Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Energy Department Gets Permit to Ship Plutonium to France
More questions on the deaths and illnesses of American soldiers
France may get plutonium from U.S.
Korea envoy needed
Russia will not use nuclear weapons preemptively: Ivanov
Right reserved for pre-emptive strike if practice spreads: Putin
London talks study beefing up fight against traffic in WMD
300 Pounds of Weapons-Grade Plutonium Headed to Charleston
Plutonium to be shipped overseas through Charleston
WHAT IS MOX?
More nukes headed to, through state
Cornyn touts Pantex's roles
Rumsfeld's $9 Billion Slush Fund
Cheney Defends Administration's Handling of Iraq
Transcript: Cheney at the Heritage Foundation
MILITARY
Afghans and Foreign Envoys Struggle to Quell Fighting in North
Afghan Militia Leaders Sign Truce
Clearing the Smoke Around Weapons Emissions Components
India buys radar systems from Israel
Japan's support for Iraq seen focusing on water supply: defence chief
Blair ignores call to stay away
Something Fishy about 'No-Bid' Contracts for Iraq Reconstruction?
Northrop sees possible big US missile-shield deals
Turks and Greeks cancel war games
Bulgaria Considered for US Missile Base to Deter Iran
Amid Iraq unrest, a force of children takes over security
2 G.I.'s Killed in Baghdad Slum Where Car Bomb Exploded
Iraq Math: Visible Gains Minus Losses
Iraq Has Deadliest Day in A Month
Israeli Forces Continue Major Gaza Raid
7 Palestinians Killed in Overnight Israeli Raid in Gaza Strip
9 Killed in Street Battles Between Army Troops and Protesters
US to tighten Cuba sanctions
Bush Initiative on Cuba Looks Beyond Castro Era
Bahrain denies army pilot defected to Iran in fighter jet
Construction Was Spotted at Syrian Camp Hit by Israel
Facing Risks, Turkish Leader Defends Decision to Send Troops to Iraq
Russian Official Cautions U.S. on Use of Central Asian Bases
Historic China Space Launch Planned for Next Week
Australian defence minister backs call for UN preemptive strikes
Saving Pvt. Ryan ... From Pain
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
New Food Import Rules Issued
4 Senators Criticize Leak Probe
More Agents Are Added to Leak Case
Philadelphia Mayor Seeks Explanation Of FBI Bugs
Red Cross Criticizes Indefinite Detention in Guantánamo Bay
South American Area Is Cited as Haven of Terrorist Training
OTHER
Ex-EPA Officials Question Clean Air Suits
Details Emerge on Post-9/11 Clash Between White House and E.P.A.
Breast Cancer Drug Reduces Relapse Risk
ACTIVISTS
Iranian Reformers Hail Nobel Prize Winner
Activist struggles with injustice
Iranian Lawyer Is Awarded Peace Prize for Human Rights Work
Full text of Nobel Peace Prize citation for 2003 winner Shirin Ebadi
Airmen ready base for weekend protest
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Energy Department Gets Permit to Ship Plutonium to France
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
October 10, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2003/2003-10-10-09.asp#anchor3
A U.S. Energy Department plan to ship weapons plutonium to France for processing presents an unacceptable proliferation and safety risk, environmentalists say. The department has recently filed an export license with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ship up to 140 kilograms of plutonium, enough to for some fifty nuclear weapons.
The Energy Department's plan reveals that "the U.S. refuses to apply the same non proliferation standards to itself which it is attempting to dictate to the world," said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International. "Given the risk of accident or deliberate attack presented by transporting plutonium, the United States must show the world that it will abide by the highest non proliferation norms and cancel this shipment."
Clements pointed out that the October 7 filing of the export license comes in the wake of a decision by French government to safeguard information on plutonium transports and all other nuclear matters as state secrets on the grounds of national security.
"No security system can guarantee the safety of plutonium and that is why the French authorities are trying to stop the public's right to know what threatens them," added Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International in France.
The Energy Department has proposed to export the weapons plutonium to France from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, via the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina. The hazardous material would be placed in containers on a British flagged transport vessel destined for Cherbourg, France, where the plutonium would be turned over to French officials.
The plutonium would then be taken to the Cadarache plutonium facility, although the facility was recently closed by French safety authorities due to seismic safety concerns
The Energy Department has declined to comment on the plan and has refused requests by Greenpeace and other environmental and non proliferation organizations to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement on the shipment, as mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act.
-------- depleted uranium
More questions on the deaths and illnesses of American soldiers
By James Conachy
10 October 2003
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/oct2003/ill-o10.shtml
There are growing reasons to doubt the veracity of an ongoing US Army Surgeon General's investigation into the pneumonia-like condition that has killed and sickened American military personnel involved in operations in Iraq.
The investigation has been running since July 17 and was initiated in response to the death of two soldiers and the hospitalisation of approximately 100 with what was diagnosed as pneumonia. The military has revealed that 10 of the 19 most severe cases, including the two fatalities, had the condition eosinophilia-a higher than normal level of the white blood cell eosinophil. Eosinophilia is commonly associated with an allergic reaction to either toxins or parasitic infection. In these cases, the military claims there is no evidence of toxins or an infectious variant of pneumonia.
At a September 9 press briefing, Army spokesmen highlighted that 9 of the 10 cases with eosinophilia had recently taken up smoking, suggesting that it was linked to their condition. Colonel Bob DeFraites told the press: "[T]obacco is a known lung irritant and we think what it is going on here is that it's playing a role in at least sensitizing the lungs and making them more susceptible to pneumonia... it may be a combination of desert deployment with the heat, the dust and everything else... but... it's an association." [1]
The Army investigation is supporting this thesis with references to clinical studies in Japan during which smoking appeared to induce patients with acute eosinophilic pneumonia. It is discounting as a cause "exposures unique to Iraq (e.g., abandoned buildings, unexploded ordnance, and war-damaged vehicles or equipment)" with references to a case in 1997 when two US soldiers on training in California contracted acute respiratory distress with eosinophilia. [2]
The WSWS is not in a position to determine whether cigarette smoke was a major factor in soldiers in Iraq and neighbouring countries contracting severe pneumonia.
The military, however, appears to be attempting to ignore public concerns about other possible causes.
Thousands of US personnel involved in the invasion of Iraq are likely to have been exposed to some degree to depleted uranium (DU), due to the military's extensive use of the substance in munitions and vehicle armor.
Studies appear on the Army's own medical website detailing how certain combat and post-combat scenarios can result in particles of uranium entering a soldier's body. The report notes: "The fate of the particles within the human body depends primarily on their physical and chemical properties and the physiological conditions of the lungs (for example, asthma or effects of smoking)." [3]
The World Health Organisation has specifically warned that "brief accidental exposure to high concentrations of uranium hexafluoride has caused acute respiratory illness, which may be fatal". The WHO report notes that "pulmonary edema [fluid in the lungs], haemorrhages, inflammation and emphysema" were observed in rats, mice and guinea pigs after 30 days of inhaling DU. Fatal kidney damage has also been induced in animals by several days of high exposure. [4]
While releasing information about the patients' smoking habits, the military has not released what levels of uranium 234, 235, and 238 were present in the soldiers' bodies, which, if independently verified, would establish whether and what degree of exposure occurred. DU was not even referred to at the September 9 press conference-by either the military doctors or by any of the journalists in attendance.
Moreover, the military appears to have arbitrarily excluded from its investigation a number of fatalities and serious illnesses involving pneumonia or pulmonary conditions, and a number of other deaths that have been reported only as "heart attacks" or "heat-related". While the Army specifically denied on September 9 there was any link between the pneumonia cases and anthrax and smallpox vaccines, a civilian coroners' report directly suggests vaccinations may be responsible for one of the deaths that the Army is ignoring.
On April 4, Specialist Rachael Lacy died from lung damage in Rochester, Minnesota, after being hospitalised with pneumonia while her unit prepared to deploy to the Middle East. Doctor Eric Pfeifer, the Minnesota coroner who performed the autopsy on Lacy, told the July 14 Army Times there may be a link between her death and the five vaccinations, including the anthrax and smallpox vaccines, she was administered on March 2. He stated: "It's just very suspicious in my mind... that's she healthy, gets the vaccinations and then dies a couple of weeks later".
Pfeifer recorded on Lacy's death certificate three possible causes: 1) heart inflammation with eosinophils, which is sometimes observed following smallpox vaccination; 2) an auto-immune disorder that Lacy had never been diagnosed with before; and 3) post-vaccine complications. He has suggested that "one of the theories is the vaccine... may have exacerbated this immune problem". [5]
Moses Lacy, Rachael's father, has insisted his daughter had no prior condition and that the auto-immune illness must have been caused by the vaccinations. There are medical grounds for his view. Doctor Meryl Nass told the Army Times that people vaccinated "are developing auto-immune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, reactive arthritis and lupus, which cause musculoskeletal pain". Others, she stated, "develop fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome whose causes are unknown but also may cause similar musculoskeletal pain and fatigue".
Nass's research into the sicknesses among first Gulf War veterans has led her to oppose mandatory anthrax vaccinations. A paper she co-authored in 2000 with two other researchers noted that "respiratory distress and a variety of pulmonary illnesses have also been reported". [6]
In a September 16 article, United Press International (UPI) journalist Mark Benjamin interviewed 43-year-old Air Force sergeant Neal Erickson, who claims he has been hospitalised twice this year with respiratory problems following anthrax shots. "I had severe chest pains, dizziness and shortness of breath," he told Benjamin. "They basically labeled it as a type of pneumonia". According to Erickson, another member of his squadron required hospitalisation and three others fell ill with similar symptoms.
Benjamin also interviewed 27-year-old Army private Dennis Drew, who claims he fell ill with pneumonia and swelling around his heart on April 27, three days after his anthrax vaccine. Drew told UPI: "I started to get a real sharp pain in my chest. I had a hard time breathing and every time I moved, my chest hurt." He alleges that he now suffers headaches, loss of peripheral vision and frequent respiratory ailments. Drew has written to the US House National Security Subcommittee condemning the anthrax vaccine.
Medical researcher Jeffrey Sartin told UPI: "They [the military] keep saying there is no common exposure, but every one of those soldiers got vaccinated. That is one definite common exposure that should not be dismissed out of hand." [7]
The sudden and unexpected deaths of 16 soldiers and one civilian deployed or preparing to deploy to the Middle East are not included in the military pneumonia investigation. Only limited information has been made available to the public, but five directly involved a respiratory or pulmonary condition, six were reported as heat-related, four due to heart attacks and one from a cerebral blood clot. (See the associated WSWS article: "17 deaths not included in the US military pneumonia investigation")
There are also a large number of illnesses for which no adequate public explanation has been given.
It is over a month since the military revealed to the Washington Post that thousands of military personnel have required evacuation from Iraq for medical reasons other than combat and non-combat injuries. According to an October 3 report by UPI's Mark Benjamin, the military admits there have been 3,915 medical evacuations. The Pentagon told UPI that 478 were for psychiatric problems, 387 for neurological conditions, 290 for gynecological reasons, 118 for orthopedic problems and 544 for general surgery.
That leaves 2,098 evacuations still unexplained and a great many questions the US military still has to answer.
Notes:
1. Teleconference Update on Southwest Asia Pneumonia Review, September 9, 2003, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030909-0657.html
2. Operation Iraqi Freedom Severe Acute Pneumonitis Epidemiology Group, U.S. Army Medical Command. National Center for Infectious Diseases; National Center for Environmental Health, CDC, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5236a1.htm
3. "Health Risk Assessment Consultation No. 26-MF-7555-00D" (September 2000) http://www.deploymentlink.osd.mil/du_library/reports/medical_us.shtml
4. "Depleted Uranium: Sources, Exposure and Health Effects", World Health Organization, Geneva 2001, http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/ir_pub/en/
5. Army Times, 14 July 2003, http://www.armytimes.com/archivepaper.php?f=0-ARMYPAPER-1992586.php
6. "Anthrax Vaccine: Controversy over Safety and Efficacy", http://www.immed.org/publications/gulf_war_illness/anthrax3-18-00.html 7. "Mystery pneumonia toll may be much higher", Mark Benjamin, 16 September 2003, http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030915-014545-8114r
See Also:
17 deaths not included in the US military pneumonia investigation [10 October 2003]
Thousands of US troops evacuated from Iraq for unexplained medical reasons [9 September 2003]
Why are they dying? More questions over US military fatalities in Iraq [20 August 2003]
Are American soldiers in Iraq dying due to depleted uranium? [4 August 2003]
America's maimed come home from Iraq [30 July 2003]
-------- europe
France may get plutonium from U.S.
U.S. seeks license to export weapons-grade powder
ASSOCIATED PRESS,
Oct. 10, 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/978563.asp
WASHINGTON - The government has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an export license to ship 300 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium to France for processing into reactor fuel, prompting criticism from nuclear nonproliferation groups.
THE PLUTONIUM SHIPMENTS are part of a long-range plan to dispose of 34 tons of excess plutonium in the government's nuclear weapons program by turning it into a mixed oxide fuel for use in commercial U.S. reactors.
The plan calls for building a plant in South Carolina to process the plutonium. In the meantime, the 300 pounds of plutonium powder - enough, critics say, for 50 or more nuclear weapons - must be shipped to France for processing so it can be used in a commercial reactor test run in 2005, officials said.
The Energy Department, in its request to the NRC for an export license, said the plutonium will be shipped across the country from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico to a Navy base at Charleston, S.C., and by a special armed and escorted ship to France.
The shipments are to occur sometime next year.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis rejected suggestions by critics of the program that the shipments pose a terrorist risk. "We will have safe and secure transport for any plutonium that we ship," Davis said. "Charleston and federal DOE officials are capable of making sure the shipments arrive safe and secure."
Davis said the department is committed to the plutonium disposition program, which is being conducted in conjunction with a similar effort in Russia. He said the reactor test runs, expected to begin in 2005, are an essential part of the program.
CRITICS SEE SAFETY RISK
But some nonproliferation groups have long opposed using converted plutonium in commercial power reactors, maintaining that it erases the separation of military and commercial nuclear programs and adds to the chance that some plutonium might be diverted improperly.
The shipments to Europe of some 300 pounds of plutonium in powder form as planned by the Energy Department "presents an unacceptable proliferation and safety risk and should be canceled," said Tom Clements, a nuclear materials expert working for Greenpeace International.
While the department has openly discussed its plans to convert excess weapons-grade plutonium to so-called MOX fuel and burn it in commercial power reactors, the request for an export license was not publicized.
The application was placed quietly on the NRC's Web site this week and first disclosed Thursday by Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group that has strongly protested nuclear waste reprocessing in Europe and opposes the U.S. government's plutonium disposal program.
The United States is sending "a message ... that commerce in weapons plutonium is acceptable," said Clements.
FUEL FOR COMMERCIAL REACTORS
Under a U.S. agreement with Russia, both countries planned to dispose of 34 tons of excess weapons-grade plutonium by turning it into MOX fuel. Several utilities in the United States have agreed to use the converted fuel, which once processed is no longer usable for weapons, in commercial reactors.
Duke Energy plans the first reactor test runs using MOX fuel assemblies at its Catawba reactor south of Charlotte, N.C., over a period of three years, beginning in 2005.
The fuel used for those tests is coming from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It will be shipped across country to the Charleston Naval Weapons Station and then by ship to the port at Cherbourg, France. From there the plutonium will be taken to the Cadarache processing facility in southern France to be processed into MOX fuel assemblies and then returned to the United States, according to the Energy Department license applications.
-------- korea
Korea envoy needed
October 10, 2003
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Inside the Ring
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Former Secretary of State George Shultz said the Bush administration should appoint a high-ranking special envoy for North Korea.
In an interview at his office at the Hoover Institution, Mr. Shultz said the nuclear crisis with Pyongyang, which a year ago revealed a covert uranium-enrichment program for arms, needs a specialist to address the problem. He said it would be similar to what former Defense Secretary William Perry did for the Clinton administration after leaving the Pentagon.
The Bush administration's diplomatic effort to deal with the nuclear crisis is foundering as North Korea continues to demand concessions from the United States. This week, Pyongyang said it would not continue six-nation talks with Japan.
U.S. officials said problems with the administration's diplomacy are a result of the weakness of the State Department bureaucracy, which has been put in charge of the talks. The department is good at implementing policy, but generally views diplomatic talks as an end rather than a tool for reaching objectives.
Soft-line officials in the department, led by James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, privately want to reach "Agreed Framework II," to follow the failed 1994 agreement that was supposed to have ended North Korea's nuclear-weapons program.
The Pentagon's view of North Korea was outlined by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in a recent speech. The secretary has a satellite photograph of Korea on the glass-top desk in his Pentagon office, showing the bright lights of South Korea contrasted by the darkness of the communist North, above the 38th parallel.
"What a difference between freedom and oppression. In one, the light of liberty outshines everything; and in the other, the darkness of the dictatorship is so obvious even from so many miles in outer space," he said.
Mr. Rumsfeld said he is convinced that "one day freedom will come to the people of the North and light up that oppressed land with hope and with promise."
-------- russia
Russia will not use nuclear weapons preemptively: Ivanov
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (AFP)
Oct 10, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031010003045.5ybkr24r.html
Russia will not use nuclear weapons preemptively under any conditions but reserves the right to use conventional military force preventively, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Thursday.
Ivanov denied reports from Moscow last week that Russia was asserting the right to launch preemptive nuclear strikes under certain conditions as part of a new national security strategy.
"Russia still regards nuclear weapons as a means of political deterrence. We do not envisage a scenario or a situation where we would use such weapons first," he said through a translator at a press conference here.
But Ivanov, who spoke after discussions with NATO defense ministers here on Russia's military modernization plans, said Russia would not give up the right to use conventional military force preventively against another country.
He said he briefed NATO ministers in detail on the conditions under which Russia might resort to preventive military attacks, noting that Russia regards the former Soviet republics as a "an important and sensitive sphere of security."
The ministers, he said, responded to his presentation with "understanding."
----
Right reserved for pre-emptive strike if practice spreads: Putin
Friday October 10, 2003
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2003-daily/10-10-2003/world/w1.htm
MOSCOW: Russia is opposed to the doctrine of using pre-emptive strikes to prevent attacks but reserves the right to resort to it if the practice should become widespread, President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday at a Russo-German summit.
"If the practice of preventive strikes should de facto become widespread and grow stronger, Russia reserves the right to such a practice," Putin said on the second day of a two-day summit in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
"We are against this, but we retain the right to carry out preventive strikes," he said, as quoted by the Interfax news agency.
Putin stressed that Russian missiles were not on combat status but have been mothballed.
"This situation will continue for decades till the middle of the 21st century. Meanwhile we will work on perfecting our defence systems, including with the United States, and are already holding such talks," he said.
Last week Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov told a gathering of senior officers that Moscow retained the right to stage pre-emptive strikes against other countries under certain circumstances. "We cannot absolutely rule out the pre-emptive use of force if this is dictated by Russia's interests or its commitments to allies," he said.
Although his words were merely a restatement of Russia's long-standing defence doctrine, it struck a jarring note as it came just days after Putin and his US counterpart George W. Bush reaffirmed their personal friendship at a Camp David summit.
Russia, which along with Germany and France has formed the basis of a peace camp that opposed the US-led war in Iraq, has contested the US doctrine announced by the Bush administration in September 2002 that it was willing to take pre-emptive action against hostile states and terrorist groups considered a threat to global stability or US interests.
Meanwhile, Putin said that he wanted a new UN resolution on Iraq adopted before an October 23-24 Madrid conference is called to discuss financial aid for the war-ravaged country.
Putin said after summit talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder that Russia was still pressing for a quick transfer of power from the US-appointed Governing Council to a freely elected Iraqi government. "We would like to see the resolution voted on before the Madrid conference. "This would serve as a good basis for the Madrid talks," Putin told reporters.
"Iraq needs huge investments, but these investments can only be used effectively after political rules are established for the reconstruction of Iraq," said Putin. He added Russia would most likely take part in this conference as an observer.
Also yesterday, Putin and Schroeder said their countries were days away from sealing a mammoth Baltic Sea gas pipeline project aimed at lucrative European markets.
At the final day of their summit, the two leaders also said they shared a similar approach to the crises in both the Middle East and Iraq - the war on which both men opposed, even though Putin has in recent weeks softened his stance on the US campaign.
Putin also used the meeting to lash out at European Union 'bureaucrats' for standing in the way of Russian efforts to join the World Trade Organisation and urged Germany to champion Moscow's cause.
On the other hand, the European Union, reacting to sharp criticism from Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisted that Russia fulfil the conditions set out by the World Trade Organisation before gaining admission to the body.
"The WTO's adhesion process is not political, it's a process that consists in fulfilling rules and regulations that exist already at the WTO," said Arancha Gonzalez, spokeswoman for EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy. "When a country doesn't meet them, it doesn't join," he expressed.
-------- treaties / diplomacy
London talks study beefing up fight against traffic in WMD
LONDON (AFP)
Oct 10, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031010211802.tr3hx46m.html
Officials from 11 countries meeting in London for talks on fighting the illegal traffic of weapons of mass destruction said Friday they had studied ways of strengthening anti-proliferation measures.
The aim of the discussions was to gain wider support for the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) launched in May by US President George W. Bush on the interception of shipments of materials related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The three-day meeting which wrapped up Friday included an exercise mid-week simulating the interception of a flight suspected of carrying WMD, said a spokesman for the Foreign Office.
The countries taking part said in a statement they had "an initial exchange of views on a possible boarding agreement, presented by the United States, which could facilitate practical implementation of the initiative.
"Participants agreed that future interdiction exercices should build on the successful exercises that have already taken place," the statement added.
A Spanish-led exercise is planned in the Mediterranean from October 14 to 17, and another, led by France, from November 24 to 28. Six others are planned at various locations up to next spring.
The 11 states are also to hold meeting of experts in the United States in December, which will be open to a number of other countries. Some 50 nations have expressed interest in joining the group.
"Participation in PSI, which is an activity not an organisation, should be open to any state or international body that accepts the Paris statement of principles and makes an effective contribution," the statement issued Friday said.
Eleven governments signed up to the PSI principles last month at talks in the French capital and the signatories are now looking for broader international support.
The group of 11 comprises Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United States.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- south carolina
300 Pounds of Weapons-Grade Plutonium Headed to Charleston
Friday October 10, 2003
ABC News,
Posted By: Uche Uwah
http://www.abcnews4.com/news/stories/1003/106058.html
The shipment is large enough to make 50 nuclear weapons. The plutonium will be trucked cross-country in powder form, then shipped to France through the Naval Weapons Station next August. In France, it will be turned into fuel and sent back through Charleston where it will be used by a power plant in York County. Environmentalists have safety concerns about the shipments coming to Charleston.
----
Plutonium to be shipped overseas through Charleston
By SAMMY FRETWELL
Fri, Oct. 10, 2003
TheState.com (South Carolina)
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/6978086.htm
The U.S. Department of Energy plans to send deadly plutonium through Charleston as part of its program to make mixed oxide fuel for use in commercial atomic power reactors.
Federal records show that up to 300 pounds of plutonium powder will be shipped across the country from a U.S. nuclear complex at Los Alamos, N.M., put on ships in Charleston and sent to France, where it will be turned into mixed oxide fuel.
The amount of plutonium going through Charleston - up to 300 pounds - would be enough to make 50 atomic weapons, according to Greenpeace, an environmental group tracking the issue.
Once the plutonium-blended fuel has been made at a fabrication plant in France, it will be shipped back to Charleston, then taken to a Duke Energy nuclear facility in York County, according to an Oct. 1 application to export nuclear material.
Mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, would then be tested in Duke's Catawba nuclear facility to see how well it works, records show. The shipments would go through Charleston in August 2004 and return in early 2005, the export license request said.
The Energy Department's plan is part of a government proposal to turn surplus weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for commercial power plants. The plutonium would be blended at a plant on the Savannah River Site near Aiken. The fuel would for the first time be regularly burned at an American commercial nuclear plant. The DOE will send up to 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium to SRS for use in MOX fuel, according to plans.
But the mixed oxide fuel plant at SRS hasn't been built, so the government is seeking to obtain fuel for testing from a French plant.
Nuclear nonproliferation activists said Thursday they are worried about terrorist attacks on the shipments, either in the United States, on the open seas or in France.
"Shipping plutonium long distances around the world presents a target for attack," said Tom Clements, a nuclear nonproliferation expert with Greenpeace. Clements' group also opposes the MOX program because of safety and nonproliferation concerns.
Plutonium also can increase a person's chances of lung cancer if inhaled, even in microscopic amounts.
DOE spokesman Joe Davis told the Associated Press that the plutonium transports will be adequately guarded.
"Charleston and DOE officials are capable of making sure the shipments arrive safe and secure,'' Davis said.
In this instance, plutonium oxide would be shipped in eight or nine packages to the Charleston Naval Weapons Station. Two armed ships would then leave Charleston for France. Having two ships provides "an acceptable level of protection," according to the DOE's Oct. 1 export license request.
In France, the material would be shipped by land to a MOX fabrication plant, the export license request shows. French authorities would be in charge of guarding the shipments in that country.
Upon its return to Charleston, the plutonium-blended fuel will be unloaded and shipped over land to Duke Energy's nuclear Catawba nuclear plant, records show. A heavily guarded "safe-secure transport" system would be used to haul the material to Catawba, the license application said.
Contact Fretwell at (803) 771-8537 or sfretwell@thestate.com.
----
WHAT IS MOX?
Fri, Oct. 10, 2003,
TheState.com
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/local/6978087.htm
Mixed oxide fuel is a blend of plutonium and uranium. It has been used for decades in Europe to fuel power plants and has been experimented with in U.S. plants.
American nuclear power plants historically have been fueled by uranium.
Duke Energy Corp. hopes to regularly use mox for the first time in U.S. nuclear power plants. If approved by the federal government, mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, would be fabricated at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, then shipped to Duke plants in the Carolinas.
Supporters say the MOX program is a good way to accomplish the nation's goal of nuclear nonproliferation, while also fueling power plants in the Carolinas. Opponents favor turning all the excess plutonium into waste because of suspected dangers of plutonium.
----
More nukes headed to, through state
Friday, October 10, 2003
By Jason Zacher, jzacher@greenvillenews.com
Greenville News ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER
http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2003/10/10/2003101016610.htm
A nuclear power reactor from Michigan will be sent to a Barnwell County landfill and plutonium from New Mexico will be shipped through the port of Charleston, heightening fears that South Carolina is not only becoming America's nuclear dumping ground, but also a crossroads.
The two plans were filed with the state and federal governments this week. The plutonium shipment was revealed in an export license application and should move through the state in July or August 2004. The nuclear reactor will be in the state later this month.
While anti-nuclear activists are concerned about the reactor shipment, they are most concerned with the plutonium coming to Charleston. There is no way to determine whether either shipment will come through the Upstate.
"This is unprecedented," said Tom Clements, of Greenpeace's nuclear campaign. "Research reactor fuel does come in through Charleston, so they do have some experience, but not with shipments that pose such a nuclear weapons proliferation risk."
According to the export license, the plutonium will be 140 kilograms - about 310 pounds - of "plutonium oxide." Plutonium oxide is a powder form of the deadly metal. The powder will be shipped from Charleston to Cherbourg, France.
"It could be easily dispersed in any kind of accident or attack," Clements said, adding the shipment was enough for 50 nuclear weapons.
Critics of Gov. Mark Sanford said Friday he should be putting up more of a fight to prevent nuclear material from shipping through the state.
"You don't build relationships with folks by threatening to lie down in front of the trucks," said Sanford spokesman Will Folks, referring to threats made by former Gov. Jim Hodges to stop plutonium shipments. "You build relationships by raising concerns through appropriate channels."
State Rep. Robert Brown, D-Hollywood, was bothered by the prospect of powdered plutonium coming through Charleston and said he would fight the shipments.
"What has cooperation done for us in the past?" he asked. "Cooperation is a good thing, but we need to tell the federal government we don't want it coming through Charleston County at all."
Folks said Sanford has met with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on several occasions and said the governor will monitor the shipments.
The plutonium that leaves Charleston will be converted to mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel. MOX fuel takes weapons-grade plutonium and transforms it for use in commercial nuclear reactors. The MOX program is a key part of an agreement between the United States and Russia to dismantle nuclear arms.
A plant to manufacture MOX is planned to begin production in 2009 at the Savannah River Site near Aiken.
Once the plutonium is converted to MOX fuel, it will be shipped back to Charleston on its way to two Duke Energy nuclear reactors near Charlotte, where it will be tested.
The reactor dump is much less of a concern because, as Tim Petrosky, the spokesman for Consumers Energy, the owner of the reactor said, low-level nuclear waste is transported across the country every day. The reactor is low-level despite being used for 35 years.
"General members of the public will receive no radiation from the shipment," he said.
The reactor was treated with chemicals and is in a steel container with walls seven inches thick. Empty spaces in the reactor have been filled with low-density concrete and the entire package weighs nearly 290 tons.
Petrosky said the reactor was moved Tuesday and Wednesday by a special heavy-load truck from the nuclear plant, which closed in 1997, to a rail siding in the northern end of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. On Thursday, the reactor was transferred to the rail car, where it will be welded and bolted to the rail car before leaving next week, Petrosky said.
The rail car is the same one that transported the Yankee Rowe reactor from Massachusetts to South Carolina in 1997. He also said after consultations with law enforcement, the route will be kept secret. However, he did say the train will travel 25 mph and only during daylight hours, meaning the reactor won't make it to the Barnwell low-level nuclear waste dump until the end of the month.
When it gets to Barnwell, workers will bury the reactor under 40 feet of earth.
Jason Zacher covers the environment and natural resources. He can be reached at 298-4272.
-------- texas
Cornyn touts Pantex's roles
Senator: Plant should receive new facility
By JIM McBRIDE jmcbride@amarillonet.com
Friday, October 10, 2003
Amarilllo Globe-News
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/101003/new_cornyntouts.shtml
U.S. Sen John Cornyn on Thursday touted Pantex Plant as the potential site for a new plutonium processing facility and praised the plant's role in protecting national security.
Cornyn, R-Texas, toured Pantex on Thursday to learn more about the plant's plutonium pit packaging and nuclear weapons operations.
Cornyn said Pantex compares favorably with other sites vying for the Modern Pit Facility.
Other possible sites include Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.; Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; Nevada Test Site; and Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The new facility, estimated to cost up to $4 billion, will produce new plutonium weapons cores from recycled plutonium and would employ more than 1,000 workers.
In a recent letter to Linton Brooks, administrator of National Nuclear Security Administration, Cornyn said Pantex is the most cost-effective site in the nuclear weapons program and should be picked for the Modern Pit Facility.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is expected to name the site for the new facility in April.
Cornyn said sites vying for the project are competing heavily, but Pantex is a strong contender for the new mission.
"For example, public safety in terms of transporting radioactive material, Pantex, I think, compares very favorably because a lot of that material is already stored here," he said.
Cornyn also praised Pantex's security and its work force for their role in protecting national security.
"Certainly there are very few locations where America's nuclear weapons are stored and maintained and indeed refurbished," Cornyn said. "We need to make sure from a public safety standpoint that it's done in a safe manner, and the people here at Pantex do a good job of handling a very delicate weapon system in a safe way."
-------- us politics
Rumsfeld's $9 Billion Slush Fund
By Fred Kaplan
Friday, October 10, 2003
http://slate.msn.com/id/2089674/
For all the debate over President Bush's $87 billion supplemental request for military operations and economic reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, no one seems to have noticed that the sum includes a slush fund of at least $9.3 billion, which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld can spend pretty much as he pleases.
Last week, the congressional armed services committees-and this week the House Appropriations Committee-marked up the supplemental, excising a few hundred million that Bush had requested for new hospitals, housing, and sanitation. But the committees didn't touch a nickel of the slush fund-and there's a cravenly wink-and-nudge reason why they didn't.
Most of the supplemental request is fairly straightforward: $32 billion to maintain the tempo of military operations, $18 billion for military personnel, $5.1 billion for security and a new Iraqi army, $5.7 billion for electrical power, and so forth.
But deep within, the document proposes the following allowance:
Not less than $1.4 billion, to remain available until expended, may be used, notwithstanding any other provision of law, for payments to reimburse Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations, for logistics, military and other support provided, or to be provided, to United States military operations.
First, look closely at those first three words: Not less than. In other words, Rumsfeld could transfer more than $1.4 billion for this purpose-how much more, who can say? The section goes on to say that Rumsfeld must notify the appropriate congressional committees whenever he uses any of this money, and that the payments must be made with the concurrence of the secretary of state. But otherwise, the bill emphasizes that he alone determines how to spend this money "and such determination is final and conclusive."
Another section, subtitled the "Iraq Freedom Fund," states that the secretary of defense can transfer $1,988,600,000 from one part of the overall $87 billion supplemental to any other part, again, as long as he notifies the committees when he does this. (As with the previous allowance, the committees appear to have no power to disapprove these transfers.)
Still another section reads:
Upon his determination that such action is necessary in the national interest, the Secretary of Defense may transfer between appropriations up to $5 billion of the funds made available in this title.
Again, he "shall notify the Congress promptly of each transfer."
Another section gives Rumsfeld authority to "transfer not more than $500 million of the funds appropriated in this title to the contingency construction account ... to carry out military construction projects not otherwise authorized by law." So much for pulling in the reins on Halliburton and Bechtel.
Then there is this section:
Notwithstanding any other provision of law, from funds available to the Department of Defense for Operations and Maintenance in fiscal year 2004, not to exceed $200 million may be used by the Secretary of Defense, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, to provide assistance to military forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other friendly nearby regional nations to enhance their capability to combat terrorism and to support U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Egregious syntax makes this one a little hard to follow, but maybe that's because the leeway it allows is quite a bit broader than in the other sections. It gives Rumsfeld the power not merely to transfer funds within the $87 billion, but to transfer up to $200 million from the Pentagon's entire operations and maintenance budget-in other words, from programs that have nothing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, or terrorism.
Finally, the president has a little slush fund, too. One section notes that he may transfer "any appropriation made available in this title," as long as it does "not exceed $200 million."
Add them all up: $9.3 billion-11 percent of the entire, already-controversial sum (and that doesn't include the expandable loophole provided by the "not less than" clause).
There is no overlap or double-counting in this calculation. Each of these separate sections explicitly notes, "The transfer authority provided in this section is in addition to any other transfer authority available to the Department of Defense" (italics added), or words to that effect.
In the supplemental document, the Pentagon offered explanations for these loopholes. Transfer accounts are "necessary due to the dynamic nature of these operations," or "to provide the flexibility needed to allocate funding to those components that are actually incurring costs," or "to help the Department address the unpredictable scope, duration, and intensity of these military operations."
Certainly postwar Iraq and Afghanistan are a lot more unpredictable than, well, the Pentagon predicted. Much of life is unpredictable. That's why budgets have supplementals. The entire $87 billion request is officially designated "an emergency requirement." Yet much of it is broken down into specific line-items or at least general categories of spending. Is the situation really so unpredictable that more than $9 billion of that sum-and possibly much more (the "not less than" clause)-might need to be spent in ways so quickly, and so differently from what is currently imagined, that Rumsfeld must be given the authority to move it around, from one account to another, without prior congressional approval? If the circumstances do warrant it, couldn't he simply put forth another supplemental? The present supplemental didn't run into many obstacles, despite growing criticism of the whole operation; there's no reason to fear that a subsequent one would, either.
So why have three committees of Congress essentially abrogated such a sizable chunk of their oversight powers? Mainly because they wanted to. The lawmakers can play populist politics, tossing out hundreds of millions of dollars for new Iraqi hospitals, housing, garbage trucks, and business subsidies. They can thunder that their constituents-the American people-don't get federal money for such niceties, so why should Iraqis? Meanwhile, they know that Rumsfeld can use some of the slush-fund money-the "transfer funds"-to put them back in the budget, very low key, notifying the committees but not needing their permission. Responsibility is thus eluded, electoral-politics points are gained.
The trick lets legislators avoid a few hundred million dollars' worth of potential outrage from the constituents. The price they pay, though, is that Rumsfeld gets several billion dollars of walking-around money for whatever projects in the region he may want to enrich.
----
Cheney Defends Administration's Handling of Iraq
October 10, 2003
New York Times
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/politics/10CND-CHENEY.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 - Vice President Dick Cheney forcefully defended the administration's handling of Iraq today, declaring that to do nothing against Saddam Hussein and people like him would be to invite terrorist atrocities on a horrific scale.
"Iraq has become the central front in the war on terror," Mr. Cheney said in an address at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative institution here. "Our mission in Iraq is a great undertaking and part of a larger mission that the United States accepted now more than two years ago. Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything for this country."
The vice president's remarks continued the administration's recent spirited defense of the military and reconstruction campaign in Iraq. President Bush himself defended the campaign on Thursday in speeches in New Hampshire, where the primary on Jan. 27, 2004, will mark the beginning of full-scale presidential politicking.
Mr. Cheney told the foundation today that President Bush would not be deterred by criticism or second-guessing. The vice president said that nothing less than the security of the United States was at stake.
"We came to recognize our vulnerability to the threats of the new era," Mr. Cheney said. "We saw the harm that 19 evil men could do armed with little more than airline tickets and box cutters and driven by a philosophy of hatred. We lost some 3,000 innocent lives that morning, in scarcely two hours' time."
Mr. Cheney continued: "We know to a certainty that terrorists are doing everything they can to gain even deadlier means of striking us. From the training manuals we found in the caves of Afghanistan to the interrogations of terrorists that we've captured, we have learned of their ambitions to develop or acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons."
If terrorists ever do acquire those weapons, "on their own or with help from a terror regime, they will use it without the slightest constraint of reason or morality," the vice president asserted. "That possibility, the ultimate nightmare, could bring devastation to our country on a scale we have never experienced. Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives in a single day of war."
Mr. Cheney was well received by the Heritage Foundation members, who punctuated his remarks with frequent applause. In describing the American campaign in Iraq as part of a broader war on terrorism, Mr. Cheney was rebutting criticism that has been building on Capitol Hill.
Some people who differ with the Bush administration's approach on Iraq say the president and his top aides exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction that he may or may not have had. Some critics also say the administration has disingenuously implied a link between the Sept. 11 attacks and Saddam Hussein, even though no such link has been established.
In his speech today, Mr. Cheney did not say, nor did he seem to imply, that Saddam Hussein had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. But the vice president did say, repeatedly, that tyrants who seek deadly chemical, biological or nuclear weapons are an intolerable danger in the post-Sept. 11 world. And in making that argument, the vice president said the United States would not hesitate to make another pre-emptive strike if circumstances demanded it.
"The strategy of deterrence, which served us so well during the decades of the cold war, will no longer do," Mr. Cheney said. "Our terrorist enemy has no country to defend, no assets to destroy in order to discourage an attack," adding, "There is only one way to protect ourselves against catastrophic terrorist violence, and that is to destroy the terrorists before they can launch further attacks against the United States."
Mr. Cheney said the United States was slow to awake to the reality that terror attacks before Sept. 11 were not isolated incidents but rather part of a broader strategy. "It started years ago, when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States," he said.
The vice president's speech comes at a delicate time politically. The administration's request for $87 billion for military expenses and rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan is being debated in the Capitol, and potential donor countries will soon meet in Spain to discuss aid for Iraq.
But Mr. Cheney tried to portray the current debate as one for history. "As the president told Congress earlier this year, if threats from terrorists and terror states are permitted to fully emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late."
Mr. Cheney said President Bush was determined to "not permit gathering threats to become certain tragedies."
"Sometimes, history presents clear and stark choices," Mr. Cheney said. "We have come to such a moment. Those who bear the responsibility for making those choices for America must understand that while action will always carry cost, measured in effort and sacrifice, inaction carries heavy cost of its own."
----
Transcript: Cheney at the Heritage Foundation
FDCH e-Media, Inc.
Friday, October 10, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8205-2003Oct10?language=printer
Following is the full transcript of Vice President Dick Cheney's speech to the Heritage Foundation on the Iraq invasion and the war on terror:
CHENEY: Thank you all. Thank you all very much.
And, Ed, thank you and thank you for the welcome and for allowing me to be here this morning to see so many old friends in the room, including distinguished scholars and writers whose work I've admired for years.
The Heritage Foundation sets a very high standards of scholarship and public advocacy. And in my various jobs over the years as congressman, secretary of defense and now vice president, I benefited greatly from the work done in the building. I want to thank all of you for what you do for all of us.
All of you are serious observers of public affairs, especially in matters of national security. And that's why I've come here this morning to discuss the war on terror, the choices America has made in that war and the choices still before us.
For most of this year, the attention of the world has centered on Iraq, from the final ultimatum to Saddam Hussein last March, to the removal of his regime and on up to the present, as we continue to battle with Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists.
Iraq has become the central front in the war on terror. It was crucial that we enforce the U.N. Security Council resolutions. Now, having liberated that country, it is crucial that we keep our word to the Iraqi people, helping them to build a secure country and a democratic government. And we will do so.
(APPLAUSE)
Our mission in Iraq is a great undertaking and part of a larger mission that the United States accepted now more than two years ago. September 11th, 2001 changed everything for this country. We came to recognize our vulnerability to the threats of the new era. We saw the harm that 19 evil men could do, armed with little more than airline tickets and box cutters and driven by a philosophy of hatred.
We lost some 3,000 innocent lives that morning in scarcely two hours time.
Since 9/11, we've learned much more about what these enemies intend for us. One member of Al Qaida said 9/11 was the beginning of the end of America. And we know to a certainty that terrorists are doing everything they can to gain even deadlier means of striking us. From the training manuals we found in the caves of Afghanistan to the interrogations of terrorists that we capture, we have learned of their ambitions to develop or acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.
And if terrorists ever do acquire that capability, on their own or with help from a terror regime, they will use it without the slightest constraint of reason or morality.
That possibility, the ultimate nightmare, could bring devastation to our country on a scale we have never experienced. Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives in a single day of horror.
Remember what we saw on the morning of 9/11. And knowing the nature of these enemies, we have as clear a responsibility as to ever fall to government. We must do everything in our power to keep terrorists from ever acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
This great and urgent responsibility has required to shift a national security policy. The strategy of deterrence which served us so well during the decades of the Cold War will no longer do. Our terrorist enemy has no country to defend, no assets to destroy in order to discourage an attack.
Strategies of containment will not assure our security either. There's no containing a terrorist who will commit suicide for the purposes of mass slaughter. There's also no containing a terrorist state that secretly passes along deadly weapons to a terrorist network.
There is only one way to protect ourselves against catastrophic terrorist violence, and that is to destroy the terrorists before they can launch further attacks against the United States.
For many years prior to 9/11, it was the terrorists who were on the offensive. We treated their repeated attacks against Americans as isolated incidents and answered, if at all, on an ad hoc basis and rarely in a systematic way.
There was the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, 1983, killing 241 men; the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993; five more murders when the Saudi National Guard Training Center in Riyadh was struck in 1995; the killings at Khobar Towers in 1996; the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998; and in 2000, the attack on the USS Cole.
There was a tendency to treat incidents like these as individual criminal acts to be handled primarily through law enforcement. Ramzi Yousef, who perpetrated the first attack on the World Trade Center, is the best case in point.
The U.S. government tracking him down, arrested him and got a conviction. After he was sent off to serve a 240-year sentence, some might have thought, ``Case closed.'' But the case was not closed. The leads were not successfully followed. The dots were not adequately connected. The threat was not recognized for what it was.
For Al Qaida, the World Trade Center attack in 1993 was part of a sustained campaign. Behind that one man, Ramzi Yousef, was a growing network with operatives inside and outside the United States, waging war against our country. For us, that war started on 9/11. For them, it started years ago, when Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States.
In 1996, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11 and the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, first proposed to bin Laden that they use hijacked airliners to attack targets in the U.S. During this period, thousands of terrorists were trained at Al Qaida camps in Afghanistan.
Since September 11th, the terrorists have continued their attacks in Riyadh, Casablanca, Mombasa, Bali, Jakarta, Najaf and Baghdad. Against this kind of determined, organized, ruthless enemy, America requires a new strategy, not merely to prosecute a series of crimes, but to conduct a global campaign against the terror network.
Our strategy has several key elements. We've strengthened our defenses here at home, organizing the government to protect the homeland. But a good defense is not enough. We're going after the terrorists wherever they plot and plan.
Of those known to be directly involved in organizing the attacks of 9/11, most are now in custody or confirmed dead. The leadership of Al Qaida has sustained heavy losses; they will sustain more.
We're also dismantling the financial networks that support terror, a vital step never before taken. The hidden bank accounts, the front groups, the phony charities are being discovered and the assets seized to starve terrorists of the money that makes it possible for them to operate.
Our government is also working closely with intelligence services all over the globe, including those of governments not traditionally considered friends of the United States. And we are applying the Bush doctrine: Any person or government that supports, protects or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and will be held to account.
(APPLAUSE)
The first to see this doctrine in application were the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan by violence while turning the country into a training camp for terrorists. With fine allies at our side, we took down the regime and shut down the Al Qaida camps.
Our work there continues, confronting Taliban and Al Qaida remnants, training a new Afghan army and providing security as the new government takes shape. Under President Karzai's leadership, and with the help of our coalition, the Afghan people are building a decent and just society, a nation fully joined in the war on terror.
In Iraq, we took another essential step in the war on terror. The United States and our allies rid the Iraqi people of a murderous dictator and rid the world of a menace to our future peace and security.
Saddam had a lengthy history of reckless and sudden aggression. He cultivated ties to terror, hosting the Abu Nidal organization, supporting terrorists, making payments to the families of suicide bombers in Israel. He also had an established relationship with Al Qaida, providing training to Al Qaida members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional bombs.
Saddam built, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction.
He refused or evaded all international demands to account for those weapons.
Twelve years of diplomacy, more than a dozen Security Council resolutions, hundreds of U.N. weapons inspectors, thousands of flights to enforce the no-fly zones and even strikes and against military targets in Iraq, all of these measures were tried to compel Saddam Hussein's compliance with the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire. All of these measured failed.
Last October, the United States Congress voted overwhelming to authorize the use of force in Iraq.
Last November, the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations and vowing serious consequences in the event Saddam Hussein did not fully and immediately comply. When Saddam Hussein failed even then to comply, our coalition acted to deliver those serious consequences.
In that effort, the American military acted with speed and precision and skill. Once again, our men and women in uniform have served with honor, reflecting great credit on themselves and on the United States of America.
(APPLAUSE)
In the post-9/11 era, certain risks are unacceptable. The United States made our position clear: We could not accept the grave danger of Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies turning weapons of mass destruction against us or our friends and allies.
And gradually, we are learning the details of his hidden weapons program. This work is being carried out under the direction of Dr. David Kay, a respected scientist and former U.N. inspector, who is leading the weapons search in Iraq.
Dr. Kay's team faces an enormous task: They have yet to examine more than 100 large conventional weapons arsenals, some of which cover areas larger than 50 square miles.
Finding comparatively small volumes of extremely deadly materials hidden in these vast stockpiles will be time-consuming and difficult. Yet Dr. Kay and his team are making progress and have compiled an interim report, portions of which were declassified last week.
Let me read to you a couple of passages from Dr. Kay's testimony to Congress, which deserve closer attention.
He notes, quote, ``Iraq's WMD programs spanned more than two decades, involved thousands of people, billions of dollars, and were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom,'' end quote.
Dr. Kay further stated, ``We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002.
``The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about, both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials, concerning information they deliberately withheld, as well as through physical evidence of equipment and activities that the Iraq Survey Group has discovered should have been declared to the United Nations,'' end quote.
Among the items Dr. Kay and his team have already identified are the following.
A clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the Iraqi intelligence service. They contained equipment suitable for continuing chemical and biological weapons research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of biological weapons agents that Iraqi officials were explicitly ordered not to declare to the United Nations.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever. And continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin which had not been declared to the United Nations.
Documents and equipment hidden in scientists' homes that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation.
A line of unmanned aerial vehicles, not fully declared, and an admission that they had been tested out to a range of 500 kilometers: 350 kilometer beyond the legal limit imposed by the U.N. after the Gulf War.
Plans and advanced design work for new long-range ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges capable of striking targets throughout the Middle East, which were prohibited by the U.N. and which Saddam sought to conceal from U.N. weapons inspectors.
Clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-kilometer-range ballistic missiles, 300-kilometer-range anti-ship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, each and every one of these findings confirms a material breach by the former Iraqi regime of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441. Taken together, they constitute a massive breach of that unanimously passed resolution and provide a compelling case for the use of force against Saddam Hussein.
Even as more evidence is found of Saddam's weapons programs, critics of our action in Iraq continue to voice other objections. And the arguments they make are helping to frame the most important debate of the post-9/11 era. Some claim we should not have acted because the threat from Saddam Hussein was not imminent. Yet, as the president has said, ``Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intention, politely putting us on notice before they strike?''
I would remind the critics of the fundamental case the president has made since September 11th. Terrorist enemies of our country hope to strike us with the most lethal weapons known to man and it would be reckless in the extreme to rule out action and save our worries until the day they strike.
As the president told Congress earlier this year, if threats from terrorists and terror states are permitted to fully emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late. That is the debate. That is the choice set before the American people.
And as long as George W. Bush is president of the United States, this country will not permit gathering threats to become certain tragedies.
(APPLAUSE)
Critics of our national security policy have also argued that to confront a gathering threat is simply to stir up hostility. In the case of Saddam Hussein, his hostility to our country long predates 9/11 and America's war on terror.
In the case of the Al Qaida terrorists, their hostility has long been evident. And year after year, the terrorists only grew bolder in the absence of forceful response from America and other nations. Weakness and drift and vacillation in the face of danger invite attacks. Strength and resolve and decisive action defeat attacks before they can arrive on our soil.
Another criticism we hear is that the United States, when its security is threatened, may not act without unanimous international consent. Under this view, even in the face of a specific stated agreed-upon danger, the mere objection of even one foreign government would be sufficient to prevent us from acting.
This view reflects a deep confusion about the requirements of our national security. Though often couched in high-sounding terms of unity and cooperation, it is a prescription for perpetual disunity and obstructionism.
In practice, it would prevent our own country from acting with friends and allies, even in the most urgent circumstance. To accept the view that action by America and our allies can be stopped by the objection of foreign governments that may not feel threatened is to confer undue power on them while leaving the rest of us powerless to act in our own defense.
Yet we continue to hear this attitude and arguments in our own country. So often, and so conveniently, it amounts to a policy of doing exactly nothing.
In Afghanistan, in Iraq, on every front in the war on terror, the United States has cooperated with friends and allies and with others who recognize the common threat we face. More than 50 countries are contributing to peace and stability in Iraq today, including most of the world's democracies, and more than 70 are with us in Afghanistan.
The United States is committed to multilateral action wherever possible, yet this commitment does not require us to stop everything and neglect our own defense merely on the say so of a single foreign government.
(APPLAUSE)
This is the debate before the American people and it is of more than academic interest. It comes down to a choice between action that assures our security and inaction that allows dangers to grow. And we can see the consequences of these choices in real events. The contrast is greatest on the ground in Iraq.
Had the United States been constrained by the objections of some, the regime of Saddam Hussein would still rule Iraq, his statues would still stand, his sons would still be running the secret police, dissidents would still be in prison, the apparatus of torture and rape would still be in place, and the mass graves would be undiscovered.
We must never forget the kind of man who ran that country and the depravity of his regime.
Last month, Bernard Kerik, former police commissioner of New York returned from Iraq after spending four months helping to activate and stand up a new national police force. Bernie Kerik tells of many things he saw, including the videos of interrogations in which the victim is blown apart by a hand grenade. Another video, as he describes it, shows and I quote, ``Saddam sitting in an office allowing two Doberman Pinchers to eat alive a general because he did not trust his loyalty,'' end quote.
Those who declined to support the liberation of Iraq would not deny the evil of Saddam Hussein's regime. They must concede, however, that had their own advice been followed, that regime would rule Iraq today.
President Bush declined the course of inaction and the results are there for all to see. The torture chambers are empty, the prisons for children are closed, the murders of innocents have been exposed and their mass graves have been uncovered. The regime is gone, never to return. And despite difficulties we knew would occur, the Iraqi people prefer liberty and hope to tyranny and fear.
(APPLAUSE)
Our coalition is helping them to build a secure, hopeful and self-governing nation which will stand as an example of freedom to all the Middle East. We are rebuilding more than 1,000 schools, supplying and reopening hospitals, rehabilitating power plants, water and sanitation facilities, bridges and airports.
We are training Iraqi police, border guards and a new army, so that the Iraqi people can assume full responsibility for their own security.
Iraq now has its own governing council, has appointed interim government ministers and is moving toward the drafting of a new constitution and free elections.
The contrast of visions is evident, as well, throughout the region. Had we followed the counsel of inaction, the Iraqi regime would still be a menace to its neighbors and a destabilizing force in the Middle East. Today, because we acted, Iraq stands to be a force for good in the Middle East.
Comparing both sides of the debate, we can see certain consequences for the world, beyond the Middle East, consequences with direct implications for our own security.
If Saddam Hussein were in power today, there would still be active terror camps in Iraq, the regime would still be allowing terrorist leaders into the country and this ally of terrorists would still have a hidden biological weapons program capable of producing deadly agents on short notice.
There would be today, as there was six months ago, the prospect of the Iraqi dictator providing weapons of mass destruction or the means to make them to terrorists for the purpose of attacking America.
Today, we do not face this prospect. There are terrorists in Iraq, yet there is no dictator to protect them and we are dealing with them, one by one. Terrorists have gathered in that country and there they will be defeated. We are fighting this evil in Iraq so we do not have to fight it on the streets of our own cities.
(APPLAUSE)
The current debate over America's national security policy is the most consequential since the early days of the Cold War and the emergence of a bipartisan commitment to face the evils of communism.
All of us now look back with respect and gratitude on the great decisions that set America on the path to victory in the Cold War and kept us on that path through nine presidencies.
I believe that, one day, scholars and historians will look back on our time and pay tribute to our 43rd president who has both called upon and exemplified the courage and perseverance of the American people.
(APPLAUSE)
In this period of extraordinary danger, President Bush has made clear America's purposes in the world and our determination to overcome the threats to our liberty and our lives.
Sometimes history presents clear and stark choices--we have come to such a moment. Those who bear the responsibility for making those choices for America must understand that while action will always carry cost, measured in effort and sacrifice, inaction carries heavy costs of its own.
As in the years of the Cold War, much is asked of us and much rides on our actions. A watching world is depending on the United States of America.
Only America has the might and the will to lead the world through a time of peril toward greater security and peace.
And as we've done before, we accept the great mission that history has given us.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghans and Foreign Envoys Struggle to Quell Fighting in North
October 10, 2003
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/international/asia/10AFGH.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 9 - Western diplomats joined the Afghan interior minister and senior military officials on Thursday to try to halt some of the worst fighting the country has seen in almost two years.
Rival factional commanders battled all night with tanks, artillery and mortars in a district just 40 miles west of Mazar-i-Sharif, the major city of northern Afghanistan.
One faction reported 50 killed and wounded, although the opposing faction put the losses at much less. The United Nations, which has a mission in Mazar-i-Sharif, confirmed the fighting but was unable to verify casualties.
"It is worse than anything before," said Manoel de Almeida e Silva, a United Nations spokesman in Kabul. "Tanks have been used, which we have not seen in a long time."
Civilians were among the 50 casualties, and dozens of houses and shops were burned, the government-run Bakhtar News Agency reported.
Fighting has occurred across three northern provinces, but the most serious has been in the Faizabad District, just west of Mazar-i-Sharif, raging all Wednesday night and into midmorning on Thursday.
The fighting has highlighted the dangers still common in Afghanistan, where warlords and local commanders have not been disarmed and are becoming increasingly politicized as the country prepares to adopt a constitution and hold elections. It has also demonstrated the weaknesses of the international security effort and of President Hamid Karzai's government, which has sought to co-opt the warlords to keep the peace.
The British military has recently established a presence in the north, with 60 soldiers working in a reconstruction team in Mazar-i-Sharif as part of an international plan to improve security, but they appear to have been unable to prevent fighting.
Tensions began to mount a week ago, when one faction, Junbish-i-Milli, commanded by Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, captured a group of 15 fighters from another faction, Jamiat-i-Islami, a United Nations official said. The next day two Junbish commanders were captured, he said.
The confrontation has built up since then, with the British, the United Nations and the government all unable to prevent violence.
The Junbish faction appeared to be behind the outbreak of fighting and has seized control of Maimana, the capital of Fariab Province, and of Faizabad, the district in dispute in Jowzjan Province.
The fighting overnight could be heard by residents of Mazar-i-Sharif, and the regional police chief imposed a 9 p.m. curfew. Shops and schools were closed on Thursday, Said Nurullah, deputy to General Dostum, said in a telephone interview.
A government delegation, which included the the British ambassador in Kabul and a senior United Nations representative, wrung a cease-fire agreement out of General Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, and his main rival, Gen. Atta Mohammad, a Tajik, Mr. Nurullah said.
The leaders agreed to pull their forces back to their bases and return the men to barracks within two days. The interior minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, promised to send 300 police officers from Kabul to help provide security in Mazar-i-Sharif.
The United Nations has repeatedly tried to organize cease-fires between the two warring factions in northern Afghanistan, yet the truces never seem to last.
"Weapons were not always collected in great numbers, and arms collected one day seemed to find their way back on the next," the United Nations spokesman said.
--------
Afghan Militia Leaders Sign Truce
50 Slain in Fighting; Rivalry Still Threatens Plan for Disarmament
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 10, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5863-2003Oct9.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 9 -- Two long-feuding militia leaders signed a truce Thursday after 24 hours of armor and artillery clashes in northeastern Afghanistan that left at least 50 fighters dead, according to security sources. The flare-up came just as the Afghan government prepared to launch a program to disarm and demobilize as many as 100,000 militiamen nationwide.
Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, a powerful ethnic Uzbek leader who has long dominated several northeastern provinces, and Gen. Attah Mohammad, an ethnic Tajik and close political ally of Afghanistan's defense minister, signed the agreement under strong pressure from the central government and Western military officials, who brokered the deal at a meeting in the city of Mazar-e Sharif.
But Afghan and international analysts said the rivalry between Dostum and Mohammad, who command separate army corps and have been vying for regional control for years, is far from over and could still prove the most serious stumbling block to the long-stalled disarmament program mandated by the United Nations.
"This is the first step to resolving the violence. We need deep reforms in both the military and the executive" in the northeast, Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali told journalists early Thursday morning before flying to Mazar-e Sharif for the negotiations. "Our main goal is to extend the authority of the central government and stop the influence" of armed factions.
Spokesmen for both militia leaders in Kabul traded blame for the outbreak of military tensions in three areas of the northeast since Tuesday, but Afghan and U.N. officials here expressed anger and frustration at both Dostum and Mohammad for their persistent mutual hostility and inability to control subordinates.
Over the past two years, forces loyal to the two leaders have clashed repeatedly despite numerous negotiations, truces and attempts at mediation by the United Nations and international groups. The rivalry is personal, ethnic and ideological, with Mohammad representing a conservative, Tajik-dominated Islamic party and Dostum's political background one of pro-communist Uzbek nationalism.
"There is a limit to what the international community can do when two parties want to fight," said Manoel de Almeida e Silva, the U.N. spokesman in Afghanistan. "These two parties have two leaders who are responsible for their fighters. They are responsible for the fighting, and they are responsible for stopping it."
The U.N. spokesman and other sources described several violent confrontations in the region since Wednesday, the biggest being near Mazar-e Sharif in Balkh province, where troops loyal to Dostum and Mohammad attacked each other with tanks and mortars. Exact casualty figures were not known, but at least 50 militiamen were reported dead and 100 of Mohammad's fighters were in Dostum's custody.
Dostum, who previously served as deputy defense minister and regional army commander under the U.S.-backed government, appeared to have emerged from the crisis in a stronger political and military position. He flew with Jalali, the interior minister, from Kabul to Mazar-e Sharif Thursday morning to negotiate with Mohammad, and aides said his truce proposal was adopted at the meeting.
Mohammad, in contrast, appeared to have resorted increasingly to criminal thuggery to gain regional influence. Reports from Mazar-e Sharif allege that his forces have kidnapped and killed several of Dostum's top lieutenants in recent weeks, provoking angry reactions from their armed supporters. Last week, he called for further delays in the disarmament campaign, saying militias need further assurances before turning in their weapons.
Under Thursday's agreement, both Dostum and Mohammad will withdraw their forces 30 miles in opposite directions from Mazar-e Sharif over the next two days; a commission will be named to investigate criminal charges against Mohammad's forces; and 300 police officers will be sent from Kabul to oversee security in the city.
"General Dostum believes the entire region needs to be demilitarized, and he is ready to do this," said Faizullah Zaki, Dostum's spokesman here. "The other side is stuck in the old psychology of saying, 'Mazar is mine,' but this has to change. The people are tired of clashes and fighting. If this agreement fails, they are not going to stand for it."
Afghan and U.N. officials said they are determined not to let the renewed conflict between Dostum and Mohammad derail the ambitious disarmament program, which is scheduled to begin this month in the northern city of Kunduz and be gradually extended across the country.
Afghans have repeatedly complained of feuding and abuses by regional militias, whose fighters are largely uneducated and unskilled. There is growing concern that if they are not soon disarmed and retrained for civilian life, it will be extremely difficult to hold national elections next year or to bring stability to the country.
Officials deliberately chose Kunduz, a calmer and less divisive place than Mazar-e Sharif, to begin the program, in which militias will turn over their weapons under monitoring by independent commissions. Despite Thursday's truce, authorities acknowledged that the obstacles to successfully disarming the areas under Dostum's and Mohammad's control remain significant.
"The pilot project is modest, with only 1,000 men disarmed and no serious threat to one faction or another," said one U.N. official. "This is a way to open doors and create confidence among commanders. But there is no question that as we move west [toward Mazar-e Sharif], it will become much more difficult. There is too big a problem with mistrust."
-------- arms
Clearing the Smoke Around Weapons Emissions Components
By Eleanore Hajian
U.S. Army Environmental Center
http://aec.army.mil/usaec/publicaffairs/update/fall03/fall0320.html
Courtesy Aberdeen Test Center Emissions testing on Aberdeen Proving Ground When a gun fires, it blasts out more than just bullets.
It may not always be detectable to the human eye, but the firing of a weapon releases a number of substances into the air.
Exactly what those substances are and how much of them make it into the atmosphere is currently being investigated.
An Army testing program designed to measure the levels of chemicals and particles that go airborne when weapons discharge will soon produce the largest and most accurate set of data on the subject to date.
Sampling of weapons used in the first phase of testing will provide air emissions parameters for 99.9 percent of the conventional munitions used in Army training during 1999, 2000 and 2001, based on early calculations, said Erik Hangeland, chief of the Technology Branch at the U.S. Army Environmental Center. In fiscal 2001 alone, the Army expended 235 million munitions. The information gathered from the test results will help the Army develop an accurate, scientifically sound picture of what is chemically emitted into the air during munitions use and testing, Hangeland said. "Preliminary data show that firing weapons releases much lower levels of harmful air emissions than early models predicted," he said.
"Preliminary data show that firing weapons releases much lower levels of harmful air emissions than early models predicted"
With increased scrutiny from environmental regulators, the answers can't come soon enough, according to Hangeland. In at least one instance, at Camp Edwards, Mass., concerns over air emissions resulted in an order to stop live-fire training. Testing proved that contaminants of concern were not being released, and training resumed (See Environmental Update, Winter 2002).
The test results will also help the Army fulfill its environmental reporting requirements, as well as assess the potential environmental and health impacts from munitions use. The results will be submitted for inclusion in AP-42, the Environmental Protection Agency's standardized inventory for emissions factors. This is expected to greatly improve the accuracy of Army air emissions models and assist with air emissions reporting and permitting required by laws such as the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA). The testing has been conducted in cooperation with EPA and exceeds regulatory standards for these types of measurements.
Conventional weaponry being examined in the air emissions testing program include small, medium and large caliber guns; smokes and pyrotechnics; explosives; kinetic penetrators; mortars; and rockets and missiles. Their discharge is analyzed and measured for 281 substances such as particulate matter, toxic metals, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and acid gases.
To test the weapons, the Army uses five specialized enclosures with high-tech devices that gather air samples immediately following detonation or discharge. Each enclosure is designed for specific types of weapons. There is one for small-caliber firing point emissions, large-caliber firing point emissions, smokes and pyrotechnics, and two for explosives (fragmenting and non-fragmenting). The testing takes place at the Aberdeen Test Center on Aberdeen Proving Ground and at the West Desert Test Center at Dugway Proving Ground.
The Army anticipates presenting the results from the first phase of its air emissions testing program to EPA for inclusion in the standardized inventory later this year. Additional munitions will be tested during the next two years.
----
India buys radar systems from Israel
Friday 10 October 2003
Reuters
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B58537E2-FD86-4616-89BE-6D476AA07172.htm
India and Israel agreed their biggest ever weapons deal on Friday, with New Delhi signing up to buy strategic airborne radar systems which it hopes will boost its military edge over nuclear neighbour Pakistan.
The Israeli-made Phalcon radars will be mounted on Russian IL-76 aircraft in a deal estimated to be more than $1 billion.
"A tripartite agreement was signed this morning at the defence ministry involving Israeli and Russian representatives for the acquisition of AWACS (airborne warning and control systems) and mounting of these," an Indian Defence Ministry spokesman who declined to be named told Reuters.
Pakistan has repeatedly expressed concern at growing India-Israel defence ties and said the introduction of advanced systems such as the AWACS could lead to an escalation of the arms race between the nuclear powers.
Diplomatic relations
The countries have recently restored diplomatic relations after they came close to war last year over the disputed state of Kashmir.
New Delhi plans to buy three Phalcon systems which officials and experts say will put large parts of Pakistan under its surveillance, including the unstable border in Kashmir.
Last month, India and Israel said they planned to boost defence ties during a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
India also wants to buy anti-ballistic Arrow missiles from Israel but this has yet to be cleared by the United States which funded the research and development.
Washington persuaded Israel last year to delay the transfer of the Phalcon because of India's stand-off with Pakistan.
-------- asia
Japan's support for Iraq seen focusing on water supply: defence chief
TOKYO (AFP)
Oct 10, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031010091741.sntlb5f1.html
Japan's defence chief Shigeru Ishiba said Friday Japan's support for the reconstruction of Iraq was likely to concentrate on water supply and other infrastructure works.
Ishiba made the remarks after he was briefed by officials who had returned from the latest government research mission to Iraq.
"We have been hearing that (Iraq) needs our support in such work as water purification, and what I heard this time does not contradict our initial forecast," Ishiba told reporters.
Ishiba, however, stopped short of mentioning further details of the planned dispatch of Japanese troops to Iraq.
He said: "Life is returning to normal in some areas but in other areas security is not so good."
Amid the uncertainty over security, Japan has yet to decide when to send troops to Iraq although Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is expected to re-assure US President George W. Bush of his intention to proceed with the dispatch when they talk in Tokyo on October 17.
A formal announcement may be delayed however, until after the general election set for November 9, media reports have suggested, because of public opposition to the dispatch.
Japanese news reports have said Japan is considering an advance party of about 150 troops to Iraq in December, to be followed by a main force of 550 personnel early next year.
-------- britain
Blair ignores call to stay away
10/10/2003
News24 (SA)
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1428500,00.html
London - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Tony Blair joined relatives of the 51 British victims of the Iraq war on Friday for a service of remembrance to honour those who lost their lives in the conflict.
The families of those who died walked silently, some hand in hand, into Saint Paul's Cathedral in central London, alongside uniformed military veterans of the war.
Leading British politicians and 12 members of the royal family were present for the service, which included prayers for those who died on both sides during the war and its aftermath.
"You know the cost (of war) in a unique way," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican community, told the relatives of the 50 military personnel and one civilian contractor who died in the conflict.
"Those who defended the action in Iraq rightly reminded us that while we talk people are suffering appallingly; while we try to keep our hands clean, atrocity and oppression reign unchecked," Williams said.
Archbishop gives word of caution
But the archbishop, who voiced his opposition to military action in the build-up to war, also had a thinly-veiled word of caution to political leaders in Washington and London.
"We hold ourselves accountable for peace and justice in Iraq. Leaders and people alike will be called to account for it," he said.
The congregation - including some 250 relatives of those lost and uniformed rank and file of the army, navy and air force - observed a two-minute silence with a bugler sounding the traditional "Last Post" tune before and after.
In a break with practice after past recent conflicts, including the 1991 Gulf war and the campaign against Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982, there was no victory parade or military march past.
Organisers said the theme should be one of sombre remembrance rather than triumphalism.
Nineteen of Britain's 51 deaths have occurred since US President George W Bush declared the end of hostilities in Iraq on May 1.
"Died in vain"
Before the service a man who lost his 24-year-old son, Llewelyn, in a helicopter crash in the Kuwaiti desert on the first day of the war blasted Blair and said he should not attend the service.
"He (Llewelyn) did die in vain and the reason I don't want Blair there today is because if it was not for him ... there would not be a memorial service because the troops would never have gone out in the first place," said Gordon Evans from Llandudno in north Wales.
Evans said some parents wanted Blair to attend to see their grief, but added that he would turn his back on the British prime minister without a word.
Peter Brierley, whose 29-year-old son Shaun, was killed in March during the conflict said he felt the war in Iraq was unjustified.
"I didn't up to two or three weeks ago, but I do now," he told BBC radio.
Blair shouted and sworn at
A member of the Royal British Legion - Britain's leading charity dealing with the welfare, interests and memory of those who have served in the armed forces - shouted and swore at Blair as he left the cathedral.
Speaking outside the cathedral, Royal Marines and Navy spokesperson Ben Curry said it had been a "calm and peaceful service".
"I lost a couple of good friends in an early helicopter crash and it was a fitting service for them and for the nation," said Curry referring to a helicopter crash in March when eight British servicemen died.
"It wasn't a thanksgiving service but it was important to say thank you to all the services involved. It was an act of remembrance and was very poignant. There were a lot of different emotions for different people," Curry said.
Britain, Washington's main ally in Iraq, sent over 40 000 troops to the Gulf to oust Saddam Hussein and his regime.
-------- business
Something Fishy about 'No-Bid' Contracts for Iraq Reconstruction?
Fri Oct 10, 2003
Gail Russell Chaddock,
Christian Science Monitor
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&e=6&u=/oneworld/4536701541065788844
WASHINGTON, D.C., Oct. 10 (CSM) - Critics on Capitol Hill are taking a hard look at several lucrative U.S. contracts to rebuild war-damaged Iraq.
When Susan Collins was just a staffer in the United States Senate, she used to worry about fat government contracts being awarded in secret. Now Collins is a US Senator--and she can finally do something about it.
Senator Collins is drawing a bead on contracts in Iraq, where the US has begun pouring in billions of dollars to repair war damage and rebuild the country. There are charges in the press that no-bid contracts are squandering taxpayer funds.
"A tremendous amount of money will be spent on contracts to rebuild Iraq," says the soft-spoken Maine senator, a leading GOP moderate. She wants Washington to avoid even the appearance of cronyism or war profiteering in these deals. "We have an obligation to make sure that money is not being wasted," Collins says.
Yet some key Iraq contracts already were bid secretly, or on a sole-source basis, to companies with strong ties to the Bush administration. These included a $1.39 billion contract to a subsidiary of Halliburton, an energy giant formerly chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Another $680 million contract for Iraq's power grid, water system, and airport facilities went to Bechtel Group Inc., after a secret bidding process. Together, the six companies invited to bid on the Bechtel contract contributed $3.6 million to federal election campaigns, two-thirds to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
"These suspect contracts with Halliburton and other companies raise questions about the awarding of contracts to friends of the administration," says Sen. Richard Durbin (D) of Illinois. "Wasn't there someone in the room who said, 'This just doesn't look right.'?"
It's that appearance of wrongdoing that most concerns Collins. In the heat of war, there may be reasons that contracts for fighting oil fires or rebuilding water systems should move quickly - or go to industry giants, she says. Still, anything less than open competition also carries a risk: the integrity of the process, she adds.
Such issues have been a nearly lifelong concern for Collins - one of the rare lawmakers who can do the dog work of a tough investigation herself. As staff director for the government management subcommittee from 1979 to 1987, she led an investigation that found "excessive reliance" on sole-source contracting in Washington. The committee produced a bill that required more competitive bidding, but the law left a loophole: No one needs to account to Congress when they claim one of the seven exceptions in that law, including one for national security.
"The problem is there is no oversight to see that these exceptions are used appropriately," she says. As chairman of the committee she once worked for, Collins wants those loopholes closed. Her "sunshine rule," cosponsored with Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon, was approved by the Senate as an amendment to President Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq.
She claims another influence in this work: Sen. Harry Truman (D) of Missouri, who was spotted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a vice-presidential prospect for his work on war profiteering during World War II. Truman, like Collins, was no grandstander. He said his aim was "heading off scandals before they started." But his conclusions were unambiguous: "The little manufacturer, the little contractor, and the little machine shop have been left entirely out in the cold. The policy seems to be to make the big man bigger and to put the little man completely out of business," Truman said in 1941.
Historian Theodore Wilson wrote in 1975 that the Truman committee is widely viewed as "the most successful congressional investigative effort in United States history." It later evolved into the permanent subcommittee on investigation, now a panel of the Senate Government Affairs Committee that Collins chairs. "Our committee has a legacy of being aggressive in protecting the taxpayer from contracting abuses," she says.
Many of the same Truman-like criticisms are surfacing in the congressional debate over the contracts in Iraq. In all, some $79 billion has already been allocated for war expenses in Iraq, and another $87 billion bill is working its way through Congress - a windfall for companies that can make themselves part of it.
"We're overrelying on large umbrella contracts.... Halliburton has a monopoly on the work in oil, and Bechtel has a monopoly on the reconstruction work," says Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee. "There is no incentive to lower costs," he adds.
No contract has riled critics as much as the first and most lucrative: to Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. It started as a 2001 contract for logistical support to the US military, wherever it went, and it was competitively bid. But a decision to expand that contract - from supporting troops to oil-well firefighting, repairing oil systems, and now maintaining and operating oil systems - was not.
"Redefining the contract on a no-bid basis, that's where the Pentagon went awry," says P. W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "All the companies have decided that one way for them to achieve a corporate advantage is to hire former government officials or to make political campaign contributions."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told Congress, "The Halliburton contract for oil-field restoration is currently in the process of being recompeted," and that "no new funds are planned to be awarded under the old contract."
The impression of favoritism could be tough to blot out. Recently, a new lobby shop touted its ties to the Bush administration as an asset in helping clients get business in Iraq. New Bridge Strategies, with offices in Washington and Houston, describes itself as "a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the US-led war in Iraq." Its principals include Joe Allbaugh, campaign manager for Bush presidential race in 2000.
"This kind of thing is tawdry and will reinforce the conviction in some quarters that this is all about making bucks and paying off corporate pals," says Andrew Bacevich, director of the Center for International Relations at Boston University.
----
Northrop sees possible big US missile-shield deals
Reuters,
10.10.03
By Jim Wolf
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2003/10/10/rtr1106192.html
WASHINGTON - Potential U.S. missile-shield contracts could bring "very significant" revenues in coming years for Northrop Grumman Corp. (nyse: NOC - news - people), chief executive Ronald Sugar said on Friday. He cited a Pentagon competition to build an anti-missile rocket called a kinetic energy interceptor, as well as targets and countermeasures work plus unspecified other tasks.
These could be multibillion-dollar programs "that could result in a very significant stream of annual revenue to this company," Sugar told a forum at the American Enterprise Institute, a private research group. "And if we're successful, it would be very, very significant."
Northrop Grumman is teamed with Raytheon Co. (nyse: RTN - news - people) in the competition for the interceptor, designed to knock out ballistic missiles in their first minutes of flight, when they could be downed over enemy territory.
Also vying is a team from Lockheed Martin Corp. (nyse: LMT - news - people) and Boeing Co. (nyse: LMT - news - people). The program's development and testing deal is due to be awarded to one contractor team early next year.
Sugar, who took over as Northrop's board chairman last week, dismissed critics who have faulted President George W. Bush's rush to start fielding a rudimentary missile defense by next Sept. 30.
"It's not raining missiles yet, but we can see the threatening clouds," he said, citing North Korea's reported work on a new nuclear-capable Taepodoong missile, which some analysts have said might be able to hit the U.S. West Coast.
The Pentagon plans to spend $50 billion over the next five years to develop and field a multi-layered defense against incoming warheads, which could deliver nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Northrop Grumman has several missile defense programs already under way, including a chemical laser in a modified Boeing 747, similarly designed to destroy missiles in their boost and ascent phases.
It also serves as prime contractor developing the Pentagon's new Space Tracking and Surveillance System and, separately, the battle management and command and control for the ground-based midcourse defense element.
The General Accounting Office, Congress's audit and investigative arm, said in an Aug. 20 report that the Missile Defense Agency has "accepted higher cost and schedule risks by beginning integration of the (ground-based) element's components before these technologies have matured."
-------- europe
Turks and Greeks cancel war games
The Greek navy will have to give up its Toksodis exercises
Friday, 10 October, 2003
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3180306.stm
Turkey and Greece have agreed to cancel military exercises they were planning separately in the Mediterranean.
Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said the move was aimed at securing stability in the region.
The two countries have a long-running dispute over Cyprus, an island divided since a Turkish invasion in 974.
Greece and Turkey also postponed military exercises in 2001 and 2002 when the United Nations presented a plan aimed at reunifying Cyprus.
Correspondents say that relations between Turkey and Greece appear to have warmed recently, despite the collapse of the UN peace plan.
'Sign of improvement'
Speaking at a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul in the southern city of Antalya, Mr Papandreou said the decision had been made in the spirit of the Olympic Games, to be held in Athens in August next year.
"We see this as a sign of the improvement in ties between our countries," Mr Gul said.
Greece and Turkey had been planning naval exercises, codenamed Toksodis and Barbaros respectively, in the eastern Mediterranean.
They will also give up manoeuvres held jointly with the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, known as Nikiforos and Toros.
Earlier this year Greece and Turkey took a number of measures easing trade and travel restrictions for both sides of the island.
However, correspondents say the division of Cyprus could continue to be a stumbling block for Turkey's aspirations to start talks on accession to the EU.
Cyprus itself is set to join the EU in May 2004, but unless a settlement is reached between the two communities only the Greek side will be admitted.
----
Bulgaria Considered for US Missile Base to Deter Iran
Politics: Friday, 10 October 2003,
Novinite (Bulgaria)
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=26944
The US government is considering stationing defensive missiles in a number of European countries against a potential attack from Iran, Germany's Sueddeutsche newspaper reported on Friday issue citing State Department sources.
US defence policy specialist Benjamin Schreer of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs told the newspaper that Romania and Bulgaria could be the "first choices."
The daily quoted a high-ranking US diplomat as saying that the Americans would like to develop a defensive missile network with Europeans but doubted whether a deal could be reached quickly by NATO.
Because of these concerns, Washington may pursue bilateral agreements with individual European countries for deployment in 2006 anti-ballistic systems in exchange for economic aid, the Sueddeutsche said.
The US military last month unveiled an upgraded Patriot anti-missile system in South Korea designed to thwart a missile blitz from North Korea.<b></b>
-------- iraq
Amid Iraq unrest, a force of children takes over security
Guards: Poorly trained young Iraqis are being rushed into service to protect key facilities and assist American soldiers.
By Todd Richissin
Baltimore Sun Foreign Staff
published October 9, 2003
http://www.sunspot.net/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.iraq09oct09,0,5834145.story?coll=bal-home-headlines
BAGHDAD, Iraq - On the street corner 50 yards from a group of U.S. soldiers, a giggling 10-year-old boy clutched an AK-47 assault rifle, which was fully loaded and ready to fire.
The rifle, once the property of the U.S. military, would not be fired in the direction of the soldiers on this night, but soon would be. Muhammad al-Jurany got the weapon from a member of the new Iraqi security apparatus, the Facilities Protection Service, a force of 14,500 armed guards who are to protect hotels, government buildings and oil pipelines, among other fixtures.
The man who handed the rifle to him to play with, Haider Kadhim, who claimed to be 20, stood at his post along the Tigris River, unarmed, dressed in baggy jeans and sneakers, dancing to music blaring through his headset.
As the U.S. military works to quell unrest in Iraq, it is relying on help from people like Kadhim, young men and women rushed into security service with little training and no real uniforms but armed with the powerful weapons that are now a fixture in this country.
"We've retrained them twice and they seem to get it, then you let them alone for five minutes and it's like they've never talked to us," said a soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who asked that his name not be used because his unit has been forbidden to speak with reporters. "Some of them are OK, but a lot of them are like little kids."
In this case, al-Jurany was merely holding the weapon, not firing it, and if the young security officer who gave it to him had any thought that he was doing wrong, he did not show it. He offered to pose for a photograph with the boy.
Included in President Bush's $20.3 billion request to Congress to begin work to rebuild Iraq is $67 million for this protection service. Aside from salaries - most of the officers make $5 per shift - the money includes $2.6 million for 80 pickup trucks and $15 million for training.
Increasingly, in Baghdad and beyond, young men and women stand guard, frisking people entering and exiting restricted areas and checking cars for bombs. This frees coalition troops who had been performing such tasks to perform other work and puts more responsibility on Iraqis to police their country.
Some of the guards wear gray shirts, their official "uniform," but they can be difficult to distinguish from anybody else with a weapon, which is a fair number of people. In a country where robberies and carjackings seem as common as the sound of gunfire, not everyone trusts the security officers.
"The soldiers trained us good," Kadhim said as the boy held his gun. "If someone tries to kill me, I can shoot them. If someone drives by without stopping, I can shoot them."
That is precisely what happened one recent afternoon. At a checkpoint on the Tigris, two men in a car sped past guards, who opened fire down a street packed with pedestrians and toward a corner where American soldiers were gathered. Pedestrians dived to the ground and soldiers ducked behind a tank while a couple of dozen shots were fired, none hitting the speeding car. Nobody was hit by the bullets, and the car, which turned out to be stolen, was finally stopped around the corner by U.S. troops.
"That should not happen, because the guards are trained how to use the weapons, when to use the weapons and when not to," said Naheed Mehta, a spokeswoman for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. "Understand that we're just getting these groups up and running and they're not going to be perfect from the beginning."
To be sure, not all of the officers are as seemingly distracted as Kadhim, who said he worked in a shoe factory before the war and is now homeless, spending a night with a friend, the next with another. His mother fled the country in 1991, he said, and his father was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime.
Wejdy Adeeb, a 19-year-old who said his parents were killed by Hussein's men, reports to work at 8 p.m. - seven days a week - and works until 7 a.m. to earn his $5 per shift. He has never fired his rifle, he said, but he did find a handgun in a car he was searching and called for U.S. troops to arrest the man.
He lets no one pass his post without frisking them and checks each car under the hood and chassis. He would not accept a soda during an interview, saying he has been trained not to take bribes.
"I need the money and the country needs security, so it is a good job for me," Adeeb said. "People in Iraq are crazy. They kill for no reason."
The Coalition Provisional Authority said it could not provide information on how prospective guards are screened to determine whether they were criminals released from prison before the war by Hussein or had been ranking Baath Party members. Nehta said they were asked both questions on an application form, but she did not know if subsequent checks were made.
Soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division said they had trained some of the guards, spending about five hours a night with them for seven days.
Falih Meklif, who for 14 years was a member of the Iraqi army, said he decided to join the protection force because he would not be given his former rank of captain if he rejoined the military. He fought U.S. and British soldiers during the war, and when he finally determined that it was a lost cause, he changed into civilian clothes, made his way to Baghdad and eventually was hired to work alongside the army he'd been fighting against.
"So now I am a guard, doing the job of a child," he said as he stood outside a hospital in Baghdad, his new post. "I can keep this hospital safe, but I am a waste here. I could do more."
This is not the security group on which most attention is focused. Bush's budget proposal includes $2.1 billion for Iraqi national security, the bulk of it to build an army that administration officials hope will number 40,000 troops by August. Another $2.1 billion is requested for police and fire service and border enforcement. But the security force represents the organization with which most Iraqis have face-to-face contact, and its success would ease strains on coalition troops and the country's new police force.
By the Tigris, when Kadhim decided he wanted his rifle back, he told the 10-year-old to hand it over.
"Come and get it," said the boy, pointing it at the security guard. But then he relented, straining to lift the weapon high enough to get the shoulder strap over his head.
--------
2 G.I.'s Killed in Baghdad Slum Where Car Bomb Exploded
October 10, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/international/middleeast/10CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 10 - Two American soldiers were killed and two were wounded in an ambush on Thursday night in the same slum area of Baghdad where a white Oldsmobile station wagon packed with explosives had earlier blown up inside a police compound, leaving at least eight people dead, military officials said today.
The troops, from the First Armored Division, were on routine patrol when they were attacked at about 8 p.m., apparently with small-arms fire, the United States Central Command said in a statement this morning.
The troops were evacuated to the 28th Combat Support Hospital, but no other details were released.
Witnesses to the suicide bombing, in which the car's occupants were also killed and 40 people were wounded, said the vehicle had burst into the compound at a high speed, possibly running over two officers. The blast left a four-foot-deep crater, an American military officer at the scene said.
No one claimed responsibility for either attack, but suspicion fell on Sunni Muslims loyal to the former government. But unlike previous attacks, this one was in a predominantly Shiite Muslim area, Sadr City, raising the possibility of involvement by radical Shiites.
The bombing was the second large attack on the Iraqi police. In July, seven recruits were killed when a bomb exploded at their graduation ceremony.
The police make an increasingly tempting target, occupation officials said, being easily painted as "collaborators" with the Americans.
At almost the same hour, on the other side of town in Baghdad's richest neighborhood, José Antonio Bernal Gómez, the 34-year-old deputy intelligence officer at the Spanish Embassy, was assassinated at his home when he opened the gate to a man dressed as a Shiite cleric, a Spanish official said.
The continuing security problems raise the question of how diplomats, the United Nations or relief agencies are going to do their jobs here.
"It is a juggling act," said a Western official. On the one hand, he said, to be effective, you have to be able to move about, to meet and talk with Iraqis. But that is almost impossible to do these days, he said, given the security situation.
Mr. Bernal was the first diplomat not related to the United Nations to be singled out for assassination, other diplomats said. There are about a dozen embassies here, ranging in size from one or two diplomats to six or eight.
A Spanish official said the embassy had reports that it would be singled out, primarily because of its support for the United States in the war. But Mr. Bernal might have been killed by former members of the government with whom he had worked in his intelligence capacity, the official said.
Also on Thursday, an American soldier was killed when his convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the town of Baqubah, northeast of Baghdad, the military reported. It was the 92nd death of an American soldier in combat since President Bush declared major hostilities in Iraq over in May.
As in the other attacks, suspicion immediately fell on members of the former government. "Saddam's group does not want Iraq to settle down," said one wounded officer, Ahamad Jassim Resen, 30. "The Americans are helping us, but Saddam's people don't want this country to get back on its feet."
Last month, the police chief in Khaldiya, a rebellious Sunni city, was assassinated. Jassim Mihsin, 31, an officer who lost hearing and wounded his hand in the blast, said that he did not consider himself a collaborator but that the danger was too great to stay a policeman.
"I don't want anymore work with the police," said Mr. Mihsin, an officer for 13 years who rejoined the force after Mr. Hussein fell. "I will get a simple job to avoid problems and explosions."
With Westerners now taking extreme security precautions, the American officials said, forces loyal to the Saddam Hussein, supported perhaps by outsiders, are turning to so-called soft targets, which include the police, who do not even have bulletproof vests.
If the police become an effective force, officials said, they would become a threat to the perpetrators of the violence.
Witnesses to the attack on Thursday said they had seen several policemen, including the two at the gate, lying dead around the site of the explosion. The Associated Press reported that about 50 policemen had gathered in the courtyard of the compound to collect their pay when the vehicle sped through the gate.
"We were just talking, and then I felt something like a big fire," said a witness, Najah Khadim Lafta, 48, heavily bandaged but still bleeding in his bed at Al Sadr hospital. "I felt myself thrown into the air."
Sadr City, about five miles from downtown Baghdad, is a depressed Shiite neighborhood of two million, where most of the residents are followers of a radical, anti-American cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.
After the blast, American soldiers surrounded Mr. Sadr's office, but withdrew when the cleric's followers, many armed, appeared.
After the bomb went off, many young men poured into the police compound, which was being refurbished. But instead of helping the wounded they began taking weapons from the soldiers and money from the dead and seriously wounded, said Mr. Resem, a wounded policeman.
--------
NEWS ANALYSIS
Iraq Math: Visible Gains Minus Losses
October 10, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/international/middleeast/10ASSE.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 9 - It was a symbol of Iraq, six months to the day after United States marines ripped down the statue of Saddam Hussein and America set out on its experiment to rebuild a democratic Iraq in the land it had just conquered.
Early Thursday morning, about 50 new Iraqi police officers in sharp blue uniforms stood waiting for their American-paid salaries before going out on patrol. The sight of Iraqis policing their own streets is perhaps the most visible of American successes here.
But then came crashing through the front gate the chaos that America has not been able to control: a suicide bomber who detonated an Oldsmobile - by chance, an American classic - in the crowd of policemen. At least nine people were killed, including the bomber.
This was not the best day to trumpet America's accomplishments in these first six months. But the job fell nonetheless to L. Paul Bremer III, the American civilian administrator here, and he argued that whatever the problems, the changes in Iraq have been positive.
"There will be bumps on the road," Mr. Bremer told reporters on Thursday. "There will be bad days like today. But I think it's important, as those of you who are here regularly covering the story, to put that in perspective, because it's a lot better than it was."
Still, the events of today underscored the limits of the huge American effort here, illustrating how the steady beat of violence and uncertainty overshadows many of the very real American advances here.
That mixed record is reflected in the view of many Iraqis. They believe that the United States has, in fact, made Iraq better than under Mr. Hussein but that American promises, so far, have been greater than what has been delivered.
"I know they came to help me," Dr. Ghasan Azawi, 61, said of the Americans. "But they should show their help more."
A surgeon, he was fired from the army by Mr. Hussein. Since Mr. Hussein's overthrow, his car has been stolen and he has taken two bullets from the thieves.
In his news conference, Mr. Bremer listed what he called America's achievements (although many of his comparisons were from immediately after the war, when services were far worse than before it began): 40,000 police officers on the streets; 13,000 new reconstruction projects; more electricity generated now than before the war; 1,500 schools renovated; 22 million vaccinations; 4,900 Internet connections - not to mention freedom of speech, virtually nonexistent under Mr. Hussein, and an end to torture, which was commonplace.
"I am optimistic," Mr. Bremer said. "We have made an enormous amount of progress here in six months, more than I think anybody could have safely predicted, in many places beyond what our plan was."
The changes are visible. The streets are cleaner. Shops are flooded with goods pouring into Iraq now that the borders are open again. Those who have jobs - and tens of thousands are working for the Americans, directly or indirectly - are largely paid better than they were.
But as the attack on Thursday again showed, there is another list of statistics: 92 American soldiers killed in combat since President Bush declared major hostilities over in May; nearly 100 dead at a suicide bombing at a Shiite shrine in Najaf; 22 dead at a bombing at the United Nations headquarters here; at least 17 dead in a bombing at the Jordanian Embassy.
The fear of this violence is visible as well: American officials and the contractors they hired to rebuild Iraq live and work behind huge concrete walls.
Many aid workers have been sent home. Anyone working directly for the Americans or those, like the police, who are merely making a living under a new system, are targets. Last month, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, Akila al-Hashemi, was assassinated, apparently for siding with America's effort here.
Mr. Bremer sought, to some degree, to play down the significance of the violence. Ninety percent of the attacks, he noted, occur in only 5 percent of Iraq.
"They pose no strategic threat to the coalition or to its forces," he said. "We are dealing with that threat on a virtually daily basis, rounding up killers, the trained torturers of the Fedayeen Saddam, the intelligence services."
But this statement seemed to ignore the psychological impact of the violence, which is felt not on 5 percent of the territory, but throughout the country.
Mr. Bremer suggested that America could handle the job in Iraq. But the Bush administration will find it hard to claim victory as long Iraq remains so unsafe that not even the United Nations can work at anything like full capacity.
Many military experts fear that one calamitous terror strike - killing many American soldiers as did those in Beirut in 1983 or in Saudi Arabia in 1996 - could still bring the whole Iraq operation into question.
Even if he played down the violence, Mr. Bremer acknowledged that the task of rebuilding Iraq had turned out to be far greater than expected, because of decades of neglect under Mr. Hussein. So, he said, it is important that Congress approve the full $20 billion Mr. Bush has requested for reconstruction - for electricity, water, a new Iraqi army.
Occupation authorities believe that may be the key to ending the violence: raising the standard of living and convincing Iraqis, maybe even some of those fighting now, that the American operation has been worth the pain. But, as Mr. Bremer noted, the huge task of reconstruction will not come "overnight."
In fact, after six months, one thing seems clear in the general confusion of Iraq: The American project will measured over years, or even decades, and to see it through, to ensure that there is no going back, American soldiers will probably be needed.
--------
Iraq Has Deadliest Day in A Month
Attacks Kill 3 GIs, Diplomat, 8 Police
By Karl Vick and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 10, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A1759-2003Oct9?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Oct. 10 (Friday) -- A Spanish diplomat was assassinated outside his home, three U.S. soldiers were killed in ambushes, and eight Iraqis perished in a car bomb explosion in Baghdad on Thursday, the deadliest day in Iraq in more than a month.
The diplomat, whom the Spanish Foreign Ministry identified as an intelligence officer, was chased down a city street in his underwear by an assassin whose accomplice had politely rung the diplomat's doorbell.
Two U.S. soldiers were killed and four were wounded Thursday night when their patrol was ambushed in a predominantly Shiite Muslim Baghdad slum known as Sadr City, the U.S. military said early Friday. Earlier, another soldier died after a 2 a.m. attack on a convoy in Baqubah, a town 30 miles northeast of Baghdad where U.S. forces say they face attempts on their lives almost every day.
The Iraqis slain in Baghdad were attacked inside a guarded police station. Witnesses said a bearded man wrapped in electrical wire barreled through a gate in a white Oldsmobile station wagon and detonated his explosives as several dozen new Iraqi police officers were lining up to receive their pay.
The double-digit death toll starkly illustrated the risks that remain in and around the Iraqi capital six months to the day after American soldiers toppled a statue of president Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad square, signaling the start of the controversial U.S.-led occupation.
"There will be bumps in the road. There will be bad days like today," said the U.S. civil administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. But Bremer said conditions in Iraq had become "a lot better" since the arrival of U.S. forces.
No group claimed responsibility for the car bombing, the first in Baghdad since a Sept. 22 attack claimed the lives of a bomber and a U.N. guard.
"It must be the same people who did the other explosions -- Saddam loyalists, Baathists," said Haitham Hadi Hassan, 28, one of several dozen Iraqis wounded by the massive blast at the edge of Sadr City.
"They're criminal people who want to kill," said Juma Khalaf Badr, 57, a 32-year police veteran who was also wounded.
The police officers had assembled to collect their monthly $120 salaries, a payout that had been postponed at least twice during the previous week, according to surviving officers.
One survivor estimated that 70 officers had assembled in three rows at 8:45 a.m., when the white Olds sped toward the entrance to the white-walled compound. Witnesses and officials said guards challenged the vehicle, but after several shots were fired -- by whom remained unclear -- the bomber roared through.
Two Volkswagen Passats were parked between the gate and the police officers assembled in front of the newly renovated headquarters. Witnesses said the driver crashed into the parked cars, then detonated the explosives. The blast reduced the Olds to a charred chassis in a crater 10 feet long, 8 feet wide and 4 feet deep.
"We thought at first it was a car accident," said Badr, who was treated for shrapnel wounds in his chest and arms at a Baghdad hospital. "Right after the crash was the explosion."
A U.S. military spokesman said five civilians and three police officers were killed, in addition to the bomber. American military police set up a perimeter around the scene, holding back a crowd that threatened journalists and occasionally chanted "No, no to America." One Iraqi policeman was stabbed in the upper arm while helping to control the crowd.
An Iraqi police sergeant was quoted by the Associated Press as saying the station had received threats from a Shiite cleric who was upset that former Baathists continued to work there. On Wednesday, a crowd had assembled at the station in the belief that a cleric was being held inside.
The suspects in the killing of the Spanish military attache, Jose Antonio Bernal Gomez, also showed astute timing. The diplomat's walled home in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood was guarded overnight by an armed sentry who left each morning at 7. The assassins arrived at 7:45, according to Iraqi guards at a Sudanese school across the street.
The guards, Ahmed Ismail, 26, and Awad Edan, 27, gave a chilling account of Bernal's death.
Three middle-aged men arrived in a brown Opel sedan with foreign license plates, an indication that it was imported recently, Ismail said. The first to climb out was dressed in the black turban and gown of a Shiite cleric. He greeted the school guards routinely, saying in Arabic, "May peace be upon you," and heard the guards reply, "And also on you." Then he rang Bernal's doorbell.
Bernal, who appeared to have been sleeping, answered in his underwear. The guards could not hear the ensuing exchange but watched as a second man from the Opel -- this one in the Western clothing worn by most Baghdad men -- pushed his way into the compound.
Moments later Bernal dashed out the door, pushed aside the man dressed as a cleric and ran down the street to the left, toward busy 14th of Ramadan Street.
"He was shouting, 'No! No! No!' " Ismail said.
The second man followed on foot, holding a pistol, while the third man -- by now out of the car -- produced a 9mm handgun and fired four times. All four shots appeared to miss the diplomat, but as he neared the corner Bernal lost his footing and fell to the pavement, the guards said. In the time it took him to regain his footing, the second man reached the diplomat, put the pistol behind his ear and fired once.
As the three men returned to their car, one of them pointed a gun at the stunned watchmen. "If you say anything, we will kill you," Ismail quoted one of them as saying. The men then returned the way they came, avoiding a street leading past the nearby embassy of Saudi Arabia, where police are normally stationed.
Ismail said he was running toward the Saudi Embassy to summon help when he encountered a police car already approaching after officers heard the shots.
The guards, who wear the uniform of the official Facilities Protection Service, were equipped with neither guns nor radios.
"God, it's getting very dangerous," said Ismail. "I don't think this is the right job for me. I think I'm going to quit. The $125 they give me a month is not worth my life."
Spain, one of the nations President Bush assembled to topple Hussein, has 1,300 troops in Iraq. A statement issued by the Spanish Foreign Ministry said Bernal was an air force sergeant attached to the country's National Intelligence Center. It said he had worked in Baghdad for two years "and maintained an ample network of personal contacts necessary for properly performing his job."
"Mr. Bernal apparently recognized some of the people who showed up at his residence when he opened the door," it said.
In an interview with Spanish Radio, Deputy Foreign Minister Ramon Gil-Casares expressed surprise that Bernal, whom he called "a professional in security matters," had opened the door.
"We don't know right now . . . if they targeted him because they knew him personally or if it was because he was member of the Spanish Embassy or simply because he was a Westerner and they knew where he lived," Gil-Casares said.
The U.S. military did not release the identity of the soldier killed near Baqubah or any details about the attack there. The military also did not release additional information about the Sadr City attack. The attacks Thursday bring to 94 the number of U.S. soldiers killed in hostile action since major combat in Iraq was declared over by President Bush on May 1.
In addition, police in the northern city of Irbil said two officers and two civilians died when attackers opened fire on a police car, according to the Reuters news agency, which cited a Kurdistan Democratic Party satellite television report monitored in London by the BBC.
Despite the four attacks, Bremer insisted that the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq was making extraordinary progress. At an afternoon news conference, he recited a barrage of statistics showing improvements over the past six months: 13,000 projects, including construction of 1,500 schools and the reopening of almost all of the country's 400 courts; resumption of operations at nearly all primary and secondary schools and 95 percent of banks; and an increase in power generation from 300 megawatts when U.S. forces arrived to more than 4,500 megawatts.
"We have made an enormous amount of progress here in six months, more than anyone could have predicted," Bremer said.
"We're also aware the progress we've made is only the beginning," he said. "A quarter-century of negligence, cronyism and warmongering have devastated this country. Profound damage like that cannot be repaired overnight."
Bremer made a pitch for the Bush administration's request for $20 billion to fund reconstruction. He emphasized that Iraq's continuing needs -- particularly in building new power-generating capacity and training security forces -- warranted additional spending.
Bremer also said he was continuing discussions with members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council about Turkey's decision to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq. Members of the council have objected to the presence of soldiers from neighboring countries.
Bremer said he had "a good exchange" with the council's security committee on Thursday and was willing "to try to find a way to meet the concerns of all involved."
"The coalition is well aware of the sensitivities in the question of foreign troops in Iraq," he said.
Special correspondents Naseer Noori Hassan and Khalid Alsaffar contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Forces Continue Major Gaza Raid
By KHALIL HAMRA
Associated Press Writer
Oct 10, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Moving deep inside this shantytown on the Egyptian border, Israeli troops hunted for weapons smuggling tunnels and searched houses Friday. It was the biggest army raid in the Gaza Strip in nearly six months.
Gun battles erupted between soldiers and Palestinian gunmen during the raid in the Rafah refugee camp. Seven Palestinians were killed, including an 8-year-old boy, and 62 were wounded. One Israeli soldier was lightly wounded.
Meanwhile, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat attended Friday prayers at his compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah. He seemed stronger after what aides said was a bout of stomach flu, and sat cross-legged, attentive and smiling. Arafat confidants have denied rumors he is suffering from a serious illness.
Some news reports said Arafat had suffered a mild heart attack or had stomach cancer and needed to undergo surgery; Arafat himself was said to be fearful he might have been poisoned. All those reports were untrue, according to his doctors and aides.
Israel's raid of Rafah, a frequent battlefield, began around midnight Thursday and could last several days, military sources said. That means the action could signal a new approach to dealing with the camps. In the past, Israeli troops would conduct only rapid raids into the highly dangerous refugee camps and then leave quickly to try to minimize the risk of casualties.
The raid was part of stepped-up military activity after last weekend's suicide bombing that killed 20 Israelis in a restaurant in the port city of Haifa. On Sunday, Israel struck what it said was a Palestinian militant training camp inside Syria.
Earlier this week, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz ordered two more battalions into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and decided to call up four battalions of reserve soldiers, or about 1,000 troops, after the Sukkot holiday that ends in a week. Troops have been enforcing a strict travel ban, confining Palestinians in the West Bank to their communities and blocking main roads in the Gaza Strip.
The Rafah action was aimed at uncovering weapons smuggling tunnels. Armored vehicles and attack helicopters swept into the camp on Gaza's border with Egypt, joined by special forces and engineering units with dogs trained to find tunnels.
"So far we've found two tunnels. We believe that the results will improve in the course of the operation," said Col. Eyal Eisenberg, who was in charge of the operation.
Government spokesman Dore Gold said Israel was forced to go after militant groups and their infrastructure because the Palestinian leadership had not done so.
"In uncovering the vast network of arms smuggling tunnels in the area of Rafah, Israel is compelled again to do the work that the Palestinian Authority is supposed to do," Gold said.
Seven Palestinians were killed and 62 people wounded by Israeli fire, Palestinians said. An 8-year-old boy shot in the stomach died of his wounds while on a respirator. Most of the casualties were caused when a helicopter fired a missile at a crowd, witnesses said, and one of the dead had been decapitated. The military said the missile targeted a group of gunmen.
Dr. Ali Mousa, director of Rafah's small Najar Hospital, said women and children were among the wounded. Two of the dead were identified as members of militant groups, and at least two others were civilians, Mousa said. Another 8-year-old boy, also shot in the stomach, survived.
Mousa said his hospital was overwhelmed by the casualties. Many of the wounded required surgery, but he said he had only one operating room and not enough medicine. Normally, serious cases are sent to hospitals in other towns, but those patients could not be transferred because of the Israeli travel restrictions, he said.
The Israeli army bulldozed three houses where it said gunmen sought refuge near the border. Thunderous explosions could be heard, and the military said Palestinians hurled hand grenades and fired anti-tank missiles at the forces.
The army positioned snipers on rooftops, witnesses said, and fired a tank shell at an electricity transformer, plunging the camp into darkness.
Israeli military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel had intelligence warnings that Palestinians were planning to use the tunnels to smuggle in anti-aircraft missiles - weapons that could have a strategic impact on the three-year conflict.
They said Palestinians were trying to get shoulder-held Stinger missiles that could shoot down attack helicopters Israel often uses in Gaza, and could also threaten Israeli warplanes or civilian aircraft flying close to the coastal strip.
Also, they said, the Palestinians were trying to smuggle in Katyusha rockets, which would have the range to hit Israeli cities near Gaza.
The officials did not present evidence to back up the claims but said Egypt was not taking steps to stop the smuggling. So far this year, the military said it has destroyed 33 smuggling tunnels in the area.
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat condemned the Gaza raid and said such violence contributes to instability that is undermining efforts to get a new Palestinian government in place.
--------
7 Palestinians Killed in Overnight Israeli Raid in Gaza Strip
October 10, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/international/middleeast/10CND-MIDE.html?hp
JERUSALEM, Oct. 10 - Israeli forces looking to close down tunnels used to smuggle weapons and other items from Egypt into the Gaza Strip clashed with militants in a large-scale assault on the Rafah refugee camp overnight.
Seven Palestinians were killed - four militants and three boys, ages 8, 12 and 15. More than 20 Palestinians were wounded, Dr. Ali Mousa, director of Rafah's Najar Hospital. said today. Israel said one of its soldiers was wounded.
The Israelis went into Rafah with a number of vehicles and helicopters at 11 on Thursday night and were met with heavy automatic gunfire, hand grenades and antitank missiles, military sources said.
Gunbattles continued on and off during the night, ending this morning.
At one point, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a group of militants, the army said. However, Palestinians said the missile hit a house, wounding many women and children.
The town of Rafah straddles the border between Egypt and Gaza and tunnels between the two areas are used to bring in weapons for Palestinian militants.
The Israelis say they have uncovered and destroyed more than 30 tunnels this year, but the overnight raid was a major action to try to find more and close them down.
Israeli officials say Palestinians are trying to get shoulder-held Stinger missiles that could shoot down attack helicopters and civilian aircraft, although they offered no evidence of the assertions. They also said Palestinians are trying to smuggle in Katyusha rockets, which could hit Israeli cities near Gaza.
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior aide to the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, called the operation in Rafah a "war crime and human catastrophe." A Palestinian cabinet minister, Saeb Erekat, said such violence contributes to the instability that is undermining efforts to get a new Palestinian government in place.
It was the kind of Israeli action that was familiar before the American-backed road map for peace was proclaimed in late 2002. The Israelis pulled out of Gaza last June, although they have continued to make occasional forays there.
Israel has cut the Gaza Strip into four sections, with Palestinians unable to move from one to another. The present restrictions have been in place on and off for the last two weeks.
-------- latin america
9 Killed in Street Battles Between Army Troops and Protesters in Bolivia Over the Past Month
Friday, October 10th, 2003
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/10/1537257
A new cycle of conflict has developed in Bolivia as worker unions, coca farmers and ordinary citizens unite to prevent the sale of the nation's gas reserves to the United States through a Chilean port. We got to Bolivia to hear from a member of the Bolivian Movement Against the FTAA. Two people were killed and 10 injured in Bolivia yesterday as army troops clashed with protesters in street battles around the country's capital of La Paz.
Authorities say a miner died when explosives carried by protesting workers went off accidentally. Later, a student was shot dead as a three-week-old wave of demonstrations against unpopular President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada again turned violent. Seven Bolivians were killed in clashes a month ago when tens of thousands protested in cities across the country.
President de Lozada, a key U.S. ally in the war on drugs, has played down the protests and defied calls to step down. He is widely unpopular for failing to alleviate the poverty that engulfs two thirds of the population of Bolivia.
The new cycle of conflict has developed in Bolivia as worker unions, coca farmers and ordinary citizens unite to prevent the sale of the nation's gas reserves to the United States through a Chilean port.
Chile has had tense diplomatic relations with Bolivia because of a longtime border dispute.
Also, on Wednesday, Bolivians commemorated the 36th anniversary of famed guerilla leader Ernesto Che Guevara in Bolivia. Che Guevara led a peasant uprising in Bolivia in 1966 aimed at toppling the military regime. He was captured in an ambush and executed on October 9, 1967.
Pablo Solon, organizer with the Bolivian Movement Against the FTAA, which is a coalition of over 300 groups in Bolivia who are part of the massive protests and general strike opposing the country's gas export industry.
----
US to tighten Cuba sanctions
Bush: 'Cuba shall be free'
Friday, 10 October, 2003,
BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3181048.stm
US-Cuba timeline
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3182150.stm
US President George W Bush has announced fresh measures designed to hasten the end of communist rule in Cuba.
They include tightening an American travel embargo to the island, cracking down on illegal cash transfers, and a more robust information campaign aimed at Cuba.
Mr Bush said the punitive measures were being introduced because the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, had acted with "defiance and contempt and a new round of brutal oppression that outraged world conscience".
The speech - before members of the Cuban community at the White House - came as the 2004 election campaign gets under way.
Mr Bush's advisers know that fiercely anti-Castro Cuban exiles living in the key state of Florida might well be hugely important in determining whether the president holds on to power, says the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington.
His speech today will have secured some valuable votes, our correspondent says.
Robust enforcement
Mr Bush was speaking on the day Cuba celebrates the 1868 start of its quest for independence from Spain.
"The struggle for freedom continues," the US president said.
Mr Bush said the current Cuban regime, the only one-party communist government in the Americas, would never change its policies.
"The Castro regime will not change by its own choice - but Cuba must change," Mr Bush promised.
The new measures announced include:
- Strictly enforcing an existing US law forbidding Americans from travelling to Cuba for pleasure.
- Cracking down on illegal money transfers
- Imposing controls of shipments to the island.
- Aggressive campaign to inform Cubans of safer routes to reach the United States
- Increasing the number of Cuban immigrants in the US.
- More US radio, television, satellite and internet broadcasts to break the "information embargo" Mr Castro had imposed on his people.
Beyond the more immediate measures, the US president announced he was setting up a "Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba" to plan for the day communism would collapse.
Headed by the US secretary of state and the head of the department of housing, the new body would look ahead to the end of the regime.
International pressure
Secretary of State Colin Powell has been trying to enlist other nations in efforts to bring democracy to Cuba - and Mr Bush said more were joining.
In June, Mr Powell urged foreign ministers from the Organisation of American States meeting in Chile to join the United States in promoting a peaceful transition in Cuba.
Mr Castro ridiculed the idea, saying his country had a transition in 1959.
Cubans would be informed of safer routes to the US On Thursday, the head of Cuba's diplomatic mission in Washington said Mr Bush should "stop acting like a lawless cowboy" and "start listening to the voices of the nations of the world".
Analysts say the votes from the 400,000 Cuban-American community in Florida - a key state - could be crucial in the 2004 presidential election.
Mr Bush's relations with his supporters in Miami are said to have reached a low in July, when Washington returned 15 migrants to Cuba after receiving assurances they would not be executed for hijacking a boat.
The president's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, criticised the decision.
Earlier this year, the jailing of 75 dissidents by the Cuban authorities drew international condemnation.
----
Bush Initiative on Cuba Looks Beyond Castro Era
October 10, 2003
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/politics/10CND-PREXY.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 - President Bush announced several steps today that he said were meant to speed the coming of "a new, free, democratic Cuba" after 44 years of the rule of Fidel Castro.
Mr. Bush said the United States would increase the number of Cuban immigrants who are allowed in to the United States each year and would tighten restrictions on Americans' travel to the island. And he announced the creation of a commission to plan for change.
The commission, to be headed by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Mel Martinez, the Cuban-born secretary of Housing and Urgan Development, will draw upon government experts, Mr. Bush said, "to plan for Cuba's transition from Stalinist rule to a free and open society, to identify ways to hasten the arrival of that day."
The president's Rose Garden announcement, on the 135th anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban revolt against colonial rule, was partly symbolic, and it surely had as much to do with Florida as it did with Cuba.
Miami has a large and influential Cuban community, many members of which long for Castro to be gone. Mr. Bush carried Florida and its 25 electoral votes by a slim margin in 2000, so the president is eager to shore up his support in the state.
Mr. Bush's backing in Miami may have been weakened this past summer, when Washington ordered the return of about a dozen migrants to Cuba after being assured that they would not be executed. The migrants had been intercepted by the Coast Guard at sea, and their return to Cuba was such an emotional issue in South Florida that the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, was publicly critical of the decision.
Many other Republican politicians in Florida were also critical. Thirteen state lawmakers, including 10 Cuban Americans, wrote the president shortly after the episode, warning him that if he did not make "substantial progress" toward fulfilling Cuban-American demands, "we fear the historic and intense support from Cuban-American voters for Republican federal candidates, including yourself, will be jeopardized."
The administration had hinted for weeks that an announcement on Cuba was coming, so today's initiatives were not really surprising. Nor were they heavy on specifics. Mr. Bush did not say, for instance, how many more Cuban immigrants would be welcomed.
"The Castro regime will not change by its own choice," Mr. Bush said. "But Cuba must change."
Mr. Bush said the Department of Homeland Security would increase scrutiny of travelers and shipments to and from Cuba and would focus on people who skirt travel restrictions by going to the island through a third country.
Travel to Cuba is allowed under exceptions for family matters, research and other limited circumstances, but "those exceptions are too often used as a cover for illegal business travel and tourism, or to skirt the restrictions on carrying cash into Cuba," Mr. Bush said, adding that "illegal tourism perpetuates the misery of the Cuban people."
In increasing the number of immigrants admitted from Cuba, Mr. Bush said the administration would step up efforts to inform cubans "of the many routes to safe and legal entry into the United States," so that desperate people do not take to the sea in rickety boats.
Symbolic or not, Mr. Bush's announcement in the Rose Garden drew warm applause from members of Florida's Congressional delegation, especially when the president occasionally spoke in Spanish. And while no one can predict when the Castro era will end, Mr. Castro turned 77 on Aug. 13.
-------- mideast
Bahrain denies army pilot defected to Iran in fighter jet
MANAMA (AFP)
Oct 10, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031010074116.sk92r33z.html
Bahrain denied a report in a Kuwaiti newspaper that one of its military pilots defected to Iran in a Bahraini air force F-16 that went missing last month.
"The information published Thursday in Al-Qabas newspaper, citing diplomatic sources, concerning the loss of an F-16 and a Bahraini pilot, is baseless," an army spokesman said, quoted in the local press.
At the end of September, a Bahraini military spokesman announced that a Bahraini F-16 had crashed during a training flight in the north of the small Gulf kingdom and that search and rescue operations were continuing.
The military spokesman indicated that the fate of the crew of the US-built fighter was still unknown.
"Search and rescue operations continue and a British company specialised in underwater searches is helping" to locate the possible wreckage of the plane, the spokesman said Friday.
Quoting diplomatic sources, Al-Qabas reported Thursday that a Bahraini pilot had fled to Iran, where he requested political asylum.
----
Construction Was Spotted at Syrian Camp Hit by Israel
October 10, 2003
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/international/middleeast/10INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - The Syrian target that Israeli warplanes struck last weekend had been the site of recent construction, possibly to prepare it for use by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, senior American officials briefed on intelligence reports said Thursday.
Among the officials interviewed were some who said earlier in the week that they were skeptical of Israel's claims that the target was a terrorist camp. The officials agreed to discuss the issue after reviewing reports provided by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The site, about 15 miles northwest of Damascus, has been used for training in the last six months by two smaller, less active, Palestinian militant groups, the American officials said. But they said the new construction, which was detected by American spy satellites, together with human intelligence reports indicating that Islamic Jihad might be preparing to use the site, had been seen as particularly worrisome.
The human intelligence reports had provided uncorroborated indications that the Syrian site might be used in the future not just as a staging ground for attacks on targets inside Israel, but also for attacks against United States troops in Iraq, the American officials said.
The Bush administration has said that the United States had no advance knowledge of the Israeli raid, and the American officials reiterated that point today. But the American officials also said they assumed that American intelligence information about the Syrian site had been shared with the Israeli government, as is customary in the relationship between the countries.
The American officials said Thursday that the specific nature of intelligence information about improvements under way at the site was one reason that President Bush, both in public and in private conversations with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, has defended the Israeli attack as justifiable.
The Israeli attack into Syria was the first in 30 years, and it was launched after a Palestinian suicide bomber from Islamic Jihad carried out an attack in the northern port city of Haifa that killed 20 people. Together with the Islamic resistance group Hamas, Islamic Jihad is the largest and most active of the Palestinian militant groups, and it has carried out many large-scale suicide attacks in Israel. It has long maintained a political office in Syria, but it has denied having a "military presence" there.
On Sunday, immediately after Israel's predawn raid on the site in Ain Saheb, about 15 miles northwest of Damascus, Bush administration officials said they were not sure whether the target was indeed a terrorist camp, as Israel was publicly contending. On Monday, in response to further inquires, American officials amended that message, saying that a review of intelligence information made clear that the camp had indeed been used as a training base for various Palestinian organizations.
In response to repeated inquiries, and after reviewing recent intelligence reports, the American officials agreed on Thursday to share more details about the basis for that conclusion. They spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One official said American spy satellite monitoring at the camp had picked up indications of recent "structural improvements." The camp had been used as recently as six months ago by at least one of two separate factions of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the officials said. But the officials said the evidence of new construction suggested that it "was being fixed up for someone else to use."
The American officials said that they did not know which entity had been making improvements to the camp, but that they could only have been carried out with the knowledge and acquiescence of the Syrian government.
The Damascus government has said the Ain Saheb site was a civilian area with no connection to terrorist groups. But the Syrian authorities have refused to permit reporters access to the site, which is in an area of steep ravines.
The United States has long listed Syria as a state-sponsor of terrorism, and the Bush administration has said in recent weeks that its calls over the last six months on Damascus to sever ties to terrorist groups have produced little in the way of concrete action.
In a newspaper interview this week, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria dismissed the attack as an attempt by Israel "to terrorize Syria and drag it and the region into other wars." Palestinian groups in Syria have said that the camp had been defunct for years.
The two groups said by American officials to have used the camp in the past are rival factions of a Palestinian group that was founded in 1967 by George Habash. Both the original group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and its rival, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, which is headed by Ahmad Jibril, were most active in the 1970's and 1980's, but have been largely dormant in recent years.
Islamic Jihad, which originated among Palestinian militants in Gaza in the 1970's, is among the most militant of the Palestinian resistance groups. According to the State Department's most recent report on international terrorism, a faction headed by Ramadan Shallah, who is based in Syria, has been the most active in carrying out suicide bomb attacks in Israel.
The State Department report, released in March, said Islamic Jihad had "increased its operational activity in 2002, claiming numerous attacks against Israeli interests." So far, however, the group is not known to have attacked American targets, and "continues to confine its attacks to Israelis inside Israel and the territories," the report said.
In recent months, however, Bush administration officials have said that at least 1,000 Islamic militants, and perhaps three times that number, have crossed from Syria into Iraq to join in attacks against American troops. They have said those militants included members of Hezbollah, the Islamic resistance group based in Lebanon, Syria's neighbor, but have not publicly described any connection between Islamic Jihad and attacks inside Iraq.
--------
THE OCCUPATION
Facing Risks, Turkish Leader Defends Decision to Send Troops to Iraq
October 10, 2003
By CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/international/europe/10TURK.html
ANKARA, Turkey, Oct. 9 - Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Thursday brushed aside objections to his country's decision to send thousands of soldiers to Iraq for the first time since Turkish troops were driven out of the former Ottoman territory in 1917.
"Turkish soldiers aren't going there as a police or gendarme force," Mr. Erdogan told reporters when asked about Iraqi protests to the plan. "Negative approaches to soldiers who go for happiness and tranquillity can't be accepted."
But Mr. Erdogan's bravado belied the grave risks his government faces with its gesture to support the effort led by the United States in Iraq after spurning American requests for help before the war.
While Turkish troops would be the first from a Muslim country to join allied forces in Iraq, they will not necessarily be welcomed there. Members of the Iraqi Governing Council have said they do not want any Turkish troops on Iraqi soil.
Nor is there much support for the plan at home: at least two-thirds of Turks oppose the troop deployment according to several recent polls.
"We are going somewhere that we are not welcome," warned Inal Batu, a member of Parliament from the Republican People's Party, or CHP, the country's main opposition party. "There is an occupying force in Iraq, and if you send troops there, they will surely be a part of the existing occupying force."
On Tuesday, Parliament gave Mr. Erdogan's government permission to decide whether to send troops for up to one year. But Mr. Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party will bear the blame if the deployment turns sour.
Turkish and American officials said the Turkish force could be from 6,000 to more than 10,000 and might arrive in Iraq as early as late November.
Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has the alliance's second largest military with half a million troops. They have served in Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Mr. Erdogan said Thursday that the country has soldiers in 26 countries.
Details of where and how the troops will be deployed in Iraq have yet to be negotiated by Turkish and American military officials. The American ambassador, Eric Edelman, met Thursday with the Turkish Foreign Ministry officials to set a timetable for the talks, which are expected to begin next week.
While Iraq is a predominantly Islamic country, most of its people are Shiite Muslims, who already feel shortchanged by decades under the thumb of the country's Sunni Muslim minority. Turks are mostly Sunni and Iraqi Shiites began Wednesday demonstrating against the Turks' planned presence in the country.
Mr. Erdogan's government will be under pressure to show that it is getting something from the United States for its unpopular efforts. Last month, Washington granted Turkey an $8.5 billion loan in what many political analysts saw as an inducement to the troop commitment. But there are broad disagreements between what the Turks and the Americans want the troops to do.
At the crux of the disagreement lie the Iraqi Kurds, the country's second largest ethnic group, who control the northern third of the country. The Americans need Kurdish support to maintain stability and build a postwar government.
Turkey has aggressively opposed Kurdish autonomy in northern Iraq because of fears that it feeds separatist ambitions among the Kurds on the Turkish side of the border.
Last week, the United States agreed to help Turkey eliminate the remaining Turkish Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, about 4,000 of whom are believed to be living around Mount Qandil near the Turkish border. But Turkish officials stressed Thursday that the public needs to see some concrete American action.
Turkey wants to station troops around Turkmen enclaves near the northern city of Salahuddin, closer to its own border with Iraq and the Kurdish controlled areas there. It has long expressed a desire to protect the rights of the Turkmens, the third largest ethnic group in Iraq, with whom the Turks share an ethnic and linguistic heritage.
The Kurds, who maintain their own forces in the north, vehemently oppose any Turkish deployment in Iraq, particularly near Kurdish areas. They worry that Turkey will use its support for the Turkmens to weaken Kurdish autonomy in the north and control the region's rich oil resources. The United States worries that putting the forces close to each other would lead to conflict.
American officials say they want the Turkish troops in western Iraq between Tikrit, Baghdad and the junction of the Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi borders. That is a predominantly Sunni region that has presented the Americans with some of the toughest resistance since the war officially ended in May.
But the Turkish press has called the area "the devil's triangle" because of its concentration of Syrian interlopers and loyalists of Saddam Hussein and there is widespread concern that the troops there would bear the brunt of future fighting.
"Our soldiers will be deployed in the most violent parts of Iraq," Mr. Batu said.
A stream of returning casualties from Iraq, could weaken the Turkish government and hurt Mr. Erdogan's party.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian Official Cautions U.S. on Use of Central Asian Bases
October 10, 2003
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/international/americas/10NATO.html
COLORADO SPRINGS, Oct. 9 - Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov of Russia said Thursday that his government expected the American military to withdraw from bases in two former Soviet republics in Central Asia once the mission in Afghanistan was completed.
On a day spent reassuring NATO defense ministers that Russia seeks broader cooperation with the Atlantic alliance and has no plans to announce a policy of nuclear pre-emption, Mr. Ivanov also said Russia reserved the right to intervene militarily in former Soviet states if the human rights of ethnic Russians were violated. That forceful restatement of Moscow's concern for ethnic Russians in former Soviet republics comes as NATO prepares to expand beyond former Warsaw Pact nations to include three of those former Soviet states: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
Mr. Ivanov said Russia fully supported decisions by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to allow American forces to use bases in those countries for the war to topple the Taliban and hunt Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Those bases remain important to American and NATO efforts to pacify and rebuild the nation.
"But we have always been proceeding from the fact that those bases exist solely for the period required for the final, definitive stabilization of the situation in Afghanistan," he said.
Continued firefights between American-led forces in Afghanistan and Taliban or Qaeda holdouts indicate that there is no short-term conclusion to that mission.
Referring to future NATO membership of the three Baltic states, Mr. Ivanov complained that the Atlantic alliance would soon be able to station combat jets "a three-minute flight away from St. Petersburg." Those concerns, he emphasized, are being discussed with NATO "in an open manner."
Alliance officials had expressed concerns over news reports that Russia was embarking on a policy of nuclear pre-emption, but Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary general, said he had received assurances that was not true.
Russian news media reported on a speech given by Mr. Ivanov at the Defense Ministry last week in which he was quoted as saying that Russia reserved the right to launch pre-emptive strikes against other nations. Those news reports sought to draw comparisons to the Bush administration's strategic doctrine or pre-emption.
A copy of the Russians' statement on strategic doctrine did hint at tensions if NATO retained its offensive stance.
"If NATO remains a military alliance with today's offensive military doctrine, a radical restructuring of the Russian defense planning and of the principles of the Russian Armed Forces development, including the altering of Russia's nuclear position, will be required," the new policy states, according to a translation of the document.
During the informal meeting of NATO defense ministers here, Mr. Ivanov met with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for 25 minutes. Senior Pentagon officials said neither the Russian document nor Moscow's views on access to bases in Central Asia was discussed.
On the issue of Bosnia, R. Nicholas Burns, the American ambassador to NATO, said the United States and its NATO partners "can see an end" to the alliance's peacekeeping mission there, which began in 1995, with the task being handed over to the European Union. But there is no timetable for withdrawal of NATO forces from Bosnia, he said.
-------- space
Historic China Space Launch Planned for Next Week
October 10, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-space-china.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will launch its first manned spaceship next week, aiming to become the third country after the Soviet Union and the United States to put a man in orbit.
The official Xinhua news agency said on Friday the Shenzhou V would be launched between October 15 and 17 at an ``appropriate time'' from a launch pad in the Gobi desert in northwestern China and orbit the Earth 14 times.
It was the first official confirmation of the launch window on a mission China has kept under tight wraps.
``The Shenzhou V spacecraft will carry out the first manned space mission and will lift off from the China Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center,'' Xinhua quoted an official in charge of the country's space program as saying.
``Now all preparatory work for the launch is progressing smoothly.''
Sources at two major state-run television stations and a tour operator told Reuters early this week the launch had been provisionally set for the morning of October 15, barring bad weather.
And Hong Kong's Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper said the craft would fly for 21 hours, or 90 minutes per orbit, before floating back down to Earth the next morning.
It did not say how many astronauts would be taking part in the maiden voyage, but that a team had been trained for the mission.
Qi Faren, chief designer of the vessel, was quoted by the China Daily as saying he and his colleagues were confident about the mission despite the fact China had so far conducted only four unmanned test flights due to ``limited funds.''
RIGHT STUFF
China has kept a veil of secrecy on details of the launch, with scant details leaking in a few state newspapers and in Hong Kong.
State media have said that up to three ``taikonauts'' could be aboard the craft, although the Shanghai-based Liberation Daily said on Thursday a single astronaut would be chosen from 14 experienced fighter pilots.
A successful manned flight, on the heels of Beijing winning a bid to host the 2008 Olympics, could fuel nationalism and offer a boost to the Communist Party as China seeks a place on the world stage alongside the traditional great powers.
Any failure would be a loss of face and would raise questions about the necessity of a space program in a country where 140 million people live on less than $1 a day.
The public buildup for the space launch began on Friday, with state media releasing a flood of new though still sketchy details, preparing the country for the big day.
An army song and dance troupe was filming a music video to celebrate the launch called ``Flying,'' the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily said.
It showed a black-and-white photo of a girl tightly clad in a spacesuit trimmed with shiny vinyl, the Chinese flag sewn on her chest, with fake moonrock in the backdrop.
``'Flying' will express through song the romantic emotions and spirit of exploration of the Chinese people in their 1,000-year pursuit of a dream,'' the paper said.
State television giant CCTV is poised to begin a 20-part documentary on the history of the space program on its science and technology channel, the TV program's chief editor said.
The Beijing tabloid Star said the show would deal with the failure of two test rocket launches in 1990 and 1992, which killed an unknown number of people.
-------- un
Australian defence minister backs call for UN preemptive strikes
SYDNEY (AFP)
Oct 10, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031010034445.zi9ssv26.html
Australia's Defence Minister Robert Hill on Friday backed a controversial call by its governor general for the United Nations to be given the power to carry out preemptive strikes.
In a speech late on Thursday, Governor General Michael Jeffery said such changes to the United Nations charter were needed, if the world did not want superpowers to act unilaterally.
It was an unusual and potentially controversial foray into policy matters by Jeffery, who became Queen Elizabeth II's representative in Australia after his predecessor resigned in disgrace.
"It seems to me that if the world does not want a superpower of the day to take unilateral or multilateral action against threats that it perceives to be inimical to its national interest, then the UN must be given authority and the appropriate tools to ensure that human rights and dignity of the individual ... are maintained," Jeffery said.
Hill on Friday backed Jeffery's comments as a "useful contribution"
"I don't think you want to turn a governor-general into an invisible person," he said, adding that he supported such changes to the UN charter.
"The definitions of self-defence, for example, do need further consideration. Self-defence was defined in an era when there were long lead-in times -- basically the enemy came over the hill and you had time to respond.
"In this day and age of weapons of mass destruction, terrorists that you don't see and don't know, it's forcing countries in effect to redefine for themselves and I would like to see the UN as a whole taking up that challenge."
Prime Minister John Howard said, however, that he thought such changes were unlikely.
The position of governor general has been a sensitive one in Australia since 1975, when then governor general John Kerr dismissed the government of Gough Whitlam, a move regarded by some as unconstitutional.
Jeffery was appointed earlier this year after the resignation of his predecessor Peter Hollingworth over a child sex abuse scandal. Hollingworth, a former Anglican cleric, resigned in May amid widespread controversy over his failure to discipline pedophile priests when he was archbishop of Brisbane in the 1990s.
The scandal around Hollingworth revived demands among republicans that the office of governor general, a holdover from Australia's days as a British colony, be scrapped.
-------- us
Saving Pvt. Ryan ... From Pain
By Noah Shachtman,
Oct. 10, 2003
Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0%2C1286%2C60768%2C00.html
It's a scene that's been repeated thousands of times on hundreds of battlefields -- a soldier is hit by gunfire or shrapnel. He calls out for a medic, who tries to stabilize him on the spot and arranges for the injured warrior to be taken to a field hospital. And then, the soldier is gone -- maybe for the rest of the conflict.
But with the pace of American military missions getting faster and faster, losing GIs to injuries becomes an increasingly ugly option: Units that stay together fight better, military analysts say. And with soldiers operating in smaller groups -- think of the Special Forces combing the mountains of Afghanistan -- there often isn't a medic around to provide aid.
Pentagon-funded scientists and doctors are working on a suite of technologies and treatments to let soldiers heal themselves, just about instantly. Acute pain and blood loss will be controlled in five minutes or less, if the program is successful. And an injured GI, assuming the wounds are not too severe, can stay alive and fighting on the battlefield for up to 96 hours -- without the help of a medic, without being evacuated.
"It sounds coldhearted, but a wounded soldier can be more disruptive than a dead one. At minimum, you need a couple of guys to carry him out. And once he's out, it hurts unit cohesion," said Jim Lewis, with the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "So the more you can do upfront to stabilize someone -- and the more that person can do for themselves -- the better."
The technologies, developed under a broad Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency effort called Persistence in Combat (PDF), all sound pretty far-fetched: a painkiller soldiers could take -- before they get hurt; a sensor that scans the eye for internal trauma; a bandage that stimulates skin repair with electrical impulses. But several of these projects are surprisingly close to reality, with human trials either underway or about to begin.
Next summer, researchers from Rinat Neuroscience in Palo Alto, California, will begin human testing on what they call RI624 -- and what Darpa calls a "pain vaccine." The drug uses an antibody to keep in check a neuropeptide that helps transmit pain sensations from the tissues to the nerves.
It's a radically different approach from the morphine and morphine-like drugs soldiers and civilian patients get today. Morphine kills the perception of pain by limiting sensory input to the brain. But it doesn't exactly do wonders for math or motor skills.
"We're working on something that takes away pain without interfering with cognitive faculties," said Franz Hefti, an executive at Rinat, a spinoff of biotech giant Genentech.
If successful, RI624 won't completely cut out the need for traditional painkillers, noted Dr. Donald Stanski, a Stanford University professor of anesthesia and clinical pharmacology who's consulting with Rinat. But RI624 -- administered by injection -- could reduce the amount of morphine and other orally ingested analgesics the wounded need to take. And that would be the first major upgrade in battlefield pain management in more than a century, according to Hefti.
"Soldiers in Iraq are getting the same stuff that they got in the Civil War," he said.
Antibodies, like the one on which RI624 relies, have lengthy half-lives -- in rodent tests, about a week. So soldiers could take RI624 days before combat, and feel less pain if they get hit in action.
Rinat has received about $700,000 from Darpa for the effort -- compared with $55 million in private funds. So it's no surprise that Hefti doesn't see the military as RI624's primary market. Instead, he believes, the drug will be used mostly for postoperative pain and chronic pain caused by conditions like arthritis.
Other projects funded by Persistence in Combat should have civilian applications as well. Medical College of Wisconsin neurology professor Dr. Harry Whelan has used Darpa money to develop light-emitting diodes that reverse damage done to the eyes by lasers. But he's also using the therapy to treat a few of the harsher side effects of chemotherapy.
Scientists at MD Biotech in Morgantown, West Virginia, are working on optical scanning instrumentation, or OSI, that can tell whether someone has inhaled nerve gas or botulinum toxin -- threats a soldier might face on the battlefield. But the handheld OSI can also spot evidence of cyanide or carbon monoxide inhalation -- which regularly affect firefighters, too.
By looking at the blood vessels in the eye, the device can see what's going on deeper in the body, said Dr. Lance Molnar, the company's director of life science. The color of the eye's vasculature indicates how much oxygen is in the blood; the lighter the color, the less oxygen there is. So the presence of carbon monoxide, which keeps the blood from accepting oxygen, is easy to detect.
Darpa has been at the center of controversy and funding battles of late. Much of its Information Awareness Office -- responsible for the Terrorism Information Awareness data-mining scheme and the online "trading" floor on the possibility of terrorism -- has been gutted by congressional overseers.
But Persistence in Combat seems less likely to raise hackles because of its clear-cut benefits to soldiers and civilians.
The effort does keep with one long-standing Darpa tradition, however: science that's so bleeding-edge it can border on the wacky. How else would you describe a battery-powered bandage that speeds skin repair with electrical impulses? Or a nanotechnological magnetic tourniquet?
"It's not clear to me whether this is driven by the gee-whiz toy story -- people coming in with all these weird projects -- or by a structured understanding of why people end up dead in combat," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org. The nano-tourniquet seems particularly suspect.
When it first began, Persistence in Combat was also going to examine alternative healing approaches, "such as acupuncture, acupressure employing stimulation to release pain-relieving biomolecules, biofeedback, training and meditation. East Asian techniques for combat medicine and pathways/mediators of pain meridian points (were also) of particular interest," according to the program's website.
But such plans have since been dropped as the effort comes closer to reality. Persistence in Combat is without a program manager at the moment, but research is continuing. And Darpa plans to have the project ready to be integrated into the next generation of soldier battle suits in 2008.
Have a comment on this article? Send it - http://www.wired.com/news/feedback/mail/1,2330,1--60768,00.html
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
New Food Import Rules Issued
FDA Hopes Regulations Will Protect Shipments From Terrorists
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 10, 2003; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5899-2003Oct9.html
In an effort to reduce the threat of terrorist attacks on the nation's food supply, the Food and Drug Administration issued new regulations yesterday that will require all food manufacturers and distributors to register with the agency, and all food importers to notify it whenever their products are headed to the United States.
The rules, which were mandated by a bioterrorism preparedness bill approved last year, are designed to give federal authorities more control over the flow of food into the country -- which officials said constitutes 20 percent of all imports to the United States.
In announcing the regulations, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said that after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he concluded that "one of our greatest potential vulnerabilities is something we depend on every day, and that's our food supply."
The regulations, which were proposed in February and modified in discussions with the food industry, reduce the amount of time that food importers must allow the FDA to examine information about a shipment before bringing goods into the country. While the initial proposal called for an almost 24-hour notification period, the rules announced yesterday require two-hour notification for goods coming by road, four hours for goods coming by rail or air and eight hours for goods arriving by ship.
In part because of such changes, food producers and distributors embraced the new rules yesterday.
"FDA clearly listened to various stakeholders on ways to improve these regulations, and made changes," said John R. Cady, president and CEO of the National Food Processors Association. "The changes not only maintain the effectiveness of these new regulations, but also increase their workability."
Susan Stout, a vice president of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, called the new rules "an example of what can be accomplished when the government engages all stakeholders to create regulations that meet the needs of FDA, the food industry and consumers to further protect the food supply without creating overly burdensome requirements."
But the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, criticized the FDA for weakening the bioterrorism regulations "in response to food industry pressure."
"These regulations are critically needed to protect the food supply, but we're concerned that the agency is requiring less advance notice for imported food shipments," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, CSPI food safety director. "If trucks of food can arrive at our borders with just two hours' notice, it might be easier for someone to avoid inspection."
FDA Commissioner Mark B. McClellan said yesterday at a news conference, however, that improvements in information technology will make it possible for the agency, along with customs agents, to flag high-risk shipments in the time allowed.
McClellan and Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, said a computerized system that will take into account more than 100 risk factors will be used to red-flag shipments that should be inspected. They said the criteria will include the type of food being shipped, its country of origin and the histories of the importer and food producers involved.
McClellan said yesterday that two more final regulations related to terrorism against the food supply will be released later this year. One will require paperwork that traces where food is grown and processed, and the other will give the FDA clear authority to stop food shipments at U.S. borders. McClellan said the new regulations will increase costs to food importers in particular, but he did not specify by how much.
The perceived need for increased oversight of the food supply comes not only from the Sept. 11 attacks. In the fall of 2002, three people were arrested in Jerusalem on suspicion of planning a mass poisoning, and in January 2003, several others were arrested in Britain on suspicion of plotting to add ricin to the food supply on a military base. Soon after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Congress provided $150 million to hire more than 650 new FDA inspectors to better oversee the food coming into the country. With the new rules announced yesterday, Thompson said that for "the first time in history, the FDA will have a complete working inventory of all the food manufacturers and others who deal with food."
The registration rule does not apply to farms, private residences, restaurants, grocery stores and roadside stands or fishing boats.
-------- justice
4 Senators Criticize Leak Probe
Letter to Bush Cites Screening of White House Documents
By Mike Allen and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 10, 2003; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6063-2003Oct9.html
Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) and three other Senate Democrats asserted yesterday that procedures adopted by the Justice Department and White House could compromise an investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA operative's identity.
Their objections include the decision of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to screen documents White House employees submitted to his office in response to a Justice Department order. Gonzales set a deadline of last Tuesday for employees to turn in records that might be relevant; then his office is forwarding them to investigators.
The White House has not ruled out the possibility that Gonzales will seek to withhold documents under a claim of executive privilege.
The Justice Department and several outside Republican lawyers said they considered the procedures to be standard and prudent.
The Democrats outlined their objections in a letter to President Bush, calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor who would have a degree of independence from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.
"Already, just fourteen days into this investigation, there have been at least five serious missteps," they wrote. "We are at risk of seeing this investigation so compromised that those responsible for this national security breach will never be identified and prosecuted."
The letter was signed by Daschle and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.).
The objections were:
• The Justice Department began the investigation Sept. 26 but did not ask the White House to order employees to preserve relevant evidence until Sept. 29.
• Gonzales did not order employees to preserve their records until the next day, when the investigation was announced.
• The Justice Department did not ask the Pentagon and State Department to preserve possible evidence until late on Oct. 1, after news reports that such a request was coming.
• White House press secretary Scott McClellan has said he determined that three senior officials who were the subject of speculation in news accounts were not involved in leaking classified information. The senators wrote: "Clearly, a media spokesperson does not have the legal expertise to be questioning possible suspects or evaluating or reaching conclusions about the legality of their conduct."
• Ashcroft remains responsible for the probe despite his close political and personal relationships with Bush and his top aides.
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo replied: "From the time that career prosecutors at the Department of Justice decided to open an investigation, it has been handled professionally and by the book."
The investigation is being headed by John J. Dion, the department's counterespionage chief. Corallo called Dion "a 30-year-veteran of impeccable integrity."
Federal law generally bars destruction of materials relevant to an investigation whether or not subpoenas have been issued.
Asked Tuesday about the possibility of a claim of executive privilege on documents not forwarded to investigators, McClellan said: "The president has made it clear that we are cooperating fully. We welcome this investigation. We want this investigation to move forward in a thorough and quick way, so that we can get to the bottom of this. But I think it's premature to even speculate about such matters."
--------
More Agents Are Added to Leak Case
October 10, 2003
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/politics/10LEAK.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - As Democrats accused the White House of trying to improperly influence an inquiry into a leak, officials said on Thursday that the F.B.I. was doubling the number of investigators on the politically charged case.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to use about 12 agents and other personnel, twice the number first planned, to try to find the person who leaked the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, the officials said.
The White House began this week to turn over to the Justice Department what it considers relevant documents. Prosecutors have told at least three other agencies - the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department and the State Department - not to destroy records that might be connected to the case.
Because of the volume of records that may have to be reviewed, "it just made sense to increase our numbers," a senior F.B.I. official said. "Six people can't do this alone."
The expansion underscores the gravity of an inquiry that has threatened to become a major headache for the Bush administration.
Democrats in Congress, who have pushed for Attorney General John Ashcroft to appoint a special counsel to investigate the case because of his close ties to the White House, said President Bush and his advisers sought to influence the course of the investigation through their aggressive comments.
The White House has promised its full cooperation, but Mr. Bush said this week that he had doubts about whether investigators would catch the leaker.
"I don't know," Mr. Bush said, "if we're going to find out the senior administration official" who told Robert Novak, as Mr. Novak wrote in his syndicated column in July, that Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a C.I.A. employee. Mr. Wilson was a critic of the administration's Iraq policies.
Administration officials said the president's statement was a frank acknowledgment of the difficulty of conducting such investigations.
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said in an interview that the comments threatened to undermine the inquiry by lowering expectations.
"If the president says, `I don't know if we're going to find this person,' what kind of a statement is that for the president of the United States to make?" Mr. Lautenberg asked. "Would he say that about a bank-robbery investigation? He should be as indignant as everybody else is over this breach."
Mr. Wilson said Mr. Bush "certainly seems far less certain about finding the leaker than he is about finding Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein."
"This goes far beyond someone identifying my wife," he said. "This was a breach of public trust, and I would think it would behoove the president to ensure that the appropriate assets are devoted to identifying the leaker."
Mr. Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, said criticism of the handling of the inquiry and comments "appear to be more about politics than about getting to the bottom of the investigation."
Democrats said other White House statement could also compromise the independence of the inquiry.
Mr. McClellan has said although the Justice Department will decide about a special counsel the White House does not believe that such a move was necessary. In response to speculation in the news media about the leaker's identity, Mr. McClellan has said three senior officials - Elliott Abrams, I. Lewis Libby Jr. and Karl Rove - were not involved and did not condone it.
In a letter to Mr. Bush, four Democratic senators pointed to the White House statement about the aides as one of several serious missteps. Mr. McClellan did not have the legal expertise to question possible suspects, said the letter from the Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and Senators Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, Carl Levin of Michigan and Charles E. Schumer of New York.
"The White House has now put the Justice Department in the position of having to determine not only what happened, but also whether to contradict the publicly stated position of the White House," they said.
A spokesman for the department, Mark Corallo, said officials' statements in the White House or elsewhere had "nothing to do with this investigation."
"The investigation," Mr. Corallo said, "will follow the facts."
-------- police
Philadelphia Mayor Seeks Explanation Of FBI Bugs
By David B. Caruso
Associated Press
Friday, October 10, 2003; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5861-2003Oct9.html
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 9 -- Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street tried to get his reelection campaign back on track Thursday after FBI bugging devices were discovered in his office, insisting that he has done nothing wrong and that prosecutors have assured him he is not the target of the investigation.
He and other politicians called on the FBI to say who is being investigated -- something the FBI refused to do for the third straight day.
"I just can't entertain a never-ending series of questions about this," Street said, urging the FBI to "lift the clouds" over City Hall.
Street's Republican rival, Sam Katz, denied having anything to do with the eavesdropping equipment. The bitter rematch between the two has been marked by charges of intimidation and race-baiting. Street is black, Katz white.
The devices were found Tuesday by police conducting a routine sweep of Street's City Hall office suite.
Three federal law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the FBI was responsible for the bugs but refused to provide details about the nature of the probe.
However, federal officials are known to be investigating the city's dealings with private companies.
One day after the devices were discovered, the FBI raided the Philadelphia headquarters of a business affiliated with one of the city's influential Muslim leaders, Shamsud-din Ali. The business was awarded a no-bid contract in 2002 to collect $605,990 in delinquent city real-estate taxes.
And in June, the city was asked to turn over information on its relationship with Philadelphia Airport Services, which had a $13.6 million maintenance contract at the Philadelphia airport. Earlier this year, the company made plans to subcontract $1.2 million of the work to a business founded by Street's brother, but the mayor quashed the deal after critics said it smacked of nepotism.
City officials also have confirmed that the FBI is investigating allegations that the city department that handles appeals of parking citations had fixed tickets in exchange for bribes.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Red Cross Criticizes Indefinite Detention in Guantánamo Bay
October 10, 2003
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/national/10GITM.html
GANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Oct. 9 - A senior official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday that the holding of more than 600 detainees here was unacceptable because they were being held for open-ended terms without proper legal process.
Christophe Girod, the senior Red Cross official in Washington, said on Thursday in an interview at the United States Naval Base here, "One cannot keep these detainees in this pattern, this situation, indefinitely."
Mr. Girod spoke as he and a team of officials from the international organization were completing their latest inspection tour of the detention camp. Although he did not criticize any physical conditions at the camp, which houses 660 detainees, most of them captured in the Afghan conflict, he said that it was intolerable that the complex was used as "an investigation center, not a detention center."
He said the International Red Cross was making the unusual statements because of a lack of action.
United States officials have said they have begun moving to sort the detainees, choosing which to release and which to take before military tribunals on criminal charges.
Some officials, notably Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have said the detainees may be held until the effort against terrorism ends.
Mr. Girod said, "The open-endedness of the situation and its impact on the mental health of the population has become a major problem."
In 18 months, 21 detainees have made 32 suicide attempts, and human rights groups have said the high incidence of such events, as well as the number of detainees being treated for clinical depression, was a direct result of the uncertainties of their situations.
Mr. Girod said that in meetings with members of his inspection teams, detainees regularly asked about what was going to happen to them.
"It's always the No. 1 question," he said. "They don't know about the future."
Camp officials have said most of the detainees' mental health problems existed before they arrived.
Mr. Girod's comments departed from the usual reluctance of the International Red Cross to issue public criticism. The International Committee of the Red Cross, based in Geneva, is the sole group outside the government allowed to inspect the main detention center and meet the detainees.
Under longstanding procedures, the committee agrees that in exchange for access it will not generally publicize its findings but rather take complaints or criticisms to the government in charge in the hope that they can be addressed. Only when the Red Cross decides that its views are not being heeded does it publicize its concerns.
Mr. Girod said the views he was expressing had recently been placed on the Red Cross Web site, www .icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf /html/5QRC5V?OpenDocument.
He said the International Red Cross had been urging the Bush administration for months to make significant changes in operations here if it intended to keep using the site as an investigation center. The administration, Mr. Girod added, should consider establishing a policy under which most, if not all, of the detainees have some idea of when they can learn whether they will be charged or released.
The military has released 68 detainees to their home countries. Most of those sent to Afghanistan were freed. Those sent to Saudi Arabia were imprisoned there.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller of the Army, commander of the task force that runs the detention center and oversees the questioning of the detainees, said in an interview, "We don't want the enemy combatants here to stay one day longer than is necessary."
General Miller said the inmates had been kept in custody because they had valuable information to impart.
"There is intelligence of enormous value to the nation that is received every day" from the questioning, he said. The efficiency of the investigation teams has greatly improved, the general said, adding:
"We've gotten better at what we do. But as we go about developing intelligence, it takes some amount of time."
General Miller said officials were trying to determine whether the arrests on suspicion of espionage of three men who worked here and had contact with detainees indicated a wider effort to infiltrate the camp. Defense Department officials have said they plan to review tapes of some of the questioning to see whether they were mistranslated as part of a sabotage effort by translators. Two translators, one an enlisted member in the Air Force and the other a contract employee, have been arrested on suspicion of espionage.
Officials said that they were found with classified information that they were trying to take off the base and that they were suspected of an effort to carry messages from detainees to people abroad.
More strikingly, the Islamic chaplain at the base, Capt. James J. Yee of the Army, also known as Youssef Yee, was arrested on Sept. 10 after customs officers found a map of the base in his belongings as he was starting on home leave. The officials also said Captain Yee might have had messages from detainees, as well as notes about which detainees had been questioned by which investigators and on what subjects.
General Miller said investigators were trying to assess "the seriousness and breadth" of the problem. A team of about 24 investigators from the Army Southern Command in Miami began work on Wednesday to determine whether there was a wide conspiracy to infiltrate the base.
It was unclear whether the new investigation would further slow releasing detainees or taking them to military tribunals. In July, the administration designated six detainees who it said President Bush had deemed eligible for military tribunals. The group includes two Britons and one Australian. Their governments have objected to their being tried in a proceeding, without the usual safeguards, that could theoretically impose the death penalty.
Military tribunals, solely for noncitizens, are much more tightly controlled than civilian courts.
American officials offered assurances that the crimes with which the suspects would be charged would not carry the death penalty. But disapproval, especially in Britain, has produced a drawn-out negotiation that has delayed any trial. American officials said they were sensitive to the problem and did not want to create new political difficulties for Prime Minister Tony Blair, an ally in the Iraq war.
-------- terrorism
South American Area Is Cited as Haven of Terrorist Training
October 10, 2003
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/national/10TERR.html
The Bush administration's point man on terrorist financing said on Thursday that the training and financing of terrorists remained a problem in the region of South America where the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina intersect.
The official, David Aufhauser, the Treasury Department's outgoing general counsel, said in a telephone interview that despite two years of efforts by Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies to dislodge terrorist cells there, the border region was home to a "rich marriage of drugs and terror."
Mr. Aufhauser added that he expected antiterrorist operations in the area to begin to bear fruit soon. Other Western officials have said that the region, a nexus of drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, counterfeiting and smuggling centered around the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, has been a primary source of support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other Muslim extremist groups.
Mr. Aufhauser, who plans to leave office next week having overseen efforts to combat terrorist financing since the Sept. 11 attacks, said that "Pakistan continues to be a place of great mystery and a source of substantial funding" of terrorism. He also cited Southeast Asia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Saudi Arabia as principal conduits for terrorist money.
Mr. Aufhauser's departure follows other recent announcements of resignations by senior members of the federal antiterrorism effort, including the head of the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism office. Those officials have worked long, stressful hours and confronted the remaking of agencies that had been ill-prepared for such work before the attacks two years ago. Mr. Aufhauser is praised by his counterparts at other law enforcement and intelligence agencies as being even-handed, dedicated and nonpartisan, and he is credited with dismantling many bureaucratic barriers and rivalries that previously prevented agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency and the Treasury Department from working together effectively.
Mr. Aufhauser said that White House had made combatting terrorist financing a priority and had forced federal agencies to cooperate more readily to move that effort forward. Indeed, many of his responsibilities as the coordinator of terrorism financing issues have been assumed by Frances F. Townsend, the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism. Ms. Townsend reports to Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, giving terrorism financing issues firm footing within the White House itself.
Critics of terrorist financing initiatives have said that the effort has lacked a single, clear advocate in the White House, someone who both has the president's ear and is known to foreign diplomats and law enforcement officials as their primary contact within the federal bureaucracy.
Mr. Aufhauser, 54, said that cutting off money remained one of the best defenses against terrorism because that prevented militants from planning and organizing effectively.
"It has the most profound leveraging, exponential effect of any resource we devote to defending the nation," he said.
But he also noted that the chief cure for terrorism was economic aid to impoverished nations or populations because it "addresses hopelessness."
"No father kills who thinks his children have a future," Mr. Aufhauser said.
The roots of terrorism in the Muslim world have also been entwined with the politics of oil, religious differences and other longstanding grievances with the West, many of which have taken hold most strongly in Saudi Arabia, a frequent target of Mr. Aufhauser's criticism during his tenure as general counsel. Mr. Aufhauser, one of the White House's main liaisons with Saudi Arabia, has described that country as the "epicenter" of terrorist financing.
Noting that Saudi Arabia has made great strides in countering terrorism at home, Mr. Aufhauser cited examples yesterday of what he believes to be continuing problems within the country, particularly the use of major Saudi charities as funnels for terrorist money. He conceded that Saudi authorities had begun a criminal investigation of the Al Haramain Charitable Foundation, but he said the inquiry was centered on the misappropriation of money by Al Haramain's directors and not on the sponsorship of terrorism - despite evidence that Al Haramain is a terrorist financier.
"Why is it limited to the graft?" Mr. Aufhauser asked. "Why isn't the funding of terrorism a priority for a criminal investigatory matter?"
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Ex-EPA Officials Question Clean Air Suits
Assistant Administrator Disputes That He Misled Congress About Effect of Rules
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 10, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6118-2003Oct9.html
A top U.S. environmental official told Congress last year that Bush administration efforts to soften clean air enforcement rules would not harm pending lawsuits against aging coal-fired power plants, even though key aides had told him just the opposite, two former Environmental Protection Agency enforcement officials said this week.
Jeffrey Holmstead, assistant EPA administrator for air policy, told two Senate committees in July 2002 that "we do not believe these [proposed rule] changes will have a negative impact on the enforcement cases." He testified that he based his assessment on numerous meetings with lawyers from the Justice Department's environmental and natural resources division and the EPA's enforcement office.
However, EPA enforcement agents repeatedly had told Holmstead and others that the proposed rule changes would inevitably undermine ongoing clean air enforcement cases, possibly by prompting courts to accept a more lenient standard, according to Sylvia Lowrance, former acting chief of the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, and Eric Schaeffer, another former enforcement official. "Officials in EPA's enforcement office raised concerns regarding these specific proposals on current and future enforcement with top political officials at EPA [including Holmstead] on several occasions," Lowrance said.
"I think Jeff's statement was misleading," said Schaeffer, who was director of civil enforcement until March 2002, when he resigned to head the advocacy group Environmental Integrity Project. "The controversy inside the agency over these cases was very high, and he knew that."
In an interview yesterday, Holmstead disputed Schaeffer's and Lowrance's accounts and denied that he gave false or misleading testimony. "There's nothing at all inaccurate or misleading about what I testified to," he said.
Holmstead said he was responding to senators' questions about a new administration report recommending changes in the enforcement regulations, and that it was his impression that the Justice Department and EPA enforcement officials were satisfied with last-minute changes to ensure the new regulations would apply only to future cases.
"What we had been told by the Office of Enforcement and Justice was that the report and the recommendations that we had released just prior to that hearing would not have an adverse impact on the enforcement cases," he said. "We emphasized five or six times that the rule was prospective and that any activities taken at these plants prior to the rule would still be subject to the old regulations."
The comments by Lowrance and Schaeffer, first reported by Public Citizen's Congress Watch, have spurred criticisms from at least one prominent Democrat.
"These are troubling allegations that seem entirely credible, because they fit the pattern of arrogance and deception we have seen so often from this administration about its environmental policies," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) who, as the Judiciary Committee's ranking Democrat, had questioned Holmstead about the likely impact of the rule-making. "To them, hiding the facts from the public and from the Congress may seem only to be a convenient public relations tactic. But it amounts to fraud when hiding the facts contributes to endangering the health of the American people."
Leahy was alluding to recent incidents in which the EPA's credibility has been questioned. For example, the EPA's inspector general this summer concluded that the agency -- at the White House's urging -- softened its public assessment of dangers posed by dust and debris from the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.
The EPA's decision in August to revise the clean air standards already is affecting an enforcement case against Dynegy, which operates a major power plant in Illinois. As the trial drew to a close, Justice Department lawyers filed a brief Sept. 5 that essentially disavowed their previous definition of the rules governing plant activities. A Dynegy lawyer said the federal brief helped his company's case.
At stake is the fate of dozens of enforcement cases brought against 51 power plant operators and scores of refineries during the Clinton administration. A federal judge in Ohio ruled Aug. 7 against FirstEnergy's Ohio Edison Co., marking the first time the Justice Department prevailed in court in such cases. But that was before EPA unveiled the new rules. Suits are pending against major utilities including American Electric Power Co., Cinergy Corp., Duke Energy Corp. and Southern Co.
Under the current Clean Air Act rules, plants and refineries built before 1970 are not required to install modern "scrubbers" while doing routine maintenance. But they must do so if they undertake extensive improvements that extend the facilities' lives and boost harmful emissions.
An energy task force headed by Vice President Cheney in 2001 ordered a review of the rules with an eye to expanding the definition of routine maintenance. The utility industry, which contributed $4.8 million to the Bush campaign and other GOP committees in 2000, argued that existing rules have discouraged investment and expansion of energy sources. Under the revised rules announced in August, older plants will not have to install pollution controls when they replace parts with "functional" equivalents, provided the cost does not exceed 20 percent of the entire unit's replacement value. Environmentalists say that most plant modifications would be acceptable under that standard.
Some Democratic lawmakers and environmentalists warned last year that the rule-making would impede pending enforcement actions, despite assurances from then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman; Assistant Attorney General Thomas Sansonetti, head of the Justice Department's environmental division; and Holmstead, who played a key role in revising the regulations.
At a joint hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works and Judiciary committees on July 16, 2002, Leahy cited news reports indicating that utilities were backing away from their settlement negotiations in clean air enforcement cases. He asked Holmstead whether he had discussed the potential impact of the rulemaking with Justice and EPA enforcement officials.
Holmstead replied: "Yes, that was one of the primary issues that was discussed. What I can say is, based on numerous meetings that I have had, which included staff attorneys from [Sansonetti's] office as well as attorneys from our own enforcement office, is we do not believe these changes will have a negative impact on the enforcement cases."
Lowrance, a 24-year veteran of the EPA , left government in summer 2002. She later said the administration's proposed rules "substantially complicate current litigation and act as a disincentive for companies to settle." Lowrance said this week that she and others in the enforcement and compliance office had repeatedly warned their superiors that courts might view the proposed new regulations as the "correct interpretation" of the law, despite EPA assurances that the new regulations would be "prospective" and would not affect existing cases.
"The fact that the rule states it is prospective does not obviate the fact that this rule contains many provisions harmful to the cases and ongoing investigations," Lowrance said.
--------
Details Emerge on Post-9/11 Clash Between White House and E.P.A.
October 10, 2003
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/nyregion/10AIR.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 - Tensions between the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality over informing the public about air safety after the collapse of the World Trade Center may well have been greater than revealed in a report issued by the E.P.A.'s inspector general in August, according to newly released documents.
The August report, evaluating the agency's response, found that White House council officials had influenced the language used in news releases to make them less alarming and more reassuring to the public in the first few days after the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. It said that because of White House influence, some important cautionary information had been removed from proposed agency news releases after they had been reviewed by the council.
The documents that formed the basis for the report - summaries of interviews with agency officials, internal agency documents and e-mail correspondence between White House and agency officials shortly after Sept. 11 - show that there were "screaming telephone calls" about the news releases between Tina Kreisher, then an associate administrator, and Sam Thernstrom, then the White House council's communications director. The E.P.A.'s chief of staff, Eileen McGinnis, had to ask the head of the White House council, James L. Connaughton, to urge his staff to "lighten up," according to interviews with the inspector general's office. Ms. Kreisher, who now works as a speechwriter at the Department of the Interior, is quoted as saying she "felt extreme pressure" from Mr. Thernstrom.
Officials with the council sought to play down the significance of the references to screaming matches. "I think everyone can understand it was an intense and emotional time," Mr. Connaughton said. "It is natural at times that people exchange words. It is also the case that it was a rarity in our collective discussion."
Ms. Kreisher declined to comment.
The documents were released at the request of Congressional Democrats, who have seized on the August report as a political weapon, much to the frustration of administration officials. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has threatened to block the confirmation of Gov. Michael O. Leavitt of Utah as E.P.A. administrator unless the White House answers questions about what was in the report.
The documents offer details that the Democrats have been clamoring after - essentially who was responsible for editing and influencing the news releases that the environmental agency issued.
According to the documents, Mr. Thernstrom objected to the agency's putting raw data on a public Web site, fearing that the information would be taken out of context and "easily misunderstood and mischaracterized by political candidates in the city who have an ax to grind," as he wrote in an e-mail message sent to Ms. Kreisher on Sept. 25.
E.P.A. officials said Mr. Thernstrom's message did not influence policy. "As soon as we got the data, we made it available," said Lisa Harrison, a spokeswoman for the agency.
In an interview with the inspector general, Ms. Kreisher also said that Mr. Thernstrom had said the environmental agency should not include health information in news releases because that was New York City's responsibility. But city health officials told the inspector general that they "were not aware of any agreement or understanding concerning this philosophy," according to the documents.
On Thursday, officials of the White House council disputed the city officials' claim. E.P.A. officials have maintained, both in the documents and in public interviews, that the White House's role after Sept. 11 was to coordinate information and not to suppress it. And they have noted that such joint efforts are typical in major emergencies.
The officials have also noted that the disputed news releases were a fraction of the agency's public information campaign.
A number of senators who have historically had poor relations with the Bush administration over environmental issues piled on their criticism on Thursday. "The release of this information further reinforces the concerns I have raised and puts a fine point on New Yorkers' demand for answers and actions from both the E.P.A. and the White House," Senator Clinton said.
James M. Jeffords of Vermont, the ranking minority member of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, said, "This is just part of a pattern of White House interference that prohibits agencies such as the E.P.A. from doing their jobs."
-------- health
Breast Cancer Drug Reduces Relapse Risk
Experts End Research Early After Seeing Striking Benefits
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 10, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6438-2003Oct9?language=printer
A new drug cuts by nearly half the risk that older women who have survived early-stage breast cancer will suffer a relapse, according to the results of a large international study released yesterday.
The study, which was halted early so that the results could be made public, has the potential to change the way thousands of women are treated for one of the most common and feared malignancies, researchers said.
"The results of this study unquestionably offer new hope to hundreds of thousands of breast cancer patients and their families," said Paul E. Goss of the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, who led the study.
The drug, letrozole, for the first time offers many post-menopausal women who have undergone the standard treatment for early-stage breast cancer a way to reduce their risk of a recurrence for more than five years.
About 211,300 American women are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, and 40,200 are expected to die, making the disease the second most common cancer and cause of cancer deaths among women. The new treatment could benefit nearly 100,000 of those women, experts estimated.
Currently, women diagnosed with early breast cancer undergo surgery to remove the tumor, sometimes receive chemotherapy to kill cancer cells that may have spread, and then typically take the drug tamoxifen for five years to minimize the chances that their cancer will return. But taking tamoxifen for more than five years provides no added benefit and may even be dangerous.
Because many women who survive early-stage breast cancer suffer recurrences after five or more years of survival, doctors have been urgently searching for ways they can continue to reduce the risk.
"This becomes a dark cloud that hangs over many patients," Goss said at a news conference in Toronto. "I don't think any of us understand what it's like to wake up every day waiting for the other shoe to drop."
Estrogen fuels the growth of breast cancer cells, increasing the chances of a recurrence. Tamoxifen is a weaker version of estrogen that blocks the action of the hormone in the body. Letrozole, which is sold as Femara, is one of a new generation of breast-cancer preventives known as aromatase inhibitors. It blocks the creation of estrogen in the body.
Letrozole has already been approved for the treatment of advanced breast cancer. Because studies have shown that combining tamoxifen and letrozole appears to protect women from recurrences for longer periods than using tamoxifen alone, researchers decided to see if the drug would lengthen the protection if administered for five years after women have completed five years on tamoxifen.
In the new study, 5,187 women in the United States, Canada and Europe -- most of whom had tumors stimulated by estrogen -- took letrozole or a placebo once a day after undergoing the standard treatment, including five years on tamoxifen.
The women were supposed to have been followed for five years. But after they had been taking the letrozole for an average of 21/2 years, experts monitoring the study decided the benefits were so striking that it would be unethical to continue giving half the participants a placebo.
The National Cancer Institutes in the United States and Canada and the Canadian Cancer Society, which coordinated and funded the research with support from Novartis Pharmaceuticals, the drug's manufacturer, agreed to stop the trial and release the results. The details will be published in the Nov. 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, which posted the study with two editorials on its Web site yesterday.
When the study was terminated, 207 new cancers had been diagnosed -- 132 among those receiving the placebo, but 75 among the women taking letrozole -- a 43 percent difference. The risk of death from breast cancer was also nearly halved, but there were too few deaths for that finding to reach statistical significance, researchers said. The benefits, however , appeared to be equal for women whose cancer had spread beyond the breast and those whose cancer had not.
The drug reduced recurrences in the breast that was initially affected, in the other breast and in other parts of the body. "This very important advance in breast cancer treatment will improve the outlook for many thousands of women," said Andrew C. von Eschenbach, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
The women taking letrozole were more likely to develop the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis, and to suffer broken bones. Researchers are studying ways to ameliorate that side effect. Women on the drug also had more hot flashes, as well as muscle and joint aches.
In an editorial accompanying the study, John Bryant of the University of Pittsburgh and Norman Wolmark of Allegheny General Hospital questioned the decision to discontinue the study early. The termination prevented researchers from determining whether the drug actually reduced the risk of dying, how long women should take the drug and the full extent of the risk of negative effects. "It is not even possible to quantify the magnitude of a potential benefit," they wrote. "It is likely that in the coming months there will be much debate over whether the data and safety monitoring committee made the best decision."
In another editorial, Harold J. Burstein of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston said much more research is needed before the benefits of letrozole and similar drugs become clear. "In the meantime, a woman who is considering letrozole therapy in order to reduce further the risk of a recurrence of breast cancer should be carefully educated about the realistic benefits and the likely side effects of therapy so that she can make a well-informed decision," Burstein wrote.
The researchers who conducted the study defended their decision. They recommended that women should talk to their doctors about taking the drug if they are post-menopausal survivors of early breast cancer that was sensitive to estrogen and have been off tamoxifen at least three months.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Iranian Reformers Hail Nobel Prize Winner
By BRIAN MURPHY
Associated Press Writer
Oct 10, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NOBEL_PEACE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Moments after learning Friday that Shirin Ebadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the mother of the Iranian human rights lawyer prayed to Allah. Ebadi's husband, too, gave thanks for what may lie ahead.
"The reform movement is reborn," said Javad Tavassolian, the husband of Ebadi, the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the peace prize.
Ebadi - who also is Iran's first female judge - was hailed around the world as a courageous champion of political freedom after the Norwegian Nobel Committee honored her for promoting peaceful and democratic solutions in the struggle for human rights.
The prize, announced Friday in Oslo, Norway, also gave hope to the dispirited reformers challenging Iran's ruling clerics that the 56-year-old lawyer's newfound clout and international stature may breathe life into their tired ranks.
"This prize doesn't belong to me only. It belongs to all people who work for human rights and democracy in Iran," Ebadi said in Paris, where she was attending a conference.
Ebadi, who was jailed for three weeks in 2000, has been a forceful advocate for women, children and those on the margins of society.
"As a lawyer, judge, lecturer, writer and activist, she has spoken out clearly and strongly in her country, Iran, far beyond its borders," the Nobel committee said in its citation.
Reformers in Iran may now expect even more: a firebrand willing to directly battle the powerful theocracy in the model of other history-shaping Nobel laureates such as Nelson Mandela and Lech Walesa.
"She is an international figure now," said Isa Saharqis, a prominent reformer and editor of the monthly political journal, Aftab, or Sun. "The conservatives cannot close their eyes to this."
Iranian state media waited hours to report the Nobel committee's decision - and then only as the last item on the radio news update.
It was not until late Friday that Iran issued an official statement, with government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh congratulating Ebadi for her prize.
"We hope more attention will be paid to the opinions of Mrs. Ebadi both inside and outside Iran more than before," he said.
"In the name of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, I congratulate Mrs. Ebadi and all Iranian Muslim women," Ramezanzadeh told The Associated Press.
"We are happy that a Muslim Iranian woman has behaved, using the capabilities of the country in the fields of defending human rights, especially the rights of children and women, in a way that is appreciated by the peace-loving bodies around the world."
Ramezanzadeh said the government is expected to send a top official to attend Ebadi's welcoming ceremony in Tehran on Tuesday.
At Ebadi's home, her family watched updates on international broadcasts via a satellite dish - technically illegal but recently tolerated as conservatives try to soften opposition.
Ebadi's 79-year-old mother, Minu Yamini, said the Nobel announcement was just the third time she cried for her daughter. The first was her university graduation; the second was when she was jailed.
Ebadi, who is often sharply criticized by Iran's hard-liners and conservative clerics, was convicted in a closed trial three years ago of slandering government officials. She was given a suspended sentence following her three weeks in jail.
At her news conference in Paris, Ebadi said Iran's most pressing human rights crisis is the lack of free speech, and she urged the government to immediately release prisoners jailed for expressing their opinions.
"There is no difference between Islam and human rights," said Ebadi, who was not wearing the Islamic head covering required for women in Iran.
"Therefore, the religious ones should also welcome this award," she added. "The prize means you can be a Muslim and at the same time have human rights."
Iran's reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, has often said the same in his vision of "Islamic democracy." But Khatami has been discredited in the eyes of many mainstream reformers for his unwillingness to press for rapid change. More radical activists are also disheartened by the failure of street protests, including a violent but short-lived confrontation with authorities in June.
Now, reformers appear ready to look for direction and unity from Ebadi, who is scheduled to return to Iran on Tuesday. One of the first tests could be February parliamentary elections, which many reformers have suggested they would shun as a show of frustration.
"Today is a happy day in Iranian history," said Saeed Pourazizi, a close ally of Khatami. "I don't hide my deep feelings of happiness."
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a Paris-based group opposing the clerical establishment, called the Nobel award "an act against the religious fascism ruling Iran."
Although Iranian women serve in parliament and have far fewer limits than in other Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia, laws still impose some definite boundaries. An Iranian woman needs her husband's permission to work or travel abroad, and a man's court testimony is considered twice as important as that of a woman.
"The prize is an outcome of her relentless fight against inequality," said Azam Taleqani, leader of a women's rights group.
Ebadi served as Iran's first female judge in the waning years of the Western-backed monarchy, which was toppled by the Islamic Revolution of 1979, when she was forced to resign.
She turned her law office into a base for rights crusades and assaults on the establishment on issues such a persecution of dissidents and now-rare punishments such as stoning and flogging for social offenses.
She has taken cases dealing with domestic abuse and the rights of street children. Her writings have touched on rights for refugees, women and child laborers.
In 2001, Ebadi wrote in an Iranian magazine about her experience in jail - the loneliness of her confinement and the agony of recurring back pain and other ailments.
"I hate myself for being so weak," she wrote in the Payam Emrooz Monthly Review. "I try not to complain. I would just press my teeth against each other and would flex my fingers hard - my nails have turned blue because of the intensity of the pressure - but never would I groan."
Last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, former President Jimmy Carter, called Ebadi's work "an inspiration to people in Iran and around the world."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the award underscores "the importance of expanding human rights throughout the world."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called her "a lifetime champion of the cause of human dignity and democracy."
This year's prize is worth $1.3 million. Speculation on winners this year had centered on former Czech President Vaclav Havel and Pope John Paul II.
Ebadi is the third Muslim to win. Yasser Arafat took the prize in 1994, sharing it with then-Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1978, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat shared the award with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for jointly negotiating peace between the two countries. Rabin and Sadat were assassinated after winning their prizes.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death. The other prizes will be given that day in the Swedish capital, Stockholm.
On the Net:
Nobel site: http://www.nobel.se
----
Activist struggles with injustice
October 10, 2003
By Delphine Soulas
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031009-090456-8382r.htm
Nigerian lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim was in Washington this week to celebrate her success in overturning a death sentence for a Nigerian Muslim woman accused of adultery and to warn that the struggle against unjust laws in her homeland must continue.
A sentence of death by stoning for Amina Lawal, 32, was quashed by a court on Sept. 25 but the state has until the end of this month to appeal. Meanwhile at least five other women face similar sentences in Nigeria.
"This is a great victory for justice. The law of justice has prevailed over the law of man," Miss Ibrahim said during an appearance at the National Press Club on Wednesday.
But, she stressed, "Amina is not the only [person] accused of these charges."
Miss Ibrahim, the first woman lawyer in northern Nigeria, said she is not fighting Islam or the strict Islamic "sharia" law under which Miss Lawal was sentenced, but that "we have a mission: the respect of the law of justice."
The Islamic law, gradually introduced in 12 states in northern Nigeria since 1999, provides a mandatory death penalty for adultery and allows the death penalty for other sexual offenses on a discretionary basis.
Miss Lawal was condemned to death by stoning in March 2002 for bearing a child out of wedlock. The sentence was deferred for eight months while she weaned her daughter, which afforded her an opportunity to appeal.
As it is often the case in an adultery trial, the man whom Miss Lawal named as the father denied involvement and the charges against him were dropped.
Miss Lawal's sentence was quashed by the sharia court of appeal of Katsina state on the grounds that sharia law was not in effect when she became pregnant.
The court also took into consideration that she had not been caught "in the very act of adultery," she had not fully understood the proceedings and she was not represented by a lawyer during her trial.
Private organizations such as Baobab For Women's Human Rights, which focuses on women's legal rights in Nigeria, worked to publicize the case around the world.
Both Amnesty International and Baobab For Women's Human Rights refuse to condemn sharia law as long as it respects international human rights standards and international conventions ratified by Nigeria, including a convention against torture.
However sharia courts in several of Nigeria's northern states continue to sentence convicts to punishments including amputation, flogging and stoning.
----
Iranian Lawyer Is Awarded Peace Prize for Human Rights Work
October 10, 2003
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/10/international/10CND-NOBEL.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
OSLO, Oct. 10 - Shirin Ebadi became the first Muslim woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize today, in recognition of her work promoting the rights of women and children in Iran over the past three decades.
In awarding the prize to Ms. Ebadi, the Nobel committee said it wished to prod the Muslim world into recognizing that Islam and human rights, particularly those of women and children, can go hand in hand. The committee also said it hoped to advance a moderate, nonviolent path toward reform in Islamic countries, one in which religious and cultural differences are rewarded rather than punished during this time of turbulence and upheaval.
"Her principal arena is the struggle for basic human rights, and no society deserves to be labeled civilized unless the rights of women and children are respected," the Nobel committee's chairman, Ole Danbolt Mjoes, said in a statement after announcing the winner.
In its citation, the committee noted that Ms. Ebadi "sees no conflict between Islam and fundamental human rights," adding, "It is important to her that the dialogue between the different cultures and religions of the world should take as its point of departure their shared values."
Iran has been criticized internationally for its harsh, discriminatory treatment of women, and the award could lead to renewed interest in Iran and its internal struggles over change.
The selection of Ms. Ebadi was also viewed in some circles as an attempt to influence the debate over how best to deal with Iran and the issue of whether it is developing nuclear weapons. The United States has taken an aggressive stance on the matter and has pushed Iran - which President Bush has called part of an international "axis of evil" - to make clear whether it is developing such weapons. Europe, on the other hand, would rather rely on diplomacy to resolve the question and prefers to stoke change in Iran from within the country.
"Iran is at the top of the international map in terms of weapons of mass destruction and regime change," said Janne H. Matlary, a professor of international politics at the University of Oslo and a former deputy foreign minister of Norway. "There is Western agreement on putting pressure on Iran. But there are differences between Europe and America about the effects of regime change. Europe favors working to strengthen democratic groups from inside the country. Change through cooperation is very European."
Ms. Ebadi, who was jailed in Iran on charges of slandering government officials, has long served as a pioneer for women's rights. She was the first woman to serve as a judge in Iran, a position she was forced to give up in 1979, after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power and banned women from the bench. Since then, Ms. Ebadi has used her position as a lawyer to defend a number of political activists, including writers and intellectuals. She worked "active and successfully," the committee noted, to identify the perpetrators behind a 1999 attack on students at Tehran University.
But it is her work on behalf of women and children that garnered the most attention. Ms. Ebadi, 56, is the founder and leader of the Association for Support of Children's Rights in Iran and has written several books and articles promoting human rights, among then the "History and Documentation of Human Rights in Iran." Working at a grass-roots level, she has managed to establish crisis telephone lines for children and raised awareness about issues like children in prison and forced child marriages.
The fact that she is a woman in a Muslim country teetering between reform and fundamentalism "carries special resonance," Mr. Mjoes, the Nobel chairman, said in an interview after the announcement.
"Ebadi represents reformed Islam, and argues for a new interpretation of Islamic law which is in harmony with vital human rights such as democracy, equality before the law, religious freedom and freedom of speech," he said.
Ms. Ebadi's selection by the Nobel committee was unforeseen. Her name had not been raised by Nobel observers on their annual list of nominees who were most likely to succeed. In fact, Nobel officials were unable to locate Ms. Ebadi in Tehran and wound up passing the information on to her husband. Ms. Ebadi, who was in Paris, will receive $1.32 million in prize money.
In choosing Ms. Ebadi this year, the committee passed over Pope John Paul II, who was viewed as a favorite because of his opposition to the war in Iraq and his fragile health. But some observers say the pope remains too controversial for the Nobel committee, mostly because of his opposition to birth control and abortion. Others said the selection of the pope, or another favorite, the former Czech president, Vaclav Havel, would have placed too much emphasis on the past rather than the future.
Ms. Matlary, who also serves on the pontifical council for justice and peace in the Vatican, said this would have been an ideal year for the pope to receive the award. John Paul, whose health has badly deteriorated, forcefully opposed the war on Iraq and has worked through the years to reconcile different religious groups. He was also instrumental in the downfall of Communism.
But he remains controversial, particularly in Scandinavia. "One disagrees profoundly in the Nordic countries with his moral theology, his views on family, abortion, homosexuality," she said. "All the controversial issues of the modern lifestyle."
In Iran, Ms. Ebadi's selection was met with lukewarm detachment by the government. State-controlled television and radio did not announce her victory until several hours after her selection was made public, and then did so with little fanfare. Conservatives, who have long viewed Ms. Ebadi's activities as a threat to the Islamic system, reacted angrily to the committee's decision.
"Although we may be happy that an Iranian has won the prize, we believe the Nobel Peace Prize is being used to suit political objectives," Amir Mohebian, an editor of the hard-line conservative newspaper Resalat, told The Associated Press. "This prize carries the message that Europe intends to put further pressure on human rights issues in Iran as a political move to achieve its particular objectives," he said.
But officials who advocate change and are closely aligned with President Mohammad Khatami celebrated her selection.
The selection process for the Nobel Peace Prize winner is famously secretive. This year it was also relatively difficult to handicap. There were a record 165 nominations for the prize and three new members on the five-member selection committee, including the chairman. Three of the five members are women.
Ms. Ebadi is the 11th woman and the 3rd Muslim to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
----
Full text of Nobel Peace Prize citation for 2003 winner Shirin Ebadi
OSLO (AFP)
Oct 10, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031010091506.up7k4o12.html
Following is the full text of the Norwegian Nobel Committee's citation for Shirin Ebadi, who on Friday was awarded the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize.
"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2003 to Shirin Ebadi for her efforts for democracy and human rights. She has focused especially on the struggle for the rights of women and children.
As a lawyer, judge, lecturer, writer and activist, she has spoken out clearly and strongly in her country, Iran, and far beyond its borders. She has stood up as a sound professional, a courageous person, and has never heeded the threats to her own safety.
Her principal arena is the struggle for basic human rights, and no society deserves to be labelled civilized unless the rights of women and children are respected. In an era of violence, she has consistently supported non-violence. It is fundamental to her view that the supreme political power in a community must be built on democratic elections. She favours enlightenment and dialogue as the best path to changing attitudes and resolving conflict.
Ebadi is a conscious Moslem. She sees no conflict between Islam and fundamental human rights. It is important to her that the dialogue between the different cultures and religions of the world should take as its point of departure their shared values. It is a pleasure for the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award the Peace Prize to a woman who is part of the Moslem world, and of whom that world can be proud - along with all who fight for human rights wherever they live.
During recent decades, democracy and human rights have advanced in various parts of the world. By its awards of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has attempted to speed up this process.
We hope that the people of Iran will feel joyous that for the first time in history one of their citizens has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and we hope the Prize will be an inspiration for all those who struggle for human rights and democracy in her country, in the Moslem world, and in all countries where the fight for human rights needs inspiration and support."
--------
Airmen ready base for weekend protest
By Maj. Stacee N. Bako
30th Space Wing Public Affairs
October 10, 2003
Vandenberg AFB News
http://www.vandenberg.af.mil/space-missile-times/story_2/story2.htm
Base personnel may be diverted to alternate gates if demonstrators for the International Day of Protest to Stop the Militarization of Space block the Santa Maria Gate Saturday.
Protestors from the Vandenberg Action Coalition plan to stage a nonviolent protest at the main gate here from 1 to 4 p.m. Should the group block the road, base traffic will be re-routed to the Utah or Lompoc Gates for base access.
The group is conducting the protest as part of a week-long, worldwide action entitled "Keep Space for Peace." According to the group's Web site, their goal is to encourage the redirection of funding to alternative energy sources, like windmills instead of continued funding of the Missile Defense Program.
Demonstrators are allowed to park in the Vandenberg Middle School parking lot and to protest in the areas designated by snow fencing put up by the 30th Civil Engineer Squadron.
The 30th Security Forces Squadron patrols ensure no laws are broken during the protest and will be on hand to detain trespassers if required.
Suspicious activities should be reported to the Security Forces Control Center at 606-3911. For more information on protest advisories, visit the Web at http://www.vandenberg.af.mil.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.