
The PKK took up arms against the Ankara government in 1984 for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey's southeast, a campaign that has left more than 36,000 people dead.
Following the capture of Ocalan in 1999, the rebels ended the armed campaign and withdrew to mountainous northern Iraq to seek a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Ocalan was originally sentenced to death by a Turkish military court but the sentence was commuted to life in prison in October last year after Turkey abolished capital punishment. He is currently the only inmate of a remote island jail.
His threat came as two PKK rebels turned themselves in to Turkish authorities to benefit from an amnesty in return for laying down their arms.
The rebels, who were in hiding in northern Iraq, surrendered at the Habur border gate with Iraq, a local official, told the Anatolia news agency, just hours after the amnesty law came into force. The law offers outright pardons and sentence reductions to PKK militants, but strictly excludes the group's senior leaders and commanders.
Turkey is hoping that the amnesty will attract many of the 5,000 PKK rebels believed to have found refuge in northern Iraq.
However, Ocalan told Ozgur Politika that Turkey was forcing the PKK into war by excluding its leadership from the amnesty. "They are leaving 100 people out of an odd law of provocation. Everyone should know that there are at least 500 people are loyal to each leader," he said.
"They (Turkish officials) are saying 'They (PKK rebels) cannot stay in Iraq, Iran'. This amounts to calling them back to Turkey to fight," Ocalan said. "If war starts, hundreds will die in the first stage. Then tens of thousands will die."
The 'Ozgur Politika' daily did not specify how it contacted Ocalan, but the rebel leader occasionally talks to the press through his lawyers.
Meanwhile, Turkish security officers said that two Kurdish guerrillas had surrendered to Turkish authorities, the first to do so under a partial amnesty offered to thousands of rebels based over the border in Iraq.
The United States has backed the controversial law, which went into effect on Wednesday, hoping it will help end NATO partner Turkey's standoff with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters based in the mountains of northern Iraq.
----
'We Have Nothing to Hide'
Mohammed Alkhereiji,
Arab News Staff
7 August 2003
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=29904&d=7&m=8&y=2003
JEDDAH - "We have nothing to hide," proclaimed Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal here yesterday in a scathing attack on the fact that 28 pages of a congressional report on supposed links between Saudi Arabia and the Sept. 11 hijackers remain classified.
Saudi Arabia had addressed all accusations levied against it, with facts and figures, but parts of the US Congress seemed to have "deaf ears" when it comes to Saudi Arabia's efforts, he said.
"How can Saudi Arabia be the main country fighting terrorism now and exchanging information that saved the lives of people in the United States and at the same time assist terrorism? How is that possible?" the prince asked during a press conference here.
"The Kingdom will not fall prey to false accusations. These accusations are very dangerous, and there is no way that we will accept them or be silent on the matter.
"Where are the facts, where is the evidence? If they want to hide the truth, make false accusations and write unpublished documents here and there, we cannot deal with that," he said.
"The truth needs to be told and these accusations need to be addressed for the sake of finding the truth," the prince insisted.
The Saudi government, some members of Congress and at least two presidential candidates have sought declassification of the section, but President George W. Bush has refused.
"Good relations between sovereign nations will always require efforts from both sides," Prince Saud said.
When asked about stories of mistreatment of Saudis in the United States because of the new security measures of the Patriot Act, the prince said: "If the United States implemented security measures that it believes are to its benefit, then that is its privilege."
However, he said Saudi Arabia would not allow any government body to harm its people. He added the Patriot Act had not been an unqualified success, either in terms of increasing homeland security in the US or in helping relations between the two countries.
"The question needs to be addressed: Have these measures improved safety or have they just dampened US-Saudi relations?"
Regarding the volatile situation in Iraq, the prince voiced the Kingdom's total support for Iraq, saying Baghdad, whether under US occupation or not, "remains at the heart of the Arab world."
The situation in Iraq does not depend on Arab efforts alone, said Prince Saud and added that "individual actions to deal with this issue are not in the interest of Iraq".
"The government of Saudi Arabia is always keen to establish a unified Arab position to be able to respond to the big questions about what Iraq may need," he added.
Prince Saud also announced that Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, will soon embark on a tour of several Arab countries and Russia for talks on Iraq and Middle East peace.
The tour will take the crown prince to Syria, Egypt and Morocco to discuss issues related to Iraq and the implementation of the Middle East peace road map, Prince Saud said.
The Arab trip will be followed by an already scheduled visit to Moscow where he will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on bilateral relations, terrorism, and energy.
----
Turkey Attempts to Limit Role of Military
President Approves Plan Aimed at Improving Chances for EU Membership
Associated Press
Thursday, August 7, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25733-2003Aug6.html
ANKARA, Turkey, Aug. 6 -- President Ahmet Necdet Sezer approved reforms today aimed at curtailing the military's powerful influence in politics, hoping to boost the chances that this largely Muslim country will join the European Union.
The reforms, passed last week by parliament, reduce the military's hold over the National Security Council, a key body of military and political leaders that is often used by generals to impose their will on the government.
The measures stress that the council will be strictly an advisory body, with no executive powers. They limit the number of times the council meets, permit appointment of a civilian to head the council's secretariat and allow greater parliamentary scrutiny of military expenses.
The 15-nation European Union has been pressing Turkey to curb the military's influence and make other fundamental changes as conditions for joining the bloc. The parliament passed the reforms in the hopes of starting negotiations for EU membership by the end of next year.
Turkey's military has staged three coups -- each widely welcomed by the public -- in the past four decades. In 1997, the military, whose leadership is strictly secular, pressured an Islamic government out of power for trying to raise the profile of Islam.
The military has pledged its support for EU membership, but many in the top brass suspect that the country's current government isn't pursuing EU membership so much as an Islamic agenda. Over the weekend, top generals criticized Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for objecting to the sacking of 18 officers.
Most were accused of having ties with radical Islamic groups.
-------- russia / chechnya
Female Suicide Bombers Unnerve Russians
August 7, 2003
The New York Times
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/europe/07CHEC.html
KURCHALOI, Russia, Aug. 3 - Zulikhan Yelikhadzhiyeva lived much of her short life surrounded by the horrors of the two wars in Chechnya, but she suffered comparatively little.
She lived in a cloistered brick house in this small Chechen village, which has largely escaped war's worst ravages. She studied at the village's medical vocational school and interned at its local clinic.
Little seems to explain why a month ago, accompanied by another woman, she approached the entrance to a music festival in Moscow and blew herself up. The blast killed only her, but the other woman detonated her own suicide bomb moments later, killing at least 16 people. Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva was 20.
In the last four months, seven suicide attacks, all but one of them carried out by women, have spread fear across Russia, killing 165 people in all and setting in motion a new dynamic in the four-year-old war against Chechen secessionists.
Russian news media, echoing officials, have dubbed the perpetrators "black widows," women prepared to kill and to die to avenge the deaths of fathers, husbands, brothers and sons at the hands of Russian troops in the current war or the one in the 1990's.
But Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva - identified, officials said, by a passport found at the scene - does not fit such a description. Here in Chechnya, truth is elusive and what, precisely, drives these women, and how they are recruited, seem murky. Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva had no dead father, husband, brother or son to motivate her.
The suicide attacks by women have particularly unnerved the Russian authorities, in part because Chechen women had been able to move more freely than Chechen men, who are routinely harassed by Russia's police and security services.
The only recent attack not carried out by a woman was the truck bombing of a military hospital in Mozdok on Friday, which left 50 dead at last count.
In Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's case, neither the authorities nor those who knew her could say exactly what compelled her to blow herself up. In February she disappeared in circumstances that remain mysterious.
Her grandmother, Zuda Khasukhanova, said she had been kidnapped on the orders of her half-brother. The authorities said she joined one of Chechnya's rebel groups.
She had not married. According to her grandmother and a neighbor who knew her all her life, she displayed little interest in the radical Islamic ideology that has increasingly characterized Chechnya's separatist fighters. She planned to continue studying medicine.
"We had such a good family," Ms. Khasukhanova said in an interview, punctuated with tears, in the house where she had lived with her granddaughter. "She was like an angel."
Imran Yezhiyev, the head of the Society of Chechen-Russian Friendship, an advocacy group in the region of Ingushetia, on Chechnya's western boundary, said in a telephone interview that the suicide attacks were an inevitable response to the "most crude, the most terrible" crimes Russian forces had committed against Chechen civilians during the war.
"They are desperate because they see no prospect of this horrible war ending," he said of the suicide bombers.
At the same time, though, he said he and other elders had denounced the tactic as anathema to Chechen traditions of honor.
Most Chechens, in fact, have not embraced a cult of martyrdom, as have, for example, Palestinian suicide bombers in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In Kurchaloi there are no posters or graffiti celebrating Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's suicide. Those interviewed here in Chechnya professed shock and horror.
"How can a person who kills somebody get to heaven?" said her grandmother, who is 63. "It's horrible what's going on in Chechnya right now."
Russian officials, who bristle at any suggestion that abuses by Russian forces could have inspired any of the suicide attacks, have blamed the influence of Islamic fundamentalists, including foreign groups associated with international terrorism.
Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, President Vladimir V. Putin's senior adviser on Chechnya, suggested in an interview published in the weekly newspaper Sobesednik last month that Islamic extremists had co-opted the "black widows" against their will to become suicide bombers.
"Chechens are turning these young girls into zombies using psychotropic drugs," Mr. Yastrzhembsky said. "I have heard that they rape them and record the rapes on video. After that, such Chechen girls have no chance at all of resuming a normal life in Chechnya. They have only one option: to blow themselves up with a bomb full of nails and ball bearings."
Mr. Yastrzhembsky and other officials have provided scant evidence of links to international terrorism. They seem to know little about how the suicide attacks have been planned, organized and carried out.
According to some reports, there may be as many 36 "black widows." Last month Russia's deputy prosecutor general, Sergei N. Fridinsky, said the suicide bombers were being trained inside and outside Chechnya, but he did not elaborate.
The Russian authorities have now expanded their arbitrary security checks to woman dressed in scarves or other clothing characteristic of Chechnya's Muslim majority, prompting the country's largest Muslim organization to warn of "religious and racial apartheid."
Prosecutors' greatest lead came with the arrest of Zarema Muzhikhoyeva, a 22-year-old Chechen who was arrested after trying unsuccessfully to detonate a bomb at a cafe on Tverskaya on the night of July 9.
Her husband is reported to have died, but in a car accident, not in the struggle against Russian forces. She also reportedly has an infant daughter.
The newspaper Kommersant, citing unidentified investigators, reported last month that Ms. Muzhikhoyeva arrived in Moscow from Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia, a week before the attempted bombing.
She was met by a Chechen woman - named Lyuba and dubbed Black Fatima in news reports, after a common Chechen name - who provided her with the explosives and plied her with orange juice that made her disoriented, suggesting that she had been drugged, the newspaper said.
Officials said her arrest led to the discovery of a cache of suicide bombs in a small village on Moscow's outskirts on July 24, but they have so far announced no arrests of accomplices. A spokesman for the prosecutor general's office declined to discuss the investigation into her case or that of Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva.
Kurchaloi is a village of 10,000 about 18 miles east of Chechnya's capital, Grozny. The roads into it are blocked by bleak checkpoints manned by Russian and Chechen soldiers. Its streets are gutted and dusty, but the village has not been the center of the fierce fighting that has reduced cities like Grozny to apocalyptic ruins.
Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva lived with her father, Suleiman, her mother and a younger sister and younger brother, said her grandmother, Ms. Khasukhanova. None, she said, were involved in Chechnya's separatist conflicts.
Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's father, she said, lived on a disability pension and had a 21-year-old son, Danilkhan, from a first marriage that ended in divorce soon after he was born.
Their relationship was estranged, and the son drifted into the fundamentalist branch of Islam known as Wahhabism, which has made inroads into Chechnya from Saudi Arabia.
The grandmother said Russian forces entered the village last November to arrest a cell of what she called Arab fighters who were living in two houses on the same street. The houses were destroyed.
She said Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's father had been detained for questioning for 24 hours, beaten by interrogators and then released.
Afterward he fled with his wife and youngest son, living in a refugee camp in Ingushetia, though he returned on occasion. Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva remained, with her younger sister, Iman.
Nothing is known about what happened to Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva after she disappeared in February. Ms. Khasukhanova explained that she had been abducted on the orders of her half-brother, Danilkhan, and driven away in a white car with a man and two other women.
A spokesman for Chechnya's interior ministry, Ruslan Atsayev, said in a telephone interview that the authorities had been informed of her disappearance but concluded that she had left voluntarily.
He added that Danilkhan was known as a separatist guerrilla who went by the nickname the Afghan and that Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva's family had been too intimidated by him to file an official report on her disappearance.
Mr. Atsayev said there were reports that Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva had traveled at some point, possibly with Danilkhan, to the republic of Georgia, which borders Chechnya on the south. Other officials have said it was more likely that she went to Moscow through Ingushetia.
Kheda, a neighbor who would speak on the condition she only be identified by her first name, because she feared retaliation, said it was inconceivable that Ms. Yelikhadzhiyeva had adopted extremist ideas.
"She studied," Kheda said. "She was a cultured girl, a modern girl. She could not have had anything like this in her mind."
-------- us
Pentagon Office Home to Neo-Con Network
by Jim Lobe
Thursday, August 7, 2003
by the Inter Press Service
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0807-02.htm
WASHINGTON - An ad hoc office under U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith appears to have acted as the key base for an informal network of mostly neo-conservative political appointees that circumvented normal inter-agency channels to lead the push for war against Iraq.
The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which worked alongside the Near East and South Asia (NESA) bureau in Feith's domain, was originally created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to review raw information collected by the official U.S. intelligence agencies for connections between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Retired intelligence officials from the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have long charged that the two offices exaggerated and manipulated intelligence about Iraq before passing it along to the White House.
But key personnel who worked in both NESA and OSP were part of a broader network of neo-conservative ideologues and activists who worked with other Bush political appointees scattered around the national-security bureaucracy to move the country to war, according to retired Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski, who was assigned to NESA from May 2002 through February 2003.
The heads of NESA and OSP were Deputy Undersecretary William Luti and Abram Shulsky, respectively.
Other appointees who worked with them in both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud 'Jerusalem Post'; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.
Along with Feith, all of the political appointees have in common a close identification with the views of the right-wing Likud Party in Israel.
Feith, whose law partner is a spokesman for the settlement movement in Israel, has long been a fierce opponent of the Oslo peace process, while WINEP has acted as the think tank for the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which generally follows a Likud line.
Also like Feith, several of the appointees were protégés of Richard Perle, an AEI fellow who doubles as chairman until last April of Rumsfeld's unpaid Defense Policy Board (DPB), whose members were appointed by Feith, also had an office in the Pentagon one floor below the NESA offices.
Similarly, Luti, a retired naval officer, was a protégé of another DPB board member also based at AEI, former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich. Luti in turn hired Ret Col William Bruner, a former Gingrich staffer, and Chris Straub, a retired lieutenant colonel, anti-abortion activist, and former staffer on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Also working for Luti was another naval officer, Yousef Aboul-Enein, whose main job was to pore over Arabic-language newspapers and CIA transcripts of radio broadcasts to find evidence of ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein that may have been overlooked by the intelligence agencies, and a DIA officer named John Trigilio.
Through Feith, both offices worked closely with Perle, Gingrich, and two other DPB members and major war boosters -- former CIA director James Woolsey and Kenneth Adelman -- in ensuring that the ''intelligence'' they developed reached a wide public audience outside the bureaucracy.
They also debriefed ''defectors'' handled by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an opposition umbrella group headed by Ahmed Chalabi, a long-time friend of Perle, whom the intelligence agencies generally wrote off as an unreliable self-promoter.
Karen Kwiatkowski:
''It looked like Cheney's office was pulling the strings''. Karen Kwiatkowski [ksusiek@shentel.net] is a recently retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon.
''They would draw up 'talking points' they would use and distribute to their friends'', said Kwiatkowski. ''But the talking points would be changed continually, not because of new intel (intelligence), but because the press was poking holes in what was in the memos''.
The offices fed information directly and indirectly to sympathetic media outlets, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned 'Weekly Standard' and FoxNews Network, as well as the editorial pages of the 'Wall Street Journal' and syndicated columnists, such as Charles Krauthammer.
In inter-agency discussions, Feith and the two offices communicated almost exclusively with like-minded allies in other agencies, rather than with their official counterparts, including even the DIA in the Pentagon, according to Kwiatkowski.
Rather than working with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, its Near Eastern Affairs bureau, or even its Iraq desk, for example, they preferred to work through Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (and former AEI executive vice president) John Bolton; Michael Wurmser (another Perle protégé at AEI who staffed the predecessor to OSP); and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of the Vice President Dick Cheney.
At the National Security Council (NSC), they communicated mainly with Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, until Elliott Abrams, a dyed-in-the-wool neo-con with close ties to Feith and Perle, was appointed last December as the NSC's top Middle East aide.
''They worked really hard for Abrams; he was a necessary link'', Kwiatkowski told IPS Wednesday. ''The day he got (the appointment), they were whooping and hollering, 'We got him in, we got him in'''.
They rarely communicated directly with the CIA, leaving that to political heavyweights, including Gingrich, who is reported to have made several trips to the CIA headquarters, and, more importantly, I Lewis ''Scooter'' Lilly, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser.
According to recent published reports, CIA analysts felt these visits were designed to put pressure on them to tailor their analyses more to the liking of administration hawks.
In some cases, NESA and OSP even prepared memos specifically for Cheney and Libby, something unheard of in previous administration because the lines of authority in the Vice President's office and the Pentagon are entirely separate. ''Luti sometimes would say, 'I've got to do this for Scooter' '', said Kwiatkowski. ''It looked like Cheney's office was pulling the strings''.
Kwiatkowski said she could not confirm published reports that OSP worked with a similar ad hoc group in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office.
But she recounts one incident in which she helped escort a group of half a dozen Israelis, including several generals, from the first floor reception area to Feith's office. ''We just followed them, because they knew exactly where they were going and moving fast''.
When the group arrived, she noted the book which all visitors are required to sign under special regulations that took effect after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks. ''I asked his secretary, 'Do you want these guys to sign in'? She said, 'No, these guys don't have to sign in' ''. It occurred to her, she said, that the office may have deliberately not wanted to maintain a record of the meeting.
She added that OSP and MESA personnel were already discussing the possibility of ''going after Iran'' after the war in Iraq last January and that articles by Michael Ledeen, another AEI fellow and Perle associate who has been calling for the U.S. to work for ''regime change'' in Tehran since late 2001, were given much attention in the two offices.
Ledeen and Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, recently created the Coalition for Democracy in Iran (CDI) to lobby for a more aggressive policy there. Their move coincided with suggestions by Sharon that Washington adopt a more confrontational policy vis-a-vis Teheran.
Iran recently said it was prepared to turn over five senior al-Qaeda figures, including the son of Osama bin Laden, who are currently in its custody if Washington permanently shuts down an Iraqi-based Iranian rebel group that is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.
Pentagon officials, particularly Feith's office, have reportedly opposed the deal, which had been favored by the State Department, because of the possibility that the group, the Mujahadeen Khalq, might be useful in putting pressure on Tehran.
-------- propaganda wars
U.S. Clamps Secrecy on Warnings Before 9/11
Newsday August 7, 2003
Newsday
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpcoc073404676aug07,0,4849578.column
It's not just the Saudi secret that's being kept.
The recent report of the joint congressional committee that probed intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reveals what the Bush administration doesn't want Americans to know about the American government.
You would not know this from media accounts about this report. They have dwelled on what the Bush administration doesn't want us to know about the Saudi government.
This is the famous 28-page chapter, a series of blank lines across page after page, that the president refuses to declassify despite the pleadings of the bipartisan group of lawmakers and the Saudi government itself.
The dustup over Saudi secrets is exquisitely convenient. It obscures George W. Bush's relentless hold on U.S. secrets and on information he maintains should be secret, though it has not necessarily been before now.
The report's appendix hints at what these secrets are, and why they are kept. "Access Limitations Encountered by the Joint Inquiry," the section is titled.
The White House refused to provide contents of the president's daily brief. This would clear up questions about how much specific information President Bush received about an impending attack during the spring and summer of 2001 - a period in which the intelligence community was reporting with alarm that a "spectacular" attack against the United States involving "mass casualties" was in the works.
"Ultimately, this bar was extended to the point where CIA personnel were not allowed to be interviewed regarding the simple process by which the (brief) is prepared," the panel said.
The committee managed, "inadvertently," it says, to get some contents of a key briefing Bush received in August 2001. It included "FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks; as well as information acquired in May 2001 that indicated a group of Bin Ladin (sic) supporters was planning attacks in the United States with explosives." In an extraordinary footnote, the panel cites public statements by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that characterized the August briefing as general and having provided historical perspective on Osama bin Laden's methods of terror.
The lawmakers, though, were barred from interviewing Rice. They sought to "obtain a better understanding of the development of counterterrorism policy in the Bush administration before September 11, 2001." The panel was forced to submit written questions to a deputy.
Lawmakers also were barred from getting information on an intelligence reform commission chaired by former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft. The Scowcroft commission's findings already had been widely reported in the press.
The administration blocked the congressional investigators from obtaining information showing how intelligence agency funding requests were handled by the White House budget office, dating back to the Reagan administration. The lawmakers were kept from interviewing an FBI informant who had contact with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were living in San Diego.
Not once, but twice, the panel was forced to tangle in court with the Justice Department over information about its handling of Zacarias Moussaoui.
Moussaoui was detained nearly a month before the attack and now is charged as the "20th hijacker." The Justice Department argued, to no avail, that Congress is covered by a local rule in Virginia, where the Moussaoui case is being heard, that bars prosecutors and defense lawyers from making out-of-court statements. The rule contains explicit language stating that it doesn't cover "hearings or the lawful issuance of reports" by legislative or investigative bodies.
The inquiry's report devotes 15 pages to describing a pattern of Bush administration denials and delaying tactics that prevented a fuller account of national failure before the attack. Last month the independent 9/11 commission still probing the attack issued a similar compendium of complaint.
Worry, if you will, about those 28 pages involving the Saudi sheiks. But a deeper, darker problem is our own government's refusal to fill in the blanks about itself.
Email: cocco@newsday.com
-------- war crimes
Largest-ever mass grave may be discovered in eastern Bosnia
Thursday August 07, 2003
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2003-daily/07-08-2003/world/w6.htm
SARAJEVO: Forensic experts have found several hundred skeletons after 10 days of digging up a mass grave in eastern Bosnia that could be the largest burial site from the Bosnian war, an official said on Wednesday.
"According to the mass grave's depth we are sure that a few hundred skeletons are buried there," Murat Hurtic, a member of the Bosnian Muslim commission for missing people, said.
Since July 28 the experts have been at work unearthing a four-by-40 meter large and three-metre deep block of human remains located in the mountainous countryside near the eastern town of Zvornik, close to the border with Serbia.
"We have started removing skeletons this morning," Hurtic said at the site thought to contain around 500 bodies of civilians from Zvornik, as well as victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst post-World War II atrocity.
Twenty-one complete skeletons and ten detached parts had been exhumed yesterday, he said adding that the work in the area known as Crni Vrh, or Black Peak, some 80 kilometres northeast of Sarajevo, are expected to last up to two months.
Preliminary examination of the skeletons at the top of the grave there are at least five women and three children under 14, Hurtic said, adding that some of the skulls had bullet holes.
Experts found some personal documents of the victims showing that they were Muslim civilians from Zvornik executed when Serb forces captured the town at the outbreak of 1992-95 war.
The town's 1,500 residents are still missing following the Serbs' notorious campaign of ethnic cleansing during the war that claimed over 200,000 lives. Some 350 bodies have been found in mass graves in the Zvornik region.
"We still do not know if we would find Srebrenica victims as we dig deeper," he added.
Some 7,000 Muslim men and boys are believed to have been summarily executed after Serb forces took over the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.
The Zvornik site is a so-called "secondary" grave where Bosnian Serbs brought bodies from other sites in order to cover up their crimes.
It contains skeletons that had been crushed by bulldozers, which makes identification and even determining the exact number of victims very difficult. DNA analysis would be the only tool to do such a job.
The exhumation is expected to reveal the fate of at least some of the more than 17,000 people still missing in the former Yugoslav republic, nearly eight years after the conclusion of the war, thought to have left about 200,000 people dead.
Experts from the commission have so far exhumed the remains of more than 17,000 bodies from more than 300 mass graves in Bosnia.
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Ratko Mladic, indicted for genocide and war crimes by the Hague-based UN tribunal, are still at large.
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is on trial at The Hague on more than 60 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1990s wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. For the war in Bosnia he faces a separate charge of genocide.
----
We need rules for war
We can't end war, but we can eliminate some of its cruelty and excess
ROBERT S. MCNAMARA
Los Angeles Times
Thu, Aug. 07, 2003
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/6476345.htm
On the night of March 9, 1945, when the lead crews of the 21st Bomber Command returned from the first firebombing mission over Tokyo, Gen. Curtis LeMay was waiting for them in his headquarters on Guam. I was in Guam on temporary duty from Air Force headquarters in Washington, and LeMay had asked me to join him for the after-mission reports that evening.
LeMay was as tough as his reputation. In many ways, he appeared to be brutal, but he was also the ablest commander of any I met during my three years of service with the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II.
That night, he'd sent out 334 B-29 bombers, seeking to inflict, as he put it, the maximum target destruction for the minimum loss of American lives. World War II was entering its final months, and the United States was beginning the last, devastating push for an unconditional Japanese surrender.
On that one night alone, LeMay's bombers burned to death 83,793 Japanese civilians and injured 40,918 more. The planes dropped firebombs and flew lower than they had in the past and therefore were more accurate and more destructive.
They leveled a large part of Tokyo. It was a wooden city and burned like a match when it was firebombed.
That night's raid was only the first of 67. Night after night -- 66 more times -- crews were sent out over the skies of Japan. Over a period of months American bombs inflicted extraordinary damage on a host of Japanese cities -- 900,000 killed, 1.3 million injured, more than half the population displaced.
LeMay was convinced that it was the right thing to do, and he told his superiors (from whom he had not asked for authority to conduct the March 9 raid), "If you want me to burn the rest of Japan, I can do that."
LeMay's position on war was clear: If you're going to fight, you should fight to win.
In the years afterward, he was quoted as saying, "If you're going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force." He also said: "All war is immoral, and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier."
Today, looking back almost 60 years later -- and after serving as secretary of defense for seven years during one of the hottest periods of the Cold War, including the Cuban missile crisis -- I have to say that I disagree.
War may or may not be immoral, but it should be fought within a clearly defined set of rules.
One other thing LeMay said, and I heard him say it myself: "If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals."
On that last point, I think he was right. We would have been. But what makes one's conduct immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
The "just war" theory, first expounded by the great Catholic thinkers (I am a Protestant), argues that the application of military power should be proportional to the cause to which you're applying it. A prosecutor would have argued that burning to death 83,000 civilians in a single night and following up with 66 additional raids was not proportional to our war aims.
War will not be eliminated in the foreseeable future, if ever. But we can -- and we must -- eliminate some of the violence and cruelty and excess that go along with it.
That's why the United States needs to participate in the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, which was recently established in The Hague.
President Clinton signed that treaty on New Year's Eve 2000, just before leaving office, but in May 2002 President Bush announced that the United States did not intend to become a party to the treaty.
The Bush administration believes that the court could become a vehicle for frivolous or unfair prosecutions of American military personnel. Although that is a cause for concern, I believe we should join the court immediately while we continue to negotiate further protection against such cases.
If LeMay were alive, he would tell me I was out of my mind. He'd say the proportionality rule is ridiculous. He'd say that if you don't kill enough of the enemy, it just means more of your own troops will die.
But I believe that the human race desperately needs an agreed-upon system of jurisprudence that tells us what conduct by political and military leaders is right and what is wrong, both in conflict within nations and in conflict across national borders.
We need a clear code, internationally accepted, so that not only our Congress and president know, but so that all our military and civilian personnel know as well what is legal in conflict and what is illegal. And we need a court that can bring wrongdoers to trial for their crimes.
Is it legal to incinerate 83,000 people in a single night to achieve your war aims? Was Hiroshima legal? Was the use of Agent Orange -- which occurred while I was secretary of defense -- a violation of international law?
These questions are critical.
Our country needs to be involved, along with the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, in the search for answers.
Robert S. McNamara was secretary of defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
--------
Masters of deceit
Convicted felons responsible for thousands of deaths are calling the shots at the White House
Isabel Hilton
Thursday August 7, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4728128,00.html
The announcement that Admiral John Poindexter's latest brainwave - to encourage betting on the likelihood of a terrorist attack - had been terminated was characteristically bland. It began: "The Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced today that DARPA's participation in the Futures Markets Applied to Prediction (FutureMAP) program has been withdrawn"
The language does not betray the repugnant nature of the project, but then Poindexter is expert at disguising repugnant projects in bland language. He came to prominence in the Reagan administration, where the word "freedom" was used to justify renewed support for Latin American military dictatorships guilty of some of the most egregious human rights abuses on the planet. President Jimmy Carter had frozen them out, but Ronald Reagan's election meant a renewed round of invitations to Pentagon cocktail parties for Latin American torturers.
The tiny, impoverished countries of central America were, to the Reagan White House, the most pressing threat to the United States, through their impertinent insistence on trying to change their internal political arrangements, first through the ballot box and later through resort to arms. But in those days, even a president was not free to do exactly what he wanted. The US constitution gave the right to declare war to Congress, and Congress was cramping the Reagan administration's style in central America.
In El Salvador, there was a leftwing insurgency that needed to be repressed, but there were congressional restrictions on the numbers of US military personnel the president could send. Old friendships, though, are worth a lot. The Argentine generals were happy to lend some spare killers to help out in El Salvador. (Washington was so grateful that the generals thought it would not object to their invading the Falkland Islands - but that's another story.)
In Honduras a local band of killers was doing a good job under the protection of John Negroponte, then US ambassador in Tegucigalpa, now US ambassador to the United Nations. In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas had overthrown the US-backed Somosa dictatorship and had gone on to consolidate their power by winning an election. The problem was that Congress had voted the Boland amendment, which banned the administration from funding their favourite Nicaraguan terrorists, the Contras, who had been engaged to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.
Poindexter, by then national security adviser, proved his worth with a breathtakingly simple scheme. The administration would sell arms to Iran and divert the proceeds to the Contras. Since both ends of the operation were highly illegal - Iran was also under a US arms embargo - it had to be secret.
It worked for a while. The euphemistically named Office of Public Diplomacy planted articles in the US press depicting the Contras as democrats and freedom fighters and put the frighteners on any one who tried to report otherwise. But still journalists reported on the affair. By late 1986, it had begun to leak.
In September 1986, President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica - a small central American country noted for its decision to abolish its army - found that the US was using his country as a supply base for the secret Contra operations. When he decided to call a press conference, Oliver North, a marine working for Poindexter, swung into action. As he reported to Poindexter in an email they later tried to destroy, North called President Arias to "tell him that if the press conference were held, Arias [one line deleted] wd never see a nickel of the $80m that McPhearson had promised him earlier on Friday". Oliver Tambs, another conspirator, "then called Arias and confirmed what I had said and suggested that Arias talk to Elliott (Abrams) for further confirmation. Arias then got the same word from Elliott. [one line deleted ] At 0300 Arias called back to advise that there wd be no press conference and no team of reporters sent to the airfield."
But just a month later the Nicaraguans shot down a CIA supply plane. A month after that, a Lebanese newspaper reported Reagan's arms deals with Iran. A frenzy of shredding and the destruction of emails broke out, and it took a congressional investigation - during which Poindexter, Elliott Abrams, Caspar Weinberger, Colin Powell (now secretary of state) and Richard Armitage (now deputy secretary of state) lied - and a specially appointed independent counsel to get the full story. By then, though, as the independent counsel reported, the administration's web of deceit had achieved its objectives - to protect Reagan, vice-president George Bush and the rest from the consequences of their conspiracy. As the independent counsel put it, Poindexter and North were made "the scapegoats whose sacrifice would protect the Reagan administration in its final two years".
Poindexter, North and two others were indicted on 23 counts of conspiracy to defraud the US and Poindexter was convicted on five felony counts of conspiracy, false statements, destruction and removal of records and obstruction of Congress. His conviction was reversed on the technicality that he had given immunised testimony to Congress.
Elliott Abrams later pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress. George Bush senior pardoned him; and Bush junior appointed him director of the National Security Council's office for democracy, human rights and international operations and then to his current job as director of Middle East affairs in the White House. The wars these men promoted had left 75,000 dead in El Salvador and 30,000-40,000 dead in Nicaragua, not to mention many thousands dead in Guatemala and Honduras.
Poindexter, having fallen on his sword to save Reagan and Bush, moved into the private sector to pursue his passion for electronic surveillance. In the 1980s, Poindexter had pioneered electronic sur veillance in the US through a 1984 initiative known as National Security Decision Directive 145. This gave intelligence agencies the right to trawl computer databases for "sensitive but unclassified information", a power Poindexter later expanded to give the military responsibility for all computer security for both the federal government and private industry.
It would be wrong to argue that convicted felons should not get a second chance. But this usually requires payment of a debt to society and even remorse, something Poindexter has never shown. Under this President Bush, Poindexter expanded the surveillance of US citizens to unprecedented levels, designing programmes that would not only track trillions of emails, text messages and phone calls but even send agents into public libraries to compile information on what Americans were reading.
Back in Argentina, though, where the festering sore of crimes that were never cleansed through judicial procedures has haunted politics for decades, the new president, in a bold and surprising move, has removed legal obstacles to the extradition of more than 40 military officers wanted for torture, kidnapping and murder of various foreign citizens in the Dirty War. Lies and deceit, as they have learned in Buenos Aires, are enemies of freedom and democracy and generate more lies and deceit. President Nestor Kirchner's actions may yet put an end to a culture of past impunity that has poisoned the politics of the present. In Washington, under this administration, the crimes of the past have been the passport to power; the methods, far from being discarded, have merely been refined.
isabel.hilton@guardian.co.uk
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Ashcroft Orders Tally Of Lighter Sentences
Critics Say He Wants 'Blacklist' of Judges
By Edward Walsh and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25892-2003Aug6.html
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has ordered U.S. attorneys across the country to become much more aggressive in reporting to the Justice Department cases in which federal judges impose lighter sentences than called for in sentencing guidelines.
The directive, contained in a July 28 memo from Ashcroft, is the latest salvo in an escalating battle over how much discretion federal judges should have in handing down sentences in criminal cases. The more extensive reporting will lay the groundwork for the Justice Department to appeal many more of those sentencing decisions than it has.
The Ashcroft memo amended a section of the United States Attorneys' Manual that previously said federal prosecutors had to report to the department only those sentences that prosecutors had objected to and wanted to appeal. In the new directive, U.S. attorneys were told to report all "downward departure" sentencing decisions that meet certain criteria in nine categories.
The effect of the change will be to shift most decisions on whether to appeal a sentence that is less than called for in sentencing guidelines from prosecutors in the field to Justice Department lawyers here.
Ashcroft's critics reacted angrily to the memo, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) accused Ashcroft of engaging in an "ongoing attack on judicial independence" and of requiring federal prosecutors "to participate in the establishment of a blacklist of judges who impose lesser sentences than those recommended by the sentencing guidelines."
Justice Department lawyers, who had championed even tougher measures to limit judicial discretion in sentencing, said the change is needed because of the increasing willingness of some judges to ignore sentencing guidelines.
That nearly all departures from the guidelines have resulted in more lenient sentences further angered Ashcroft and his conservative-minded attorneys, officials said.
"Some judges felt they were not bound by any guidelines," one senior Justice Department official said. "They were ignored out of some sense that the judge was not beholden to them. . . ."
Department spokesman Mark Corallo said that under the previous system, officials in Washington were alerted to problematic sentences on an "ad hoc" basis. By requiring U.S. attorney's offices to report the lighter sentences in a systematic way, Corallo said, Ashcroft and his advisers will be able to identify judges and jurisdictions that deviate from legislative mandates on sentencing.
"The purpose of this is to make sure that all of our U.S. attorneys understand that we intend to apply U.S. law evenly across all jurisdictions," he said. "They should be aware of excessive downward departures and, if necessary, appeal those decisions."
Congress set the stage for the latest showdown over sentencing practices in April when it adopted an amendment to the "Amber alert" legislation on child abductions. The amendment, crafted and pushed by the Justice Department, restricted the ability of federal judges to depart from the sentencing guidelines and made it easier to appeal and overturn "downward departures" from the guidelines.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the American Bar Association and others strongly objected to the amendment. In a letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Rehnquist said that the measure "would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and reasonable sentences."
According to statistics compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 35 percent of the sentences handed down in federal court in fiscal 2001 fell below the range set in the sentencing guidelines. Almost half of those involved plea bargain agreements or other cases of "substantial assistance" to prosecutors, but 18 percent of the "downward departures" were for other reasons. Federal judges imposed sentences that exceeded the guidelines in less than 1 percent of the cases; the Justice Department appealed 19 of more than 11,000 "downward departure" sentencing decisions.
U.S. District Judge Irene M. Keeley, head of the ABA's National Conference of Federal Judges, said federal judges "will continue to evaluate each sentence on a case-by-case basis. I believe that if the facts are studied carefully, there is no evidence that federal district judges have been departing from the current sentencing guidelines."
Some federal judges have spoken out forcefully against what many of them see as a congressional and Justice Department assault on their independence. U.S. District Judge John S. Martin Jr. resigned from a federal court in Manhattan in June and accused Congress of attempting "to intimidate judges."
"For a judge to be deprived of the ability to consider all of the factors that go into formulating a just sentence is completely at odds with the sentencing philosophy that has been the hallmark of the American system of justice," Martin wrote in an op-ed page article in the New York Times.
Last month, in a concurring opinion in a sentencing case, senior Judge Myron H. Bright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit said that "an already difficult situation has been made worse" by Congress's recent enactment of legislation affecting the sentencing guidelines. "It is not my position to criticize Congress," Bright wrote. "I simply point out that this enactment will exacerbate the problems with the guidelines by making it even more difficult for district judges to do justice under the law as circumstances warrant."
In his memo to prosecutors, Ashcroft quoted approvingly from a May 5 speech by Rehnquist in which the chief justice said it was up to Congress to set sentencing policies.
The memo did not quote another section of the same speech in which Rehnquist said that gathering information on sentencing practices could help Congress make decisions, but also "could amount to an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties."
-------- homeland security
F.B.I. Warns of Ways to Hide Weapons
August 7, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/national/07WARN.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - The F.B.I. is warning security workers about dozens of everyday items, including belt buckles, keys and cards, that could conceal knives or other weapons terrorists could use to hijack an airliner.
Many items cost less than $20 and can be hard to detect with airport screening devices, the F.B.I. said in a statement accompanying a catalog of the items obtained by The Associated Press. The catalog has been sent to airport screeners and law enforcement agencies around the country.
Law enforcement officials have previously warned that Al Qaeda might use improvised or easily obtained substances to attack, especially chemicals that are dangerous when mixed.
Among the more unusual items listed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation is a deck of fake playing cards made of metal. The cards have sharp edges that can be thrown with deadly results.
False soup, hairspray, shaving cream and cleanser cans with hidden compartments - the F.B.I. calls them "can safes" - where weapons or dangerous substances could be placed are also on the list, along with books with hollowed centers.
-------- justice
Ashcroft Orders Tally Of Lighter Sentences
Critics Say He Wants 'Blacklist' of Judges
By Edward Walsh and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25892-2003Aug6.html?referrer=emailarticle
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has ordered U.S. attorneys across the country to become much more aggressive in reporting to the Justice Department cases in which federal judges impose lighter sentences than called for in sentencing guidelines. Click here!
The directive, contained in a July 28 memo from Ashcroft, is the latest salvo in an escalating battle over how much discretion federal judges should have in handing down sentences in criminal cases. The more extensive reporting will lay the groundwork for the Justice Department to appeal many more of those sentencing decisions than it has.
The Ashcroft memo amended a section of the United States Attorneys' Manual that previously said federal prosecutors had to report to the department only those sentences that prosecutors had objected to and wanted to appeal. In the new directive, U.S. attorneys were told to report all "downward departure" sentencing decisions that meet certain criteria in nine categories.
The effect of the change will be to shift most decisions on whether to appeal a sentence that is less than called for in sentencing guidelines from prosecutors in the field to Justice Department lawyers here.
Ashcroft's critics reacted angrily to the memo, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) accused Ashcroft of engaging in an "ongoing attack on judicial independence" and of requiring federal prosecutors "to participate in the establishment of a blacklist of judges who impose lesser sentences than those recommended by the sentencing guidelines."
Justice Department lawyers, who had championed even tougher measures to limit judicial discretion in sentencing, said the change is needed because of the increasing willingness of some judges to ignore sentencing guidelines.
That nearly all departures from the guidelines have resulted in more lenient sentences further angered Ashcroft and his conservative-minded attorneys, officials said.
"Some judges felt they were not bound by any guidelines," one senior Justice Department official said. "They were ignored out of some sense that the judge was not beholden to them. . . ."
Department spokesman Mark Corallo said that under the previous system, officials in Washington were alerted to problematic sentences on an "ad hoc" basis. By requiring U.S. attorney's offices to report the lighter sentences in a systematic way, Corallo said, Ashcroft and his advisers will be able to identify judges and jurisdictions that deviate from legislative mandates on sentencing.
"The purpose of this is to make sure that all of our U.S. attorneys understand that we intend to apply U.S. law evenly across all jurisdictions," he said. "They should be aware of excessive downward departures and, if necessary, appeal those decisions."
Congress set the stage for the latest showdown over sentencing practices in April when it adopted an amendment to the "Amber alert" legislation on child abductions. The amendment, crafted and pushed by the Justice Department, restricted the ability of federal judges to depart from the sentencing guidelines and made it easier to appeal and overturn "downward departures" from the guidelines.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the American Bar Association and others strongly objected to the amendment. In a letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Rehnquist said that the measure "would seriously impair the ability of courts to impose just and reasonable sentences."
According to statistics compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 35 percent of the sentences handed down in federal court in fiscal 2001 fell below the range set in the sentencing guidelines. Almost half of those involved plea bargain agreements or other cases of "substantial assistance" to prosecutors, but 18 percent of the "downward departures" were for other reasons. Federal judges imposed sentences that exceeded the guidelines in less than 1 percent of the cases; the Justice Department appealed 19 of more than 11,000 "downward departure" sentencing decisions.
U.S. District Judge Irene M. Keeley, head of the ABA's National Conference of Federal Judges, said federal judges "will continue to evaluate each sentence on a case-by-case basis. I believe that if the facts are studied carefully, there is no evidence that federal district judges have been departing from the current sentencing guidelines."
Some federal judges have spoken out forcefully against what many of them see as a congressional and Justice Department assault on their independence. U.S. District Judge John S. Martin Jr. resigned from a federal court in Manhattan in June and accused Congress of attempting "to intimidate judges."
"For a judge to be deprived of the ability to consider all of the factors that go into formulating a just sentence is completely at odds with the sentencing philosophy that has been the hallmark of the American system of justice," Martin wrote in an op-ed page article in the New York Times.
Last month, in a concurring opinion in a sentencing case, senior Judge Myron H. Bright of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit said that "an already difficult situation has been made worse" by Congress's recent enactment of legislation affecting the sentencing guidelines. "It is not my position to criticize Congress," Bright wrote. "I simply point out that this enactment will exacerbate the problems with the guidelines by making it even more difficult for district judges to do justice under the law as circumstances warrant."
In his memo to prosecutors, Ashcroft quoted approvingly from a May 5 speech by Rehnquist in which the chief justice said it was up to Congress to set sentencing policies.
The memo did not quote another section of the same speech in which Rehnquist said that gathering information on sentencing practices could help Congress make decisions, but also "could amount to an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties."
-------- police
Muslim, Arab Residents Meet With FBI
Speakers Seek Better Relations, Question Tactics in Fight Against Terrorism
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page B05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26875-2003Aug7.html
Area Muslims and Arab Americans gathered for an unusual town hall meeting last night in Annandale, where many confronted FBI and other U.S. government officials with concerns that their communities are being treated unfairly during the war on terrorism.
Along with the suspicion-laced questions, however, came some earnest suggestions about how the FBI could improve relations with the communities.
Abdallah al-Zuabi of the Arab American Institute told the crowd of about 70 that the meeting was "proof of the commitment by our community and law enforcement to build a more constructive relationship."
The meeting at the Mason District Government Center was sponsored by Muslim and Arab groups as well as the local FBI-Arab American Advisory Committee, the only such body in the country. It was created after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as some Muslims and Arab Americans felt that their communities were being targeted unjustly by law enforcement.
Last night, representatives from both sides pleaded for greater understanding.
One man, Saba Habshi, pointed out to federal officials that many Muslims and Arabs had come from totalitarian societies where "the FBI's equivalents are tools of oppression." He suggested that officials explain more fully what they do with information they gather, "so people know you're not going to give it to some foreign government" that could punish them for their political views.
Michael Rolince, acting assistant director of the region's FBI office, acknowledged that the bureau had been too slow in building relationships with Muslims and Arab Americans.
"We cannot come into your community in the immediate aftermath of an event . . . and ask you to help us. We need to be in touch on a more regular basis," he said. He asked those attending to help educate the FBI about their cultures and to bring their concerns to authorities or to community representatives.
But Rolince and other officials offered no apology for the sometimes controversial steps they have taken since the Sept. 11 attacks. Rolince said, for example, that a program to interview hundreds of Iraqi immigrants in the region had yielded valuable intelligence.
When one questioner asked whether many terrorism cases were handled in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria because of its reputation for toughness, an assistant U.S. attorney from that district, Brian Miller, responded: "Our officers enforce the law. I think you would want us to do that."
Several speakers voiced suspicion that federal officials handling terrorism issues were treating Muslims and Arab Americans more harshly than others.
Ibrahim Hussein of Southeast Washington attended the hearing in a T-shirt bearing the U.S. flag and the slogan "I Want My Country Back." He told authorities that he was concerned about the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen captured with Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan, who is being held without charge as an "enemy combatant."
"What would happen if his last name was Johnson or Kennedy?" Hussein asked. Miller said Hamdi would be in the same position.
Other speakers complained of what they called slow progress in a case involving Muslim charities and businesses in Northern Virginia that were raided last year in what appeared to be a terrorism investigation.
Area Muslims and Arabs weren't the only ones drawn to the unusual meeting. Representatives of state and county government attended, as well as three Middle Eastern TV networks: al-Jazeera, Abu Dhabi TV and Egypt's Nile TV.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Moussaoui Requests More al Qaeda Interviews
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26289-2003Aug6.html
Zacarias Moussaoui wants to interview two more high-level al Qaeda operatives he says would help clear him of charges that he conspired to carry out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to court papers unsealed yesterday.
Moussaoui's attorneys, in heavily redacted court papers unsealed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, said they are seeking trial testimony from two top members of Osama bin Laden's organization. The projected testimony from one of the witnesses, the lawyers said, is crucial to the defense because "it eliminates Moussaoui from any role in the September 11 plot."
The papers did not identify the witnesses, but sources close to the case said they are former al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, a Saudi man who allegedly served as paymaster to the Sept. 11 hijackers and is named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment against Moussaoui. The two were captured together in Pakistan in March.
Moussaoui is charged with conspiring with al Qaeda in the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But efforts by Moussaoui and his standby lawyers to interview another captured al Qaeda operative -- Ramzi Binalshibh -- have snarled the case against him.
U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria in January granted a defense motion to depose Binalshibh, who the defense contends has information vital to Moussaoui's defense. Prosecutors say Binalshibh, who was captured last fall in Pakistan and is being questioned, actually implicates Moussaoui.
Government lawyers strongly objected to the deposition, saying it would interrupt a vital interrogation and threaten national security. The issue has reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which last month dismissed the government's appeal of Brinkema's ruling on procedural grounds but said prosecutors could appeal again if they refused to produce Binalshibh and are punished by Brinkema.
The government took that step on July 14, saying it would defy Brinkema's order, and it acknowledged that the judge would likely respond by dismissing the case. Brinkema has said she wants legal briefs from both sides on what sanctions she should impose, but has not set a schedule for those briefs.
She has said she would not rule on whether Moussaoui could interview other al Qaeda captives until the issue of the Binalshibh deposition is resolved.
-------- terrorism
U.S. Is Inspecting Overseas Airports for Missile Threats
August 7, 2003
New York Times
By PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/worldspecial2/X07MISS.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - The Bush administration has dispatched teams of aviation safety investigators to Iraq and to major capital cities in Europe and Asia to determine if their commercial airports can be defended against terrorists who might try to shoot down passenger planes using shoulder-fired missiles, senior American officials say.
The inspections at airports in the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Basra - as well as in Athens, Istanbul, Manila and several other foreign capitals where American air carriers have regularly scheduled flights - are part of the administration's response to recent intelligence reports suggesting that a terrorist attack using small heat-seeking missiles may be imminent, probably overseas.
While the overseas inspections began several weeks ago, administration officials said they had not discussed them publicly until now out of concern that the information might prompt terrorists to attack before security was tightened at some of the airports being inspected.
The concern in Iraq is centered on anti-American forces loyal to the former government of Saddam Hussein, while the concern elsewhere in the world involves Al Qaeda, which has been blamed for trying to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet last November. Terrorists fired two Russian-built shoulder-fired missiles at the plane as it took off from the airport in Mombasa, Kenya, barely missing the jet.
In what administration officials described as additional proof that they are taking the intelligence reports seriously, the Department of Homeland Security has decided to open a special office to deal with the missile threat and in an unpublicized request to Congress last month sought $2 million for the new office's initial budget.
The department has also notified eight government contractors in recent weeks that they are finalists for a potentially huge federal contract to develop prototypes for an electronic antimissile system that could be installed in thousands of passenger jets, similar to systems that are already installed in American military planes, including Air Force One.
Intelligence agencies say Al Qaeda has dozens of the small missiles, many of them Stingers made in the United States, left over from the American-led effort to help Muslim guerrillas oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980's.
Hundreds of other shoulder-fired missiles - including Stingers and Russian SA-7's, which are designed for portability and can weigh as little as 30 pounds apiece - are believed to be in the hands of other terrorist organizations and rebel groups around the world. Arms dealers say the weapons can be bought easily on the black market for as little as a few thousand dollars each.
Administration officials say the missile threat appears to be especially grave in Iraq, which will soon reopen its airports to regular passenger flights by European and other foreign airlines.
In a pair of incidents this summer, shoulder-fired missiles were fired at American military cargo planes. In both cases they missed, in part because of antimissile technologies built into the planes. The attacks were thought to have been carried out by anti-American rebels in Iraq who took the missiles from Iraqi military stockpiles after the ouster of Mr. Hussein.
The Pentagon has acknowledged the serious threat to its fleet in Iraq and has recently offered rewards to Iraqis who turn in shoulder-fired missiles, offering to pay $500 apiece for shoulder-fired SA-7's, SA-14's and SA-18's. So far, none have been purchased.
"Throughout the global war on terrorism, the manned portable missile threat is perhaps the greatest threat that we face anywhere in the world," Gen. John W. Handy, commander of the United States Transportation Command, recently told reporters. He said the missile threat in Iraq was "somewhere between high and moderate, depending upon what part of the country you are in."
The first of the international airport inspections were organized this spring, without any public announcement, by the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, which is part of the department. The overseas inspections mirror ones that were carried out at dozens of domestic airports in the United States in the weeks after the attack on the Israeli charter plane in Mombasa, Kenya's major coastal city.
"Mombasa was a wake-up call," Adm. James M. Loy, the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, said in an interview. "The potential for actual attacks is very real," he said. "If I was a bad guy and I had access to that particular weapon, it would certainly be something that I know I would want to be part of my terrorist campaign."
He said that the inspections were being carried out at a "group of foreign airports that are important to us to have a good handle on."
While he did not list them, other Homeland Security officials said that the initial inspections occurred this spring and summer at a dozen overseas airports that were considered prominent terrorist targets and that were located in foreign countries eager to cooperate with the United States on airport security issues.
The officials said the inspections had been completed at Athens, Istanbul and Manila and were nearing completion at Baghdad and Basra. Al Qaeda and its terrorist affiliates have long been known to operate in Greece, Turkey and the Philippines, and American air carriers fly to all three countries.
They said they would not identify the other inspected airports until after the security reviews were completed.
While the Greek government has often had a testy relationship with the United States, it has been eager to show that Athens, which will be the site of next year's summer Olympic Games, is safe from terrorism.
The inspections are expected to result in a host of security changes at some of the airports, including tightened police patrols along flight paths used for planes on takeoff and landing, as well as the installation of electronic surveillance equipment.
While administration officials stressed that the United States was not offering to assist foreign governments in paying for new security measures, the administration was offering the airports its continuing air safety expertise.
Administration officials said that multiple intelligence sources suggested in the spring that Al Qaeda would attempt a new attack with shoulder-fired missiles against Western passenger planes in Kenya or elsewhere in East Africa, similar to the effort to shoot down the Israeli jet in November.
As a result of the threat, the United States issued a travel advisory in May urging American travelers to stay away from Kenya, and Britain and Israel shut down all flights by its national air carriers to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.
British Airways resumed flights to Nairobi last month, but only after the Kenyan government had stepped up round-the-clock security patrols along the flight paths leading into the international airports in Nairobi and Mombasa and agreed to the construction of high-technology watchtowers and tightened passenger inspections. El Al, the Israeli airline, has not yet resumed flights to Kenya.
The Bush administration has come under fierce criticism on Capitol Hill for having done too little to deal with the threat of terrorist attacks with shoulder-fired missiles, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers has called for the government to agree to pay billions of dollars for the immediate installation of antimissile systems on passenger planes, a move the administration has resisted.
In an interview, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said his department was moving quickly in considering technical options for passenger planes, but that the administration had no deadline for a decision. "It's like a lot of other risks; there's no single solution," he said, noting that his department had recently chosen the eight contractors to develop prototypes for antimissile technology for passenger planes.
"We got dozens and dozens of proposals, and we're looking seriously at those eight," he said.
He said that while recent intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda might use shoulder-fired missiles against passenger jets concerned him, there was no evidence to suggest an imminent threat against planes flying within the United States.
"We have no credible intelligence that Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization has them in the United States and is targeting them for use here," he said.
--------
THE ATTACK
Group Linked to Al Qaeda Seen Behind Jakarta Blast
August 7, 2003
The New York Times
By JANE PERLEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/international/asia/07INDO.html
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Aug. 6 - The terror attack at the J. W. Marriott Hotel that killed at least 16 people and wounded 150 on Tuesday was almost certainly the work of Jemaah Islamiyah, a group terror experts have linked closely to Al Qaeda, American officials said today.
Most of the senior members of Jemaah Islamiyah, including its top operations officer and its most skilled bomb makers, remain at large even though about 50 members of the group have been arrested since the attack on a Bali nightclub 10 months ago, they said.
The blast at the Marriott illustrated what had been known for months, the officials said: that Jemaah Islamiyah, a group intent on achieving an Islamic state in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, consisted of many independent cells, each with the capacity to mount attacks. Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country, and its sprawling archipelago with 220 million people provides near perfect cover for fugitives.
The group's operations officer, known as Hambali, is among the "top echelon" of Qaeda members wanted by the United States, an American official said. The bomb experts, Dulmatin and Azahari Husin, who the Indonesian authorities have said made the bomb for the Bali explosion, have been the targets of searches by the Indonesian authorities for many months.
Another bomb expert, Fathur Roman al-Ghozi, was allowed to escape from a Philippine jail last month, according to the Philippine government.
A defendant in the Bali bombing trials and a suspected member of Jemaah Islamiyah, Amrozi, is to appear in a Bali court on Thursday to hear the verdict in his case. There was some speculation that the Marriott attack was timed as a warning to the government not to impose the death penalty, which Mr. Amrozi could face if convicted.
Another defendant in the Bali attack, Imam Samudra, told reporters in Bali today that he was "happy" about the attack in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.
The center of the city returned to a sense of normalcy today as Indonesian officials said they would impose new security measures at major hotels and businesses. But precisely what those measures would be was not immediately clear.
The choice of the 33-story Marriott, the most visibly American building in the city, left little doubt about the intentions of the terrorists.
"In 20-20 hindsight, the Marriott was an obvious choice," said Ken Conboy, who heads a security company, Risk Management Advisory. "It had a reputation as an American brand; it flaunted its American connection."
Interrogations of Jemaah Islamiyah members who have been arrested showed that they tended to give considerable thought to their choice of targets and the aftereffects, Mr. Conboy said.
The Marriott, which was often the site of American events, was considered to have some of the best security in the capital. Even so, the trunks and undercarriages of cars were not inspected before they drove up to the front door, and the floor-to-ceiling windows of the coffee shop that bore the brunt of the attack on Tuesday faced the driveway. Guests at a Fourth of July celebration at the Marriott this year had to leave their cars at the foot of the driveway and walk 100 yards to the hotel entrance.
A Jakarta police spokesman, Prasetyo, said the Indonesian authorities had found information about a planned attack on the Marriott when the police raided a Jemaah Islamiyah hideout in Semarang in central Java last month. Nine suspected members of Jemaah Islamiyah were arrested in Jakarta and Semarang at or around the same time.
But the United States ambassador, Ralph L. Boyce, dismissed the notion that there was prior knowledge. "We didn't have any information that the Marriott was targeted," he said today.
Because of mounting information from Indonesian sources of possible new attacks by Jemaah Islamiyah, he said, the United States Embassy has been at a "very high state of alert" and warnings had been in place for Americans living in and visiting Indonesia. "Soft targets" where foreigners gathered - hotels and restaurants, for example - have been of particular concern.
The Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, took the unusual step of predicting a possible terrorist attack in Indonesia "in the next day or so," and on Aug. 17, when Indonesia celebrates its independence. "That is a day when we think it's possible there could be a terrorist attack in the central Jakarta area," he said.
American officials said they preferred not to be so precise about possible attacks but, instead, to emphasize precaution at all times.
The methods used in the Bali and Jakarta attacks were similar, the head of the Jakarta criminal investigation department, Erwin Mappaseng said today.
Both involved a vehicle packed with explosives being driven to the site. The police said today that potassium chloride and TNT, both substances used in the Bali bomb, were found on the Marriott driveway, where an Indonesian brand sport utility vehicle packed with explosives blew up. The bomber appears to have been in the S.U.V., Indonesian officials said. A suicide bomber was involved in the Bali attack.
A senior Australian official said today he was not surprised by the Marriott blast. "Everyone has been waiting for another attack," he said. "This is no more and no less than a reminder that Jemaah Islamiyah is still there, has the capability, and will use that capability from time to time."
But the Australian warned that the Jakarta attack showed a ratcheting up of Jemaah Islamiyah's tactics. "Bali was rationalized by the expatriates as being a tourist place, of being Hindu," he said.
Senior Australian officials said that by attacking a Western institution in the heart of the capital, the Islamic group was trying to create fear in the expatriate community. By intimidating foreigners, the militants would drive the struggling economy into deeper trouble, a goal that was consistent with their ideal of wanting to establish a radical Islamic state in a place where most of the population is moderate in its religious beliefs.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- health
Monkeys immune to Ebola virus after fast-acting injection
August 07, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030806-104051-9891r.htm
Federal scientists have developed a fast-acting, single-shot Ebola vaccine that makes monkeys immune to the lethal virus six times faster than an earlier version.
If the same approach works in humans, it could control or prevent outbreaks of the rare infection, which causes high fever, severe pain and bleeding from the eyes as blood vessels collapse. Nearly everyone who is infected dies within a few days.
Scientists not connected with the experiment said that if the vaccine works in other primates, it probably will work in humans.
Health care workers in Africa - the only place where the few outbreaks have occurred - may be the most likely recipients of an approved Ebola vaccine. Researchers who handle samples of the virus in laboratories under strictly controlled conditions also might use it.
The experimental vaccine has not been tested on humans, but Dr. Gary J. Nabel of the National Institutes of Health, one of the vaccine developers, said he hopes to have it ready for human studies by the end of next year, pending approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
Microbiologist C.J. Peters of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston said more animal trials are needed before researchers could seek regulatory approval of a human vaccine. He said it also would be important to determine how the vaccine conveys its immunity and how long it would protect against the infection.
NIH researchers tested the new vaccine by giving eight macaque monkeys a single injection of a weakened virus modified with a protein from the Ebola virus.
Twenty-eight days later, the monkeys were injected with an Ebola virus strain taken from a human who died from the disease in 1995. All eight monkeys remained healthy, even those given high doses of the virus.
However, all the monkeys in a separate control group that were not given the vaccine died after they were exposed to the virus.
The findings appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
Dr. Nabel, director of the NIH's Vaccine Research Center, developed an earlier version of the vaccine for monkeys three years ago. The injections were administered over a six-month period that included a booster shot.
"While that might be useful as a preventative vaccine, for any individual caught up in the middle of an outbreak it wasn't going to help them," Dr. Nabel said.
His team and scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Md., decided to try just the "booster" portion of their vaccine.
They found that while the booster produced a weaker immune response in the monkeys, it was still strong enough to prevent full infection.
Even though the vaccine probably would protect central African great apes from Ebola - a threat along with poaching and habitat loss - it would be tough to vaccinate them, one wildlife researcher said.
Darting thousands of endangered gorillas and chimpanzees would be nearly impossible because they are wary of humans and live in virtually impenetrable forests, said Peter Walsh, a Princeton University research fellow who has studied Ebola and primate losses.
----
Green tea a cup full of health
07aug03
Australia Herald Sun
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,6875291%255E662,00.html
GREEN tea's ability to fight cancer is even more potent and varied than scientists suspected, research suggests.
Scientists already know that green tea contains anti-oxidants that may protect against cancer.
But now they have discovered that chemicals in the tea also shut down a key molecule that can play a significant role in the development of cancer.
The molecule, known as the aryl hydrocarbon receptor, has the ability to activate genes -- but not always in a positive way.
Tobacco smoke and dioxins, in particular, disrupt the functioning of the molecule and cause it to trigger potentially harmful gene activity.
The researchers, from Rochester University, found that two chemicals in green tea inhibit AH activity.
The chemical is similar to compounds called flavonoids, which are found in broccoli, cabbage, grapes and red wine, and which are also known to help prevent cancer.
Researcher Professor Thomas Gasiewicz said: "Green tea may work differently than we thought to exert its anti-cancer activity.
"It's likely that the compounds in green tea act through many different pathways," he said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Release Ordered For Iran Protesters
Reuters
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26217-2003Aug6.html
TEHRAN, Aug. 6 -- Tehran's public prosecutor today ordered the immediate release of nine students jailed during pro-democracy protests in June and July, the official IRNA news agency said.
Judiciary officials have said that 4,000 people were arrested in the student-led demonstrations against Iran's clerical leaders. More than half of those arrested were quickly released but legislators said this week that at least 30 students were being held in Tehran's Evin prison.
----
Activists commemorating atomic bomb drop ticketed for chalk use
Associated Press
Aug. 7, 2003
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0807peaceactivists-cited-ON.html
Five peace activists commemorating the 58th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan were given citations for violating Mesa's graffiti ordinance.
Danielle Hagerty said she and other members of the Women In Black group were using chalk to draw the outlines of bodies on pavement near the public library and post office about 9 p.m. Tuesday when they were spotted by authorities.
"They confiscated our chalk and cardboard bodies as evidence. It was sad," Hagerty said.
Mesa Police Detective Tim Gaffney defended the department's actions and said authorities were forced to write the summonses.
The city's graffiti ordinance doesn't differentiate between the use of chalk or other materials to deface property, he said.
It also requires that property owners give prior approval for any drawings to be made on their property, Gaffney said.
Another of those cited, Amy Shinabarger said the city ordinance was applied arbitrarily and used as a form of harassment against the peace group.
Last year, members of the Arizona Alliance for Peaceful Justice drew the outlines to commemorate the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at several locations without incident.
----
City remembers nuclear horror
Aug 7 2003
by Tony Barrett,
Liverpool Echo (UK)
http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/content_objectid=13264889_method=full_siteid=50061_headline=-City-remembers-nuclear-horror-name_page.html
A CEREMONY has been held to mark the anniversary of nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
The Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Cllr Ron Gould, laid a wreath at the city's Hiroshima memorial stone in St John's Gardens as part of yesterday's ceremony organised by peace campaigners CND.
Some 140,000 people were killed on August 6, 1945 when a nuclear bomb - named Little Boy - exploded above Hiroshima.
Three days later, another bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 40,000 people instantly.
Lord Mayor said: "We should always remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the suffering the people there went through."
Liverpool West Derby MP Bob Wareing said: "As human beings it is our duty to ensure the world follows a more peaceful, humane path."
CND chairwoman Carol Naughton said: "Now, more than ever, the case for nuclear disarmament is of the highest priority."
----
Local peace activists remember Hiroshima
By Barbara Taormina / btaormin@cnc.com
Thursday, August 7, 2003
North Andover Citizen
http://www.townonline.com/northandover/news/local_regional/nac_newnahiroshima08072003.htm
The 20th century turned a corner 58 years ago when the United States decided to drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Within one week, the world witnessed a new power that could destroy centuries of civilization with unbelievable ease and efficiency.
Peace activists and religious groups throughout the country marked that awful moment this week with vigils on Aug. 6 and 9 -- the dates of the bombings. The Merrimack Valley People for Peace, formerly the North Andover People for Peace, gathered in front of Town Hall in Andover on Wednesday afternoon to talk about Hiroshima and share their ideas and reflections on the event.
The group also used the vigil to share information on current campaigns to ban depleted uranium, particularly in weapons production, and to urge the United States to surrender control of Iraq to the United Nations.
Peter Cameron, who has been coming to the group's peace rallies for the past several months, was 16 when Hiroshima was bombed.
"I didn't think much of it at the time," recalled Cameron who remembers having his first job and getting ready to go off to college at the end of World War II. "I remember feeling really sorry that the United States killed so many people."
Cameron said that time and new information had given him a different perspective.
"Since then I've wondered, and I know I didn't think this at the time, but I've wondered if a demonstration bomb had been exploded and the Japanese government informed, could that have persuaded them to end the war?"
It's a question some historians and activists have been asking in light of historical documents that show how much retaliation for Pearl Harbor played into President Harry Truman's decision to use the weapons.
For other members of Merrimack People for Peace, the question of the past is not nearly as difficult as the question of the future. They believe the horror of Hiroshima should be enough to guarantee that weapons of mass destruction are never used again.
"Since the United States is the largest holder of nuclear weapons, we really ought to think about not doing it again," said group member Linda Ballard. "We are the only country who has turned people into nuclear rubble. We ought to know better."
Ballard and other members of the group have also been working to spread the word about depleted uranium -- a byproduct or leftover that is present when high grade uranium is processed.
Since the early 90s, at least a dozen countries including the United States have used depleted uranium in weapon production. The density of the material makes it especially useful in plating tanks and encasing traditional heavy weapons such as bunker-buster bombs.
But depleted uranium is also radioactive and, while the military says it is not a heath threat when it is intact, even they concede it can be dangerous if it is burned and inhaled -- as it often is when used in bombs.
"Depleted uranium is known to cause lots of new cancers and birth defects," said Bobbie Goldman, president of Merrimack Valley People for Peace. "It could even be the cause of Gulf War Syndrome."
"It's horrific stuff," added Andover resident Rebecca Backman, who is the group's point person on depleted uranium. "It has a half life of 4.5 billion years."
Like other peace activist groups, Merrimack Valley People for Peace has joined the push to outlaw the use of depleted uranium. And group members find it particularly disturbing that the United States justified the war in Iraq as a search for chemical, nuclear and biological weapons when the country was using its own lower level weapons of mass destruction along the way.
While vigils on Main Street in a small New England town present only a small voice in the debate, the Merrimack Valley People for Peace hope their efforts to spread information on issues like depleted uranium and their services to remember the destruction of past wars and events like Hiroshima will prompt Americans to demand that the country take a leading role in world disarmament and peace.
"With greatness comes great responsibility," said Ballard. "We ought to exercise that responsibility."
----
What have we learned since Hiroshima?
Editorial - North Bay Nugget, Canada
Thursday, August 07, 2003 - 10:00
http://www.nugget.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=39963&catname=Editorial
At 8:15 a.m., Aug. 6, 1945 a mushroom cloud rose over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
In an instant flash, 160,000 people were killed or injured. The city was a maze of twisted metal and ashes.
The world changed forever. Since that time, most of us have lived on the trigger of nuclear war - we live that way now, even if the Cold War is over and the Russians are supposed to be our friends.
It's no surprise the current mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, attacks nuclear weapons as "utterly evil, inhumane and illegal under international law."
Akiba went on to criticize the United States on the bombing's anniversary for pursuing new nuclear technology and blamed Washington for pushing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to the verge of collapse.
The mayor's frustration with Washington may be justified on some fronts, particularly with regard to the invasion of Iraq. U.S. nuclear policy is an unfortunate reality in today's political and military climate.
The non-proliferation treaty has done little to stop nuclear weapons production by countries such as North Korea, Pakistan, India, Israel and possibly Iran.
Iraq had a nuclear weapons program at one time, but it was thwarted following the Gulf War.
China works furiously to develop weapons and steal U.S. nuclear technology. That country will emerge in the next decade or two as a major industrial power.
It will be able to finance weapons and military programs now only possible by wealthy countries such as the U.S.
The Russians simply stand by trying to keep their remaining missiles in operation, although they have no plans to abandon nuclear technology regardless of the cost of production and maintenance.
It would truly be a remarkable time, if countries of the world, whether friends or foes, could agree to stop production and destroy existing nuclear weapons.
Maybe someday world politics will advance to that point, but it likely won't happen in our time, even if we cling to idealistic goals.
North Korea is the latest example.
The country has deliberately pursued nuclear weapons, not necessarily to give itself the upper hand military against the south and U.S. forces stationed in the country, but to use them for economic and political leverage.
Japan has a key stake in upcoming talks to stop the North Koreans from furthering their nuclear ambitions. Test missiles from the rogue state have flown over its waters. Of all people, the Japanese know the devastation and inhuman nature of atomic warfare.
One must wonder what we as a species have learned since the Second World War ended with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasakl.
It would appear we have learned little, other than might is still right, even if it is truly wrong.
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'I have denounced violence but I am going to continue the resistance by words'
By Sa'id Ghazali in Surif, West Bank
07 August 2003
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=431296
"Yes, I have denounced violence, but I am going to continue the resistance by words," said Ahmed Ghenemat, a bearded Hamas activist who was among the 334 Palestinian prisoners released by Israel yesterday. "I am going to respect the pledge I signed, even if I do not believe in it."
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Father of dead soldier claims Army coverup
By Mark Benjamin Investigations Editor
8/7/2003
(UPI)
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030807-043512-3755r
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 -- The father of a soldier who died of pneumonia this spring said Thursday the Army has excluded her death from its investigation of deadly pneumonia because it wants to cover up vaccine side effects.
"The government is covering this up and it is a dog-gone shame," said Moses Lacy, whose daughter, Army Spc. Rachael Lacy, died April 4 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., after getting pneumonia.
Lacy said his daughter "was a healthy young woman" but got ill within days of getting anthrax and smallpox vaccinations on March 2 in preparation for deployment to the Persian Gulf. She was too ill to ever be deployed.
The Army said 100 soldiers have gotten pneumonia in Iraq and southwestern Asia, two of those have died and another 13 have had to be put on respirators.
"The common denominator is smallpox and anthrax vaccinations," Moses Lacy said in a telephone interview from his home in Lynwood, Ill. "These young people have given their lives to the military and they are getting a raw deal. The Department of Defense is closing their eyes."
The Army did not mention vaccines on Tuesday when it held a press conference on the pneumonia investigation. Officials said the pneumonia does not appear to be contagious, and are close to ruling out biological or chemical warfare, SARS and Legionnaire's disease.
Col. Robert DeFraites of the Army Surgeon General's office said at the press conference that the Pentagon launched the investigation because of the severity of the pneumonia. "Are we seeing more cases in general than we might expect? Despite the harsh environment, the answer is no ... But again, we are still concerned about these severe ones."
DeFraites told UPI on Wednesday that the Pentagon would look into whether vaccines, among other factors, might have triggered the pneumonia cases. "Among all of the possible causes or contributing factors, we are looking at the immunizations that the soldiers received as well," DeFraites said. "It is premature to say that there is any relationship at all."
The Army said it is excluding Lacy's death from its investigation because Lacy never made it to Iraq or southwestern Asia where it says the cases are clustered. "She was never deployed to Iraq," Army Surgeon General spokeswoman Virginia Stephanakis told UPI Thursday. She said the military is participating in an investigation of Lacy's death separate from the pneumonia investigation. "It is a whole different issue."
Moses Lacy disagreed.
"She should be on that list (of deaths to investigate) because my daughter's first symptoms were pneumonia," Lacy said. "It happened immediately" after the vaccines, Moses said. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. If I were a medical official it would be the first thing I would look into."
Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, told UPI, "We should include in this study any illnesses or deaths that appear to be pneumonia-related that occurred in theater or out of theater."
Dr. Eric Pfeifer, the Minnesota coroner who performed Lacy's autopsy, told the Army Times that the smallpox and anthrax vaccines "may have" contributed to Lacy's death. "It's just very suspicious in my mind...that she's healthy, gets the vaccinations and then dies a couple weeks later." He listed "post-vaccine" problems on the death certificate.
Other members of the armed forces not in the Pentagon investigation say the anthrax vaccine has made them very sick with pneumonia-like symptoms. Michael Girard, a Senior Airman at Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa Beach, Fla., got his second anthrax shot on March 4. He developed flu-like symptoms - runny nose and a "heavy chest" - starting March 6 and by March 12 developed a rash on his left arm where he had gotten the shot.
"Then basically it started attacking my body, section by section," Girard said. He said he has since suffered bouts of vomiting up blood, pain in his feet that made them turn blue, chest pain, constipation, pain in his legs, headaches, stomach aches and extremely high blood pressure. In one weekend he went to the emergency room four times. He says he suffers from insomnia and fatigue.
At one point, he developed a horrible cough. "They did do a chest X-ray because they thought it might be pneumonia. A nurse told me that it was, but a doctor came in and said that it was not."
Girard said Air Force doctors first suspected the anthrax vaccine caused his problems, but since have backed away from that diagnosis. "Everything that has been associated with this ever since I got sick has been like a coverup," Girard said. He said he "was perfectly 100 percent healthy" before getting the vaccine. "I was in the gym for an hour to two hours per day. I was running. I was energetic."
He said he was not scheduled to deploy anywhere.
In its pneumonia investigation, the Army is looking into the July 12 death of Army Spc. Joshua M. Neusche, 20, of Montreal, Mo. The Pentagon has described his death as "other causes." The Army is also looking at the June 17 death of Army Sgt. Michael L. Tosto, 24, of Apex, N.C. His death is listed as "illness."
Stephanakis said she was unfamiliar with the June 26 death in Kuwait of another soldier, Army Spc. Cory A. Hubbell, 20, of Urbana, Ill. His death is listed by the Pentagon under "breathing difficulties." Hubbell's mother, Connie Bickers, of Urbana, Ill., told the Champaign News-Gazette that the Army had not told her how her apparently healthy son died. "I wish I had answers, but I don't know if I'm ever going to get them," Bickers told the paper.
On Thursday, the Pentagon announced the death of Sgt. David L. Loyd, 44, of Jackson, Tenn. The announcement said Lloyd died on Aug. 5 when he "was on a mission when he experienced severe chest pains. The soldier was sent to the Kuwait hospital where he was pronounced dead."
A co-author of a government-sponsored study of possible side effects from the anthrax vaccine told UPI that the Army should look at whether that vaccine is behind the cluster of pneumonia cases. That study last year found the vaccine was the "possible or probable" cause of pneumonia in two soldiers.
"As physicians, I would think they would be looking at all possible causes. I would think vaccines would be part of that," said Dr. John L. Sever of George Washington University Medical School, who was one of six authors of the study.
Last year's anthrax vaccine study, printed in the May 2002 issue of Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, found that the vaccine was the "possible or probable" cause of pneumonia among two soldiers, according to Sever. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services convened the group, called the Anthrax Vaccine Expert Committee, which studied 602 reports of possible reactions to the vaccine among nearly 400,000 troops who received it, Sever said.
In addition to identifying pneumonia and flu-like symptoms among troops who received the vaccine, the group also looked at four other cases of potentially serious reactions, including severe back pain and two soldiers who had sudden difficulty breathing in a possible allergic reaction to the vaccine.
Sever described the two cases of pneumonia as "wheezing and difficulty breathing going into a pneumonia-like picture."
To conduct the study, the Anthrax Vaccine Expert Committee examined reports from the U.S. military to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; they are anecdotal reports and do not necessarily show a cause-and-effect relationship.
Moses Lacy said he believes the real story is about vaccine side effects. "Unless somebody breaks this story wide open, we are going to have a lot more deaths. I am afraid we are going to lose a lot because of this vaccine."
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