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NUCLEAR
Dismissed sailor wants job back or pension
No surprises seen for nuke talks
U.S. Says Talks Offer N. Korea Chance
Suspected N. Korean Chemicals Worry U.S.
Another Lie, One Among Many
Bush appoints anti-Muslim to peace role
When is Enough Enough?
Wesley Clark: The Guy Who Almost Started World War III
MILITARY
Afghans Battle Suspected Taliban; 8 Die
Ethnic Militias Wage Battles in Nigeria, Killing 100
US returns Pakistan money it paid for F-16 purchase
Thai troops leave Thursday to help rebuild war-torn country
Australian case for Iraq war was 'fabricated'
Blair Aides Shaped Iraq Dossier
Rumsfeld Does Bogota
3 British Soldiers Killed in Iraq Attack
Bush Cites 'Foreign Element' in Iraq
Bush Orders Move to Freeze Assets of Hamas Charities
Israelis, Palestinians Sit on the Brink
At Gaza Funeral, Arab Anger Boils Up
Land mine kills two children in Afghan capital
Troops stand on guard for mines
Insults to Intelligence
Sanctions harden Iraqis attitude to U.N.
US finds Britain its lone supporter
U.N.'s Annan says U.S. must cede control
U.N. has long history of casualties
U.N. added security before blast in Iraq
U.N. Chief Says New Force in Iraq Can Be Led by U.S.
Reserve tracking faulty
Ideas the Pentagon Wishes It Never Had
White House edited EPA's 9/11 reports
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge Suspended in Ten Commandments Case
Texas Governor Pardons 35 Arrested in Tainted Sting
Texas Governor Pardons 35 Convicted in Drug Sting
8 Members of Congress Urge Release of Immigrant
3 Likely To Be Freed From Guantanamo Rights
U.S. Moves Enemy Combatant to S.C. Brig
Six Groups Said to Be Monitored in U.S. for Possible Qaeda Links
As Security Threats
ENERGY AND OTHER
Bush's Energy Policy Stalled
E.P.A. Defends Itself Against 9/11 Rebukes
EPA Pressed to Call Air Safe After 9/11, Report Says
Clean Air Rules To Be Relaxed
ACTIVISTS
Protesters near Bush ranch demand withdrawal of troops from Iraq
Brazen Corruption of Every American Ideal
NEPAL - Maoists plan strike to protests killings
Hidden Sides, Hushed Ideals of a Civil Rights Strategist
Warriors For Peace
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Dismissed sailor wants job back or pension
Former weapons technician claims brain tumour may be work-related
By Beverley Ware
Saturday, August 23, 2003
Halifax Herald
http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2003/08/23/f231.raw.html
A former naval weapons technician who worked with PCBs and depleted uranium says he lost his job with the navy because of a brain tumour he had removed nearly four years ago.
Gerrie Groot-Koerkamp had been given a clean bill of health by his doctor before he was dismissed April 1. The tumour is gone and he takes no medication, though he must have an MRI test once a year.
"There's nothing to prevent me from doing my job," he said.
The military said he was dismissed because he would not have access to a specialist within 24 hours if there was a medical emergency at sea, and it may not be possible to medically evacuate him from some places....
Mr. Groot-Koerkamp believes he may have developed the tumour because of his job. However, Veterans Affairs Canada says it sees no such proof and has denied him pension benefits.
The department discounted a letter from Mr. Groot-Koerkamp's oncologist, who wrote a letter supporting his patient's claim the brain tumour could have been caused by his work.
"I got caught by a system that is inflexible," said the Eastern Passage father of two. "There should be somebody watching the system to say maybe this doesn't apply here."
Veterans Affairs, however, says its system is flexible and heavily slanted in favour of veterans. "It is very much weighed in support of the claimant," said Bernard Butler, director of disability pension operations.
Mr. Groot-Koerkamp's first wish is to get his job back. Failing that, he wants a disability pension to help take care of his wife and children.
His problems began in the spring of 1998, while he was stationed on HMCS Huron, based out of Esquimalt, B.C.
Former Master Seaman Groot-Koerkamp suffered pressure headaches while on a four-month deployment.
That December, when he was back at home changing a battery in a smoke detector, he suddenly went blind for about five minutes.
A base surgeon saw nothing wrong but referred him to an ophthalmologist. The ophthalmologist immediately saw pressure building in Mr. Groot-Koerkamp's eye.
A CT scan that afternoon showed a tumour and he was admitted to hospital that night.
The tumour, measuring 2.5 by five centimetres, was removed right away, and 35 sessions of radiation followed.
Mr. Groot-Koerkamp received his full pay while on medical leave and was back at work within six months, but he was posted to a shore job.
He was granted a request for a transfer to Halifax in July 2001.
In the meantime, Mr. Groot-Koerkamp filed with Veterans Affairs for a disability pension. He said he believed he could show a plausible link between his job and the type of cancer he had.
Mr. Groot-Koerkamp said he was exposed to depleted uranium, graphite grease, hydrocarbons, PCBs, electromagnetic emissions and radiation in his 16 years working with weapons and radar systems.
His doctor with the B.C. Cancer Agency wrote to Veterans Affairs saying it is impossible to prove a direct connection between the tumour and the known carcinogens Mr. Groot-Koerkamp handled, but Dr. Paul Blood wrote "it would be reasonable to take these exposures into account."
Manufacturers of some of the oils and chemicals Mr. Groot-Koerkamp says he worked with said they did produce tumours in lab rats.
Mr. Groot-Koerkamp said he came into contact with these chemicals through greases, oils and solvents used in the regular maintenance and operation of a ship's weapons systems, including guns, missiles, torpedoes and ammunition and the fire control and radar systems.
Veterans Affairs, however, says it has no recorded data proving Mr. Groot-Koerkamp was exposed to any carcinogens through his work.
The department concluded in July 2001 the tumour had nothing to do with his work and denied him a disability pension.
Mr. Groot-Koerkamp is filing an appeal and considering suing for wrongful dismissal.
"Veterans Affairs does not want to make any judgment because they'd be opening up a can of worms," he said.
The government of Nova Scotia passed legislation this year, retroactive for 10 years, to compensate firefighters for six different types of cancer that could be related to their work. Brain cancer is included in that list.
Manitoba was the first province to pass such legislation for firefighters, while Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec are discussing such compensation for work-related cancers.
Mr. Butler of Veterans Affairs said Mr. Groot-Koerkamp should file an appeal, because it would give him a chance to explain his case more fully. He said the threshold for evidence is "fairly low" and even an inference of a connection could be enough to warrant benefits.
If evidence of a connection between the veteran's work and illness is reasonable, but not conclusive, Mr. Butler said the board is required by law to find in favour of the veteran.
"We are very, very flexible and adaptive with the appeal framework," he said.
Mr. Groot-Koerkamp gets his salary for two years and money for retraining but said that's provided through insurance, not the navy.
The military provides support, referrals and help finding a new job, something that has been offered only within the last few years.
Lt.-Cmdr. LaViolette said that previously members were released with no financial help after 30 days of sickness or injury.
He is putting his new-found medical knowledge to use, training to become a pharmacy technician.
-------- korea
No surprises seen for nuke talks
August 23, 2003
By Sharon Behn
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030822-095854-3923r.htm
The United States is not expecting any major breakthrough at next week's six-party talks hosted by China to end North Korea's nuclear-weapons program, a senior administration official said yesterday.
"This is a beginning," the official said and emphasized that the process of convincing Pyongyang to bring its nuclear-weapons activities to a complete and verifiable end would likely be a lengthy one.
"But we do have a certain urgency in resolving" the issue, he said. "We don't have forever and a day on this issue."
The official said the Wednesday through Friday meeting in Beijing would consist of "laying out the U.S. position in details and hearing, in a respectful way, the other positions," but that Washington was not prepared to offer any inducements to bring Pyongyang on board.
"I'm not going in with some package of rewards in anticipation of progress," the official said.
That did not mean the four other nations involved might not offer some kind of incentives, he said, adding that what consisted of an inducement lay "in the eye of the beholder."
The talks will place representatives from North Korea, South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States around the same table, ending a diplomatic tussle with the Stalinist state's position - at first supported by China - that it would only deal directly with the United States.
"North Korean nuclear matters are not and should not have been seen only as a matter between the U.S. and the [Democratic People's Republic of Korea]," the official said.
He hailed China's efforts as "instrumental" in bringing Pyongyang to the six-way talks, saying it highlighted "a new era of U.S.-China cooperation on major international issues."
Since last October, North Korea has admitted its nuclear-arms program, pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and evicted International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from the country.
With the belief that Pyongyang now has the capability of producing and selling nuclear weapons, the United States is demanding that North Korea cease all its nuclear-arms actions and allow inspectors back in to verify the program has been halted.
"North Korea's nuclear weapons program is much more than a regional problem, it is a threat really to the security of the world. Moreover, North Korea has been an active exporter of various kinds of weapons in the past, and we've come to realize the providing of weapons of mass destruction to those who would do us harm is probably the most active direct threat to the U.S. people," the official said.
He said the talks would give North Korea an opportunity to reassure the international community of its intentions and eventually open the door to a better relationship with the United States.
"We are ready for a full discussion across and around the table," the official said.
He said the United States wanted to use the talks to test the depth of Pyongyang's commitment to abandoning its nuclear-arms designs, but insisted Washington was not expecting to come out of the three-day summit with a number of accomplishments under its arm.
--------
U.S. Says Talks Offer N. Korea Chance
August 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Korea will have a chance next week during six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons programs to show that it harbors no ill will toward neighboring countries, a senior State Department official says.
Starting Wednesday, officials from the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia will meet in Beijing over three days to discuss the future of these programs. The United States will demand the complete and verifiable dismantling of the facilities.
A senior State Department official said Friday the Bush administration believes the talks will give North Korea an ``important opportunity'' to assure its neighbors about its intentions.
``Actions by North Korea that satisfactorily address concerns about its nuclear weapons could open the door to a new kind of relationship, certainly with the United States,'' said the official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.
North Korea had long opposed a multilateral approach to the issue, favoring instead bilateral discussions with the United States. Washington had argued that the issues had implications for a broad range of countries and was pleased when Pyongyang, under heavy pressure from China, accepted the multilateral format.
Leading the U.S. delegation will be Assistant Secretary James Kelly, who heads the State Department's East Asia bureau.
A second administration official who demanded anonymity said in a telephone interview that North Korea will be represented by a low-level diplomat who will not have authority to negotiate.
Kelly is not authorized to have a formal meeting with the North Koreans in Beijing. But the second official said Secretary of State Colin Powell has not ruled out contacts in a social setting. Powell's stand is said to have been opposed by others in the administration.
Last April, during three-way talks in China on North Korea's nuclear program, the North's delegation head approached Kelly before a dinner and disclosed to him that his country possessed nuclear weapons and would test, export or use them, depending on U.S. actions, American officials said at the time.
The official who briefed reporters said the United States is not prepared at the Beijing talks to offer pre-emptive concessions to North Korea in advance of disarmament.
Left unanswered were questions about what type of security guarantees or economic benefits the United States is prepared to offer North Korea in exchange for disarmament.
Given North Korea's desperate economic situation, the administration believes the communist country will have a lot to gain by being flexible in the talks.
Should North Korea agree to disarm, verification is expected to be one of the thorniest issues, particularly given the low level of trust between the United States and North Korea.
North Korea has walked away from a number of international agreements in recent months, including its membership in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It is believed to possess one or two nuclear weapons and experts believe it could produce five to six more in a few months.
--------
Suspected N. Korean Chemicals Worry U.S.
August 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-North-Koreas-Arsenal.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- The United States wants to talk to North Korea not only about nuclear bombs, but the communist nation's entire arsenal: suspected stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, missiles that can reach all of South Korea and Japan and massive conventional forces massed near the border.
If U.S. negotiators bring up all these issues at talks in Beijing this week, the meetings are likely to become contentious quickly. An impoverished nation with few friends, North Korea relies on its military might as one of its few means of political leverage, and it suspects U.S. talk of disarmament is a scheme to undermine its ability to defend itself.
The Aug. 27-29 talks, featuring the United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan, will focus on resolving a standoff that erupted in October over North Korea's suspected development of nuclear weapons. A diplomatic solution could take years.
But the enduring question of North Korea's threat to stability in northeast Asia -- a menace that dates to its 1950 invasion of South Korea, triggering the Korean War -- could remain even if the nuclear confrontation dissipates.
The North's test-firing of a Taepodong-1 rocket over Japan and into the Pacific in 1998 highlighted its military ambitions and penchant for provocation. The North said it was an attempt to insert a satellite into orbit.
Many analysts believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was chastened by the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein, and recognizes that a head-on military confrontation with the United States could amount to a suicidal act.
But Washington, which says North Korea is the world's main proliferator of missiles and engages in drug trafficking and other illegal activities to raise cash, fears North Korea could deal with terrorists seeking weapons of mass destruction.
``Postponing the elimination of Kim Jong Il's nuclear weapons program will only allow him time to amass even more nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and to develop even longer range missiles,'' John Bolton, U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, said in a speech in Seoul last month.
Foremost among the concerns of Washington and its allies are:
-- North Korea's nuclear activities. North Korea is suspected of having a covert uranium-based nuclear program and has resumed operations at plutonium-based facilities that some experts say could yield several bombs within months.
U.S. officials say they believe the North already has one or two nuclear bombs. South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan also said Wednesday that the North ``is believed to possess enough material to build one or two nuclear weapons.'' However, there are doubts about its ability to mount such weapons on warheads.
-- The North's arsenal of up to 700 missiles and its sales of missile technology and components to clients like Iran and Yemen. North Nodong missiles can hit targets as far as 810 miles away. U.S. defense experts believe North Korea is working on a long-range missile that could deliver a payload of several hundred pounds as far as Alaska or Hawaii, and a lighter payload to the western half of the continental United States.
The administration of former President Clinton held talks with North Korea on curbing its missile development, but no agreement was reached.
-- A chemical warfare program that includes the ability ``to indigenously produce bulk quantities of nerve, blister, choking and blood chemical agents as well as a variety if different filled munitions systems,'' according to the Federation of American Scientists, a research group based in Washington.
-- North Korea also is believed to have pursued a biological weapons program since the 1960s.
-- The huge number of North Korean troops and weapons arrayed close to the Demilitarized Zone, a buffer area between the two Koreas. In the early hours of a conflict, North Korea could rain thousands of rounds of artillery on Seoul, the South Korean capital, only 40 miles south of the border.
With more than 1 million soldiers, North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world. However, the country is short of food and fuel, and many of its weapons are antiquated. Its air force, for example, has as many as 1,600 planes, but most are based on old Russian and Chinese designs from the 1950s and 1960s. North Korea does not manufacture airplanes.
Still, North Korea often showcases its military at politically sensitive times. In March, four communist fighter jets intercepted a U.S. reconnaissance plane off the North's east coast. The fighters illuminated the U.S. plane with targeting radar, but there was no hostile fire.
-------- us politics
Another Lie, One Among Many
Jimmy Breslin,
Newsday
August 23, 2003,
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/nyc-bres0824,0,1315702.column?coll=ny-ny-columnists
I was a few hundred yards up on Liberty Street when the Two Tower of the World Trade Center blew. I put my nose inside my shirt and ran through smoke that turned day into night. In the smoke were computers, asbestos, pulverized glass, human bodies, lead. I got on another street and one tower blew up. Again, the air was black with a pulverized 110-story building.
I did not feel well for two months. I never said anything because I was too embarrassed. A couple of thousand had died. So many others were scorched and broken and maimed. I had no right to open my mouth, I thought. Besides, from the first day, the government's Environmental Protection Agency had announced that air was remarkably clean. Work on. Breathe on. You're fine.
They lied. They lied because the administration did not want people not going to work. They lied the first week and they lied the week after that and they have lied every day of the past two years to the people of this city.
Christine Whitman was the EPA head until recently. I wasn't disturbed that her education was a jump horse school, but I thought she was better than standing up and doing what she was told by George W. Bush's White House, telling lies to a public who had to breathe this air. Turns out she isn't much of a human being.
The EPA has just admitted that they lied for all this time.
Now what are we supposed to do? By now I feel better physically because I have adjusted to feeling lousy. I'm not going near a doctor. Once I read what was in that air, and in it for all those days I spent around there, I didn't want to know anything more. Don't scare me. My friend Dan Collins, whose office is on Broadway, only yards up from the site, said he has not taken a good breath for two years. "They tell me it's good and I know it's bad," he said.
This lying with the lives of the people of the nation is not solely the habit of Bush and his crew, although it is more widespread and being done in so many cases by so many of their people that it looks like a generation of liars.
This war with Iraq started with the full government standing right up and looking you in the eye and openly lying about why we had to invade Iraq immediately. Bush said the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. Why, they were starting to make nuclear bombs. He had a statement about this in his State of the Union speech. When it was shown to be a lie, Bush had people like Condoleezza Rice say, Why are you so worried about 26 words in a speech? That the 26 words were about nuclear weapons seemed beyond her. Out in the streets, you can scare people with only three words: "Stick 'em up."
I sit here in New York and I don't believe one single solitary word of what the government says. Can you believe anything Bush says? Only if you're a rank sucker. Then you put that Rumsfeld on and he grimaces and tells you the first thing he thinks of, and here is Powell, who I thought would be our first black national candidate and he's as bad as the rest of them.
What I would like to do is sit here and type in anger only about Bush and his vile people. The trouble is in my memory there is a corrupted past of people I favored.
There was the day in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was in Cleveland on some sort of appearance and a courier from Washington brought him photos taken of Russian missile sites in Cuba. Kennedy canceled the stop and flew back to Washington. His press people announced that he had a severe cold. This was reported to the country.
Kennedy was rushing back to begin secret meetings about the chances of whether the country was going to go into a nuclear war with Russia over the missiles.
Talk worked. We're here. But only one person complained about the false report of Kennedy's cold. That was David Wise and he worked on a newspaper I was on. He said that it was a dangerous precedent to lie to the nation for any reason.
At the time, I thought it a minor complaint about an enormous occurrence. I didn't have the wisdom to understand that once government gets away with lying, it becomes virtually impossible to dislodge the habit from any of them. I don't know what other lies Kennedy told, but it couldn't have been his last and he had our lives in his hands.
It was only months after the Cuban missiles that, on a night in August of 1964, Robert McNamara, the defense secretary who presented himself as being a person of unparalleled brilliance, told Lyndon Johnson that a North Vietnamese PT boat had attacked the American destroyers Turner Joy and the Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, off Haiphong, east of Hanoi. On a night of confusion, McNamara persuaded Johnson that it was an actual attack. Johnson acted. He put the country into a war right there.
The attack on the destroyers never happened. McNamara lied. And the lie grew and anybody who took the time to build evidence of this was attacked. "This is a just war," Johnson said.
The war blew up 58,00 of our young.
And now we have this administration welding their lies together on two matters, the air you breathe and the war they insist is good for us. We've just dealt with 40 years of lying and death. It is getting worse. "We're winning in Iraq," your poor president says.
----
Bush appoints anti-Muslim to peace role
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday August 23, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1028113,00.html
A Middle East expert who has written dismissively of diplomacy and holds views to the right of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was yesterday named to the board of the US Institute of Peace.
The largely honorary appointment of Daniel Pipes, a gift of President George Bush, has outraged Democratic senators, American Muslims and Arabs, liberal Jews and a large portion of the academic community, who say his opinions are not conducive to peace.
The manner of Mr Pipe's appointment is likely to deepen the sting. Mr Bush exploited the summer recess to avoid a congressional vote on his selection. But as a recess appointment, Mr Pipes will serve less than 18 months rather than the normal four years.
Mr Pipes would not comment until his appointment was formally announced but he has been no stranger to controversy, especially since the September 11 attacks.
As a frequent commentator, he has warned that America's Muslims are the enemy within and called for unrestricted racial profiling and monitoring of Muslims in the military.
From his own thinktank in Philadelphia, he has also clashed with fellow scholars, who say his Campus Watch website has initiated a witch-hunt against those he views as critics of Israel or lacking in patriotic zeal.
Within the community of Middle East scholars, he is regarded as extreme. He opposes the "road map" for the Middle East, as he opposed the Oslo peace accords, and objected to efforts to reform the Palestinian Authority.
----
When is Enough Enough?
In a new Newsweek poll, Americans say they're spending too much in Iraq with too little to show for it. And with the 2004 approaching, Bush is losing ground
By Jennifer Barrett
Aug. 23, 2003
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
http://www.msnbc.com/news/956458.asp
Americans are increasingly pessimistic about the U.S. mission in Iraq, saying the United States should reduce its spending and scale back its efforts there, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll.
SIXTY-NINE PERCENT of Americans polled say they are very concerned (40 percent) or somewhat concerned (29 percent) that the United States will be bogged down for many years in Iraq without making much progress in achieving its goals. Just 18 percent say they're confident that a stable, democratic form of government can take shape in Iraq over the long term; 37 percent are somewhat confident. Just 13 percent say U.S. efforts to establish security and rebuild Iraq have gone very well since May 1, when combat officially ended; 39 percent say somewhat well.
Nearly half of respondents, 47 percent, say they are very concerned that the cost of maintaining troops in Iraq will lead to a large budget deficit and seriously hurt the U.S. economy. And 60 percent of those polled say the estimated $1 billion per week that the United States is spending is too much and the country should scale back its efforts. One-third supports the current spending levels for now, but just 15 percent of those polled say they would support maintaining the current spending levels for three years or more. How much longer should U.S. troops remain in Iraq? Click here to take our poll
Against this backdrop, President George W. Bush's approval ratings continue to decline. His current approval rating of 53 percent is down 18 percent from April. And for the first time since the question was initially asked last fall, more registered voters say they would not like to see him re-elected to another term as president (49 percent) than re-elected. Forty-four percent would favor giving Bush a second term; in April, 52 percent backed Bush for a second term and 38 percent did not.
Despite the costs and the continued attacks against both U.S. and United Nations personnel, most Americans support maintaining current military levels in Iraq-for now anyway. Fifty-six percent approve of keeping large numbers of U.S. military personnel in Iraq for two years or less; 28 percent would support a stay of one to two years, while another 28 percent would support a stay of up to one year. Eighteen percent support keeping large numbers of troops in Iraq for three to five years, three percent for six to 10 years, and 11 percent for more than 10 years (just five percent want to bring troops home now).
Sixty-one percent still believe that the United States was right to take military action against Iraq in March; 33 percent do not. But respondents are split on how effective the U.S. war with Iraq has been in fighting Al Qaeda and terrorism in general. Forty-five percent say the war has reduced the terror network's power by removing an oil-rich regime that supported terrorism while 38 percent say the war has actually increased Al Qaeda's power by inspiring a new generation of terrorists to take up arms against the United States and its allies.
The failure to capture Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden, and the slow progress in Iraq have also affected Americans' views on the Bush administration's efforts to fight terrorists at home and abroad-but not drastically. A slim majority (54 percent) still approve of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq, though Bush had a 74 percent approval rating in his handling of Iraq in mid-April
Fifty-seven percent say Bush is doing a better job than Democrats in finding and defeating terrorists abroad, while 21 percent say Democratic party leaders in Congress are dealing better with terrorists. At the beginning of last year, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed thought Bush was doing a better job than the Democrats on fighting terrorism overseas-just 9 percent gave higher marks to Democrats. Fifty-seven percent say Bush is best at handling the fight against terror at home, down from 74 percent in January 2002. Nearly a quarter (24 percent) now think the Democrats do a better job at handling homeland security, versus 11 percent in January 2002.
The biggest shift in opinion, however, comes in Bush's handling of non-terror issues. A plurality of voters now think the Democratic leaders in Congress have a better approach to dealing with the economy, tax cuts, healthcare, education, social security, the environment and energy policy. In January 2002, more thought Bush had the best approach to handling all the issues above, except the environment.
Forty-five percent of respondents now think the Democratic party leaders are doing a better job of finding ways to stimulate the economy (36 percent say Bush is)-a huge shift from January 2002, when 55 percent thought Bush was better on the economy and just 29 percent thought Congressional Democrats were. Over the past year-and-a-half, Americans have also shifted their views of Bush's tax cuts-45 percent prefer his cuts to those supported by Democratic leaders now, but that's down 12 percent from January 2002.
Nearly half of those polled (47 percent) say Democratic leaders have the best approach to health care (31 percent say Bush does), a flip from January 2002, when 45 percent preferred Bush's approach and 36 percent liked the Democrats'. Bush has lost the most support for his handling of education issues. Just 39 percent prefer his approach now-down 16 percent from January 2002. Forty-three percent say the Democrats are now doing the better job in their approach to education issues.
Similarly, more Americans (45 percent) say Democrats have the better approach to handling Social Security issues. About one-third (32 percent) say Bush has the best approach to Social Security, down 12 points from January 2002. On the environment, 53 percent prefer the Democrats' approach, while 29 percent support Bush's handling of environmental issues versus 43 percent and 38 percent respectively in January 2002. Finally, 42 percent of Americans prefer the Democrats' approach to energy policy, while 33 percent say Bush is doing a better job on the issue (versus 33 percent and 46 percent respectively in January 2002).
Bush has the lead over Democrats in his handling of foreign policy in general, with 48 percent of Americans preferring his approach to foreign-policy issues (37 percent prefer the Democrats' approach).
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Wesley Clark: The Guy Who Almost Started World War III
by Stella Jatras
August 23, 2003
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jatras12.html
General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and Friend of Bill's (FOB) is considering a run for President of these United States. In an AP report of 29 June, former-President William Jefferson Clinton stated that Wesley Clark would make a fine president, if he ran. After all, what are friends for? There is also a grassroots campaign effort to "draft Wesley Clark" for president which states, "We believe America needs a new president. One who can be a voice for common sense and moderation in these dangerous, uncertain times. One with the unquestionable leadership and foreign policy credentials necessary to win in 2004. We believe that General Wesley Clark might just be - the one. That is why we are trying to convince him to seek the Democratic nomination for president."
Let us look at what kind of a president Wesley Clark would make according to CounterPunch of November 12, 1999, "The poster child for everything that is wrong with the GO (general officer) corps," exclaims one colonel, who has had occasion to observe Clark in action, citing, among other examples, his command of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood from 1992 to 1994.
"At the beginning of the Kosovo conflict, CounterPunch delved into the military career of General Wesley Clark and discovered that his meteoric rise through the ranks derived from the successful manipulation of appearances: faking the results of combat exercises, greasing to superiors and other practices common to the general officer corps. We correctly predicted that the unspinnable realities of a real war would cause him to become unhinged. Given that Clark attempted to bomb the CNN bureau in Belgrade and ordered the British General Michael Jackson to engage Russian troops in combat at the end of the war, we feel events amply vindicated our forecast.
"With the end of hostilities it has become clear even to Clark that most people, apart from some fanatical members of the war party in the White House and State Department, consider the general, as one Pentagon official puts it, 'a horse's ass.' Defense Secretary William Cohen is known to loathe him, and has seen to it that the Hammer of the Serbs will be relieved of the Nato command two months early."
This is the guy who received the Kosovo Campaign Medal after having been granted a waiver, although according to an article in Stars and Stripes (European addition), no one seems to know who granted the waiver in time for the general to get the first medal awarded. Even though he led the international alliance in its 78-day blitz against Yugoslavia, the waiver was necessary because General Clark's service did not meet the criteria for the award which required service in the actual theater of operation. It appears that Clark made no effort to secure similar waivers for the thousands of service personnel who supported the effort from bases outside the combat zone.
On 17 July 2001, General Wesley Clark was confronted in an often heated exchange by his critics at Border's book store where the general was promoting his book, Waging Modern War. Although one of the axioms of Clark's book is that, "A Political Problem Cannot be Solved by Military Force," what he practiced and advocated in Kosovo was just the opposite. When confronted with questions about the misuse of air power and grossly exaggerating the results as exposed in a Newsweek article titled Kosovo Cover-Up of 15 May 2000, targeting civilian targets as stated by Sen. Joe Lieberman, and consorting with KLA terrorists such as Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku, General Clark's replies were always the same: the questioner was wrong, Sen. Lieberman was wrong, and Newsweek was wrong. "I went to the presentation very much opposed to everything Clark stood for, but it wasn't until I heard him speak and answer questions that I realized how dangerous a man like this is," writes Col. George Jatras, USAF (Ret).
'THE GUY WHO ALMOST STARTED WORLD WAR III'
In Waging Modern War, General Clark wrote about his fury upon learning that Russian peacekeepers had entered the airport at Pristina, Kosovo, before British or American forces. In the article "The guy who almost started World War III," (Aug. 3, 1999), The Guardian (U.K.) wrote, "No sooner are we told by Britain's top generals that the Russians played a crucial role in ending the West's war against Yugoslavia than we learn that if NATO's supreme commander, the American General Wesley Clark, had had his way, British paratroopers would have stormed Pristina airport, threatening to unleash the most frightening crisis with Moscow since the end of the Cold War."
"I'm not going to start the third world war for you," General Sir Mike Jackson, commander of the international KFOR peacekeeping force, is reported to have told Gen. Clark when he refused to accept an order to send assault troops to prevent Russian troops from taking over the airfield of Kosovo's provincial capital. The Times of London reported on 23 May 2001 in an article titled, "Kosovo clash of allied generals," that "General Sir Michael Jackson [was] told that he would have to resign if he refused to obey an order by the American commander of Nato's forces during the Kosovo war to stop the Russians from seizing control of Pristina airport in June 1999."
If General Clark had had his way, we might have gone to war with Russia, or at least resurrected vestiges of the Cold War and we certainly would have had hundreds if not thousands of casualties in an ill-conceived ground war
In his article titled, "A Long, Tough Job," which appeared in the Washington Post on 14 September, Clark writes, "And the American public will have to grasp and appreciate a new approach to warfare. Our objective should be neither revenge nor retaliation, though we will achieve both. Rather, we must systematically target and destroy the complex, interlocking network of international terrorism. The aim should be to attack not buildings and facilities but the people who have masterminded, coordinated, supported and executed these and other terrorist attacks.
"Our methods should rely first on domestic and international law, and the support and active participation of our friends and allies around the globe. Evidence must be collected, networks uncovered and a faceless threat given shape and identity."
"Rely on international law"? Clinton and his gangsters broke every international law on the books regarding Yugoslavia. "Evidence must be collected?" Evidence of what? The Serbs certainly did not have weapons of mass destruction; nor did they attack us first; nor were they ever a threat to us. His words ring hollow.
You can read "Wes" Clark's letter to the National Albanian American Council of 1 November 2002, in which he says, "Let's stay in touch." For an American general who was supposed to be impartial in a civil war, it is no secret that Clark is the Albanian lobby's fair-haired boy. And why not? He delivered Kosovo to them.
General Clark brags about the fact that not one solder was killed under his command. Even though the Serbs had every opportunity to kill American soldiers, I contend that the Serbs did not want Americans to die at their hands. This was illustrated when Sgt. Christopher Stone of Smiths Creek, Michigan, upon his release, left a note to his prison guards thanking them for treating him with "dignity and respect." The Pentagon declined to release a copy of Stone's note, but a copy was made available to The Associated Press (5 May 1999). The note ended with "Thank you, you are very kind" and "God help you."
Col. David Hackworth, in his 1999 commentary Defending America, wrote of Clark: Known by those who've served with him as the Ultimate Perfumed Prince, he's far more comfortable in a drawing room discussing political theories than hunkering down in the trenches where bullets fly and soldiers die.
Col. Jatras writes that "General Clark is the kind of general we saw too often during the Vietnam War and hoped never to see again in a position of responsibility for the lives of our GIs and the security of our nation. That it happened once again we can thank that other Rhodes scholar from Arkansas."
In this writer's judgement, what this guy is positioning himself for is the VP slot with Hillary running for President. It would be a marriage made in Hell...a Hell for all of us.
Knowing all the above, why would anyone want as president or VP a guy who was willing to start World War III for the sake of his own ego and self-importance?
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghans Battle Suspected Taliban; 8 Die
August 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Fighting.html
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Government forces fought hundreds of suspected Taliban insurgents in central Afghanistan, killing four guerrillas and arresting 13, local officials said Saturday. At least four government soldiers died, the officials said.
The fighting late Friday in a mountainous district of Uruzgan province broke out after authorities launched a campaign to hunt down suspected rebels, said Abdul Rahim, a provincial government official.
Uruzgan Gov. Mohammed Khan estimated government forces fought as many as 300 suspected Taliban for about four hours before the rebels retreated into the mountains. One government soldier was also wounded, he said.
The province lies about 190 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul.
In a satellite telephone call, a man identifying himself as Mohammed Hanif, the spokesman for wanted Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, told The Associated Press that 30 government soldiers were killed. He said their bodies were returned after negotiations with village elders.
He said Taliban fighters detained 10 government fighters.
It was not possible to independently confirm the caller's identity or his information.
Gov. Khan disputed those casualty figures, saying four government troops died and none was captured. He said four suspected Taliban were killed and 13 arrested. The situation was calm on Saturday, he said.
Stepped up attacks in Afghanistan against the government have been blamed on the hardline Islamic militia, ousted in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces.
In recent months there have been reports that the Taliban are regrouping and reorganizing. Some of the reports say the Taliban's fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has divided the country into military zones and appointed commanders to each zone.
The reports say Dadullah is one of the commanders that is to operate in Uruzgan province, considered a strong pro-Taliban region of Afghanistan dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, like most former Taliban.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said his government is seeking Dadullah's arrest, along with several other senior Taliban commanders who his administration fears may have found safe a haven in Pakistan's conservative tribal zones.
Dadullah has been identified by witnesses as the man who ordered the shooting earlier this year of International Red Cross worker Ricardo Munguia in southern Helmand province.
Associated Press Writer Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.
-------- africa
Ethnic Militias Wage Battles in Nigeria, Killing 100
August 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/23/international/africa/23NIGE.html
LAGOS, Nigeria, Aug. 22 - Street battles between rival ethnic militias killed 100 people and injured another 1,000 in Nigeria's volatile southern oil port of Warri, the Red Cross said today, citing witness accounts and body counts.
The estimate was the most authoritative yet of the toll in five days of violence; government officials had refused to give firm numbers, fearing it would further inflame tensions.
Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Nigerian Red Cross, said the situation had calmed after the authorities flooded the city with troops and riot police officers, enabling the relief agency to piece together the extent of damage.
"We have reason to believe the number of people who died are close to 100," Mr. Ijewere said.
Another 1,000 people were injured while more than 4,000 people were displaced, most of them from homes that were burned in the violence, Mr. Ijewere said.
The Delta State government said Thursday that it had secured a cease-fire between militant Itsekiri fighters and the rival Ijaws.
Bands of youths from the two neighboring communities had battled with automatic weapons in the streets of Warri, a major base for oil multinationals.
Gov. James Ibori of Delta State met today with youth leaders from the warring sides to try to consolidate the cease-fire. The main Ijaw militant group boycotted the meeting, accusing the governor of being partisan to Itsekiri interests.
Bello Oboko, leader of the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities, accused the governor of triggering the latest violence by issuing an order on Ijaws on July 16 to leave the MacIver district of Warri, claimed by Itsekiris.
The Nigerian authorities said today they were sending a special military task force to the Niger Delta to check the growing security threats to oil operations in the region.
A military spokesman, Col. Ganiyu Adewale, said the security agencies, apart from ending the latest violence, would try to curb the theft of about 300,000 barrels daily - 15 percent of Nigeria's output - by criminal gangs believed to be funneling weapons back into the region from the proceeds of illegally sold crude.
-------- arms
US returns Pakistan money it paid for F-16 purchase
Press Trust of India Dubai,
August 23, 2003
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_347947,0005.htm
The United States has returned the money Pakistan had paid for the purchase of F-16 fighter planes after the American Congress refused to endorse the deal.
This was disclosed by Pakistan Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali in an interview to Saudi Arabic daily 'Okaz' published on Saturday. Jamali is currently in Saudi Arabia for talks with top officials.
The US rejected Pakistan's request to provide F-16 planes after which the Pakistan Air force approached Belgium to buy two squadrons of used F-16 planes, according to reports in the Pakistani media recently.
Belgium had bought the planes from the US and the contract stipulated that it could resell them only with the approval of the US.
Meanwhile, the US has decided to give six C-130 military cargo planes to Pakistan as part of a defence assistance committed under the three-billion dollar aid granted by President George W Bush during his Camp David meeting with President Pervez Musharraf.
-------- asia
Thai troops leave Thursday to help rebuild war-torn country
Not deterred by blast at UN headquarters
Saturday 23 August 2003
Bangkok Post
http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/23Aug2003_news06.html
The first contingent of Thai troops will leave for Iraq on Thursday to help rebuild the war-ravaged country.
The 31 military technicians will board a US transport plane for Karbala to be followed by another batch of 412 on Sept 16. Vehicles, tools and machinery will be shipped to the troops by a US vessel next Friday.
All 443 soldiers bound for Iraq come from the Ratchaburi-based engineers battalion, the First Army, Second Army, Fourth Army and the Navy's Sattahip-based Marine Corps. This will be the first time that marine corps technicians join peace-keeping operations abroad.
Lt-Gen Thanadej Pathumrat, chief of the Engineering Department, said the move showed Thai troops were not scared and wanted to help rebuild Iraq _ even after this week's bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
``The duties of Thai military technicians are to mend buildings, roads and facilities and to help Iraqi people. They will be accompanied by military doctors. We do it for humanitarian reasons and are not their enemy.''
He said the soldiers selected for the task were healthy, well-behaved, aged 30-45 and without drinking habits.
All soldiers sent to Iraq had to take English and Arabic lessons and study Islamic traditions to prevent misunderstandings and causing offence.
Some of the chosen are Muslim soldiers from the Fourth Army in the South.
``The most important thing for us is to have Thai soldiers who can speak Arabic as translators so we can communicate with Iraqi people. This is because Thai troops must make it known that we are there for humanitarian reasons to help restore their town and that we are not enemies but friends,'' Lt-Gen Thanadej said.
The Thai soldiers will work with Polish troops in Karbala, 110km south of Baghdad, which had not experienced any violence.
``Thai soldiers, nevertheless, will have to be careful and take care of themselves,'' Lt-Gen Thanadej said.
The Thai troops consist of 250 technicians, 70 doctors, 26 frontline command officers, 50 security officers and a bomb clearance team.
The battalion will be under Col Boonchu Kerdchok, an experienced special warfare officer attached to the Supreme Command's anti-terrorism centre.
Soldiers who were not selected for this mission will get a second chance when screening takes place for a contingent to be sent in April next year.
This group would have more time to prepare and study the languages.
-------- australia
Australian case for Iraq war was 'fabricated'
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
23 August 2003
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/story.jsp?story=436350
The Australian government "skewed, misrepresented, used selectively and fabricated" the intelligence used to justify its decision to send troops to Iraq, a parliamentary inquiry in Canberra was told yesterday.
The Australian inquiry opened yesterday and took evidence from Andrew Wilkie, a former senior intelligence analyst who resigned in March in protest at the case Australia made for going to war.
Australia contributed 2,000 special forces troops to the US-led invasion. Mr Wilkie accused the government of lying about the threat posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. "Sometimes the exaggeration was so great it was clear dishonesty," he said, and added that words and phrases qualifying intelligence assessments, such as "probably", "could" and "uncorroborated evidence suggests" were frequently dropped from reports. "Words like 'massive' and 'mammoth' were included [instead]."
Mr Wilkie has become one of the chief critics of Australia's involvement in the Iraq war since quitting his post in the Office of National Assessments (ONA). Asked by the inquiry to describe the government's handling of Australian intelligence on Iraq, he replied - mirroring the phrase used by the BBC about the British intelligence dossier - that it was "sexed up".
His claims were swiftly denied yesterday by the Prime Minister, John Howard, who was one of the first leaders to sign up to the invasion of Iraq. Mr Howard said his assessment of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime had been justified "at the time".
Asked about Mr Wilkie's allegation of exaggeration, Mr Howard replied: "I deny that absolutely. I don't know on what he bases those claims. If he has got evidence of that, let him produce it. Other-wise, stop slandering decent people." Mr Howard added that the ONA had indicated that Mr Wilkie had had "virtually no access" to the relevant intelligence on Iraq.
The Australian government has made a determined effort to discredit Mr Wilkie. An opinion poll last month found that 36 per cent of Australians believed that the government knowingly misled them over Iraq.
The ONA is an elite agency that advises the prime minister. Mr Wilkie said: "I will go so far as to say ... the exaggeration was occurring in there [Mr Howard's office]." He said the government had been "prepared to deliberately exaggerate the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and terrorism threat so as to stay in step" with the US.
The inquiry also heard evidence from the former UN chief weapons inspector Richard Butler, who cast doubt on Australia's claim that Iraq could have supplied terrorists with chemical or biological weapons.
-------- britain
Blair Aides Shaped Iraq Dossier
Inquiry Into Expert's Death Reveals How Intelligence Services Were Used
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34236-2003Aug22.html
LONDON, Aug. 22 -- The public inquiry into the apparent suicide of a British weapons expert has opened a rare window on how Prime Minister Tony Blair used Britain's intelligence services to help sell the case for war in Iraq to a reluctant public.
Eight days of testimony have shown how Blair's top aides worked closely with senior intelligence officials in compiling a dossier for public distribution, pressing for changes that sharpened the language and conclusions in the document.
The judicial inquiry has heard testimony that at least two intelligence officials raised objections to this process, as did David Kelly, the weapons expert. He told a BBC reporter that the process of turning raw intelligence data into a polished document had led to distortions that made the threat posed by Iraq appear more imminent and alarming than it really was.
Officials sought to ensure that the objections did not reach the House of Commons committee that oversees intelligence agencies, according to internal Defense Ministry documents. A memo from Martin Howard, deputy chief of defense intelligence, recommended that the ministry "resist any calls" from the committee "to disclose the identities of the individuals concerned, call them as witnesses or have access to their written comments."
The British government is known for guarding its inner workings from public scrutiny. The disclosure about the process of compiling the dossier was one of several revelations that have emerged since Lord Justice Brian Hutton began hearing evidence two weeks ago.
The controversy has been compared with the debate in the United States over the Bush administration's use of intelligence, but has been more damaging politically for Blair than for President Bush. An ICM poll for the Guardian newspaper this week found 68 percent of respondents believed the government mistreated Kelly and only 24 percent believed the government's claim that it had not embellished the intelligence dossier.
The hearings have shed light on Blair's involvement in the government's campaign to discredit a controversial BBC report on the intelligence dossier, which was published last September and became a key part of the government's case for participating in the U.S.-led war. They have shown how government officials pressed Kelly in the days leading up to his apparent suicide to renounce the BBC report. But they have also disclosed flaws in the BBC's original reporting. And they have suggested that Kelly may have had other reasons for suicide besides the controversy over the dossier.
Kelly's body was found on July 18 near his home in Oxfordshire, about 50 miles northwest of London, three days after he testified before a parliamentary committee about his meeting with Andrew Gilligan, a BBC reporter.
Gilligan's original report, on May 29, cited a confidential source in alleging that the government had "sexed up" the dossier by ordering intelligence officials to insert a claim that officials knew was probably wrong: namely, that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes. In his testimony, Gilligan acknowledged that he had misspoken in alleging that officials knew the claim was wrong.
Kelly's actual allegation was more subtle. He told another BBC reporter, Susan Watts, who tape-recorded the interview, that Blair's aides had seized upon the 45-minute claim to make the dossier more dramatic.
"It was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion," Kelly told Watts, according to the transcript entered into evidence. Blair's aides "were pushing hard for information which could be released, [and] that was one that popped up and it was seized on."
Blair's top aide, communications director Alastair Campbell, insisted in his testimony that he and his aides had provided only "presentational" advice on the dossier, which he said was solely the work of the top-secret Joint Intelligence Committee, headed by John Scarlett. But memos between the two men suggest Campbell helped "tighten" the language of the 45-minute claim, changing the phrase "may be able to deploy" to "are able to deploy."
Other analysts said the very process of turning intelligence data into a public document distorted its meaning because the data often consist of clues, suppositions and inferences rather than solid facts, "Intelligence is all about interpretation," said Garth Whitty, defense analyst for the Royal United Services Institute, a London research organization. "When you start changing words to make them more palatable or readable, you're introducing another level of interpretation, and you risk the intelligence being read as fact, which it rarely is."
Rupert Allason, a former Conservative Member of Parliament who has written on intelligence under the name Nigel West, said the dossier process had damaged the reputation and morale of the intelligence community. "To have the JIC involved in writing what was a political pamphlet undermines its authority in every possible way," said Allason, who has been a strong critic of the Blair government.
Kelly told reporters that he had no doubt that Saddam Hussein's government was seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction. But he said the threat was not imminent, and he believed the dossier was manipulated to make it appear so. "It was not so much what they have now, but what they would have in the future," he told Watts, referring to the Iraqis. "But that unfortunately wasn't expressed strongly in the dossier because that takes away the case for war, to a certain extent.
"In the end it was just a flurry of activity and it was very difficult to get comments in because people at the top of the ladder didn't want to hear some of the things."
Two intelligence officials agreed, including one unnamed senior official who wrote a memo to his superior stating: "I was so concerned about the manner in which intelligence assessments for which I had some responsibility were being presented in the dossier" that he was moved to write formally "recording and explaining my reservations."
Deputy intelligence chief Howard testified that another dissenter said that the wording of a section claiming Iraq had 20 tons of biological growth agent was "not wrong but it has [a] lot of spin on it."
Testimony has indicated that Blair was personally involved in determining how to proceed from the moment in late June when Kelly told his superiors at the Defense Ministry that he might have been Gilligan's source. The prime minister ordered Kelly to be questioned a second time to find out what he might say if called before the Foreign Affairs Committee.
He also participated in a discussion about whether it would be possible to keep Kelly's name confidential. In the end, the Defense Ministry devised a strategy of describing Kelly in sufficient detail to reporters that they were able to guess his name, which the ministry then confirmed.
Kelly himself expressed shock that his name was divulged. "I was told it would all be confidential," he told Sunday Times journalist Nick Rufford, who testified Thursday. Rufford said Kelly looked wan and tired when he saw him on July 8. "Off the record, I have been through the wringer," he told Rufford.
But a colleague of Kelly's suggested another possible motive for suicide. In February Kelly told David Broucher, a British diplomat working on disarmament issues, that he was still in contact with senior Iraqi officials and was seeking to persuade them to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. Kelly said he assured them they had nothing to fear.
But he told Broucher that he was worried an invasion would proceed anyway, and feared some of his contacts would be killed and that others would believe he had betrayed them.
"As Dr. Kelly was leaving, I said to him, 'What will happen if Iraq is invaded?' and his reply was, 'I will probably be found dead in the woods.' "
Broucher said he believed at the time it was a "throwaway line" that might have referred to being tracked down by Iraqi agents. "I now see that he may have been thinking on rather different lines."
-------- colombia
Rumsfeld Does Bogota
Right Turns in South America?
By FORREST HYLTON
August 23, 2003
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/hylton08232003.html
Helicopters circling the city, combat planes roaring overhead; the streets, airports and public buildings patrolled by 13,000 police, soldiers, secret servicemen and spies, U.S. as well as Colombian.
The arrival of Donald Rumsfeld in Bogotá on August 19 did not portend anything but the further ratcheting up of imperial terror in South America. The day before, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe faced machine-gun fire from the FARC (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces) when his helicopter approached Granada, Antioquia, a town that was destroyed by the FARC's gas cylinder bombs on December 6-7, 2000. Since the FARC have sophisticated, up-to-date grenade launchers as well as machine guns and crude cylinder bombs, one wonders if, like nearly everything else in Álvaro Uribe's presidency, the attack was not stage-managed to drive home the need for more resources to fight "drugs and terror," so as to wipe out the FARC guerrillas, now held to be responsible for the country's accumulated problems.
For the past several years, South America's non-violent social movements-the Argentine piqueteros, the Brazilian landless, the Ecuadorian indigenous people, the Bolivian coca growers, Colombian and Peruvian trade unionists and community organizations-have offered a beacon of hope to the world, since they have blocked a series of neoliberal privatization efforts in the cities and held counterinsurgency in check in the countryside. As recently as nine months ago, there were reasons for relative optimism, since the movements had translated mass mobilization into electoral power: Lula and the PT had won in Brazil, Evo Morales and MAS had lost the Bolivian presidency by less than 1.5% but promised to form a formidable opposition, Lucio Gutierrez was going to have indigenous leaders in his government in Ecuador, Chávez was close to defeating the opposition in Venezuela.
Beginning with Plan Colombia, in the name of the war on drugs-which, after September 11, 2001, became the war on drugs and terror-the U.S. government responded to the growing challenge to the Washington Consensus: a military base in Manta, Ecuador, 'Plan Dignity' to eradicate coca in the Bolivian Chapare, a coup in Venezuela, offhand comments from U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that rocked Brazilian financial markets as elections neared. But the cornerstone of the U.S. approach to the hemisphere was to be found in Colombia, the world's third most-important client-state after Israel and Egypt ($3 billion paid out since 2000). In late July 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives approved $731 million in FY 2004 for the Andean Regional Initiative (explicitly acknowledged as the continuation of Plan Colombia, under new auspices), two thirds of which will go to the Colombian government; more specifically, to its military and police.
Though the conjuncture remains fluid, hence subject to dramatic reversal, it seems that for the time being, the imperially aligned right has regained the upper hand everywhere in Latin America except Venezuela and Cuba. At the inauguration ceremony of President Nicanor Duarte in Paraguay on August 15, on the initiative of Álvaro Uribe, presidents of the South American republics-excepting Hugo Chávez-signed the "Declaration of Asunción," a pledge of loyalty in "the war on drugs and terror."
In effect, Lula has complied with his campaign pledge to meet IMF terms of fiscal austerity and renounced an independent foreign policy of the sort that Chávez has tried to forge (so far without success). Lula's diplomatic profile was conspicuously low during Gulf War: The Sequel, and the signing of the "Declaration of Asunción" is nothing short of outright capitulation to U.S. foreign policy aims. Without Brazilian leadership in foreign and economic policy, smaller, less independent countries of the continent have scant room for maneuver. Like Lula, Lucio Gutierrez has recently risen to the top of the U.S. rankings of South American presidents, and he, too, signed Uribe's pledge of allegiance. But he faces imminent confrontation at home with the very indigenous and urban popular forces that brought him to power, and may not last long. If he is overthrown, he would become the third Ecuadorian ruler to be deposed since 1999.
Lula, whose administration appears to be more stable than all others save Uribe's, recently promised the MST he would use state power and resources to confront and overcome landlord resistance to agrarian reform. He would do well to keep his promise, since the landlords are politically isolated and, lacking close ties to financial and multinational enterprise, economically marginal relative to other fractions of the Brazilian ruling class. Their armed wing, responsible for the deaths of forty-three peasants in the past year, would be no match for the Brazilian army, as it lacks political legitimacy in the cities, where sympathy runs high for the MST's legalist strategy and tactics of direct action. By implementing agrarian reform, Lula could avoid confrontation with the continent's most powerful social movement without having to deliver anything but IMF recipes to his urban, working-class constituents.
Of course Colombia contrasts sharply with Brazil. Uribe represents a politically ascendant, landed fraction of the ruling class invested in extensive cattle ranching and narco-financed, paramilitary counterinsurgency. Though the AUC paramilitaries have been on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist groups since September 10, 2001, Uribe officially began a "peace" process with them last month; U.S. Embassy Political Officer Alexander Lee, and Stewart Tuttle, head of the Human Rights Section, met in secret with AUC representatives in early May. The U.S. government has since proposed to spend $3 million to "disarm and demobilize" the 13,000 AUC fighters under the control of Carlos Castaño and Salvatore Mancuso. Mancuso-who, along with Castaño, has been convicted in absentia for war crimes and is wanted for extradition on charges of smuggling 17 tons of cocaine into the U.S.-has said that since it is politically willing to try to eliminate the guerrillas, Uribe's government has made the paramilitaries irrelevant.
A proposed bill-supplementary to a proposed referendum that would amnesty the paramilitaries-would allow paramilitaries to avoid prison by paying indemnities to families of people they massacred or murdered; or, in some cases, through public service. If sworn into law, the proposal would reinforce impunity in a country where 95 per cent of homicides go unpunished. And people like Castaño and Mancuso would become Senators or deputies in Congress, while their foot soldiers become government spies or "peasant militiamen and women."
Meanwhile, teachers and other trade unionists, community leaders, human rights workers, independent journalists and academics; petty drug dealers and consumers, the homeless, transvestites, homosexuals, addicts and street kids; all are being murdered, though in much smaller numbers than peasants. The six Afro-Colombians murdered outside Buenaventura by the AUC in early July, for example.
Or the four young Guajibo women, one of whom had her fetus hacked out of her stomach and thrown into the nearby river, raped and killed in the Betoyes reserve in Arauca in May. The perpetrators, according to Guajibo survivors, were soldiers from the 18th Brigade's Navos Pardos Battalion, wearing AUC armbands and coordinating with the ACC, a "dissident" paramilitary block that has opted out of "peace negotiations" with Uribe.
As for making peace with the FARC, "if they break the will of these rebel groups, that's when negotiations will work," a Colombian military official told Jim Garamone of the American Forces Press Service.
Uribe's imperial backing is nearly unlimited, as demonstrated by Rumsfeld's visit, as well as visits from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, on August 11, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick on August 8. Myers declared that Uribe had achieved significant victories (shades of Vietnam?), compared Venezuela to Syria, and called Colombia a "staunch ally" in the war on drugs and terror, indicating very clearly the Pentagon's vision of foreign policy for the region. For his part, Zoellick promised Uribe that Colombia was next in line for a bi-lateral trade agreement similar to the one the Bush administration recently reached with Chile. The message to the rest of Latin American rulers was simple: follow Uribe and you will be rewarded.
In Bolivia, it is evident that Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, perhaps the shakiest of South American presidents, has adopted a rigid posture on Uribe's end of the political spectrum, reciting neoliberal mantras, claiming that the armed forces represent "the pillar of democracy," and re-appointing Carlos Sánchez Berzaín-whose face, more than any other, is associated with the counterinsurgent violence of February 12-13-as Minister of Defense. Though Uribe has not gone along with the frame-up of Colombian peasant leader Francisco "Pacho" Cortés in Bolivia, Pacho's case is nevertheless in keeping with the Uribista strategy, which creates bogus links between social protest, terrorism and drug trafficking; links that conveniently obscure systematic, high-level connections between drug trafficking and the political right in order to curry favor with the U.S. government.
Though the right may have re-taken the political initiative in South America for now, it remains to be seen whether its narrow and unimaginative vision can be imposed on Bolivia, much less the rest of a continent whose peoples have proven most resistant to the long night of the neoliberal reich.
Forrest Hylton is conducting doctoral research in history in Bolivia. A Spanish version of this story originally appeared in Pulso, a Bolivian newsweekly. The September issue of New Left Review features a story by Hylton on Colombia: 'An Evil Hour': Uribe's Colombia in Historical Context." He can be reached at: forresthylton@hotmail.com.
-------- iraq
3 British Soldiers Killed in Iraq Attack
August 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Three British soldiers were killed and one seriously wounded Saturday during a guerrilla attack in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra. To the north, American forces reported killing two Iraqi Turkomen who opened fire when the U.S. soldiers arrived to put down an ethnic clash in the city of Tuz Kharmato.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, some U.N. staff returned to work in tents set up at the battered Canal Hotel compound. Investigators and soldiers searched piles of debris there for human remains and clues in the deadly suicide truck bombing Tuesday that killed at least 23 people, including the top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
In Basra, British military spokesman Capt. Hisham Halawi said the military still had no details on Saturday's attack, but termed it a guerrilla operation. Witnesses said an unknown number of men in a pickup truck shot up the British four-wheel drive vehicle in the city center.
As of Saturday, 273 U.S. soldiers have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, according to the military.
The British government has reported 48 deaths. Denmark's military has reported one death.
On or since May 1, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 135 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, according to the latest military figures. Counting only combat deaths, 65 Americans and 11 Britons have died since the Bush declaration.
In Tuz Kharmato, 110 miles north of Baghdad, U.S. soldiers killed two Turkomen tribesmen and wounded two others while returning fire, said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, 4th Infantry Division spokeswoman. She said the Americans came under fire as they arrived to put down an outbreak of ethnic fighting Friday.
There were unconfirmed reports that deadly clashes between the Turkomen and Kurds erupted after minority Kurds allegedly destroyed a newly reopened Turkomen Islamic shrine. The reports claimed there were five Turkomen and three Kurds killed and eleven injured in the fighting. Aberle said it was the first outbreak of ethnic conflict in the region since May.
Iraqi Turkomans are an ethnic minority with strong ties to neighboring Turkey. They live primarily in Iraq's north and northeast.
Soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division discovered a MiG 23 fighter jet, partially buried and covered with camouflage netting, and an anti-aircraft gun north of Balad, 55 miles north of Baghdad. Aberle said they also discovered a weapons cache including six mortars, three cases of mortar rounds and 25 crates of anti-aircraft ammunition.
Aberle said U.S. troops wounded two young Iraqis Friday night when they came upon a group of 17 young men loitering at a gas station after curfew in Dhuluaiyah, 40 miles north of Baghdad.
When troops arrived, the young men began to run, she said. After soldiers fired two warning shots, 15 of the group stopped, but the two who continued to run were shot in the legs. All were detained and were being questioned.
In Baghdad, U.N. staff, international and Iraqi, worked in tents set up inside the compound beside the battered U.N. building Saturday. Staff complained that the U.S.-led coalition had done little to provide security in the area before the bombing.
``It was the coalition's fault, because it was their job to watch the parking area where the bombing happened, ... but it seems they were incapable of that,'' said Mohammed Abdul Aziz, an Iraqi security officer working for the United Nations.
The U.S.-led coalition claims responsibility in the country in general but says it has no obligation to guard specific sites such as the U.N. headquarters and diplomatic missions. However, U.S. troops are guarding locations such as Iraqi banks and the oil ministry.
However, Maj. Mark Johnston said soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division had taken control of security at the bombed hotel, which became U.N. headquarters in Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf War.
``It's still a dangerous site. We are still in the recovery stage,'' he said.
Iraqi employees and guards at the compound were being questioned by American authorities on the suspicion that the suicide truck bombing could have been an inside job. Many of the security guards at the hotel had been in place before the war and were linked to Saddam's security service.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is working to re-establish an Iraqi police force, said the placement of the truck bomb and the timing of Tuesday's attack had raised suspicions.
The truck was as close as it could have been to the office of Vieira de Mello and the bomb went off as a high-level official meeting was in progress in the office.
``Would the security guards have access to that information? Would the people who work in that building for any other reason have access to it?'' Kerik told The Associated Press on Friday.
In a tearful and brief ceremony on Friday the coffin bearing Vieira de Mello's body and draped in the U.N. flag was carried aboard a Brazilian air force plane at Baghdad International Airport. Bagpipers played ``Amazing Grace,'' and L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, wept as he consoled a sobbing U.N. employee.
The plane stopped over in Geneva, where Vieira de Mello's wife and two children boarded the aircraft before heading for his native Brazil, airport officials in Switzerland said.
Eighty-six seriously wounded U.N. workers were being airlifted out of Iraq for medical care.
Two U.N. employees were still unaccounted for and an unknown number of people -- visitors to the building -- were still buried in the rubble. The U.N.'s official death toll stood at 20. However, independent checks by The Associated Press at area hospitals showed at least 23 died in the blast.
Associated Press writer Hrvoje Hranjski in Tikrit contributed to this report.
--------
Bush Cites 'Foreign Element' in Iraq
U.S. Efforts Called a 'Continuing Battle in the War on Terror'
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34237-2003Aug22.html
BURBANK, Wash., Aug. 22 -- President Bush contended today that a "foreign element" of terrorists has moved into Iraq and is carrying out some of the violence that continues to jar that nation nearly four months after the end of major U.S. military operations there.
Bush said that U.S. efforts to install a democracy to replace deposed leader Saddam Hussein are "turning out to be a continuing battle in the war on terror." He said the persistent killings, which have included U.S. military personnel, Iraqis and dozens of United Nations relief workers, are the combined work of former Baath Party officials loyal to Hussein and "al Qaeda-type fighters" who are infiltrating the country.
The president's remarks, toward the end of a two-day swing through the Pacific Northwest, were his first appraisal of the dynamics in postwar Iraq since shortly after a massive car bomb exploded in Baghdad, demolishing the U.N. headquarters there and killing the head of the U.N. mission and 22 others.
In addition to Hussein loyalists, Bush said about the source of resistance in Iraq, "I also believe there's a foreign element that is moving into Iraq, and these will be al Qaeda-type fighters." Bush said these infiltrators "hate the thought of a democracy emerging. And, therefore, they want to violently prevent that from happening."
The president's remarks were echoed today in an interview of Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage by al-Jazeera, the influential Arabic-language television network based in Qatar. "The borders are quite porous, as you'd imagine, and the fact that we've captured a certain number of foreign fighters in Baghdad and around Iraq indicates that the ways that these people are getting into the country is from Iran and from Syria and from Saudi Arabia," he said.
Armitage said that he could not fix blame on Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia, "but, at a minimum, I can state that these fighters are not being stopped at the borders, and this is something that causes us a great deal of concern." Armitage said the Saudis had provided better cooperation after the car bombings in a Westerners' housing compound in Riyadh on May 12.
Bush also reiterated today his call for more nations to assist the U.S.-led effort to reestablish peace in Iraq and rebuild a country torn by the dictatorial leadership of Hussein and by the war that ousted him. "We do need and welcome more foreign troops into Iraq," Bush said. "What that will do is . . . enable many of those troops to guard the infrastructure."
Of the possibility of a larger role for the United Nations, Bush said: "[W]e're discussing . . . resolutions now about how to encourage other nations to participate in the process."
In his remarks to reporters at a Seattle airport, given after a private meeting with local business leaders, Bush continued his upbeat appraisal of the efforts to capture the former aides and sympathizers of Hussein. "Every day that goes by, we're getting more solid evidence from Iraqi citizens about the whereabouts of certain . . . thugs of a former regime," he said, citing the capture this week of Ali Hassan Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali."
Staff writer Dana Milbank in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
TERRORISM
Bush Orders Move to Freeze Assets of Hamas Charities
August 23, 2003
The New York Times
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and EDMUND L. ANDREWS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/23/international/middleeast/23PREX.html
BURBANK, Wash., Aug. 22 - President Bush ordered the Treasury Department today to block and freeze the assets of six top leaders of the militant Palestinian group Hamas and five charities based outside the United States that administration officials said help finance Hamas.
Mr. Bush said he was taking the action in response to Hamas's claim of responsibility for the bus bombing in Israel on Tuesday that killed 20 people.
"By claiming responsibility for the despicable act of terror on Aug. 19, Hamas has reaffirmed that it is a terrorist organization committed to violence against Israelis and to undermining progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinian people," Mr. Bush said in a written statement issued by the White House as the president toured a dam here.
The assets affected in the United States will probably be small, but today's action was politically significant. It is the first time that the United States has gone beyond acting against the military wing of Hamas and tried to shut down the political wing that provides social services and relief assistance.
Mr. Bush's announcement is a victory for Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, and other officials who have argued for years that charitable groups tied to Hamas serve as a conduit for financing terrorism. And Hamas has been staunchly opposed to the so-called road map, the American-led peace plan that lays out the foundation for creating a Palestinian state in coexistence with Israel.
In taking this action, Mr. Bush risks fueling anti-American anger among Palestinians who not only depend on assistance from Hamas but also see it as an integral part of their lives. Hamas also has close ties to Arab leaders throughout the Middle East, and many of its biggest financial supporters come from the wealthy elite of Saudi Arabia.
The president's move could also open another rift between the United States and Europe, because European leaders have thus far made a careful distinction between the military and political wings of Hamas. The Europeans contend that the organization's charitable institutions provide much-needed services - and hope - to destitute Palestinians.
The United States will need European support if its freeze is to have any practical effect, because four of the five charities cited today are based in European countries while the fifth is based in Lebanon.
In Washington, a senior administration official conceded that the organizations had few if any assets in the United States.
"Money that goes into the right pocket is the same as money that goes into the left pocket," the official said. "We have contended that terrorist organizations like this are committed to terrorism through and through."
European officials were reluctant to comment on the matter today, but no European nation has publicly endorsed the freeze.
The administration took the action as the United States scrambled to keep Mr. Bush's peace plan from collapsing in the aftermath of bombing on Tuesday and the declaration on Wednesday by Hamas that it considered its declared cease-fire with Israel to be over.
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, told reporters flying here on Air Force One before the release of the statement on Hamas that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, continued to make calls to officials in the region.
"Our focus is on getting the parties back together so that they can work to resolve these issues, that they can work to address these matters together," Mr. McClellan said.
Asked whether Israel should show restraint in its response to the bombing, he said all the parties, including Israel, "need to keep in mind the consequences of the actions that they take."
But he also suggested that the administration's focus was on pressing the Palestinian Authority and the new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, to make good on commitments to begin dismantling terrorist groups.
"I can't emphasize the point enough, that if we are going to move forward, continue moving forward on the peace process, terrorism must end, and people must act to dismantle terrorist organizations," Mr. McClellan said.
Mr. Bush, who has taken an increasingly high profile in the Middle East peace effort and whose rationale for war with Iraq included an assertion that it could help bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians, did not mention the issue in his one public address here.
American officials made it clear that their attempt to increase the pressure on Hamas was based on its apparent role in the Jerusalem bombing. copy
The United States has already frozen the assets of charities in the United States that were tied to Hamas. In December 2001, the government froze the assets of the Dallas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, accusing it of acting as a front for terrorism. The group had been collecting as much as $13 million in donations in some years, primarily from Muslims in the United States.
The charities cited today are all based outside the United States, and experts said that most of them were fairly well-recognized organizations that help finance a wide variety of social services and relief efforts in the Palestinian territories.
Two of the organizations, the Committee for Welfare and Relief for Palestine in France and the Palestinian Relief Association in Switzerland, have been raising and disbursing money since at least the early 1990's, according to the Treasury Department.
According to the Treasury Department, the two groups worked with more than a dozen relief organizations in the West Bank and Gaza as well as in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon.
The Hamas leaders cited by the Bush administration included Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas in Gaza, and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, another Gaza official.
American officials conceded that most if not all of the organizations provided money for relief. But they contended today that the groups also served as fund-raising conduits for Hamas's terrorist activities.
Jonathan Weiner, a senior State Department official under President Clinton who dealt with terrorist financing, said today's action would be a provocative challenge to the European governments.
"It is laying down the gauntlet to the Europeans," Mr. Weiner said. "Here for the first time they have have demanded to go after Hamas's political organization in Europe."
A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, insisted today that some European nations had already signed on to the freeze. But administration officials flatly refused to say which nations had agreed to help or even how many were involved.
--------
Israelis, Palestinians Sit on the Brink
August 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Mideast-On-The-Brink.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israelis and Palestinians are on the brink of perhaps an even deadlier round of fighting, with the Israeli military and Islamic militants declaring all-out war on one another and an increasingly powerless Palestinian prime minister watching from the sidelines.
Two watershed events this week rapidly turned cautious faith in a U.S.-led ``road map'' peace plan into bleakest despair: the killing of 20 Jerusalem bus riders, including six children, in a Hamas suicide bombing, and Israel's assassination of a Hamas leader in a missile strike in Gaza City.
The bombing and the missile strike, coupled with the collapse of a unilateral truce declared by the militants two months ago, leave little hope for the survival of the peace plan.
The violence has triggered such strong emotions that a bloody collision appears inevitable, particularly with no sign of major U.S. intervention.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is seething over the Jerusalem bombing which, though not the deadliest in three years of fighting, triggered associations in Israel of pogroms because it targeted children and ultra-Orthodox Jews returning from prayers at the Western Wall.
At a security Cabinet meeting this week, participants drew a parallel to the 1972 killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, a security source says. Sharon made the same decision as a predecessor, Golda Meir, three decades earlier: he ordered the methodical killing of Hamas leaders, just as Meir sent Israeli agents to kill all Palestinians involved in the hostage-taking at the Olympics.
``The Palestinians never weaned themselves from the basic desire to murder Jews,'' the Yediot Ahronot daily quoted Sharon as saying. ``This was always (Palestinian leader Yasser) Arafat's policy, simultaneous negotiations and terrorism.''
A senior security official said that as far as Israel is concerned, ``anyone who is in the Hamas leadership is a fair target.'' Israeli officials said the strikes could be called off if the Palestinian Authority, against all expectations, takes action against Hamas.
Hamas was equally furious over the killing of Ismail Abu Shanab, a protege of the group's founder, Ahmed Yassin, and the most senior official targeted by Israel. A torrent of threats was amplified by tens of thousands of supporters taking to the streets.
Hamas bombings -- there have already been scores in the past three years -- will shake Israel ``like an earthquake,'' Abdel Aziz Rantisi, target of a failed Israeli missile strike in June, said at Abu Shanab's funeral. Defiant Hamas spokesmen said they did not fear death and that, should they be assassinated, replacements were already waiting in the wings.
Abbas has no plan for handling the situation, members of his inner circle said privately. His policy of persuading Hamas and Islamic Jihad to halt attacks has failed, and in this charged climate, he does not dare order a clampdown, as demanded by the United States and Israel.
``We cannot attack Hamas when the population is sympathetic to them and, what is more important, when Israel is attacking them as well,'' said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Ghassan Khatib.
The escalation has further weakened the never-popular Abbas, widely known as Abu Mazen, to a point of growing talk about his possible resignation.
``If this situation continues, Abu Mazen will not last long,'' said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Ziyad Abu Zayyad. ``Those interested in Abu Mazen's success must pressure Israel to stop undermining his government.''
The fighting has helped Arafat, ostracized by the United States as a leader by tainted by terror, to return to center stage.
Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a rare public appeal to the Palestinian leader to help rescue the situation. Arafat remains the only Palestinian leader with enough clout to lead a campaign against the militants -- though he has chosen to remain on the sidelines.
In a fateful meeting of the Palestinian leadership early Thursday, before the missile strike, Abbas asked Arafat to support a clampdown on the militants, but Arafat postponed a decision.
Arafat also shrugged off a request by Abbas, according to one participant, to relinquish control over security forces; Abbas commands some, but not all of the tens of thousands of men under arms in the Palestinian Authority. Abbas' security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, who fell out with Arafat last year, was reluctant to make a move without the support of all the security branches.
Israel says Abbas and Dahlan never intended to crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and were just playing for time with assurances that a major arrest campaign was imminent.
``Our demand is unequivocal,'' said Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. ``The Palestinians must dismantle terror groups. Otherwise, we have to do it ourselves.''
--------
THE PALESTINIANS
At Gaza Funeral, Arab Anger Boils Up
Israel Tightens Checkpoints
August 23, 2003
The New York Times
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/23/international/middleeast/23MIDE.html
GAZA, Aug. 22 - Thousands of enraged Palestinians at the funeral here of a slain Hamas official vowed today to take sweeping revenge against Israel, which signaled that it would continue to hunt down the leaders of militant groups.
As tension built throughout Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Israeli troops opened fire on three Palestinian militants on the rooftop of a hospital in Nablus, on the West Bank, according to witnesses and the Israeli military.
Witnesses said one of the men on the rooftop was killed and two were gravely wounded; an Israeli military official said he could confirm only that several men were wounded. The official said the men were members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a violent group connected to the mainstream Fatah faction of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
Far to the south, here in Gaza City, a sprawling crowd of what some observers estimated to be more than 10,000 Palestinians filled the streets around a mosque, then marched dozens of blocks to a cemetery. All the while, they chanted promises of martyrdom for Palestinian suicide bombers and death to Israelis in retaliation for the killing of Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior Hamas political leader, in an Israeli airstrike on Thursday. His remains were carried through the streets in a green Hamas flag.
"The response is coming in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem," said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, another Hamas leader, as he moved between the mosque and the cemetery.
All around him, loudspeakers on vans and trucks broadcast voices that swore revenge. To punctuate that point, some Palestinians fired rifles into the air.
Along the boundary between Gaza and Israel, the Israeli military seemed to be fortifying its forces. Palestinians said they expected an imminent incursion by Israeli troops.
Inside Gaza, the Israeli military established roadblocks along the main north-south highway, cutting Gaza into pieces and severely hindering residents' ability to move about. The removal of those check points during a relative lull in violence over the last two months had been seen as an important gesture by Israelis.
The Israeli military said it re- established the checkpoints in response to the firing of rockets and mortar shells by Hamas at Jewish settlements in Gaza and at Israeli towns over the boundary. There were no reports of injuries.
Today's developments reflected the profoundly tense state of affairs toward the end of a tumultuous week.
On Tuesday night, a suicide bomber affiliated with Hamas killed 20 passengers aboard a bus in Jerusalem. That bombing and the killing of Mr. Abu Shanab and two of his bodyguards by Israeli forces plunged the American-backed peace plan, known as the road map, into uncertainty.
As Israelis braced today for more suicide bombings and large numbers of police officers reappeared in downtown Jerusalem, diplomats scurried to patch up the peace effort.
A special envoy sent by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt visited Mr. Arafat today in Ramallah, his West Bank headquarters. The envoy, Osama el-Baz, told reporters, "All sides have to take steps to avoid escalation and implement the road map."
Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, echoed that appeal.
"All parties have a responsibility to do everything they can to end terrorism," Mr. McClellan told journalists traveling with President Bush in the United States. "I can't emphasize that point enough."
While the White House urged the two parties to work together, President Bush today ordered the Treasury Department to block and freeze the assets of six top Hamas leaders and five organizations that help finance the group.
Israeli officials have demanded that Palestinian leaders arrest members of militant groups and dismantle them, one element of the peace plan. Palestinian leaders said that they had intended to take such steps but that the killing of Mr. Abu Shanab had thwarted them.
Today, the Palestinian leadership repeated its promise to crack down on the militant groups if Israel suspends all military action.
Many Palestinians said in interviews today that any such action by Palestinian leaders would be unacceptable and could lead to a civil war among Palestinians. That emphatically stated position seemed to leave Palestinian leaders with limited room to maneuver.
It left Israel determined to do the work of striking against militant groups itself. "Either they destroy terrorism or terrorism will destroy them," said a senior Israeli official, referring to the Palestinians.
Over the last 24 hours, Israeli tanks and other armored vehicles moved through three West Bank cities, Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus.
Among Palestinians in Gaza City today, the anger was palpable. Around noon, hundreds of Palestinians crammed an intersection outside a new house into which Mr. Abu Shanab had recently moved to pay tribute to him.
"Your blood won't go in vain," shouted a man thronged by cheering, chanting members of Hamas. "Hamas, you are the rocket, and we are the bullets."
In between his proclamations, the sound of wailing women could be heard from the house. Mr. Abu Shanab's flag-draped remains were brought out on an orange stretcher, and as members of Hamas carried it under a brutal sun more than a mile to the mosque, the procession of mourners swelled into the thousands.
A loudspeaker blared the declaration: "Our one constitution is the Koran. Jihad is our only road. The best ambition for us is to die as martyrs."
Around the mosque, representatives from militant groups, including Fatah and Islamic Jihad, gathered under their respective flags. Some militants wore camouflage uniforms and black hoods.
Children who appeared to be just 5 years old hoisted green Hamas flags that were nearly as big as they were. Vans and trucks were decorated with hastily made placards that bore photographs of Mr. Abu Shanab and his bodyguards and portrayed them as martyrs for the Palestinian cause.
Speaking at the funeral, Mr. Rantisi, who was himself wounded recently in an Israeli missile attack, said Israel would accomplish nothing by killing militant leaders. "They think that targeting leaders will stop jihad," he said, the Arabic word for a holy war. "They are mistaken."
Elsewhere in Gaza, Palestinians who went about their daily business said that they had lost what slender hope they had for the peace plan, and that they were braced for renewed, perhaps intensified violence between Israelis and Palestinians.
"There will be no truce," said a man who identified himself as Abu Hossam, 53, an ambulance driver. His voice was more sorrowful than truculent.
But Abu Emad Ammar, 31, a bakery worker, responded to a question about what might lie ahead with a fiery declaration of defiance.
"I'm not afraid," Mr. Ammar said. "What could be worse than our daily lives?"
He made one prediction, and it reflected the pessimism that deepened it roots here today: "We won't lose if they come and kill us. We will die as martyrs."
-------- landmines
Land mine kills two children in Afghan capital
23 August 2003
(AP)
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=840a359d7df96d5a
KABUL - Two boys gathering scrap metal in a ruined district of the Afghan capital stepped on a land mine that exploded, killing both of them, the city's deputy police chief said on Saturday.
The accident happened Friday in the old quarter of Kabul, where the boys, aged 9 or 10, were searching for scrap to sell, Kalil Mamin Zada said
The old city was the frontline during factional fighting that devastated much of the capital between 1992-95. Land mines and other unexploded ordnance still litter the area, which has yet to be rebuilt.
----
Troops stand on guard for mines
The Afghan landscape has enough unexploded ordnance to keep Canadian soldiers busy for some time, writes Chris Wattie.
Chris Wattie
CanWest News Service
Saturday, August 23, 2003
Ottawa Citizen
http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id=38D2667C-5881-4634-8D16-7D1F003798A7
KABUL -- Everything was going smoothly for Master Cpl. Rob Kettleworth and his team of Canadian military engineers. After spending almost three hours sweeping an abandoned building for booby traps in the burning Afghan sun, they were on their way home for a well-deserved break.
Then the lanky 34-year-old from Picton spotted a squat, ugly cylinder sitting by the side of the gravel road from his perch atop a LAV III armoured engineer vehicle. "Stop! Mine!" he shouted, loudly enough to be heard even without his helmet intercom.
The massive vehicle came to a sliding halt, sending the occupants tumbling and causing another vehicle following behind to bump into the engineers' LAV with a crash that shook the 17-tonne carrier.
"Everyone all right?" he asked, then twisted in his station to glare at the mine, a sand-coloured plastic cylinder about 30 centimetres in diameter lying well off the road in plain view.
After checking for signs of other mines, Master Cpl. Kettleworth noted its position and continued to camp.
He swore vehemently over the LAV's intercom, adding: "I hate mines."
The anti-tank mine was found less than a kilometre from the home base for the Canadian mission to Afghanistan, on a route heavily travelled by soldiers patrolling the Afghan capital as part of the International Security Assistance Force.
The powerful Italian-made explosive, designed to penetrate even the thick armour of a main battle tank, was later destroyed and spokesmen for the Canadian battlegroup said they did not believe the mine was planted to attack one of their vehicles or foot patrols.
"It was visible from the road and quite far off the road ... so the local people could have put it there so that we would get rid of it," said Canadian spokesman Maj. Roland Lavoie. "It would be very unlikely that this would have been put there with an intent to harm."
It certainly harmed the good mood of Master Cpl. Kettleworth and his team of sappers from the 2nd Combat Engineer Regiment. They had already spent a busy afternoon, crawling through a bombed-out building, looking ever so carefully for booby traps around Camp Julien, home to most of the 1,900 Canadian troops in Kabul.
They were clearing the structure which, like so many in Afghanistan, was all but destroyed during two decades of warfare, for use as an observation post by other Canadian troops. More than two decades of war have left the nation littered with hundreds of thousands of land mines, explosives and unexploded shells or bombs and Canadian soldiers are forbidden to enter areas until they have been cleared by the contingent's engineers.
Even before their discovery of the anti-tank mine, Master Cpl. Kettleworth had warned his men to watch out for danger as their LAV climbed up a winding road to the top of a ridge near the Canadian base on the outskirts of the Afghan capital. "Remember guys," he told his two mine specialists, "the whole side of this ridge is mined."
When they reached the top, Cpl. Jeff Isaac, of Campbellford, Ont., jumped out the back with his partner, Sapper Damien Kachur, 21, of Scarborough and began unloading his kit of probes, lights and other specialized gear to help them find land mines, unexploded weapons or booby traps.
With Sapper Kachur close behind, carefully stepping in the same footprints, he begins checking almost every square centimentre of the area. Patches of sand are delicately prodded with a long, thin probe, looking for anything metallic or out of place beneath the surface.
"It's tiring doing this," said Cpl. Isaac. "You can only do it for about 20 minutes at a time, then you start to get the shakes ... it's stressful."
A branch across the steps leading up to what is left of the front door takes Cpl. Isaac several minutes to declare safe -- clear of trip wires or hidden explosives. A pile of loose rubble inside takes longer, and in minutes his dark hair is plastered to his skin beneath his helmet and Sapper Kachur takes over, pulling out a selection of telescoping probes and flexible lights from his case.
"It's no problem taking your time," Cpl. Isaac says while catching his breath. "No problem at all. You don't want to hurry, believe me."
Master Cpl. Kettleworth, watching their work from a safe distance, said there are enough mines and unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan to keep his sappers busy for a long, long time. "The stuff's everywhere, look," he said, pointing to a rusty cannon shell half-buried in the dirt. "American anti-tank round, probably depleted uranium. It's just everywhere."
-------- spies
Insults to Intelligence
It's Not too Late to Speak Out
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
August 23, 2003
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/vips08232003.html
MEMORANDUM FOR: Colleagues in Intelligence
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Now It's Your Turn
Sixty-four summers ago, when Hitler fabricated Polish provocations in his attempt to justify Germany's invasion of Poland, there was not a peep out of senior German officials. Happily, in today's Germany the imperative of truth telling no longer takes a back seat to ingrained docility and knee-jerk deference to the perceived dictates of "homeland security." The most telling recent sign of this comes in Friday's edition of Die Zeit, Germany's highly respected weekly. The story, by Jochen Bittner holds lessons for us all.
Die Zeit's report leaves in tatters the "evidence" cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration spokesmen as the strongest proof that Iraq was using mobile trailers as laboratories to produce material for biological weapons.
German Intelligence on Powell's "Solid" Sources
Bittner notes that, like their American counterparts, German intelligence officials had to hold their noses as Powell on February 5 at the UN played fast and loose with intelligence he insisted came from "solid sources." Powell's specific claims concerning the mobile laboratories, it turns out, depended heavily--perhaps entirely--on a source of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's equivalent to the CIA. But the BND, it turns out, considered the source in no way "solid." A "senior German security official" told Die Zeit that, in passing the report to US officials, the Germans made a point of noting "various problems with the source." In more diplomatic language, Die Zeit's informant indicated that the BND's "evaluation of the source was not altogether positive."
German officials remain in some confusion regarding the "four different sources" cited by Powell in presenting his case regarding the "biological laboratories." Berlin has not been told who the other three sources are. In this context, a German intelligence officer mentioned that there is always the danger of false confirmation, suggesting it is possible that the various reports can be traced back to the same original source, theirs--that is, the one with which the Germans had "various problems."
Even if there are in fact multiple sources, the Germans wonder what reason there is to believe that the others are more "solid" than their own. Powell indicated that some of the sources he cited were Iraqi emigrés. While the BND would not give Die Zeit an official comment, Bittner notes pointedly that German intelligence "proceeds on the assumption that emigrés do not always tell the truth and that the picture they draw can be colored by political motives."
Plausible?
Despite all that, in an apparent bid to avoid taking the heat for appearing the constant naysayer on an issue of such neuralgic import in Washington, German intelligence officials say that, the dubious sourcing notwithstanding, they considered the information on the mobile biological laboratories "plausible."
In recent weeks, any "plausibility" has all but evaporated. Many biological warfare specialists in the US and elsewhere were skeptical from the start. Now Defense Intelligence Agency specialists have joined their counterparts at the State Department and elsewhere in concluding that the two trailer/laboratories discovered in Iraq in early May are hydrogen-producing facilities for weather balloons to calibrate Iraqi artillery, as the Iraqis have said.
Perhaps it was this DIA report that emboldened the BND official to go public about the misgivings the BND had about the source.
Insult to Intelligence
What do intelligence analysts do when their professional ethic--to tell the truth without fear or favor--is prostituted for political expedience? Usually, they hold their peace, as we've already noted was the case in Germany in 1939 before the invasion of Poland. The good news is that some intelligence officials are now able to recognize a higher duty--particularly when the issue involves war and peace. Clearly, some BND officials are fed up with the abuse of intelligence they have witnessed--and especially the trifling with the intelligence that they have shared with the US from their own sources. At least one such official appears to have seen it as a patriotic duty to expose what appears to be a deliberate distortion.
This is a hopeful sign. There are indications that British intelligence officials, too, are beginning to see more distinctly their obligation to speak truth to power, especially in light of the treatment their government accorded Ministry of Defense biologist Dr. David Kelly, who became despondent to the point of suicide.
Even more commendable was the courageous move by senior Australian intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie when it became clear to him that the government he was serving had decided to take part in launching an unprovoked war based on "intelligence" information he knew to be specious. Wilkie resigned and promptly spoke his piece--not only to his fellow citizens but, after the war, at Parliament in London and Congress in Washington. Andrew Wilkie was not naÃve enough to believe he could stop the war when he resigned in early March. What was clear to him, however, was that he had a moral duty to expose the deliberate deception in which his government, in cooperation with the US and UK, had become engaged. And he knew instinctively that, in so doing, he could with much clearer conscience look at himself in the mirror each morning.
What About Us?
Do you not find it ironic that State Department foreign service officers, whom we intelligence professionals have (quite unfairly) tended to write off as highly articulate but unthinking apologists for whatever administration happens to be in power, are the only ones so far to resign on principle over the war on Iraq? Three of them have--all three with very moving explanations that their consciences would no longer allow them to promote "intelligence" and policies tinged with deceit.
What about you? It is clear that you have been battered, buffeted, besmirched. And you are painfully aware that you can expect no help at this point from Director George Tenet. Recall the painful morning when you watched him at the UN sitting squarely behind Powell, as if to say the Intelligence Community endorses the deceitful tapestry he wove. No need to remind you that his speech boasted not only the bogus biological trailers but also assertions of a "sinister nexus" between Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite the fact that your intense, year-and-a-half analytical effort had turned up no credible evidence to support that claim. To make matters worse, Tenet is himself under fire for acquiescing in a key National Intelligence Estimate on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq that included several paragraphs based on a known forgery. That is the same estimate from which the infamous 16 words were drawn for the president's state-of-the-union address on January 28.
And not only that. In a dramatic departure from customary practice, Tenet has let the moneychangers into the temple--welcoming the most senior policymakers into the inner sanctum where all-source analysis is performed at CIA headquarters, wining and dining Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Assistant Condoleezza Rice, and even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (now representing the Pentagon) on their various visits to make sure you didn't miss anything! You have every right to expect to be protected from that kind of indignity. Small wonder that Gingrich, in a recent unguarded moment on TV, conceded that Tenet "is so grateful to President Bush that he will do anything for him." CIA directors have no business being so integral a "part of the team."
Powell, who points proudly to his four day-and-night cram course at the CIA in the days immediately prior to his February 5 UN speech, seems oblivious to the fact that personal visitations of that frequency and duration--and for that purpose--are unprecedented in the history of the CIA. Equally unprecedented are Cheney's "multiple visits." When George H. W. Bush was vice president, not once did he go out to CIA headquarters for a working visit. We brought our analysis to him. As you are well aware, once the subjects uppermost in policymakers' minds are clear to analysts, the analysis itself must be conducted in an unfettered, sequestered way--and certainly without the direct involvement of officials with policy axes to grind. Until now, that is the way it has been done; the analysis and estimates were brought downtown to the policymakers--not the other way around.
What Happens When You Remain Silent?
There is no more telling example than Vietnam. CIA analysts were prohibited from reporting accurately on the non-incident in the Tonkin Gulf on August 4, 1964 until the White House had time to use the "furious fire-fight" to win the Tonkin Gulf resolution from Congress--and eleven more years of war for the rest of us.
And we kept quiet.
In November 1967 as the war gathered steam, CIA management gave President Lyndon Johnson a very important National Intelligence Estimate known to be fraudulent. Painstaking research by a CIA analyst, the late Sam Adams, had revealed that the Vietnamese Communists under arms numbered 500,000. But Gen. William Westmoreland in Saigon, eager to project an image of progress in the US "war of attrition," had imposed a very low artificial ceiling on estimates of enemy strength.
Analysts were aghast when management caved in and signed an NIE enshrining Westmoreland's count of between 188,000 and 208,000. The Tet offensive just two months later exploded that myth--at great human cost. And the war dragged on for seven more years.
Then, as now, morale among analysts plummeted. A senior CIA official made the mistake of jocularly asking Adams if he thought the Agency had "gone beyond the bounds of reasonable dishonesty." Sam, who had not only a keen sense of integrity but first-hand experience of what our troops were experiencing in the jungles of Vietnam, had to be restrained. He would be equally outraged at the casualties being taken now by US forces fighting another unnecessary war, this time in the desert. Kipling's verse applies equally well to jungle or desert:
If they question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.
Adams himself became, in a very real sense, a casualty of Vietnam. He died of a heart attack at 55, with remorse he was unable to shake. You see, he decided to "go through channels," pursuing redress by seeking help from imbedded CIA and the Defense Department Inspectors General. Thus, he allowed himself to be diddled for so many years that by the time he went public the war was mostly over--and the damage done.
Sam had lived painfully with the thought that, had he gone public when the CIA's leaders caved in to the military in 1967, the entire left half of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would not have had to be built. There would have been 25-30,000 fewer names for the granite to accommodate.
So too with Daniel Ellsberg, who made the courageous decision to give the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam to the New York Times and Washington Post for publication in 1971. Dan has been asked whether he has any regrets. Yes, one big one, he says. If he had made the papers available in 1964 or 65, this tragically unnecessary war might have been stopped in its tracks. Why did he not? Dan's response is quite telling; he says the thought never occurred to him at the time.
Let the thought occur to you, now.
But Isn't It Too Late?
No. While it is too late to prevent the misadventure in Iraq, the war is hardly over, and analogous "evidence" is being assembled against Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Yes, US forces will have their hands full for a long time in Iraq, but this hardly rules out further adventures based on "intelligence" as spurious as that used to argue the case for attacking Iraq.
The best deterrent is the truth. Telling the truth about the abuse of intelligence on Iraq could conceivably give pause to those about to do a reprise. It is, in any case, essential that the American people acquire a more accurate understanding of the use and abuse of intelligence. Only then can there be any hope that they can experience enough healing from the trauma of 9/11 to be able to make informed judgments regarding the policies pursued by this administration--thus far with the timid acquiescence of their elected representatives.
History is littered with the guilty consciences of those who chose to remain silent. It is time to speak out.
/s/
Gene Betit, Arlington, VA Pat Lang, Alexandria, VA David MacMichael, Linden, VA Ray McGovern, Arlington, VA
Steering Group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
The VIPS can be reached at: rmcgovern@slschool.org
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Sanctions harden Iraqis attitude to U.N.
By JAMIE TARABAY,
Associated Press Writer,
8/23/2003
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2003/08/23/sanctions_harden_iraqis_attitude_to_un/
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- When a truck packed with explosives blew up outside the United Nations compound in Baghdad and killed at least 23 people, much of the world recoiled in shock, horrified anyone would attack an organization known everywhere for its good works.
Everywhere, that is, except in Iraq, where there is deep ambivalence toward the world body.
For many Iraqis, the United Nations was synonymous with economic hardship -- responsible for much of the everyday misery here.
The crippling international sanctions imposed by the world body after Iraq invaded Kuwait 12 years ago have been blamed for everything from high infant mortality rates to a ban on ice cream.
Geoff Keele, a spokesman for UNICEF who has worked in Iraq since June 2002, said under the previous government, the state press -- the only source of information for people -- would condemn the United Nations regularly, blaming it for the lack of quality health care.
"So there are people who are out there who do feel that the United Nations is to blame for a lot of the situations they find themselves in right now in this country," Keele said.
Many Iraqis couldn't separate U.N. humanitarian programs from the political measures meted out by its member states. For them, the same organization that tried to fund schools and bring in rice and flour under the Oil for Food Program was also the instrument that laid the groundwork for the 1991 Gulf War.
The 12 years of sanctions that followed did nothing to diminish the United Nations' image as a lackey for the United States.
"When you talk to me about the United Nations, what comes to mind is a political organization," said Moaid Al Rawi, 27, in his electrical appliance store in downtown Baghdad. "I don't consider their humanitarian contribution to be so great for us here. But don't get me wrong," he quickly added, "no one agrees with what happened."
Tuesday's bomb, which blew off the facade of part of the three-story Canal Hotel, killed Iraqis and U.N. staffers, including the top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, and wounded more than 100 others. FBI agents combing through the evidence say the blast was the work of a suicide bomber.
U.S. officials in Iraq have said that foreign terrorists are infiltrating the country to try to undermine the U.S.-led Coalition and its mission to rebuild Iraq. But they stopped short of blaming non-Iraqi militants for the bombing.
FBI agents have surmised that the enormous payload of explosives most likely came from Iraqi military caches of Saddam Hussein's former regime, something to which an Iraqi, not a foreigner, would have access.
"While most people in Iraq right now are absolutely shocked by what has happened and they don't like to believe that Iraqis are capable of this kind of act, there are some who are much more indifferent to what has happened," Keele said. "A lot of that has to do with the fact that the United Nations has been associated with something like comprehensive economic sanctions."
Iraqis had to make do without ice cream and chocolate while sanctions were in place, since the government rationed sugar and goods that required it were banned from production. Anyone switching on a television set would find either Saddam, a reading from Islam's holy Quran or a blasting diatribe against the U.N. sanctions.
Students taking high-school examinations were expected to write an essay on Saddam, the Israeli-Palestinian issue or how sanctions had affected their lives. There were weekly school assemblies where teachers would give lectures on the evil consequences of the sanctions. Students were regularly pulled out of class to march in demonstrations against the United Nations.
Nevertheless, the U.N. officials said they believed the organization's multinational nature and desire to help rebuild would win over Iraqis. One official said the organization did not want a big U.S. military presence at its headquarters out of fear it would compromise humanitarian work.
It didn't help that the Canal Hotel, which housed many of the humanitarian agencies, had been the office of the U.N. weapons inspectors before the war.
Anas Madah, 26, blamed the inspectors and their aborted mission to search Iraq for banned weapons of mass destruction for the onset of the U.S.-led invasion and Iraqis' economic woes.
"This is all because of the United Nations -- the lack of security, no jobs. The United Nations could have prevented the war; wasn't the whole world against it?" he asked.
Still, other Iraqis sought to affirm that the world body was not only welcome here, but necessary to the country's resuscitation.
"We don't blame the U.N. for anything," said Bassam Nasser, 29, who runs a shoe shop. "We hope they will stay and fix our problems."
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US finds Britain its lone supporter
By Marcus Warren in New York
23/08/2003
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$XGVW3SKR1211TQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2003/08/23/wirq123.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/08/23/ixnewstop.html
America's campaign to rally more support for its occupation of Iraq at the United Nations ran into early opposition last night, leaving Britain as its only powerful ally.
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, poured gentle scorn on the idea of a new resolution being passed without significant concessions from Washington. Creating a UN-mandated multi-national force to replace US-British military control was not out of the question, Mr Annan said.
"But of course it would also imply not just burden-sharing but also sharing decision[s] and responsibility," he said. "If that doesn't happen, it's going to be very difficult to get a second resolution."
France, a permanent member of the Security Council, has expressed hesitation at American calls for military help and is likely to continue to do so unless the Pentagon cedes some authority over its operations on the ground.
But any dilution of US authority over the occupation, even on the political or economic fronts, was ruled out by Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, on Thursday.
Britain now finds itself again a middleman between a hawkish America and a sceptical world.
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U.N.'s Annan says U.S. must cede control
August 23, 2003
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030822-095848-8639r.htm
NEW YORK - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday that Washington will have to cede some authority if it expects other nations to join its coalition in Iraq.
"I think most member states ... would want to see further internationalization through broadening of a U.N. role to permit them to join the operations on the ground," Mr. Annan told reporters yesterday after a brief meeting with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
"It would also imply not just burden-sharing, but also sharing decision and responsibility with the others," he added.
"If that doesn't happen, I think it is going to be very difficult to get a second resolution that will satisfy everybody."
The United States and Britain have been discussing a second resolution with other council members since Thursday, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that the United States is seeking to expand the U.S.-dominated occupation authority. But the new multinational force, he stressed, would be under the coalition's control.
But France has openly scoffed at the notion of contributing troops to a U.S. command.
Foreign Minister Dominque de Villepin criticized Washington for having a "logic of confrontation" in yesterday's Le Monde and said Paris "can't make do with adjusting or enlarging the current plan."
In a meeting Thursday, diplomats from France, Russia and Germany expressed reluctance to authorize a new multinational force under exclusive U.S. control. Most of the diplomats expressed deep concern about the deteriorating situation in Iraq and urged the occupation authority to return political power to the Iraqi people.
"Although people's starting positions may be different, it is possible to reach a strong consensus," Mr. Straw said yesterday.
In Washington, a senior State Department official said yesterday that it was time for members of the Security Council to stand up and support the work being done by the international community and United Nations in Iraq.
"This is not a time for some sterile debate on authority. It is a time to seize the moment," he said.
The official said the United States was consulting with Mr. Annan and a number of government leaders, including Mr. De Villepin, on the language of a U.N. resolution.
Asked whether he thought France, which stood against the U.S. action in Iraq, would veto any new resolution, the official responded: "I think the French are still the French.
"If council members want to step and do something, that's fine," he said. President Bush, speaking in Seattle, said his administration is working with the United Nations to encourage allies to help bring peace the country. "There will be more foreign troops in Iraq," he said.
The momentum to expand the coalition has grown since Tuesday's attack on the U.N. office in Baghdad killed at least 23 and wounded a hundred. In addition, the continued attacks against U.S. soldiers are starting to dent public support for a prolonged occupation.
A resolution that expressly authorizes a multinational force would make it easier for nations to contribute troops without looking like they are supporting an occupying army that is increasingly resented by the Iraqi people.
Arab states, whose participation would give the operation some regional legitimacy, particularly need the U.N. umbrella to get involved. Traditional troop contributors India and Pakistan have also said they would need additional U.N. authorization to send soldiers to Iraq.
Turkey's top political and military leaders met yesterday to consider a U.S. request to deploy thousands of Turkish soldiers in Iraq - a move that could make this predominantly Muslim country the third-largest foreign country in Iraq. The meeting ended inconclusively, although Turkish leaders are said to be holding out for control over their own sector, possibly in the north.
Turkey had been prepared to host and join the U.S. troops during the March invasion but bailed out at the last moment, forcing the Pentagon to scramble troops at the last minute.
A multinational force could be endorsed by the Security Council but funded and controlled by the 15-member group, as a regular U.N. peacekeeping mission is.
• Sharon Behn in Washington contributed to this report.
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U.N. has long history of casualties
August 23, 2003
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030822-095853-3714r.htm
The United Nations' civilian personnel and blue-helmeted military peacekeepers have faced deadly peril from the very first major mission the global body undertook more than a half-century ago.
The bombing of the U.N. compound in Baghdad on Tuesday that killed Special Envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and at least 22 others only adds to a grim roster that includes an estimated 1,800 U.N. peacekeepers killed since 1948. An additional 221 U.N. civilian workers, relief specialists and administrators have died at their posts since 1992 alone.
U.S. Army Sgt. Lester Welling of Hampton, Va., became the first American to die in a U.N. peacekeeping mission when his jeep crashed near Jerusalem on Dec. 7, 1948. The U.N. force was dispatched to the region to quell the conflict between Arabs and Israelis after the declaration of an independent state of Israel.
Sgt. Welling was one of 53 American military and civilian police personnel who have died while serving in U.N. peacekeeping missions through 2002, according to the office of the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
At least two American U.N. officials - Richard Hooper of the political affairs department and Martha Teas in the U.N. humanitarian affairs office - are listed among the victims of Tuesday's attack.
Top U.N. officials still appeared stunned yesterday by the toll of the Baghdad attack, which targeted senior civilian employees working on relief and reconstruction issues - not security or peacekeeping chores.
"United Nations personnel have been targeted before," acknowledged Secretary-General Kofi Annan while meeting with U.N. staff at a memorial service in New York.
"We have gathered all too often in recent years to mourn and remember fallen colleagues, but Tuesday's attack was more deliberate and vicious than anything that has been directed at us hitherto," he added.
The trademark white flags and blue helmets have never fully shielded U.N. personnel from danger, particularly in conflicts where one or both sides reject international intervention.
The 1948 Middle East mission brought the first assassination of a top U.N. official when a Jewish underground group gunned down Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, who was pushing a compromise plan that the extremists believed threatened Israel's independence.
Mr. Bernadotte and a French U.N. observer were killed in the attack.
Dag Hammarskjold, another Swede and the second U.N. secretary-general, was killed along with 15 aides when his plane went down in still-mysterious circumstances while trying to broker a peace deal between warring factions in the former Belgian Congo in 1961.
The Congolese civil war, played out against the larger Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, proved a particularly bloody mission for the United Nations. An international force of about 19,000 troops was sent to the area, and about 250 U.N. peacekeepers were killed.
Such missions can be particularly traumatic for smaller nations that contribute soldiers to peacekeeping missions.
The loss of 17 Irish soldiers in the Congo mission - the first major overseas assignment approved by the Republic of Ireland government - remains a searing memory 40 years after the fact. Irish troops also took significant losses serving in the U.N. interim force dispatched to the tense Lebanon-Israeli border in 1978.
The United Nations last year awarded the first medals named for Mr. Hammarskjold, issued to honor those who lost their lives serving in U.N.-led peacekeeping missions.
Several nations have recorded higher casualties in U.N. missions than has the United States, including Canada (109), India (106), Ghana (94), Ireland (83), Britain (77), Sweden (64), and Pakistan (57). Nepal, with a population of 24 million, has lost 42 soldiers in U.N. missions.
Even relatively peaceful U.N. deployments have yielded casualties.
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U.N. added security before blast in Iraq
August 23, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030822-104321-2707r.htm
BAGHDAD - A senior United Nations official said yesterday that security had been stepped up at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad based on a warning tip received at least a week before Tuesday's suicide bombing.
U.S. investigators said yesterday the attack appeared to be an inside job.
"We were on a much higher level of security protection than usual," said David Nabarro, a senior World Health Organization official who survived the explosion. He told Agence France-Presse in Geneva that a tip from Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, prompted the higher security.
U.S. investigators looking into the bombing are questioning Iraqi employees and guards, many of whom were linked to Saddam Hussein's security service, a top American official said yesterday.
In Seattle, President Bush said violence in Iraq can be attributed to former members of Saddam's regime, but "foreign elements" - whom he called "al Qaeda-type fighters" - are infiltrating in the hope of committing terrorism.
"They hate freedom," he added.
"Iraq is turning out to be a continuing battle in the war on terrorism," the president said after meeting with economic leaders of Washington state. "We're going to stay the course."
Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is working to re-establish an Iraqi police force, said the placement of the truck bomb and the timing of the attack on the U.N. headquarters had raised suspicions.
The truck was as close as it could have been to the office of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. envoy and one of at least 23 persons killed in the blast. The bomb went off as a high-level official meeting was in progress in the office.
"Would the security guards have access to that information? Would the people who work in that building for any other reason have access to it? How were the schedules distributed? They're very basic parts of an investigation, and they're non-accusatory," Mr. Kerik told the Associated Press.
Mr. Kerik said some of the Iraqi personnel at the U.N. compound initially refused to cooperate with the bombing investigation and were being interrogated.
"There are concerns about some of the people who were working there," he said. "It's all under investigation at this point."
He said the United Nations was responsible for its own security guards and he was not sure whether the organization had a procedure to screen people who had worked for the former regime.
Most of the U.N. security guards at the compound had been placed there by Saddam's security service before the war and reported on U.N. staff movements at the Canal Hotel, headquarters for U.N. inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Nabarro, the WHO official, said security at the compound had been stepped up before the attack "for about the last week or two."
"When you come in through the front entrance they were very meticulous on security, searching underneath the vehicle," he said.
"In fact they'd stepped up security because there was bit of a worry of something big perhaps happening, but not necessarily to the U.N.," he added.
Mr. Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, said Wednesday he had received intelligence on Aug. 14 indicating that a "large-scale act" would be directed against a soft target, such as political parties or other parties, including the United Nations. He said the council had shared the tip with U.S. officials in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, emergency workers continued their search for human remains in the rubble of the bombed headquarters, as 86 seriously wounded U.N. workers were being airlifted out of Iraq for medical care abroad.
Two U.N. employees were still unaccounted for and an unknown number of people - visitors to the building - were still buried in the rubble, Mr. Kerik said.
A coffin bearing Mr. Vieira de Mello's body and draped in the U.N. flag was carried aboard a Brazilian air force plane yesterday after a brief, tearful ceremony at Baghdad's airport. The plane headed for Geneva, where his widow and two children will board before flying on to his native Brazil.
Bagpipers played "Amazing Grace," and L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, wept as he consoled a sobbing U.N. employee.
The United Nations has said it won't increase the number of U.S. soldiers standing guard outside its facilities from the dozen or so it had before the attack.
In Washington, the State Department yesterday issued another warning to U.S. citizens traveling to Iraq.
"The security environment in all of Iraq remains volatile and unpredictable," the statement said.
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U.N. Chief Says New Force in Iraq Can Be Led by U.S.
August 23, 2003
By FELICITY BARRINGER
The New York Times
UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 22 - Secretary General Kofi Annan suggested today that the Security Council could set up a new multinational force in Iraq that would be led by the United States as the largest troop contributor - a common practice in joint military operations.
In addition, Mr. Annan said continuing security concerns in Iraq were a part of a larger challenge of persuading Iraqis that the foreigners in their midst were acting in their interest and intended to turn back the reins of power quickly.
In remarks to reporters, he said the Security Council might "decide to transform the operation into a U.N.-mandated multinational force." But, he added, "it would also imply not just burden-sharing, but also sharing decisions and responsibility with the others."
"If that doesn't happen," he added, "I think it's going to be very difficult to get a second resolution that will satisfy everybody."
A spokesman for Mr. Annan later said a unified command would not exclude having the leaders of other troop contingents work as part of the same headquarters unit.
It was not immediately clear if Mr. Annan's suggestion would provide common ground between the United States - with its insistence on complete control of political, economic and particularly military operations - and Council members like France, Germany and Russia. They remain disinclined to lend their approval to a military effort undertaken despite their fierce opposition.
But it was clear from Mr. Annan's public remarks today and a brief interview that he is certain that a new United Nations mandate is required to give the organization a clearly defined role and to allow Iraqis to have confidence that control over Iraq's future is reverting to them.
"We are focusing a lot on the force, the multinational force, and security," he said. "I think it's because of what happened. But that is only part of the answer. The other part of the answer is to move quickly to create an environment where the average Iraqi will support the operation and see that what is happening is in their interest."
He added, "That's why I keep saying, let's come up with a timetable to let them know that the occupation is really time-bound."
Paying homage to the skills of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations coordinator on Iraq who was killed in Tuesday's bombing, he said Mr. Vieira de Mello's ability to win the trust of diverse segments of Iraqi society could not be replicated. "We have played a vital role," Mr. Annan said. "But we did because of that personality. Because of Sergio being who he is. The next time around, the mandates have to be very clear and well-defined. I cannot rely on personalities. I had only one Sergio."
The secretary general, who flew to Brazil tonight to attend the memorial service for Mr. Vieira de Mello, has been increasingly vocal in emphasizing the need for a common approach among the former Security Council opponents. He told reporters today that "a chaotic Iraq is not in anyone's interest," and "therefore we have a collective responsibility to try and deal with the situation as it exists in Iraq today."
But the bitterness, particularly on the part of France, was back in evidence on Thursday in the remarks of a French envoy to the Council.
In interviews published and broadcast today, Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, did not reject the idea of supporting a new resolution calling for international help in Iraq.
Mr. de Villepin did, however, talk of moving Iraq from a "logic of occupation" to a "political logic of the restoration of sovereignty." He called for elections for a constituent assembly, to be supervised by a new special representative of the secretary general and to take place as early as the end of the year.
It was unclear how nations like India, Pakistan and Turkey, which have balked at providing troops in the absence of a mandate, would respond to the secretary general's notion of essentially embracing the existing occupying force as part of a United Nations-mandated multinational force.
In a related development, Mexico has angered the United States by calling for a vote Monday on its moribund resolution on the security of United Nations employees overseas, diplomats here said today.
Council diplomats said today that the resolution, which was proposed in May, was put aside after the United States threatened to veto it because of its invocation of the powers of the International Criminal Court. The Bush administration opposes the court, a standing war crimes tribunal, arguing that it might be used to harass American soldiers and government officials.
But vetoing a resolution to enhance the security of United Nations staff, less than a week after 23 people died in the Baghdad bombing, would be too embarrassing, the diplomats added. Even an abstention would be hard to explain. So the United States would be left with a choice of agreeing to language it has repeatedly rejected or finding some way to get Mexico to modify the draft.
But, diplomats said, almost all the rest of the Council members have indicated support for the measure. Bulgaria, a close ally of the United States during the Iraq debates, expects to be a co-sponsor, the Bulgarian envoy, Stefan Tafrov, said today. Even Pakistan, which also has reservations about the court, has indicated its support.
A State Department official said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell would call the Mexican foreign minister, Luis Ernesto Derbez, to push for modification of the draft resolution. "We want to make sure our concerns regarding the International Criminal Court were addressed before we could support such a resolution," the official said.
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Reserve tracking faulty
By Ian Thompson,
California Daily Republic,
August 23, 2003
http://www.dailyrepublic.com/articles/2003/08/23/news/news7.txt
FAIRFIELD -- The Pentagon did a poor job keeping track of the 300,000 National Guard and Reservists called up after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to the General Accounting Office, the federal government's auditing agency.
The Pentagon didn't have adequate or enough systems to keep tabs on those called up and available to be called up, said the GAO report, released earlier this week.
In some cases, some reservists were deployed beyond dates specified in their orders or stayed on alert for more than a year but were never mobilized due to breakdowns in tracking systems and communications.
The Air Force had a better handle on managing its mobilizations, the report said. The Army had problems due to the large number of smaller Reserve and National Guard units it dealt with.
Some problems occurred because some individuals in Reserve units hadn't completed their training requirements, making the call-up more confused, the report said.
The Army Reserve's Third Brigade, which is headquartered at Travis AFB and whose mission is preparing Guard and Reserve troops for mobilization, had 340 of its members mobilized.
The 349th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base went through two waves of mobilizations, one immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, with more than 800 members mobilized. More than 1,100 mobilized for the invasion of Iraq.
In the 211th Transportation Company, based in Vallejo, 236 people responded to the mobilization. All 120 members of the Army National Guard's 349th Quartermaster Company, also based in Vallejo, are still mobilized and serving somewhere in Kuwait or Iraq.
There are about 1.4 million Reserve and National Guard members, about 187,000 of whom are currently mobilized.
Ian Thompson can be reached at ithompson@dailyrepublic.net.
-------- propaganda wars
Ideas the Pentagon Wishes It Never Had
August 23, 2003
by Ari Berman
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030901&s=berman
I n response to the outrage in late July over Adm. John Poindexter's proposed Pentagon-administered terrorism futures trading market, Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia remarked, "This is two strikes now. Do you want a third?" In fact, defying conventional baseball norms, the Pentagon already has had more strikes than Sammy Sosa on a bad day--and still is at the plate. Below, a recap of some of the Pentagon's most egregious post-9/11 mistakes, mishaps and manifestations of misdirection.
1. The Office of Special Plans. The first of the post-9/11 experiments, the secretive neocon-hawk shop was created to bypass the more skeptical Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA in investigating links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Now under fire for pushing forged Niger uranium documents and embellishing Saddam's WMD threat and connection to terrorists to gain support for the war in Iraq. Though details about the OSP remain murky, it's looking increasingly likely that many Bush Administration war lies originated here.
2. The Office of Strategic Information. Unlike the recently discovered OSP, the OSI drew immediate criticism after its inception shortly after 9/11. As part of an effort to sway the Islamic world in America's favor, the OSI planned to plant "disinformation" in the foreign newsmedia and engage in "covert deception." "If you liked the lie about the murder of Kuwaiti babies after Iraq's invasion of the oil-rich emirate in 1990, you'll love the [OSI]," UPI wrote. The office shut down almost immediately after its existence became publicly known last February.
3. Total Information Awareness. The first of convicted Iran/contra criminal Poindexter's recent strikes, TIA proposed fighting terrorism by skirting the Privacy Act of 1974 and electronically monitoring the everyday transactions of millions of ordinary Americans at a cost of $200 million annually. Called "an Orwellian concept if I've ever heard one," by former Senator Gary Hart (co-author of the Hart-Rudman Homeland Security report), one hundred senators refused to fund TIA this past February. Renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, the program will likely be killed once and for all when Congress reconvenes.
4. Jay Garner. Under Viceroy Garner, chaos reigned supreme in postwar Iraq. Viewed as an unpopular choice from the beginning by the State Department and experts in the region due to his military background, the retired general failed to either prevent massive looting or to quickly restore electricity and security, largely contributing to the lawless atmosphere still gripping the country. Replaced less than two weeks after the war's end by "civilian" administrator L. Paul Bremer, even Garner's supporters dubbed him "politically tone-deaf." Though Bremer might be more congenial, the results under the new czar have been equally disastrous--with the electricity still out and guerrilla attacks up.
5. R. James Woolsey. In another bitter fight with State, the Pentagon proposed installing Überhawk and "World War IV" advocate Woolsey as interim Iraqi information minister. Critics fumed that installing the ex-CIA chief as official truth-teller might not be the best way to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. With Karl Rove on high alert, the White House quickly vetoed the idea in early April, though Woolsey still uses his standing on the Defense Policy Board to lobby for regime change in Syria and Iran. In early August, Woolsey added North Korea's Kim Jong Il to the list of world leaders to knock off, writing, "North Korea's geriatric air defenses--both fighter aircraft and missiles--would not last long. As the Iraqis understood when facing our air power, if you fly, you die."
6. FutureMAP. Poindexter's second preposterous plan would have created an online futures market rewarding investors who correctly predicted future terrorist attacks and prominent assassinations. Donald Rumsfeld said he killed the program one hour after reading of it, while Poindexter announced his resignation from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency two days after the unveiling. "The problem is more than the fact that Admiral Poindexter was put in charge," Senator Patrick Leahy said. "The problem is that these projects were just fine with the Administration until the public found out."
7. Iraqi Media Network. A few days later, the head of the Defense Department-contracted Iraqi Television--Iraqi exile Ahmad al-Rikaby--quit his post, complaining of inadequate funding, equipment and training. Originally intended to operate with a degree of independence, the American occupying authority has instead kept the station under firm control, damaging its street credibility. While Arab broadcasts thrive, Iraqis label the American network "dull and repetitive" with the New York Times calling it a "$5-million-a-month dud."
With a Defense Department like this, it's no wonder the Pentagon budget rose to $379.9 billion for 2004, a roughly $60 billion increase since 9/11. Mass deception comes with a heavy price tag these days
----
White House edited EPA's 9/11 reports
By JOHN HEILPRIN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, August 23, 2003
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/136350_epa23.html
WASHINGTON -- At the White House's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency gave New Yorkers misleading assurances that there was no health risk from the debris-laden air after the World Trade Center collapse, according to an internal inquiry.
President Bush's senior environmental adviser yesterday defended the White House involvement, saying it was justified by national security.
The White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" by having the National Security Council control EPA communications after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley.
"When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement," the report says, adding that the EPA had yet to adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin.
In all, the EPA issued five news releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 reassuring the public about air quality. But it wasn't until June 2002 that the EPA determined that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels -- well after respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers cleaning dusty offices and apartments.
The day after the attacks, former EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher's chief of staff e-mailed senior EPA officials to say that "all statements to the media should be cleared" first by the National Security Council, which is Bush's main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet, the inspector general's report says.
Approval from the NSC, the report says, was arranged through the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which "influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."
For example, the inspector general found, the EPA was persuaded to omit guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete.
James Connaughton, chairman of the environmental council, which coordinates federal environmental efforts, said the White House directed the EPA to add and delete information based on how it should be released publicly.
He said the EPA did "an incredible job" with the World Trade Center cleanup.
Andy Darrell, New York regional director of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, said the report is indicative of a pattern of White House interference in EPA affairs.
"For EPA to do its job well, it needs to be allowed to make decisions based on the science and the facts," he said.
The EPA inspector general recommended the EPA adopt new procedures so its public statements on health risks and environmental quality are backed by data and analysis.
Other recommendations include developing better procedures for indoor air cleanups and asbestos handling in large-scale disasters.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Judge Suspended in Ten Commandments Case
By BOB JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
Aug 23, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TEN_COMMANDMENTS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
Johnson reports that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore -- who refuses to obey a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building -- is off the job for now. (Audio)
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Alabama's chief justice was suspended for disobeying a federal court's order that he remove a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state judicial building. Yet, Saturday, the massive granite marker remained in place and there were no signs it would soon be moved.
Chief Justice Roy Moore, who installed the 5,300-pound monument two years ago, was suspended with pay Friday when the nine-member Judicial Inquiry Commission referred an ethics complaint against him to the Court of the Judiciary, which can discipline and remove judges.
Moore had no immediate comment after the decision. His spokesman, Tom Parker, said his attorneys would respond to the complaint Monday.
A spokesman said Friday that Moore still intends to formally appeal the federal removal order to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Moore met with the commission on Friday as about 100 of his supporters at the federal courthouse ripped and burned a copy of U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson's order for the monument's removal.
He said he told the commission he upheld his oath of office by acknowledging God. He has said Thompson had no authority to tell the state's chief justice to remove the monument.
Although Moore's supporters have said they will try to prevent court officials from moving the monument, his attorneys offered assurances that Moore will not interfere with the removal during a conference call Friday with Thompson, two plaintiffs' attorneys who also took part in the call said.
Attorney General Bill Pryor said the public corruption and white collar crime unit in his office will handle the prosecution of the chief justice on the ethics complaint. He said senior Associate Justice Gorman Houston will perform the chief justice's duties while Moore is suspended.
"I'm not happy we have to deal with these matters, but it is part of our duties and we will continue to do so," Pryor said.
Thompson ruled last year that the monument's placement in the public rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building violated the Constitution's ban on government promotion of a religious doctrine.
He ordered the monument removed by Wednesday - the same day the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Moore's appeal for an emergency stay.
When Moore still refused to move the marker, the state Supreme Court's eight associate justices overruled him and ordered the monument out of the rotunda, though officials said it could be placed elsewhere in the building. Court officials on Friday discussed where it might be moved to comply with the order and still be secure.
Joe Conn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which sued to remove the monument, said Moore brought the suspension on himself.
"He knew all along that state court judges cannot defy the federal courts and yet he went ahead with this anyway," Conn said.
A Moore supporter, Alabama Christian Coalition president John Giles, said the commission was "trying to take down one of America's finest."
The ethics complaint, filed by Montgomery lawyer Stephen Glassroth, now goes to the Court of the Judiciary, a panel made up of four judges, three lawyers and two non-lawyers.
Attorneys who sued to get the monument out of the rotunda, meanwhile, put their contempt filing against Moore on hold after the associated justices said the monument would be moved.
Ayesha Khan, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said plaintiffs would drop their request to hold Moore in contempt, or fine the state, if the monument is moved by the end of next week.
Outside the judicial building Saturday, about 100 people sat on the front steps and in lawn chairs listening to people preach and praying.
Retired Birmingham school teacher Murray Phillips, who joined the demonstrators Friday, said she knows the monument will probably be moved soon.
"I'm upset, but I'm not surprised," she said. "At least I am going to be able to say to my grandchildren that at least I tried to do something."
-------- drug war
Texas Governor Pardons 35 Arrested in Tainted Sting
August 23, 2003
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas yesterday pardoned 35 people, 31 of them black, who were arrested in 1999 in a drug sting based solely on the word of an undercover agent who has since been indicted on perjury charges.
"Questions surrounding testimony from the key witness in these cases," the governor said, referring to the agent, Tom Coleman, "weighed heavily on my final decision."
The arrests in Tulia, a dusty small town of 5,000 people in the Texas Panhandle between Amarillo and Lubbock, attracted national attention because they decimated the small black community there.
Freddie Brookins Jr., 26, served 3 1/2 years of a 20-year sentence. He has been free since June, when Governor Perry, a Republican, signed legislation allowing the 14 people then still in prison to be released on bail while he and the courts considered their cases.
"It really takes a lot off your mind," Mr. Brookins said of the pardon.
But there was bitterness mixed with his relief.
"What hurt the most was that the people in the courtroom and on the jury knew me and knew I hadn't done it," he said. "All of it had to do with race. It's a stupid way to try to get people out of town."
Jeff Blackburn, a lawyer in Amarillo who represents many of the people pardoned yesterday, said indiscriminate spending in the war on drugs was to blame for the debacle in Tulia. He was especially critical of the Texas Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force, a federally financed consortium of 26 Texas counties based in Amarillo.
"The government agency that caused the Tulia fiasco was the task force," Mr. Blackburn said. "They were the group that hired Coleman. They were that group that allegedly supervised Coleman. We believe it was this group that encouraged him to make the largest number of cases using whatever methods he chose. The more productive he appeared to be, the more funding money they could get."
Task force officials did not respond to messages seeking comment.
At a hearing in Tulia in March, Mr. Coleman, who is white, and other witnesses testified about his troubled law enforcement career, unorthodox methods, pervasive errors, combustible temperament and what apparently was racism. Mr. Coleman blithely conceded that he routinely used the most charged racial slur.
Mr. Coleman also testified that although most of the drug transactions he swore to were in public places, he did not wear a recording device, arrange for video surveillance, ask anyone to observe the deals or fingerprint the plastic bags containing the drugs.
He worked alone and did not tape record his drug buys. Instead, he said, he would jot down information on his leg. No drugs, weapons or large sums of cash were found during the mass arrest of 46 people, 39 of them black, in 1999.
Among the people arrested in 1999 but not pardoned yesterday were seven whose cases had been dismissed before trial, two who were on probation at the time of their arrests and so not eligible for pardons, one whose conviction is not final and one who has died.
Mr. Coleman pleaded not guilty to perjury charges in April. His phone is disconnected, and his lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest court for criminal matters, is considering a recommendation from the judge who supervised the March hearing that all of the Tulia convictions be overturned. It is not clear what effect the pardons will have on those proceedings. The pardons will, however, open the way for civil suits by those charged in the cases.
"We're planning on exhausting every single remedy available to our clients," said Vanita Gupta, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents many of the Tulia defendants.
The first civil suit arising from the Tulia arrests was, apparently coincidentally, filed yesterday in federal court in Amarillo. It was brought by two women against whom charges were brought and then dropped before trial, as Mr. Coleman's evidence started to unravel.
The suit says that the people and agencies responsible for Mr. Coleman's supervision violated the plaintiffs' civil rights by sending him into the field and trusting his information when there was plenty of evidence that he was unreliable. The suit seeks unspecified damages and a court order prohibiting more drug stings singling out blacks in Tulia.
One plaintiff, Tonya White, was lucky. She had, according to court records, an unbeatable alibi. On the day Mr. Coleman said she sold him cocaine in Tulia, she was more than 300 miles away, in Oklahoma City. She had visited a bank there at almost the precise time of the supposed drug deal, and she had a time-stamped check to prove it.
Many of the defendants have agreed to a settlement of $250,000 in exchange for an agreement not to sue local officials. But they remain free to sue the task force.
Ms. White and the other plaintiff in the suit filed yesterday, Zuri Bossett, were not part of that deal, and they have sued a broad range of defendants, including Mr. Coleman.
Kizzie White, who served four years of a 25-year sentence before being released in June, described her reaction to being pardoned.
"Today is just a wonderful day," Ms. White said. "It's wonderful to be free."
She expressed hope for Tulia's future. "I'm just glad that justice was done," she said, "and I pray that everyone can come together and put this behind us."
--------
Texas Governor Pardons 35 Convicted in Drug Sting
By Karin Brulliard
The Washington Post
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33986-2003Aug22.html
AUSTIN, Aug. 22 -- Gov. Rick Perry today pardoned 35 people who were convicted in a 1999 drug sting in the Texas Panhandle town of Tulia, in a case that state prosecutors conceded had become a travesty of justice because of a now discredited undercover agent.
Perry (R) said doubts about testimony by the investigator, Tom Coleman, and the unanimous recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles influenced his decision to pardon 35 of the 38 defendants in the case.
"Texans demand a justice system that is tough but fair," Perry said in a statement. "I believe my decision to grant pardons in these cases is both appropriate and just."
The remaining three defendants were ineligible for pardons, because one is on deferred probation and two others had convictions on other charges.
Thirteen of the defendants who remained in prison were released in June after a special act of the Texas legislature allowed them to be freed on bail. Others had completed their sentences or probation but still had convictions on their records.
Though nearly all the defendants had been freed, Perry's decision today removes the stain of conviction for them.
"It feels good to finally be free," said Freddie Brookins, 26, who was one of the 13 released in June. "I hate that all of this took place in the first place, but I can't just dwell on what happened. We have to just move on."
He had received a 20-year sentence and said he hopes the pardon will help him get a job, something he hasn't been able to do because of the felony conviction. He also wants to enroll in a community college in Amarillo.
The Tulia cases had become a symbol of Texas justice gone bad, since 46 people -- 40 of them black -- were arrested four years ago in the town of about 5,000.
Coleman, an undercover officer who worked for the federally funded Panhandle Regional Narcotics Task Force, single-handedly performed the 18-month investigation that led to the arrests. He said he made several drug buys but never provided critical evidence such as fingerprints, corroborating witnesses or drugs.
Even so, juries composed mostly of white members convicted them. The harsh sentences in the first several trials persuaded most of the other defendants to plead guilty.
At a hearing in March, Coleman, 43, admitted to taking notes on his leg about the supposed drug deals and to using racial slurs. He also acknowledged "some mess-ups" in some cases.
Coleman has since been indicted on perjury charges for lying during hearings about the prosecution of some defendants.
In April, a specially appointed state judge reviewing evidence in about a dozen of the Tulia cases found Coleman to be "simply not a credible witness under oath" and recommended the dismissal of all 38 convictions. Judge Ron Chapman also accused Terry McEachern, the district attorney in Swisher County who prosecuted the cases, and other local law enforcement officials of concealing evidence of Coleman's perjury and covering up the officer's criminal history.
McEachern did not return calls seeking comment today.
Lawyers from civil rights organizations and defense attorneys from major national law firms helped represent the Tulia defendants in the appeals. Today they praised Perry's move.
"This is the biggest day in the Tulia campaign." said Vanita Gupta, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. "This is the day that we've been fighting for for the past four years. The governor has done exactly the right thing."
E. Desmond Hogan, an attorney with Hogan & Hartson in Washington, called the pardons "a stunning victory."
Hogan said he and his colleagues had called many of the defendants to tell them of the news. Their reactions were all ones of "unbridled joy," he said.
The response of one, Christopher Jackson, "was just a yell and noises for about two minutes before he could even compose himself," Hogan said.
Also today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund filed lawsuits on behalf of Tonya White and Zuri Bossett, two women who were arrested in the Tulia bust and exonerated last year. The suits say Coleman, McEachern, and other Panhandle Regional Task Force officials violated the women's civil rights.
Gupta said similar suits could be filed on behalf of the defendants pardoned today. "Now is the time to start asking why this happened and how this happened," she said.
-------- immigration / refugees
8 Members of Congress Urge Release of Immigrant
August 23, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/23/politics/23IMMI.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - Members of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus are calling for the release of an illegal African immigrant from a Pennsylvania jail because of "reprehensible mistreatment" by federal immigration officials.
The immigrant, Malik Jarno, now 18, arrived alone from Guinea in January 2001 at Dulles International Airport in Herndon, Va., and his case has become a symbol of the difficulties encountered by thousands of nonadult immigrants who arrive unaccompanied each year and are detained.
Mr. Jarno, who his lawyers say is mentally retarded, has spent all but 4 of the last 32 months in adult jails, despite a birth certificate that says he was born on Jan. 7, 1985. He says he fled his country seeking sanctuary from political persecution that had left his family dead.
Members of the human rights caucus, in a letter that will be sent on Monday to Asa Hutchinson, the under secretary for border and transportation security at the Department of Homeland Security, said, "Malik's treatment by immigration officials represents a miscarriage of justice."
A copy of the letter was given to The New York Times by an official from the office of Representative Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who is the caucus chairman. The letter is signed by several other caucus members, including Representatives Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey, and Donald M. Payne of New Jersey, Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Betty McCollum of Minnesota and Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, all Democrats.
"Based on the compelling inequities of Malik's plight, we strongly urge you to redress the injustices wrought upon him immediately," the letter says. "We strongly urge you to either release him from custody under deferred action or to grant him humanitarian parole to the care of the International Friendship House, a reputable and responsible nonprofit home for refugees in York, Pa., that is willing and able to take him."
The home has worked with immigration officials in the past to provide housing and services to young immigrants with special needs while their cases were pending.
Last week, Representative Chaka Fattah, Democrat of Pennsylvania, wrote a similar letter.
Authority for immigrant children who enter the country without any adult relative or guardian was transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services from the Immigration and Naturalization Service under the domestic security bill that Congress approved last year. For decades, the immigration service had been responsible for unaccompanied immigrant children.
About 500 unaccompanied minors are being held while the government seeks to adjudicate their asylum cases in immigration courts.
In June, the human rights group Amnesty International, which advocates for less restrictive placements or foster homes for children who are awaiting determination of their legal status, found that foreign children fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries were often improperly detained for months in bleak detention centers in the United States without access to lawyers or psychological services.
The group's report, which surveyed 33 detention centers around the country, found that illegal immigrant children who arrive in this country without caretakers are often strip-searched, shackled and housed with juveniles who have been convicted of crimes.
Because Mr. Jarno tried to enter with a false passport, he was detained in adult jails for nearly nine months before an immigration judge conducted a hearing at which the I.N.S. said he should be deported.
The agency had said Mr. Jarno, who speaks French and Puhlar, a West African language, was not a minor, contrary to his birth certificate. In April 2002, the agency learned from the Guinean Embassy here that the certificate was authentic and moved him to a juvenile shelter in Leesport, Pa., from the Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Va.
Four months later, however, after conducting an investigation in Guinea, immigration officials decided that Mr. Jarno was an adult and moved him to an adult jail in York, where he remains pending his asylum request.
Immigration officials said they had used dental records and wrist X-rays to determine that Mr. Jarno was an adult in 2002.
-------- prisons / prisoners
3 Likely To Be Freed From Guantanamo Rights
Groups Urge Children's Release Under International Law
By Tania Branigan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34221-2003Aug22.html
Three children whose detention at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, military prison has outraged international human rights groups are likely to be freed soon, military officials indicated yesterday.
The boys, who are believed to be Afghan and between the ages of 13 and 15, were among hundreds of males captured in the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan. Their presence at the U.S. Navy prison was revealed in April, but they may have been in military custody for many months before that, according to human rights activists and military officials.
"We would obviously have preferred that a determination was made earlier, but I'm pleased by the news that they will finally be released," said Olara Otunnu, U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict. He had urged the United States to free the juveniles as soon as possible.
Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, spokeswoman for the joint military task force that runs the prison, said that officials there will recommend the release of the three boys, but she could not say when they will be freed. The final decision on whether to release, charge or continue to hold detainees is made by the Pentagon.
"The process may take a while, so there's no foretelling when that may happen," Hart said.
The task force's commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, has told reporters for the Baltimore Sun and the British Broadcasting Corp. that the boys were brought to Guantanamo Bay because they were considered a threat and they had "high value" intelligence that U.S. authorities wanted.
The boys have been kept separately from about 650 adult detainees in the prison, in a low-security jail dubbed Camp Iguana. They have been allowed to watch videos and play games, and receive schooling, counseling and visits from social workers. But like the adults, they have been denied lawyers and visitors and have been interrogated.
"They were kidnapped and forced into terrorism," Hart said. "They're young, and we did a lot of care in ensuring their education continued and that they got adequate exercise and psychiatric care.
"At the same time, we remembered that they were detainees and had information they could contribute to help us in the war on terrorism," she said.
Otunnu said that, under international law, children should not be detained as enemy combatants, even if they were with fighting groups.
"We regard them essentially as victims. They should be held separately [from adults], put in contact with their families and at the earliest possible opportunity given the opportunity for rehabilitation instead of punishment," he said.
Added Jo Becker, children's rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch: "Detention at Guantanamo is not rehabilitation. It needs to take place in a community setting, and for most of these kids that means Afghanistan."
Becker said that the United States should now free 16- and 17-year-olds held at the camp, who are defined as children under international law. They include Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who is alleged to have killed a U.S. Special Forces medic in a house-to-house battle.
The U.S. government has listed six detainees as the first potential defendants in military trials known as "commissions," but has suspended proceedings against three of those men pending discussions with their governments in Britain and Australia.
--------
U.S. Moves Enemy Combatant to S.C. Brig
August 23, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Enemy-Combatants.html
HANAHAN, S.C. (AP) -- A U.S.-born man captured in Afghanistan has joined two other men deemed enemy combatants at the Navy brig at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station.
Yasser Esam Hamdi was transferred to the brig near Hanahan from Norfolk, Va., on July 30, Maj. Michael Shavers said.
``There was no announcement because it was considered a simple move,'' Shavers said. ``There was no intent to be surreptitious.''
Hamdi, 22, was with Taliban forces when he was captured by U.S. forces in late 2001. He was carrying a rifle and acknowledged loyalty to the Taliban, according to papers filed by the government.
Hamdi was born in Louisiana of Saudi Arabian parents and was raised in Saudi Arabia. The designation ``enemy combatant'' strips a person of the right to counsel and allows the government to detain him indefinitely.
He joins Jose Padilla and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri at the Charleston brig. Padilla is a former Chicago gang member who allegedly had plotted to detonate a radioactive ``dirty bomb,'' while Al-Marri has been accused of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent.
A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., refused last month to rehear Hamdi's claims that he is being unconstitutionally held by the military.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected the claims in January, ruling that the government has wide latitude to detain people caught fighting against the United States on foreign soil during wartime.
-------- terrorism
Six Groups Said to Be Monitored in U.S. for Possible Qaeda Links
August 23, 2003
The New York Times
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/23/international/worldspecial2/23TERR.html
LONDON, Aug. 22 - American law enforcement officials are monitoring the activities of at least six groups in the United States they suspect are linked to Al Qaeda, senior government officials in the United States and Europe said this week.
Most of the individuals whose movements and communications are being closely tracked are believed to be sympathizers of Osama bin Laden who may be engaged in low-level support activities for the Qaeda terror network, like raising money, relaying messages and recruiting new members, American and European officials said. The officials insisted that no evidence had emerged that any of the suspects were preparing an attack or posed any imminent threat.
American officials have limited their actions so far to intensive surveillance of the suspects, who they say are spread across 40 states, in order to gather more information about their plans and organization, the officials said. The decision to continue the surveillance, rather than to detain some suspects, reflects a strategic shift by United States government investigators. They said they had concluded that at this stage it was more valuable to try to learn more about the groups' activities and possible plans through extended observation.
"By taking a group down too early, you may be losing a lot of opportunity for great intelligence," said a senior government official in the United States, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Who are their associates? Who else is out there that we don't know of that these individuals may contact?"
United States officials may be exercising new restraint in terror investigations in response to growing criticism of the Justice Department in the Congress and from civil liberties groups for casting the net of suspicion too wide. More than 1,200 people were detained in the year after the Sept. 11 attacks, but the roundups produced few if any law enforcement coups against terrorism. A handful of the people under surveillance in the United States appear to be more militant members of the terror network who may have sought to scout locations for possible future attacks. However, the officials say they lack sufficient evidence to arrest these suspects on terror charges at this time.
"If we are aware that any group or individual could pose a threat, an appropriate and immediate law enforcement action will take place," a senior government official said.
The assessment of a widening presence of Qaeda sympathizers on American soil has alarmed intelligence and counterterrorism officials here in Europe and in the United States.
"Every month, we continue to identify new people aligned with Al Qaeda in the United States," a senior American government official said. "It's an ongoing process but it is disconcerting that every month, almost every week, we find additional people here who are sympathetic to Al Qaeda and its goals."
Terrorism experts said that prolonged observation and eavesdropping should prove to be a useful strategy for American investigators.
"This is a much better approach," said Jessica Stern, a terrorism expert, author and professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "The F.B.I. doesn't look as good. They are not arresting some and saying look who we got, look what we disrupted. But it's much more effective. They can carefully monitor what these suspects are doing. As soon as you arrest someone, you lose a very important source of information."
Concern has heightened among American and European officials about the possible expansion of Al Qaeda into the United States as American interests have become targets of terror attacks in Iraq, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.
In Europe, intelligence and law enforcement officials are taking a similar approach to that of the Americans. European intelligence officials have said there is evidence that the network of Qaeda supporters still has a significant presence in Europe.
American officials said they had been assisted in detecting the Qaeda followers by the nearly two-year-old USA Patriot Act, and changes in May 2002 to the attorney general guidelines, which permit the monitoring of mosques and Internet chat rooms and other aggressive investigative techniques.
The officials said that some people with apparent connections to the Qaeda network have settled easily into American society by obtaining jobs or enrolling in universities, and even marrying and starting families.
Before Sept. 11, the government had to have specific evidence that a group or individual was planning a terrorist attack to open a criminal inquiry. The attorney general's guidelines have lowered that threshold to a "reasonable suspicion" that individuals or groups are involved in planning for a terrorist strike. Officials explained that the lower threshold had allowed the government to monitor far more people for possible terrorist ties than in the past.
In particular, they said, the detection efforts have been bolstered by the execution of "sneak and peek" search warrants, a practice that permits the government to conduct secret searches for evidence and notify the suspects afterward of the search. A judge must still approve the execution of the secret search warrants.
In recent months, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has faced an intensifying debate about the broad powers of the USA Patriot Act. This week he went on a tour across the United States, giving speeches to defend the administration's counterterrorism efforts and the effectiveness of the new provisions in the act. At a Senate hearing in Washington in late June, Larry A. Mefford, the F.B.I.'s executive assistant director for counterterrorism/counterintelligence, said that the bureau had active inquiries of "suspected Al Qaeda members and their affiliates" in 40 states. He said then that "finding and rooting out Al Qaeda members and their associates and sympathizers once they have entered the U.S. is our most serious intelligence and law enforcement challenge."
Mr. Mefford went on to say: "This is particularly challenging given that the identity of U.S.-based Al Qaeda sleeper cells are probably the closest-held secrets in their networks. In addition to focusing on identifying individuals directly involved in launching terrorist attacks, we're also very concerned about those individuals assisting Al Qaeda, providing support activities such as assisting and fund-raising, recruiting, training or other logistical responsibilities."
Since Sept. 11, American counterterrorism officials have disrupted "terrorist activities in 35 instances within the United States," Mr. Mefford told senators at the hearing. His remarks drew little attention at the time.
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, prosecutors have arrested members of three "sleeper cells" in the United States - in Lackawanna, N.Y., Portland, Ore., and Detroit. In the Lackawanna case, six men of Yemeni descent have pleaded guilty to supporting Al Qaeda and attending a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Those men were under surveillance for months before the government arrested them on Sept. 12, 2002. Critics have said that the government accused them of being members of a "sleeper cell" with scant evidence that they intended to carry out an attack.
In the Detroit and Portland cases, the suspects were accused of providing "material support" to the terror network. But some legal experts have questioned these cases, saying the government had little evidence that any of the suspects were preparing a terrorist attack.
Several senior American government officials acknowledged that despite the new powers they had gained through the Patriot Act, they were concerned that a significant number of bin Laden sympathizers might have escaped detection.
"It's what we don't know that worries me," a senior official said. "It's what we don't know that keeps me awake at night."
19 Arrested in Canada
TORONTO, Aug. 22 (AP) - The Canadian authorities have detained 19 Pakistanis on immigration charges after a seven-month investigation found they might have posed a threat to national security, officials said today.
The 19 men, ages 18 to 33, were taken into custody on Aug. 14 in Toronto, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokeswoman, Michèle Paradis, said.
The intelligence arm of Canada's immigration department drafted a document after the men were detained that said some of the men had taken flying lessons and had once tried to enter the grounds of a nuclear reactor. Airplane schematics were found in their apartments.
The document also said an address used by one of the men was linked to the theft of a nuclear gauge, a device containing cesium-137, a highly radioactive material that could be used to make a bomb with heavy fallout.
--------
As Security Threats
By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34586-2003Aug22.html
TORONTO, Aug. 22 -- Canadian officials arrested 19 men last week who investigators say had followed "a pattern of suspicious behavior," including one man who had taken flying lessons over a nuclear power plant, officials said today.
Giovanna Gatti, a spokeswoman for the Citizenship and Immigration Department, said the men were arrested Aug. 14 in the Toronto area and face allegations of violating Canada's Immigration Act. The men were being held as possible threats to national security, officials said.
According to a document filed Tuesday at a detention hearing, one of the men was enrolled in a flight school and was trying to qualify as a multi-engine commercial pilot. "His flight path for training purposes flies over the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant," according to the document. Flight instructors described him as an "unmotivated student," according to the document. "The average time frame for qualification is approximately one year, the target has been training in Canada for almost three years."
The document said two of the men raised suspicions when police found them outside the gates of the nuclear plant at 4:15 a.m. "on a cool, damp morning in April 2002." The men "requested that they be allowed to enter the perimeter in order to go for a walk on the beach," the document said.
The document alleges that the men under investigation have associates who "have access to nuclear gauges," which contain a small amount of radioactive material that can be used to make "dirty bombs." An associate who lived with one of the suspects worked for the Global Relief Foundation, which the United Nations has said supports terrorist groups, including al Qaeda. Two apartments where some of the men in the group lived had unexplained fires, the record said.
The investigation found that the men generally lived in sparsely filled apartments with only mattresses on the floor and a computer. "One cluster left an apartment during the night and discarded all their belongings: mattresses, clothing and computer shells, apparently taking only the computer hard drive upon vacating an apartment."
The investigation, called Project Thread, began in February when an immigration officer became suspicious when she could not confirm that a student applying for permanent residency was enrolled at the Ottawa Business College.
"In fact, the visa officer could not even confirm the existence of the school," the document said. The officer became more concerned when the man produced a bank statement with a balance of more than $40,000 but "had no identifiable source of income." Investigators concluded that the school was not legitimate, but was a place where foreign students could buy acceptance letters, transcripts and diplomas without attending classes. Officials seized 400 student files and letters "issued to accommodate the students' travel to and from the United States."
"Investigators began to see an alarming trend with respect to the foreign students," the document said. Officials identified 31 students who had misrepresented themselves to obtain permits to study in Canada, which led to the arrest of the 19 men. Officials also said that all but one person in the group had connections to the Punjab province of Pakistan, which "is noted for Sunni extremism."
Mohammed Syed, an attorney representing two of the men, called the evidence weak and discriminatory. "The only reason these individuals were arrested and are being detained is based on the fact they are Muslim in origin and have Muslim-sounding names," Syed said. He said both of his clients were in their thirties; one has applied for refugee status, and the other is a student whose student visa had expired.
A hearing has been set for next week to decide whether the detentions are warranted.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Bush's Energy Policy Stalled
Partisan Differences and President's Priorities Created Impasse
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34282-2003Aug22.html
As a candidate for president, George W. Bush called for greater investment in the nation's electricity transmission grids and criticized "the Clinton-Gore administration" for failing to encourage improvements.
Four months into his presidency, Bush issued an energy policy that warned of kinks in the transmission grids that "could result in price pressures and reliability problems."
In a speech unveiling the policy, Bush said the electricity grid "needs to be modernized, so we can move product from point A to point B." He said he wanted connections as modern as the interstate highway and phone systems.
And then, nothing happened. When blackouts hit the Northeast and Midwest last week, none of Bush's plans for shoring up the grid had been turned into law.
To some degree, the president's failure to win congressional approval for his ideas is a familiar tale of partisan and regional bickering. Congress has been unable to come to consensus on a broad-based energy bill despite prodding by Bush and widespread agreement that the country should do more to reduce its reliance on foreign oil.
But lawmakers and energy analysts said the impasse also reflects Bush's penchant for leaving legislative details to others, his focus on foreign policy after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and -- perhaps most of all -- his insistence on pursuing sweeping energy legislation instead of more limited initiatives to fix the grid.
After the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Bush stopped talking about electricity grid improvements in public appearances. He argued more generally for broad energy legislation, but lobbyists and others on both sides of the aisle said the administration's focus was on other priorities, especially drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
On the few occasions when more limited proposals surfaced to deal with electricity, such as when Democrats proposed funding to modernize the grid during consideration of spending bills in 2001, the ideas were shot down by the White House and its allies on the Hill.
"He's the president, and the Congress is Republican," said William W. Hogan, research director of Harvard University's Electricity Policy Group. "The buck stops there. They didn't think the grid was that high a priority, and they wanted to bundle those issues with other things they wanted."
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the House energy committee, said, "The debate over the Bush energy bill so far has been dominated by the president's demand that the government get out of the way of big oil."
Dan R. Brouillette, a former assistant secretary of energy under Bush and now staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, disputed Democratic complaints that Bush neglected the issue. "I did not go to a single meeting at the White House where the president did not say he wanted an electricity title in the bill, along with incentives for production and efficiency and conservation measures," Brouillette said.
Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said the blackouts have allowed people to see firsthand the validity of Bush's contention that the nation needs an energy policy. "The very critics who criticized us for putting out this policy are now the ones who are claiming that we haven't focused on it," he said.
The White House and Congress are now rushing to show they can handle the crisis. The House and Senate passed differing energy bills this year, and Republican leaders have promised to begin working on a compromise version -- including many of Bush's prescriptions for the power grid -- when they return to Washington after Labor Day.
The potential for massive outages has long been predicted by authorities on the more than 150,000 miles of interconnecting lines that carry electricity among states, with engineers complaining that there has been no major overhaul of the grids for 20 years and that few upgrades are scheduled. The government now has no way to force companies to maintain a steady flow of current, despite changes in output or demand by their plants or neighboring ones, and has limited ways to penalize utilities that do not.
Bush laid out his general blueprint for energy legislation in May 2001, when he released a glossy report that included a stark description of the condition of North America's integrated transmission grids. They have too little capacity, and too few expansions are scheduled, Bush warned. He said those factors were combining with regional shortages of generating capacity "to reduce the overall reliability of electric supply in the country." In addition, he said, the grids interconnect in too few places, creating bottlenecks that can result in higher prices for consumers and lower dependability.
Among the report's seven recommendations relating to the power grids, Bush called for the regional sections to be run by "a self-regulatory organization" overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The report described "broad recognition that voluntary adherence with reliability standards is no longer a viable approach in an increasingly competitive electricity market."
Mandatory reliability standards would be designed to prevent an outage or overload in one area from being transferred down the line. The standards would require utilities to report outages to a regional or national authority and would set minimum levels for the quality and quantity of the current that must be maintained. Bush said this week that he plans to require that an energy bill include such standards, including monetary penalties.
Standards are now set by the North American Electric Reliability Council, which was formed after the massive blackout of 1965. The standards are voluntary, and experts say cheating is easy.
Another Bush recommendation called for the federal government to have eminent domain authority for the construction of long-distance electricity transmission lines. The government currently has that power for natural gas pipelines. Bush also asked Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to investigate establishing a national grid, and that study is continuing.
Democrats said the administration did far too little to prod Congress to follow through on the recommendations. Bush sent broad principles to Capitol Hill but never detailed legislation, even though staff members of the Senate energy committee said they repeatedly requested such language, particularly on electricity issues.
Democratic congressional aides contend that during negotiations on two massive energy bills over the past two years, the administration allowed Republicans to focus on controversial issues rather than trying to find consensus in a few areas, such as electricity. "The money was not in the electricity section," a senior aide said. "The Republicans were focused on the tax section -- credits for the oil industry and electric utilities and mining industry. The significant issues for them were these big, big subsidies, and relaxing environmental rules."
The Republican-dominated House passed an energy bill with much fanfare less than three months after Bush issued his recommendations, but that bill did not even contain an electricity section. House Republicans said they had an agreement to ensure the Senate would include grid improvements in its bill so they could be made a part of the final bill.
But that bill never emerged. Competing House and Senate energy bills died at the end of 2002 after Republicans won control of the Senate in midterm elections. Democrats said Bush could have insisted on a compromise bill in the lame-duck session at the end of the year but did not.
"We could have had an energy bill in the last Congress if the administration had pushed for it to be completed," said Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who was the energy committee chairman at the time.
Richard J. Pierce Jr., a law professor at George Washington University who specializes in energy regulation, said electricity legislation did not appear to be a top priority for the administration but might not have been attainable in any case. "You start with virtually zero votes in the West and Southeast, where they oppose greater federal regulation, and then you have to find the votes in the Midwest and Northeast," he said.
The administration had at least one chance to support legislation to improve the grid separately from the complexity of an energy bill. Democrats proposed spending $350 million to modernize the grid in an amendment to a spending bill in June 2001, but Republican leaders called it a government handout.
Andrew Lundquist, a consultant who was executive director of Vice President Cheney's energy task force, said a bloc of Democratic senators refused to make any deal on an energy bill in order to deny Bush a win. "Energy is an unpopular issue with Congress until the lights go out or there are supply and price problems," he said. "It's complicated and it deals with the environment, and there are some members who would prefer to keep it as an issue for elections."
-------- environment
E.P.A. Defends Itself Against 9/11 Rebukes
August 23, 2003
The New York Times
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/23/nyregion/23HILL.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 - Officials of the Environmental Protection Agency today defended their response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in New York, saying that they had done the best they could in a terrible situation and that a government report was wrong to criticize them.
The agency's inspector general issued a report this month that said White House officials had instructed the agency to reassure New Yorkers that the air in the vicinity of the World Trade Center was safe to breathe, even though deadly contaminants were present. The agency "did not have sufficient data and analyses" to be so reassuring, the report said, adding that "competing considerations, such as national security concerns and the desire to reopen Wall Street," compromised the E.P.A.'s statements.
While those findings were included in a draft report that has been in circulation since Aug. 9, the final report - released today - included E.P.A.'s first formal rebuttal.
Writing on behalf of the agency, Marianne Horinko, the acting administrator, said of the government report: "This document is infected with the attitude that somehow `business as usual' should have prevailed" in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when in fact the agency did the best it could in the face of chaos and catastrophe.
"This report simply seems out of touch with the reality of what took place at the World Trade Center," Ms. Horinko wrote. Acknowledging some difficulties, she added: "Could things have been done better? Certainly. Were mistakes made? Without a doubt. But like other agencies of government in the wake of this event, E.P.A. has reviewed its response, asked tough questions about its conduct and begun the process of change and improvement."
The report and the E.P.A.'s defense of its actions drew stinging rebukes from two New York Democrats.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the Justice Department should investigate the agency's response, "in particular the role of the White House in directing the E.P.A. to downplay the hazards of the World Trade Center contaminants."
Representative Jerrold Nadler said, "That the White House instructed E.P.A. officials to downplay the health impact of the World Trade Center contaminants due to `competing considerations' at the expense of the health and lives of New York City residents is an abomination."
--------
EPA Pressed to Call Air Safe After 9/11, Report Says
By John Heilprin
Associated Press
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34276-2003Aug22.html
The Environmental Protection Agency's internal watchdog says White House officials pressured the agency to prematurely assure the public that the air was safe to breathe a week after the World Trade Center collapse.
The agency's initial statements in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were not supported by proper air quality monitoring data and analysis, EPA Inspector General Nikki L. Tinsley said in a 155-page report released late Thursday.
An e-mail sent one day after the attacks, from then-EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher's chief of staff to senior EPA officials, said "all statements to the media should be cleared" first by the National Security Council, the report said.
Approval from the NSC, which is chaired by President Bush and serves as his main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet, was arranged through an official with the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the report said.
That council, which coordinates federal environmental efforts, in turn "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones," the inspector general found.
For example, the report found, EPA was persuaded to omit from its early public statements guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete.
James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in an interview yesterday that EPA did "an incredible job" with the World Trade Center cleanup.
"The White House was involved in making sure that we were getting the most accurate information that was real, on a wide range of activities. That included the NSC -- this was major terrorist incident," he said.
The White House directed EPA to add and delete information, Connaughton said, based on whether it should be released through news releases, information on the Web or other means.
"In the back and forth during that very intense period of time, we were making decisions about where the information should be released, what the best way to communicate the information was, so that people could respond responsibly and so that people had a good relative sense of potential risk," he said.
The EPA inspector general recommended that the agency adopt new procedures so its public statements on health risks and environmental quality are supported by data and analysis. Other recommendations include developing better indoor air cleanups and ways of handling asbestos in large-scale disasters.
--------
Clean Air Rules To Be Relaxed
EPA Will Ease Power Plants' Requirements
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 23, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34334-2003Aug22.html
The Bush administration has decided to allow thousands of the nation's dirtiest coal-fired power plants and refineries to upgrade their facilities without installing costly anti-pollution equipment, as they now must do.
Acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Marianne L. Horinko said yesterday that she will sign the new regulation next week, and that the measure will take effect this fall. The decision marks an important, cost-saving victory for the utility industry, which has vigorously lobbied the administration for the past 21/2 years to relax the Clean Air Act enforcement program.
That program, known as New Source Review, generated dozens of state and federal lawsuits against 51 aging power plants during the Clinton administration, and forced some of them to agree to install hundreds of millions of dollars of pollution-control equipment.
Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that FirstEnergy's Ohio Edison Co. violated the law by upgrading seven coal-fired power plants without installing pollution equipment -- the first time a judge has ruled against a utility in those cases.
Industry advocates have complained that the current enforcement system is confusing, and has discouraged investment and expansion at a time of increased demand for expanded and reliable sources of power. Industry and EPA officials said yesterday the new rule would encourage plant improvements, provide greater regulatory certainty and reduce dangerous emissions.
"I think it will provide more fairness and predictability for facilities," Horinko said in an interview. "We're hoping to provide a bright line of clarity on the national level that you can't get from the scattershot approach" of the existing enforcement program.
But environmentalists, state officials and congressional Democrats who have long fought the rule change -- which was first reported yesterday in the New York Times -- warned that it would undermine the only effective tool to combat industrial polluters. They said it would allow antiquated industrial plants that should have been shut down years ago to go on polluting -- or even increase pollution -- without fear of prosecution.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a presidential candidate, charged that President Bush is giving major polluters a "get out of jail free" card, and that the new rule had "literally pulled the rug out from under every governor's efforts to curb air pollution."
Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), another presidential challenger, called on Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt, Bush's nominee to succeed Christine Todd Whitman as EPA administrator, to stand up against the new rule. "If Governor Leavitt cares about our air, about kids with asthma, and about seniors with lung problems, he will tell George Bush to scrap this rule before it goes into effect," Edwards said.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a leader in the effort to prosecute utility polluters, has said he would file a court challenge to the new rule as soon as it is published, probably shortly after Labor Day.
Under the rule change, industry could potentially save billions of dollars in pollution-control equipment costs while continuing to emit hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants.
The Clean Air Act requires new plants and utilities to install the best available pollution-control technology. However, plants and refineries built before 1970 are exempt from having to install modern "scrubbers" unless they undertake extensive and costly improvements that boost power production and pollution. Industry officials have long complained that the distinction between "routine maintenance" and more substantial improvements is too vague.
Under the new rule, older plants could avoid installing pollution controls when they replace equipment -- even if the upgrade increases pollution -- provided the cost does not exceed 20 percent of the cost of replacing a plant's essential production equipment, and the new parts are the "functional equivalent" of the worn-out equipment.
For example, if a coal-fired power plant replaces a boiler at a cost that is less than 20 percent of the combined replacement cost of the boiler, turbine, generator and other equipment, the company would not have to install devices to control the additional pollution. However, the regulation would not relieve plants of continuing to meet air pollution targets set in 1990 for reducing levels of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and fine particles that pose public health problems.
A draft of the final rule was obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council and made available to The Washington Post. EPA officials cautioned that they are still putting final touches on the rule and would not confirm the 20 percent replacement threshold.
NRDC officials noted that if the new rule had been in effect during the Clinton administration, the Justice Department never could have brought charges against Ohio Edison and other major utilities.
"The Bush administration, using an arbitrary Enron-like accounting gimmick, is authorizing massive pollution increases to benefit Bush campaign contributors at the expense of public health," said John Walke, director of NRDC's Clean Air Project.
Industry officials said they had not seen the details of the rule but predicted that the measure, as reported, could be a boon to energy producers that will promote new upgrades and investment.
"It's extremely important and a good sign if there's going to be a percentage allowance," said Scott Segal, executive director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a utility advocacy group.
Quin Shea, a senior official of the Edison Electric Institute, the main lobbying arm of the utility industry, said, "This on a whole is a favorable development for electrical reliability and routine maintenance."
"I can assure you there are a lot of companies that held back on what we consider routine maintenance out of fear of triggering New Source Review actions," he added.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protesters near Bush ranch demand withdrawal of troops from Iraq
BY DAVID JACKSON
Knight Ridder/Tribune
The Dallas Morning News
Sat, Aug. 23, 2003
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/6603183.htm
CRAWFORD, Texas - (KRT) - The ongoing, emotional debate over Iraq came to President Bush's doorstep Saturday.
While protesters near the presidential ranch in Crawford urged that American troops be brought home from Iraq, Bush called their effort there a major offensive in the war on terrorism.
"There will be no flinching in this war on terror, and there will be no retreat," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
Among those gathering at the local football stadium to denounce both Bush and the war, four days after a terrorist bombing at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, were relatives of troops.
"George Bush does not support our soldiers," said Candance Robison, whose husband is an Army lieutenant in Iraq. "He lies to our nation and our soldiers about our reasons for going to war. He makes thoughtless statements like, `Bring `em on' to the Saddam loyalists who target our troops."
Robison is part of Military Families Speak Out, one of the groups sponsoring the protest. Veterans For Peace also helped organize the rally, which drew about 100 people.
As songs were sung and speeches delivered, the critics carried signs that read: "Bush says `Bring `em On' - Instead, let's bring them home;" "Get That Unelected Warmonger Out of the White House;" and "Richard Cheney - Get The Halliburton out of Iraq."
Some protested the extended tours of duty in Iraq and cuts in veterans' benefits.
Others cited continuing guerilla attacks on American soldiers and the failure to date to find weapons of mass destruction, calling the entire rationale for the war into question.
"We have recently found out the reasons weren't exactly truthful," said Christyne Harris, who has a son-in-law in Iraq. "I think the morale is sinking."
Bush administration officials have said evidence indicated that Saddam Hussein continued to seek weapons programs in defiance of United Nations sanctions imposed after the first Gulf War.
During his pre-taped radio address, Bush said Iraq is on its way to becoming a "stable, self-governing society," and "this progress makes the remaining terrorists even more desperate and willing to lash out against symbols of order and hope, like coalition forces and U.N. personnel."
"A violent few will not determine the future of Iraq, and there will be no return to the days of Saddam Hussein's torture chambers and mass graves," Bush added.
The president also condemned last week's suicide bombing aboard a bus in Jerusalem, saying Palestinian terrorists are undermining their people's hopes for an independent state. He urged Palestinians and Israelis to continue to work together toward peace.
"A Palestinian state will never be built on a foundation of violence," Bush said.
The Bush critics who journeyed to Crawford had various opinions about the president and what course he should take in Iraq.
Some accused him of lying to justify the war, while others said he was only mistaken. Some called for immediate American withdrawal from Iraq, while others urged the administration to seek help from the United Nations in stabilizing Iraq.
But all said they want loved ones back as soon as possible.
"We're not going to stop until we get our soldiers home," Robison said. "And it's going to get bigger and bigger."
----
Brazen Corruption of Every American Ideal
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
By CYNTHIA McKINNEY,
August 23, 2003
Counterpunch
(Speech to the House of the Lord Church Brooklyn, NY August 19, 2003)
http://www.counterpunch.org./mckinney08232003.html
Reverend Daughtry, Congregation of The House of the Lord, Councilman Barron-soon to be Mayor Barron-fellow warriors for peace; family members of the US troops stationed abroad. Thank you for inviting me to be with you this evening.
We also join with those who mourn today's loss of life. And that's exactly why we are here tonight. We make our stand for peace.
Tonight, the focus is not on Bush, Cheney, Powell, or Rice. It's on our troops.
And in the most passionate spirit of patriotism we say, Bring the Troops Home Now!
When America's Top Gun, George W. Bush first proclaimed his War On Terrorism, one of the first things he did was to cut the high deployment overtime pay of the young men and women he was asking to fight on the frontlines of his new war. Now, almost two years later, sadly, we must face the fact that the circumstances confronting our young military men and women have grown acutely worse.
Not only are they underpaid, but the powerful Administration that holds their fate in the cup of its hands, has obfuscated, dissembled, and outright lied to them about their central mission and why they have been placed on the four corners of our globe.
Interestingly, before our children were shipped overseas, they were given shots. They weren't given the option of taking or not taking these shots. They were given shots. And those who declined are being court-martialed for not taking those shots.
But I wonder if this Administration told our children that its vaccine supplier is the same DynCorp corporation whose employees are buying and selling little girls in Eastern Europe today. DynCorp has changed its name, but it hasn't changed its behavior and has no business supplying vaccines to the Pentagon or to our children.
Now, one of the young women being court-martialed said that she wanted to breastfeed her as yet unborn children and she didn't want the vaccines to interfere. It's sad that the Administration can't tell that young woman what the effect of these vaccines is on her and her children, but it can jail her for not taking them.
And if that isn't enough, our troops in Qatar, Iraq, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere are now afflicted with a mystery illness that might well have been caused by the anthrax vaccine, according to Dr. Sever a co-author of a government study that, last year, found the vaccine was the "possible or probable cause" of pneumonia in two soldiers.
Nearly 400,000 troops received that vaccine. One 22-year old soldier died at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota on April 4, before she could be deployed, of what one doctor diagnosed as pneumonia after receiving both the anthrax and smallpox vaccinations.
And by the way, DynCorp is involved with both the anthrax and the smallpox vaccines for the Pentagon.
Now, Rumsfeld and company can say well, these troops had the pneumonia before they left for Iraq and all these other places because the Administration also reneged on its promise to give health screenings to the troops before they deployed so we all could know what was pre-existent and what was not. Having failed to pre-screen the troops before deployment, what makes us think they will treat them properly afterwards?
And certainly, if past treatment of our sick veterans is any indication, we need look no further than the more than 160,000 Gulf War One veterans who are still sick today. Our Vietnam veterans had to sue to get treated for Agent Orange, our Gulf War vets are no different, having had to sue to get treated for Gulf War Syndrome.
In addition, this Administration is big on talk, but when it has to choose between rhetoric for our troops and hard dollars for its corporate criminal friends, it chooses its friends every time.
How else could Dick Cheney's Halliburton win a no-bid contract to feed our tro ops in Afghanistan and Iraq and yet the food make them sick in Afghanistan and they not have enough water to drink in Iraq?
Or how is it that one quarter of those who sleep on our streets every night are veterans of wars?
Wars that rich and powerful insiders like Bush and Cheney and Powell and Rice get to send other folks' kids to?
Which brings us to another point. Those who increasingly are feeling the brunt of the decisions of this Administration look like us here in this church. They don't look like the Congress or the staff at the White House or for that matter the Supreme Court that gave us this Administration.
Which is another cause for alarm. It appears that America's poor and people of color are the cannon fodder for Bush's New American Century. They have predicted a generation of fighting. And Caspar Weinberger suggests that America's people of color are more patriotic than America's young white kids are, and that's why there are disproportionately more people of color in our all-volunteer military.
It is utterly despicable to make that suggestion in the face of a recession-driven economy that has produced the highest unemployment in a generation and pushed more people of color below the middle class. Sadly, George Bush stands in the doorway of opportunity at America's colleges and universities just like his predecessor in spirit, George Wallace, did two generations before him. Dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, the anti-affirmative action stance of this Administration harks back to more shameful days in our country.
Too many of our young men and women joined the military just to get a college education. Not to be on the front lines in a war and at the back of the line when it comes to getting ahead.
So while our mucho macho commander in chief, from the safety of a presidential entourage and carefully scripted stage props, tells the Iraqis to "Bring it on," tonight we stand with the families who say, "Bring Our Troops Home . . . Now!
And as we uncover the deceit associated with George Bush The Son's Gulf War, we have yet to touch the surface of his Administration's record on 9-11.
From 2.3 trillion missing dollars at the Pentagon, to the military strategy of occupation that accompanies the New American Century; from erosion of our civil rights and a return to the COINTELPRO days, to the outright theft of an election, there is much this Administration must answer to the American people for.
As your Congresswoman, these are the issues that I tackled every day. As you now know, 48,000 Republicans crossed over and voted for the Republican they had drafted to run against me in my Democratic Primary. With your help, I can go back to Congress and fight for you once again.
Republicans spent 40 million of our tax dollars to impeach Bill Clinton for having sex. But that wasn't good enough; they targeted me because I asked what did the Bush Administration know about 9-11; and now they're targeting Gray Davis because a few Republicans call him "stupid."
Well, if stupidity is a criterion for a recall, then certainly criminal neglect in the 9-11 tragedy; conspiracy to use false intelligence to justify a war; and permitting bold corporate looting of the treasury--are certainly grounds for impeachment.
Finally, I know that after what they did in Florida, that many people, especially people of color, are asking what's the use in voting when they won't count our votes. But let me tell you. The reason we all know about Florida is because there was an overwhelming black turnout nearing 100% of all black registered voters. That's why they were forced to steal it out in the open. My prescription is not despair, but a redoubling of our efforts. Let's make the turnout in all 50 states so high that it will be impossible for them to steal it on the basis of one state alone.
George Washington, in his farewell address, warned us not to believe in false patriots who wrap themselves in the flag while betraying our values. Tonight, we are the true patriots for our country.
Tonight, we stand up against the brazen corruption of every ideal upon which our country was founded.
The true story of our mission in Iraq cannot be told by Paul Wolfowitz or Richard Perle. It is the story told by our troops who want to come home.
I'd like to thank the families for daring to believe that America can be better than what we have become and for being willing to stand up to make it so.
Cynthia McKinney is a former member of congress from Georgia.
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NEPAL - Maoists plan strike to protests killings
August 23, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/briefly.htm
KATMANDU - Maoist rebels have called for a one-day general strike Wednesday to protest the army's killing of at least 17 of their number, an incident that scuttled peace talks this week and raised concerns that a six-month truce could collapse.
Two days ago, Maoist chief negotiator Baburam Bhattarai said 19 rebels were killed in the clash at Toramba village and that the dead included the regional head of the Maoists' rebel "people's government," Baburam Lama. The army, which reported 17 Maoists were killed in the clash a week ago 181 miles east of Katmandu, said troops fired in response to an attack by the rebels.
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Hidden Sides, Hushed Ideals of a Civil Rights Strategist
August 23, 2003
The New York Times
By PAUL BERMAN
At the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., proclaimed his dream of a future in which everyone, no matter who, would be able to cry: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!"
Among King's followers, no one doubted what kind of freedom he had in mind. It was freedom from racist laws and the social customs of Jim Crow segregation - a legal and social freedom for millions of black Americans who, in the past, had never experienced anything of the sort.
But then something odd and unpredicted took place. Once the issue of freedom had been successfully raised, all kinds of people, black and nonblack, began to cast an inquisitive eye on laws and customs that had nothing to do with racism or Jim Crow, and began to identify other sorts of oppressions. The subsequent outpouring of fresh understandings and novel insights about rights and freedom - for gays, women, the disabled and more - has dominated American thinking for 40 years now, which is quite a long time. And among those many fresh understandings and insights has come a new retrospective understanding of the 1963 march itself.
The chief organizer of the Washington march was Bayard Rustin, who was duly applauded at the time for the efficiency of his labors. And yet, Rustin, who died in 1987 at 75, played a much larger role in organizing both the march and the wider civil rights movement than most people ever suspected at the time. Two new books, one a biography and the other a collection of Rustin's papers, now turn a brighter light on his life and his role, explaining how his homosexuality forced his contribution to be obscured.
Rustin was a Quaker and a pacifist, Gandhi style - which meant being a fighter, though without violence. By 1963, Rustin had been fighting a long time. In the 1940's, he worked as an assistant to A. Philip Randolph, the Harlem-based labor leader, and helped organize a campaign against racial discrimination in war-related jobs - a successful campaign, all in all, that played a role in integrating the armed forces, eventually. But for all his success at Randolph's side, Rustin did not glide from triumph to triumph.
In World War II he refused the draft, and in his pacifist zeal, refused even to accept a conscientious-objector status. Instead, he spent 28 months in federal prisons, a gruesome experience - though even there, unstoppable, he campaigned to end racial segregation in the prison dining hall. Released from jail, he went to work for a tiny pacifist organization in New York, which sent him around the country during the late 1940's and early 50's to agitate against war, against nuclear arms, against European imperialism in Africa and, always, against Jim Crow. He was arrested frequently. He was beaten. He served 28 days on a North Carolina chain gang.
But then, in December 1955, the black citizens of Montgomery, Ala., led by Dr. King, mounted a boycott of the city buses in protest against the Jim Crow seating rules. King was brilliant, and yet he was only 26 and did not always know what to do. But Bayard Rustin did. He went to Montgomery, met King, visited his home - and was dismayed to discover guns in the living room. Rustin spoke. King listened. Rustin was less than popular among some of the other leaders of the Montgomery boycott - was it his phony British accent? his monarchical air? - but King and the others dutifully put away their guns and agreed to be arrested in a Gandhian spirit of nonviolence and spiritual superiority, which was Rustin's advice, exactly.
Rustin proposed a strategy of reaching out to black churches elsewhere in the South, to broaden the boycott's base of support. And he offered King a larger coalition still, which was organized by Randolph and the handful of New York pacifists. They called on friends and allies in the labor movement, on good-hearted politicians, on singers and actors and on wealthy liberals with money to donate. And so, the young King, from his pulpit in Alabama, found himself soon enough at the head of a fledgling national coalition. And the coalition grew until, by 1963, with 250,000 people attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, it proved to be a national power.
King was the leader of that gigantic coalition. But Rustin was the principal strategist.
Yet there was the question of Rustin's homosexuality, and his sometimes desperate promiscuity. On a couple of occasions he was arrested in parks, and in Pasadena, Calif., in 1953, for having sex with two men in a parked car, an incident that sent him back to jail for 60 days. The Pasadena arrest devastated his political career. Even his closest friends and comrades, some of them, turned on him with a real fury. That was why, during the Montgomery boycott, Rustin had to operate virtually as a secret agent, whispering his advice to King, and why, in Washington in 1963, he had to conceal the full extent of his leadership. He was all too vulnerable to political attacks, and there was nothing he could do about it.
John D'Emilio, in his new biography, "Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin" (Free Press), has provided the fullest description so far of the awful depth of Rustin's agony over these matters. It is heartbreaking to read about this - heartbreaking to recall that, in the 1950's and 60's, the question of sexual orientation could not even be broached in public except as an accusation. But today is a different age. And why is that?
It is because the civil rights campaign, in its glorious fecundity, did give birth to many newer inspirations, one of which turned out to be the modern movement for gay rights. The gay movement began to gather popular support in 1969, six years after the Washington march, and advanced somewhat slowly after that. Yet it did advance, and continues to advance, even in the conservative realms of the Supreme Court, which just this year struck down a Texas sodomy law - a huge event in the history of gay rights.
Mr. D'Emilio's book shows, in its frank and sympathetic discussion of Rustin's homosexuality, just how great the progress has been. The same forward step can be seen in the volume of Rustin's writings and interviews, "A Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin" (Cleis Press), that has been assembled by Devon W. Carbado and Donald Weise. Here you can read the appreciative comments that Rustin himself began to make, during his last years in the 1980's, on the gay movement.
And so, in the new atmosphere today, Americans are finally able to see Rustin as he was - see him in his sexuality and in his sufferings, and see, as well, the monumental scale of his achievement. But does this mean that now, at last, the Washington march can be understood in full, with no more hidden aspects? The answer must be no, not really.
Thanks to the gay movement and to scholars like Mr. D'Emilio, it is possible today to speak about homosexuality with cool frankness. But it is not so easy to talk about a very different but equally pertinent theme, which is American socialism. Rustin was, after all, more than a pacifist.
His mentor A. Philip Randolph was one of the grand old men of American socialism, and Rustin followed in Randolph's footsteps, though with a Christian style of his own. Rustin as a young man briefly enrolled in the Young Communist League, but then withdrew and repudiated the Communist movement. Socialism, for both Rustin and Randolph, was a democratic idea, therefore an anti-Communist idea. It was an idea that had bubbled up from the the labor movement and had acquired its shape in the not-quite-Marxist political tradition of Eugene V. Debs. Rustin taught King some aspects of that idea - though King, loyal to his own Baptist background, kept away from the Old Left style that clung so naturally to Randolph and Rustin.
Even so, socialism figured as one element of the 1963 march, and not a small one, either. Why, after all, did the march call for "jobs" as well as "freedom"? The word jobs might sound today like political boilerplate, filling space and meaning nothing. But the word said, in effect, that securing rights was only half the program - that America's economy needed to be reorganized as well. In the first years after the march, when some of the main legislative goals of the civil rights movement congealed into federal law, Rustin came up with the idea, which he attributed to Randolph, of steering their carefully constructed national coalition in a new direction, toward the economic reorganization of society.
Rustin wrote an essay touching on this theme, "From Protest to Politics," which is included in the collection of his writings. He also wrote a sophisticated political program called "A Freedom Budget for All Americans," which unfortunately is not included.
But nothing came of the Freedom Budget. The giant civil rights coalition, instead of taking up the economic issue, fell into a thousand pieces in the later 1960's and 70's. Some people plunged into the new "identity" movements of those years. Others stayed loyal to the trade unions and were duly accused of having become "conservative." And the coalition was no more.
As for Rustin, he chose to be a union man under those circumstances, as could have been predicted. He spent the rest of his life advancing the legacy of Randolph in the AFL-CIO and working for the American Federation of Teachers - a job that caused him to be vilified in some quarters as a traitor to the left. Rustin was not a traitor, though - even if his writings show that from time to time he grew a little ornery and declined to grant even the slightest merit to his critics on the left. The problem was just that, by the 1970's, Rustin's language of economic democracy had become hard for other people to understand, even people on the left, which was precisely his complaint about them.
Today it can be said with only slight exaggeration that homosexuality has become a perfectly proper topic for public conversation, even with schoolchildren, while the very concept of a redistribution of wealth in America has somehow morphed into the great unmentionable.
Talk about ironies in the life of Bayard Rustin!
For even now, when the most painful of Rustin's secrets have come into the open, some last aspect of the March on Washington remains, in spite of everything, unremembered and undiscussed. It is the aspect that in 1963 went under the slogan "Jobs," which meant economic equality for all Americans - which is what people like Randolph and Rustin used to call, in an antique rhetoric that hardly anyone understands today, "socialism."
Paul Berman is the author of the book "Terror and Liberalism."
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Warriors For Peace
by MICHAEL UHL,
The Nation
August 23, 2003
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030901&s=uhl
QUOT-There have always been veterans for peace. War makes veterans warriors for peace." With those words, David Cline, wounded and decorated in Vietnam, and national president of Veterans For Peace (VFP), opened the organization's eighteenth annual convention, on August 8, in San Francisco.
Hundreds of veterans who'd served from World War II through the Persian Gulf War gathered here from every corner of the country for two full days of workshops, plenaries and informal conversations, focused largely on ways to express and amplify opposition to the current war with Iraq and to the new patterns of domestic repression that mark the past two years.
One featured speaker, Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, mapped the vets' progressive agenda onto the mainstream of electoral politics before the packed convention. The audience generally took heart that one candidate for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party would articulate views antagonistic to the broad strokes of the Administration's foreign and domestic policies during the approaching run of primaries.
Breakout sessions, a k a workshops, occupied the first day of the convention. Best title goes to a gay and lesbian vet contingent: "We Used to Shower Together." Point taken. At another featured workshop, a new VFP project--Bring Them Home Now (BTHN)--was launched with hopes to stir uncomfortable memories among Pentagon and White House operatives of the "hollow army" brought about by widespread resistance and disaffection within the military during the Vietnam era.
Bring Them Home Now is a coalition of military-family and veterans groups, including Nancy Lessin and Charlie Richardson of Military Families Speak Out, whose Marine Corps son, Joe, just returned from Iraq, and Stan Goff, an organizer from the Ft. Bragg area around Fayetteville, North Carolina, a retired Green Beret Master Sergeant, whose son, Jessie, just left for Iraq with the 82nd Airborne. The coalition, which also includes the Central Committee of Conscientious Objectors of GI Hotline, Citizen Soldier and Vietnam Veterans Against the War, intends to mobilize the anti-Iraq War sentiment that is growing rapidly among military families and GIs in order to help convince the American public to pull the plug on Bush's wars.
Veterans For Peace, which has doubled its paying membership to 3,100 veterans--all activists--in a year, "is aligning itself with many like-minded organizations," Korean War vet Woody Powell, the organization's national administrator, told delegates in San Francisco. United For Peace and Justice, for one, was quick to endorse the BTHN campaign, and veterans and family members are expected to play highly visible roles in the mass demonstration planned for October 25 in Washington.
Like-minded legislators too. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, planning their fall assault on the Bush agenda, have already asked BTHN and VFP to locate military families and Iraq War veterans who are willing to provide testimony before an ad hoc Congressional panel, reminiscent of the Dellums Hearings on War Crimes in Vietnam in 1971. Prior to that, however, BTHN will troop military families and their message to bring the troops home directly to Senate and House members at the district level in twenty states before the end of the summer recess in early September.
A press conference to announce the Bring Them Home Now campaign took place in Washington on August 13, and, on the following day, in Fayetteville. The press events, short of capturing headline coverage, were still broadly reported throughout the print, Internet and electronic media. Response to a reporter's question about BTHN during the Pentagon briefing on C-SPAN the evening of August 13 was cautious. "These people," referring to the BTHN families and organizers, "are entitled to their views," said the DOD spokesperson, quickly recasting the issue of troop and family member discontent as a technical problem, a question of resolving the "predictability of rotation."
Will discontent in the ranks and among family members diminish, if combatants know before deploying to Iraq the duration of their tour of duty there? Or will the "unpredictable" nature and length of this war ultimately lead to a kind of malaise in the military that was so costly to troop morale and discipline during Vietnam? It depends on how much Iraq will ultimately become like Vietnam, and on the peace movement's capacity to counter a truly unpredictable element: the fear factor around national security, so expertly manipulated thus far by the Bush team to bolster public support for the war.
James Starowicz Veterans For Peace USN '67-'71, Vietnam-In Country: '70-'71
"We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace by applying the concept of engaging conflict peacefully, without violence." Veterans for Peace, Inc.
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