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NUCLEAR
Workers exposed to deadly element
Questions on Irradiated Food
Australian Senate supports CTBT re US and Chinese nukes
Rumble in the Jungle
EU States Stall Commission's Nuclear Safety Standards
Straw hints at military action against Iran
Elbaradei Says No Change in Iran Nuke Deadline
U.N. Nuclear Chief Travels to Iran
North Korea Seeks U.S. Help Over Nukes
N. Korea Diplomacy May Hinge on Summit
More Money OKd for Weapons Worker Program
Ex-Aide: Powell Misled Americans
President Sees Election Cash in Rebuilding Iraq
Bush's War Plan Is Scarier Than He's Saying: The Widening Crusade
Clark Wants Civilian Reserve to Provide National Service
Democrats Lean Against Bush Spending Request
MILITARY
Calling for Reconciliation, New Liberian Leader Takes Office
New Leader Takes Office In Liberia
U.S. World Leader in Arms Sales
APEC: Security Essential for Prosperity
Halliburton Accused of Fleecing US Taxpayers by Overcharging for Oil
Defense Money Driving General Dynamics
'Those who broke Iraq should pay to fix it'
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE EMPIRE
Shiite Factions Clash Near Shrine in Iraq
Car Bomb Explodes Outside Turkish Embassy in Baghdad
U.S., Israel Play Risk
U.S. Diplomatic Convoy in Gaza Is Attacked, Killing at Least 3
At Least 3 Dead as Blast Hits U.S. Convoy in Gaza
Israel Raids Town in Gaza; Infighting Roils Palestinians
U.S. Vetoes Resolution Condemning Israeli Barrier
Gaza Operation By Israel Leaves Many Homeless
Bolivian Leader Loses Allies as Demonstrations Spread
The NATO Response Force
NATO Launches New, Modern Strike Force
China Sends Man Into Orbit, Entering U.S.-Russian Club
Analysts downplay talk of a space race
China Launches Its First Manned Space Mission
Ex-Chiefs Disagree on Intelligence Overhaul
Guantanamo Translator Had Hundreds of Secret Files
U.S. Vetoes U.N. Condemnation of Israel
U.S. Seems Assured of U.N.'s Approval on Plans for Iraq
Three Countries Give U.S. a Key Iraq Concession
Ground Truth
The General and the Governor
Judge Orders Reporters to Reveal Sources
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Name Sources, Judge Orders Five Reporters
High court backs states' pot statutes
U.S. Appeal Of Marijuana Case Rejected
Justices Say Doctors May Not Be Punished
Backers of Medical Marijuana Hail Ruling
Fire Dept. Drill on Bioterror Is Set for Today
ENERGY AND OTHER
Isolated hamlet in Indian forest gets electricity
Pet Projects Flood Energy Bill Before Crucial Wednesday Session
Marine species are at risk as sea meadows destroyed
Democrats Decry EPA Ads on Bill Lawmakers Cite Anti-Lobbying Laws
ACTIVISTS
Bolivian Protesters Vow More Marches
Saudi protesters demand reforms
EGYPT - Students protest Israeli raids
Saudi Arabia Arrests 150 Protesters
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Workers exposed to deadly element
PLUTONIUM LEAKS AT LIVERMORE LAB
Contra Costa Times / San Jose Mercury News
Wed, Oct. 15, 2003
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/7017955.htm
A dozen Lawrence Livermore Laboratory workers were exposed to plutonium after a power outage caused the radioactive element to leak from its specially designed container.
None of the workers -- seven from the lab's plutonium handling building and five security officers -- tested positive for plutonium exposure on an initial lung test. A second scan for the substance is pending.
Lab spokesman David Schwoegler said the lab is working to prevent this rare problem from happening again. The National Nuclear Security Administration is also investigating the incident, spokesman Bryan Wilkes said.
Plutonium, used in nuclear weapons, is extremely hazardous. If absorbed into the body, usually through the lungs or gastrointestinal tract, it can migrate through the bloodstream and settle in the liver, bone, or bone marrow, sometimes causing tissue damage or cancer.
On Oct. 3, a scheduled power outage caused a plutonium handling ``glove box'' at the lab to fail. The boxes are designed so that air cannot flow out of them and into the surrounding room.
This box had a seal removed several years ago, for reasons yet undetermined, so some of the air leaked out, Schwoegler said. The alarm nearest the release, which the lab described as ``small,'' did not sound, but one outside the door did.
Several hours later, plutonium workers entered the room and discovered the seal on the glove box had been removed.
Schwoegler said the air had changed in the room several times between the time the exposure happened and the time other employees entered the room, which makes the chance of a health problem small.
--------
EATING WELL
Questions on Irradiated Food
October 15, 2003
By MARIAN BURROS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/dining/15WELL.html
WHEN the European Parliament decided last year to put a moratorium on the irradiation of almost all food, it was influenced by studies suggesting that substances formed when fat is irradiated may promote colon cancer.
But when regulators in the United States approved the irradiation of fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry and eggs, they did not consider that type of study, in which animals were fed concentrates of the substances. Irradiated food is now sold in some stores and restaurants, but it is not widely available.
In determining that irradiation was a safe way to prevent bacterial contamination, the Food and Drug Administration reviewed tests in which animals were fed irradiated food.
Opponents of irradiation say, though, that the meat in those tests did not have enough of the substances considered in the European tests - 2-ACB's (alkylcyclobutanones) - to determine its safety. The only way to determine the effects of a lifetime's exposure to questionable substances like 2-ACB's, they say, is to test them in an isolated form.
Last month, officials from the Center for Food Safety and the Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program, two Washington-based advocacy groups, met with officials of the Food and Drug Administration and asked that the agency not approve the irradiation of any more foods until the safety of 2-ACB's has been determined by testing them specifically.
Dr. George Pauli, associate director for science and policy in the F.D.A.'s Office of Food Additive Safety, said the agency would review the studies considered by the European Parliament.
Dr. William Au, who is a toxicologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch and a scientific consultant to the two groups, said the compounds should be considered food additives, which the F.D.A. is required to test, even though they are created as the raw meat is exposed to radiation.
"To be certain about the safety of these products," Dr. Au said, "they must be tested individually and in pure form to assess the health risk to consumers."
But Dr. Pauli said the compounds are not additives and are no different from substances produced by cooking.
In 1980, an F.D.A. committee on irradiation recommended that the agency test the effects of substances, called unique radiolytic compounds, that were found only in irradiated food. But Dr. Pauli said in an interview that by 1987, the agency decided that there was no need to separately test the effects of the compounds, because more than 400 tests on irradiated food since the 1960's had proved its safety.
He said that many of the tests involved radiation levels much higher than would be used for normal irradiation, so there would already have been high levels of the compounds in the meat.
"From Day 1, the consensus of scientists was to feed animals food that had been irradiated" to test for safety, he said. "We were looking at the totality of the evidence."
The agency says that none of those studies found that the food was toxic, carcinogenic or caused genetic mutations. Critics say that when their scientists examined the peer-reviewed studies that looked for signs of genetic damage there were adverse effects in one-third of them.
Among the four peer-reviewed studies of the compounds by a group of French and German scientists that were considered by European officials, the most recent looked at rats that were injected with a substance that produces colon cancer. Some rats were then fed 2-ACB's, while others were not. Those fed 2-ACB's developed bigger and more complex tumors, and three times as many of them.
The report, published in the journal Nutrition and Cancer in December, warned against "misusing" the study to discredit irradiation of meat in general. But in a telephone interview, the leader of the study, Dr. Francis Raul, research director at the French National Institute of Health in Strasbourg, France, said he and his fellow researchers called for more study of 2-ACB's. He added, "It is perhaps too early to start irradiating beef to give to children."
In January, schools in the United States will be able to buy irradiated beef for their school lunch programs, but there seems to be little interest in doing so.
-------- australia
Australian Senate supports CTBT re US and Chinese nukes
From: "Healy, Daele (Sen A. Bartlett)" <Daele.Healy@aph.gov.au>
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 4:28 PM
Democrat Leader Senator Andrew Bartlett moved a motion on the nuclear weapons capabilities of the US and China that passed the Senate today with ALP support:
That the Senate
(a) notes:
(i) that the United States Government has 10,600 nuclear warheads, of which nearly 8,000 are considered operational.
(ii) that the Chinese Government has approximately 400 nuclear warheads.
(iii) that the US and Chinese Governments both signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on the 24 September 1996 but neither nation has ratified the Treaty.
(b) Calls on the Government to urge the leaders of the US and China to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty as soon as possible.
Senator Andrew Bartlett 15 October 2003
-------- depleted uranium
Rumble in the Jungle
By Russell Seitz
10/15/2003
Tech Central Station
http://www.techcentralstation.com/101503B.html
Newsweek, like The New York Times, seems bent on elevating our man in Bujumbura, Conakry, and the Bight of Biafra -- The Hon. Joseph Wilson IV -- to the status of Proconsul emeritus.
Last year he spent a week downstream from Timbuktu sipping mint tea and listening to Francophone assurances that no respectable Nigerian slave trader, gun runner, hashish merchant or blood diamond smuggler in the adjacent million square miles of howling sandstorm would stoop to dealing in uranium.
And what of malefactors from Mali, Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Libya, and Nigeria? Never fear: Niger's vigilant border patrol awaits them. None shall escape special visa fees stiff enough to leave impecunious Chads hanging.
Well satisfied, the intrepid Ambassador returned to Foggy Bottom, but Newsweek says that his verbal trip report "vanished into the bureaucratic maw."
But what of the oft-repeated report that "In his January '03 State of the Union address, President Bush, citing British intelligence reports, repeated the charge that the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium from Niger"? It's just not true -- President Bush said Africa, not Niger -- the Ambassador has another ten million square miles to check out.
A continent is a terrible thing for an accredited diplomat to misplace. Especially one with five major and dozens of minor uranium-mining operations in 11 nations. South Africa's fulfilled nuclear ambition speaks to the point, as does Namibia's economic geology -- it rivals Niger's. The Congo, with 13 mines, has been a cornucopia of concentrated pitchblende since the days of Madame Curie. This is hardly news to the French intelligence community. Long before Wilson's tenure in Gabon, the French had a nightmarish run-in with disappearing African uranium exports.
French Follies
For decades France shipped uranium home to Marseilles for enrichment into reactor fuel and weapons grade uranium. It was easy to monitor this strategic trade, for the natural isotopic abundance of fissionable U-235 was the scientific equivalent of Holy Writ. It was exactly 0.7204%; so one tonne of mined uranium could be relied upon to yield 7,204 grams of U-235. And 992,960 of depleted uranium-238 -- an ultradense by-product that America uses for tank armor and ammunition, and the French for racing yacht ballast.
For many uneventful years, the ore coming in was checked against the enrichment plant's output. The running total tallied exactly until one fateful day in 1971, when it fell hair-raisingly short. Somehow, enough U-235 to build a dozen A-bombs had gone missing. French security forces went into overdrive: not just the usual suspects, but the whole Marseilles underworld was rounded up. The interrogations produced nothing, and a gimlet eyed review of all the paperwork in the plant found it flawless.
Cold fear displaced disbelief when the next inventory revealed an even greater loss. Around the world, yet more villains were hauled in by spooks of every ilk and nationality, but again no leads materialized. Things were looking very ugly indeed, because ample time had passed to turn the missing uranium into bombs, and true rumors were flying about Israel's clandestine efforts to acquire uranium.
Into the growing panic stepped a junior French geochemist with a really dumb idea: could nature be the culprit? He was shown the door by Directorate of Internal Security, but managed to procure a few crumbs of old and new ore from Oklo. He ran them through a mass spectrometer, and sure enough, the most recent samples held less U235 than the older ones. Weirder still, all of the rare earth elements in the sample had equally un-natural isotope ratios. There was only one possible explanation -- when the Earth was younger, the Oklo deposit was host to natural nuclear reactions, and the missing U-235 was the fuel they had consumed.
Oklo was soon staked out by Legionnaires as a cadre of Ecole Polytechnique alumni excavated the 15 natural reactors within the mine that had gone critical and fissioned away the U-235 1.8 billion years before. Once they had been dug up, analyzed and entered into the annals of science, the last of the usual suspects were put back on the street, and the miners of Oklo returned to excavating the still rich ore.
A Little Humility
The plutonium produced in nuclear reactions, natural or man made, is popularly regarded as the most dangerous substance in existence. It is an object of widespread faith that mere grams of it could kill millions. But what of the seven tons of plutonium created in the natural reactors? Its fate in the environment has done more than literally billions of dollars of research to illuminate the modern problem of high-level radioactive waste disposal.
Rocks being rocks, their behavioral repertoire is somewhat limited. With the coming of each ancient rainy season, neutron moderating water percolated into the ore, and the natural reactors rumbled to life. But beneath the surface of this radioactive Yellowstone, the resulting fission products and plutonium just did what comes naturally to heavy metals in a mud bath. They sank to the bottom and stayed put, diffusing outwards at a rate slower than continental drift.
Plutonium's 16,000 year half life is but a geological instant, and the last atom of it gave up the ghost a billion years ago literally a stone's throw from where it started. All that's left of it is the dead end of its chain of nuclear decay: lead.
Most of the world's uranium mines now lie idle. Disarmament and a stagnant nuclear power industry have made uranium too cheap to merit the level of vigilance and security afforded more valuable commodities, like lamb chops or aspirin.
George Kennan remarked that error is so integral a part of evaluating intelligence that complete intolerance of it would banish every analyst from the corridors of power. When certain knowledge of imports, exports, and inventories eludes a nation, humility should attend its estimates of what others may, or may not, have acquired.
-------- europe
EU States Stall Commission's Nuclear Safety Standards
BRUSSELS, Belgium, (ENS)
October 15, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2003/2003-10-15-02.asp
Five governments are preparing to block a European Commission proposal to create the European Union's first ever legal nuclear safety standards. With top level support from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the two countries plus Sweden, Finland and Belgium are insisting that two draft laws be downgraded into non-binding instruments.
The European Commission, the EU executive branch, issued its controversial nuclear safety package in January. EU member states have begun considering the proposals in detail only this autumn.
It was clear from the outset that several governments viewed the proposals as an unnecessary addition to the existing international framework and an unwarranted extension of EU powers.
Schroeder and Blair have now set out these arguments in a letter to Commission President Romano Prodi. It marks a second potentially decisive intervention into EU environmental issues this autumn by the two leaders, who last month demanded simplification of the proposed REACH chemical policy for the registration and authorization of chemical substances.
Together the five countries wield enough votes in the EU Council of Ministers to block the two draft laws, known as directives.
Sources suggest that the coalition is in no mood to accept compromise proposals put forward by both the Commission and the EU's Italian Presidency that would soften the two directives' requirements while maintaining their legal status.
"No one is against safety in nuclear plants, but we don't think that the Commission's approach is the right way," one government source told Environment Daily. The nuclear safety directive would introduce "disturbance, a new level of decisionmaking and a lack of clarity over where responsibility lies."
Neither it nor the nuclear waste management proposal "give anything of added value," the source said on condition of anonymity.
The five countries have contrasting domestic policies regarding atomic energy. Finland and the UK are both nominally pro-nuclear while Germany, Sweden and Belgium are all committed to phasing it out as an energy source.
Europe's nuclear industry is split over the legislative package but is largely skeptical, agreeing with the five governments that it would add an unnecessary extra regulatory layer. However, one industry source suggested that it "will be difficult to explain [it] to the public" if the directives are killed off.
Due to the draft directives' legal base, the European Parliament has only consultative powers. According to an industry source, the Parliament looks likely to support both proposals and - given the "complex and unclear" situation in the Council of Ministers - could play an important role in the debate.
{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}
-------- iran
Straw hints at military action against Iran
Wednesday October 15, 2003
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2003-daily/15-10-2003/main/main14.htm
LONDON: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on Tuesday he wanted the standoff over Iran's nuclear programme resolved peacefully but did not rule out possible military action.
Asked in parliament if he ruled out such action if Iran did not cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog, Straw said: "We wish to see this matter resolved peacefully. I'm not going to predict what is going to happen except to say we have adopted a consistent approach in respect of Iran."
"The UK government has frequent contact with the government of Iran on this subject and we've made clear our serious concerns," Straw told parliament. "We've also made clear our wish that Iran must maintain complete transparency about its nuclear programmes and comply fully with the demands set out by the IAEA board of governors resolution on December 12."
The IAEA on Tuesday told Iran an October 31 deadline to clear up allegations that it is seeking nuclear weapons stood firm, as IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei prepared to leave for Tehran. The stern warning came after the Iranian opposition gave details on a secret nuclear installation where it claims the regime is enriching uranium with a view to producing atomic weapons.
IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told AFP: "There are two phases to our work. The first phase involves Iran providing all the information to us on unresolved questions no later than October 31." Fleming said the second phase entailed verification of the information provided by Tehran.
ElBaradei, IAEA's Secretary-General, was due to arrive in Tehran for a visit on Thursday on invitation of the Islamic republic. The inspectors' concerns focus in particular on traces of highly enriched uranium found on two samples they took from a nuclear site in Natanz.
--------
Elbaradei Says No Change in Iran Nuke Deadline
October 15, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear.html
FRANKFURT, Germany (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief said Wednesday Iran could not expect an extension of an Oct. 31 deadline to prove it does not have a secret nuclear weapons program.
Iran denies U.S. charges it is trying to make an atomic bomb, but after it failed to fully declare its nuclear sites the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) set the deadline for Tehran to show evidence or face possible U.N. sanctions.
``I cannot accept that by the end of the month we will be in a position...(where) we believe we have not gotten all the information we require,'' IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told Reuters.
Diplomats said Iran might ask for the deadline to be extended.
ElBaradei acknowledged for the first time U.N. inspectors had visited military sites in Iran and said Tehran had been more cooperative in recent weeks, but still had not been acting as quickly as the IAEA would like.
``We still need more information,'' he said. ``Now is the time to come forward with a full and comprehensive declaration of all they have done. This is a must.''
ElBaradei was speaking en route to Iran where he will hold talks with senior officials during a one-day visit.
He said the most pressing issue was clarification of Iran's uranium enrichment program which the United States says is at the heart of a clandestine attempt to build an atom bomb.
UNDERSTANDING IRAN'S ENRICHED URANIUM
Concerns about Iran's nuclear program were fueled earlier this year when Tehran revealed it was well on the way to enriching uranium. Iran says it needs to produce low-grade enriched uranium to use as fuel in nuclear power reactors.
Highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear bombs and the IAEA has found traces of it at two Iranian nuclear sites. Tehran said it was due to contaminated machinery bought from abroad.
``We still need more information, including the origin of this equipment,'' ElBaradei said. A number of diplomats have told Reuters that some of the components came from Pakistan.
He said the contamination explanation could be true, even though it had met with widespread skepticism.
``It could be contamination, it could be importing enriched uranium, it could be both,'' ElBaradei said, adding he hoped to move forward on the issue during Thursday's talks.
``There are a lot of questions we are still asking and we hope to get answers to them.''
Diplomats said the IAEA had asked to inspect military sites in Iran to see if there was a secret arms program.
``We have been to military sites,'' ElBaradei confirmed. A Western diplomat said one such site the IAEA visited was called Kolahdouz, near Tehran.
Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said the U.N. agency's governing board would probably choose to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council in November, though it would almost certainly not press for any kind of sanctions yet.
ElBaradei said this attitude was premature. He said IAEA board member countries should wait for his next report on inspections in Iran before reaching a verdict.
``People need to be patient, give us the time to do our work and not come to premature conclusions. It's only a matter of weeks before (the next report),'' he said.
The IAEA board meets on Nov. 20 to consider the IAEA's judgment of whether or not Iran has complied with the resolution.
--------
U.N. Nuclear Chief Travels to Iran
October 15, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- U.N. atomic agency inspectors will visit any site considered necessary to check Iran's claims that it doesn't want to make nuclear weapons, the agency chief said Thursday after arriving in Tehran for key talks.
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei traveled to Iran to warn that an Oct. 31 deadline leaves the government little time to prove its claims.
Two weeks ahead of the ultimatum -- and the subsequent threat of possible U.N. Security Council sanctions -- there are ``still outstanding issues to be resolved'' before suspicions are dispelled, ElBaradei told The Associated Press after landing.
ElBaradei said it wasn't too late for Iran to assist U.N. nuclear inspectors. He would not give details of ongoing inspections, but suggested reviews of both military and civilian facilities.
``If it's civilian or military sites doesn't matter much,'' he said. ``We visit sites that are relevant to our work. If it's important to us to visit a site, we will do so.''
The United States and its allies accuse Iran of working on a secret nuclear weapons program, while Tehran says it is only interested in generating electricity.
Earlier, while flying to Frankfurt from Vienna for a connecting flight to Tehran, ElBaradei told AP that despite the outstanding questions, Tehran had increased cooperation with agency officials in recent weeks, permitting inspectors visits to all sites they requested, including a military one.
``We asked and we were allowed to go there,'' ElBaradei said.
Officials close to the agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified that site as Kolahdouz, not far from the Iranian capital.
The site was identified in the summer by the National Council of Resistance of Iran as the alleged location of efforts to enrich uranium. They said centrifuge equipment there was reputedly meant to operate as a supplement to the uranium enrichment site, in Natanz.
IAEA experts have a list of several other military sites they hope to visit, the officials confirmed. ElBaradei said he would not comment on his Iran probe before presenting his report to the next board meeting. The board convenes again on Nov. 20.
``I think we need all the information that we requested, and so far we have not received all this information,'' ElBaradei said. ``The key issue is the enrichment program -- to make sure we have seen all nuclear experiments that have taken place in Iran, that we have seen all the nuclear material in Iran.''
If the agency's board of governors finds next month that Iran has not answered all questions about its nuclear program by Oct. 31, they could refer the issue referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Iran twice has confirmed in recent months that particles of weapons-grade enriched uranium were found in separate places in the country. But the government maintains its equipment was ``contaminated'' by a previous owner.
Iran has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bans the spread of nuclear weapons.
Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's senior delegate to the IAEA, said earlier this month that Tehran and agency representatives reached ``total agreement'' on measures to prove the country's nuclear program is peaceful. For example, Iran will provide the IAEA with a list of the imported equipment it contends had been contaminated.
But ElBaradei suggested there was some foot-dragging.
``There has been increased cooperation, but again there are a lot of outstanding important issues that remain ... we don't have much time left,'' he said.
Diplomats said documentation was still lacking on the origin of the centrifuge parts Iraq said it imported. Without that, the agency cannot compare isotope traces to establish whether the contamination came from abroad, as Iran asserts.
``We are getting lists, but we still need to be receiving more information as to the origin of this equipment,'' ElBaradei said.
ElBaradei he was going to Tehran on request of the country's leaders.
``It was their view that my visit there will move things forward,'' he said.
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org/worldatom
-------- korea
North Korea Seeks U.S. Help Over Nukes
Wed Oct 15
By SOO-JEONG LEE,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=721&e=10&u=/ap/20031015/ap_on_re_as/koreas_nuclear
SEOUL, South Korea - A top South Korean negotiator urged North Korea on Wednesday to ease tensions over its suspected development of nuclear weapons, but the communist regime refused to discuss the dispute, saying a solution depends on Washington.
North Korea also expressed concerns that inter-Korean relations would be hurt if South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun steps down should he fare poorly in a referendum that he wants to hold in December to gauge public trust in his rule.
"If President Roh Moo-hyun loses the vote, wouldn't there be big changes in inter-Korean relations, depending on who becomes the next president?" an unidentified North Korean official was quoted as saying in South Korean media pool reports.
The comments came as the two countries began three days of Cabinet-level talks in the North's capital of Pyongyang. Foreign journalists were barred from the event.
Roh, whose administration has lost popularity in the wake of corruption scandals involving his aides, proposed the referendum on Monday. The legality of such a proposal remains in doubt.
In Pyongyang, South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun underlined the importance of holding a second round of multilateral negotiations on the nuclear issue to follow up on talks in Beijing in August. The United States, Japan, China, Russia and the two Koreas participated, but no agreement was reached and no date was set for more discussions.
"It is time to enhance inter-Korean relations, but right now the nuclear issue is urgent," Jeong Se-hyun was quoted as saying.
"We came to the talks with the hope of discussing the nuclear issue with a more forward-looking attitude so that an atmosphere can be created for improved inter-Korean relations," he said.
However, North Korea's chief delegate, Kim Ryong Song, responded negatively to the South Korean offer. He said North Korea's position on the nuclear issue has been already revealed to the international community.
"The nuclear issue wholly depends on the United States' attitude," Kim said.
North Korea usually is reluctant to discuss the nuclear dispute with its southern neighbor, saying the issue is a matter between Washington and Pyongyang.
The United States and its allies are trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear programs. The North says it will do so only if the United States signs a nonaggression treaty, guarantees inter-Korean economic cooperation and North Korea's economic cooperation with Japan, and establishes diplomatic relations. It also says Washington should sharply increase food aid to North Korea.
Secretary of State Colin Powell has some ideas for providing security assurances to North Korea and will try them out on his Pacific rim foreign minister colleagues this weekend in Bangkok in advance of an summit of Pacific rim leaders, including President Bush.
On Wednesday, North Korea's state-run newspaper Minju Joson said the United States "is wholly responsible for worsening the situation surrounding the nuclear issue."
"The U.S. should abandon its anachronistic hostile policy toward the DPRK and accept the proposal for the conclusion of a nonaggression treaty with the DPRK," the newspaper said, according to KCNA, the North's official news agency. DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea.
The Cabinet-level talks, which end Friday, are aimed at continuing inter-Korean projects that began with a 2000 summit.
Early this month, North Korea said it has completed reprocessing its 8,000 nuclear fuel rods and is using plutonium to increase its "nuclear deterrent force."
----
N. Korea Diplomacy May Hinge on Summit
October 15, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Bush-North-Korea.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Korea isn't on the agenda when President Bush meets with fellow Pacific rim leaders at an economic summit in Thailand next week. And Kim Jong Il won't be in attendance.
But the reclusive leader and his nation's nuclear program will get plenty of attention, nevertheless, as leaders scheduled to talk about trade and currency also grapple with their region's biggest security challenge.
Whatever Bush may say about the subject will receive careful scrutiny from other delegates -- and from Kim, who will be in Pyongyang.
The president's comments could well determine the fate of the six-nation talks designed to end the standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, says Jack Pritchard, a veteran Korea expert who recently retired from the State Department.
Pritchard said in an interview that Kim has been delaying a decision on a new round of talks because, if he says ``yes'' now, he would look foolish if Bush uses the Thailand meeting to excoriate the reclusive communist state.
China, in hopes of getting Kim to commit, twice offered to send an envoy to Pyongyang, only to be rebuffed. Now Pyongyang is suddenly amenable, and Pritchard says it is no coincidence that a Beijing envoy is due in Pyongyang at about the same time that the Asia-Pacific summit is getting under way early next week.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is showing impatience with the North Koreans. There has not been a six-nation meeting on the nuclear issue since a late August conclave in Beijing. More importantly, no apparent progress has been discernible toward the administration's goal, enunciated a year ago, of bringing about the verifiable and permanent dismantling of North Korea's weapons programs.
Few issues concern Pyongyang more than U.S. intentions. ``They think we are still an enemy and we're after them, and we won't be satisfied until the regime is gone,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters last Friday.
Regime change may not be the policy now but Pritchard says that, over the long term, a denuclearized, Seoul-led, unified Korean peninsula is the U.S. goal. ``Nobody tries to hide it,'' says the former diplomat, now with the Brookings Institution.
Powell has some ideas for providing security assurances to North Korea and will try them out on his Pacific rim foreign minister colleagues this weekend in Bangkok in advance of the summit.
Powell is assuming North Korea will be less reluctant to get out of the nuclear weapons business if it receives credible no-invasion pledges from the United States and the other participants in the six-party talks.
As Powell describes it, the pledges would be contained in a formal, written multilateral agreement in which the six would guarantee peaceful intentions toward one another. Lately, Powell has had his aides scouring historical files looking for models of agreements that could apply to the North Korean situation.
Aside from the United States and North Korea, participants in the six-nation process are Japan, China, South Korea and Russia. All four will have representatives in Bangkok.
The North Korea problem is being viewed here with growing urgency. Some American intelligence analysts say the country may have three, four or even six nuclear weapons instead of the one or two the CIA now estimates.
For the time being, Bush is banking on diplomacy. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday the six-party talks ``offer the best opportunity for an effective solution to getting a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula.''
Pritchard believes the North Koreans could walk away from the process if the next round does not turn out to their liking.
At that point, he says, North Korea will pick up the pace of its weapons development and may issue a public declaration before next year's U.S. presidential elections asserting that the country is a nuclear weapons state.
Failure of the diplomatic process would reverberate here as well, forcing Bush to consider other options.
EDITOR'S NOTE -- George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
More Money OKd for Weapons Worker Program
October 15, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Sick-Workers.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress has given the Energy Department permission to spend an extra $10 million to improve a much-criticized program aimed at helping sick nuclear weapons workers get compensation.
The money is in addition to $16 million already budgeted for the program, which was required by Congress three years ago and is supposed to help thousands of people who were exposed to toxins while working for Energy Department contractors.
The decision to spend more money was announced Wednesday and comes a few weeks after congressional investigators told lawmakers the program faces a seven-year backlog, which could grow as more applicants seek help.
Once medical experts determine that illnesses are job-related, the department must help workers file claims under state worker compensation systems. That is a reversal of a decades-old policy in which the department helped contractors fight claims.
Some critics in Congress are pushing to have key parts of the program transferred to the Labor Department, which they argue has more experience handling worker compensation issues.
But Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the additional money would help the agency shore up the program.
``Providing more resources to the department will allow us to process workers' claims more efficiently,'' Abraham said Wednesday in a statement.
People who worked at Energy Department facilities in nine states account for most of the claims filed under the program. Those states are: Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington.
-------- us politics
Ex-Aide: Powell Misled Americans
Greg Thielmann, a former expert on Iraqi weapons, says that key evidence in the speech was misrepresented and the public was deceived.
"They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce." Greg Thielmann
(CBS 60 Minutes II)
Oct. 15, 2003
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/main577975.shtml
The person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell says the Secretary of State misinformed Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter. Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell's speech, Iraq didn't pose an imminent threat to anyone - not even its own neighbors. "...I think my conclusion [about Powell's speech] now is that it's probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation," says Thielmann.
Pelley's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes II, Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Thielmann also tells Pelley that he believes the decision to go to war was made first and then the intelligence was interpreted to fit that conclusion.
"...The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence," says Thielmann. "They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials."
Steve Allinson and a dozen other U.N. inspectors in Iraq also watched Powell's speech. "Various people would laugh at various times [during Powell's speech] because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn't mean anything - had no meaning," says Allinson.
Pelley asks, "When the Secretary finished the speech, you and the other inspectors turned to each other and said what?" Allinson responds, "'They have nothing.'"
Allinson gives Pelley several examples of why he believes Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction. One time, he was sent to find decontamination vehicles that turned out to be fire trucks. Another time, a satellite spotted what they thought were trucks used for biological weapons.
"We were told we were going to the site to look for refrigerated trucks specifically linked to biological agents," Allinson tells Pelley. "...We found seven or eight [trucks], I think, in total, and they had cobwebs in them. Some samples were taken and nothing was found."
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President Sees Election Cash in Rebuilding Iraq
Bush's Golden Vision
by Roger Trilling
October 15 - 21, 2003
Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0342/trilling.php
On October 1, members of the Iraqi Governing Council confronted L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the man who had appointed them. They were protesting his decision to spend $1.2 billion training a new Iraqi police force-in Jordan. Bremer claimed that the facilities required did not exist in Iraq. The council demurred, insisting that their country not only had the facilities but could provide them more cheaply. "If we had voted, a majority would have rejected it," one council member said to The New York Times. "He told us what he did. He did not ask us."
The money for Jordan came out of a $60 billion funding package for Iraq, conjured by Congress in April at the president's request. In the next few weeks, they will probably approve another $87 billion, of which $70 billion is tabbed for Baghdad. That's the easy part. What's more complicated is how it will be spent, both at home and abroad. And as subcontracts awarded to Saudi conglomerates or Kuwaiti telecoms make clear, there will be a broad impact to these taxpayer billions suddenly flowing to the Persian Gulf.
Which was part of the idea all along. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives have long justified regime change in Iraq as the first step in a larger, longer, vastly more ambitious regional transformation. And while some critics have focused on the military dimension-Syria next, then Iran-right now it's about money. More soldiers may be a possibility, but contractors are inevitable.
So is a certain amount of campaign cash, cycled back from those who profit in the reconstruction. Against the backdrop of a treasury-draining scheme to remake the world, a few million dollars in corporate contributions to a sitting president may seem insignificant, but one can be sure they matter to Bush-and to his political opponents. For Democrats, the spectacle of a Republican administration larding out contracts to close allies is a political disaster.
"A hundred-fifty billion dollars is a large amount of money with no incumbent claimant," observed John Pike, of globalsecurity.org, a nonpartisan think tank for defense. "It's new money, up for grabs, and the campaign effects are a given. Such a large sum serves to consolidate the existing distribution of power in Washington, where one party is in control, and there's an uncompetitive electoral system in Congress. So this will further undermine the pretense that we live in a functional democracy-meaning, you can look forward to another round of redistricting after the next election!"
Toward that end, the administration is already putting its own people in place, gatekeepers who will manage that potentially lucrative union between American investment and Iraqi resources. Like Thomas Foley, an old business-school friend of the president's, and also one of his 2000 Connecticut campaign bosses. Foley will decide which of Iraq's roughly 200 state-owned enterprises are fit to survive.
Iraq is being set up for auction, and in Washington and Baghdad, the administration is lining up bidders. Lawyers and lobbyists, many with deep ties to the Republican electoral machine, are corralling investors ready to join in the enormous gamble. "If you go to the Four Seasons and shout out 'Who's working on a deal in Iraq?' everybody there will raise their hand," said Ed Rogers, one of the GOP's top lobbyists in Washington, according to The Hill. With non-American companies frozen out, and the UN withdrawing its mission, U.S. firms will be on their own, just the way the administration wants it.
Estimates vary on how long it will take to get Iraq up and running, but progress will be measured in oil production: Iraq is hovering around a million barrels a day now (the Coalition Provisional Authority claims 1.7); it was about 2.7 million under Saddam; 3.5 is Iraq's traditional OPEC quota, and 6 million barrels would make Iraq the rival of Russia or Saudi Arabia. At $25 to $30 a barrel, go figure. Oil experts say it will take at least five years. The administration says two.
Either way, it will depend on the army and the marines-and perhaps Bush's re-election-to stay the course.
For now, Iraqi reconstruction is dominated by military needs, and these will generate a new infrastructure. "The big-ticket items-telecommunications systems, satellite uplinks-are related to command-and-control functions," military analyst Chris Hellman explained. "But we're also going to upgrade port facilities, build access roads, fence lines, airfields, helipads . . . and anything related to military flow, either air or sealift, we'll leave behind."
Many have wondered whether the U.S. will, like an old colonial power, install garrisons in Iraq. Well, yes and no. Modern military technology is designed to accommodate early departures as well as lengthy occupations. "We're seeing some very permanent-looking temporary facilities," Hellman said. "And some of these bases will be used by the Iraqi army and police. But we're building to U.S. military specs, and that's what the Iraqis will be buying, or be given. Why? Because we've been there twice in a decade, and the military thinks it'll be nice to have them there if we need to come back."
The U.S. engagement is open-ended, in terms of time, money, and possible casualties. Its goals-establishing security, basic social services, and a functioning democracy-are vague, and vulnerable to endless sabotage. If things go badly, we can just turn Iraq over to an elected or appointed proxy (one State Department source called neocon favorite Ahmed Chalabi "our permanent exit strategy"). If things go well, the U.S. military could withdraw in a few years. But one thing is sure: We're spending money today as if there will be a tomorrow, and nobody believes in Iraq's tomorrows like this administration.
"Leaders in the region speak of a new Arab charter that champions internal reform, greater political participation, economic openness, and free trade," President Bush told the American Enterprise Institute last February. "A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region."
It's a tall order. "We're only training about 40,000 troops, and so far there's been no mention of an Iraqi air force," Pike explained. "It's a rough neighborhood, so for some years to come, only the U.S. presence will deter Syria, Iran, or Turkey. But the real pacing factor affecting our presence there will be the extent to which the U.S. can install a security apparat capable of controlling the police, the army, the politicos, and other key institutions in Iraqi society." After 30 years of Saddam's dictatorship, that's an ominous thought. But it may help explain why the Iraqi Governing Council was so upset about that police training program in Jordan.
Given the continuing absence of weapons of mass destruction, the reasons for war remain a mystery. Similarly, post-war planning has always been a secret. In November 2002, as the UN sent weapons inspectors into Iraq, the army hired Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, to develop plans for running Iraq's oil fields. Vice President Cheney had been Halliburton's CEO until 2000, and on March 8, just 11 days before the war began, KBR got a long-term contract for the repair and maintenance of Iraq's oil fields.
Also in early March, as the UN debate unraveled, the Pentagon solicited private bids from half a dozen U.S. construction companies to repair Iraqi infrastructure. It was a closed process. Other potential bidders were not invited to compete, because of the pressing need for speed and the small number of companies with appropriate security clearances.
On March 25, less than a week into the conflict, President Bush asked Congress for $62 billion to pay for the war and begin reconstruction. A few weeks later, Bechtel, a firm strongly identified with the GOP, emerged as the clear winner in the contest to rebuild Iraq. Although Democrats on various oversight committees began to complain about the closed nature of the bidding process, the subtext of their concern was that the Pentagon was choosing companies with strong Republican ties. Given the money involved, it seemed an ominous precedent in an election year.
On September 17, Bush asked for the $87 billion supplemental provision. Staffers on congressional oversight committees, however, were shocked to discover that, for the $20 billion earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction costs, no one could tell them how the numbers were derived or who came up with them. The budget also allocates billions for classified purposes, which caused Democratic senator Edward Kennedy to accuse the Pentagon of administering a slush fund for bribing potential coalition allies. The bill also designates at least $5 billion as "transfer funds," which Secretary Rumsfeld can redirect as he deems fit. It's a mysterious document.
Ordinarily, the State Department, through its Agency for International Development (AID), would oversee reconstruction costs. But in a bitter and public turf war, Rumsfeld had wrested control from Powell, and AID money was to be administered by L. Paul Bremer, who reports only to the Pentagon, which reports only to the White House. Not only was the State Department frozen out-so was Congress. They had been asked to appropriate billions for reconstruction, only to see it disappear into a closed circuit running from the White House, which requested the money, through Donald Rumsfeld, to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, which oversees its spending.
Congress is responsible for the budget, but Republicans also owe a special fealty to President Bush, who is their party's star fundraiser, and can influence their own re-election prospects. So when it comes to voting on the president's budget, they have divided loyalties. This is not the case for Democrats, who are acutely aware that although the $150 billion is for Iraq, most of it will be spent in Washington. Beginning in the spring, and with growing momentum through the summer and fall, Washington's law and lobby firms started mobilizing around the new business opportunities popping up in Baghdad.
One of the most conspicuous is New Bridge Strategies, which was created for this purpose. Its vice chair is Ed Rogers, a founding partner in one of Washington's most powerful Republican lobby firms, Barbour Griffith & Rogers (BGR). His partner Haley Barbour ran the Republican National Committee in the mid '90s, and helped organize the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994. Another BGR principal, Jennifer Larkin, ran the House Conservative Action Team, now called the Republican Study Committee, which their website calls "the largest, most influential Republican member organization in Congress." Yet another BGR officer, Keith Schuette, helped start and run the International Republican Institute, which represents the party's interests overseas. "The bottom line on New Bridge is that it appears to be very closely linked to BGR, which has many overlapping ties to the highest levels of the Republican Party," said Thomas Ferguson, a campaign finance expert at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
New Bridge's chairman is Joe Allbaugh, who was often referred to as the third point, with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, in the president's "iron triangle." In the '90s, Allbaugh served as Governor Bush's chief of staff, and then as national campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2000. Since then, he has trained for Iraq's reconstruction as head of FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
When Allbaugh resigned to take on his duties at New Bridge, it was widely seen as a cash-out. But there is little reason to believe he would walk out on his friend and boss on the verge of a presidential election. As a lobbyist, he may not be leaving Bush's circle so much as becoming a different kind of operative, able to bind corporate and lobbying dollars to White House priorities.
On October 5, much to Secretary Rumsfeld's surprise, Iraq officially became a White House operation. Placed under the stewardship of the National Security Council, Iraq is now a Condi Rice responsibility, which puts it about halfway between Rumsfeld and Karl Rove. According to the next day's New York Times, "Ms. Rice called it 'a recognition by everyone that we are in a different phase now' that Congress is considering Mr. Bush's . . . [supplemental] request."
Why congressional deliberations would usher in a different phase was left unstated, but the relation between Congress and the national security advisor became clear four days later. Bill Young, chair of the House Committee on Appropriations, was concerned that Rice, who is appointed by the president and not confirmed by Congress, cannot be called before Congress, nor compelled to turn over information-on, say, how contracts get awarded. As such, he drafted an amendment precluding her stewardship over the spending. It passed unanimously.
Rice, meanwhile, had already appointed a four-person steering committee, called the Iraq Stabilization Group. Their brief was to coordinate the various government agencies and keep things moving in Baghdad. Why? Because as the campaign season progresses, Iraq's predicament will become an ever more sensitive issue. "Forget all the talk about Arab democracy," Professor Ferguson said. "The election these guys are focused on is right here at home."
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Bush's War Plan Is Scarier Than He's Saying: The Widening Crusade
by Sydney H. Schanberg
October 15 - 21, 2003:
(Village Voice)
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0342/schanberg.php
If some wishful Americans are still hoping President Bush will acknowledge that his imperial foreign policy has stumbled in Iraq and needs fixing or reining in, they should put aside those reveries. He's going all the way-and taking us with him.
The Israeli bombing raid on Syria October 5 was an expansion of the Bush policy, carried out by the Sharon government but with the implicit approval of Washington. The government in Iran, said to be seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, reportedly expects to be the next target.
No one who believes in democracy need feel any empathy toward the governments of Syria and Iran, for they assist the terrorist movement, yet if the Bush White House is going to use its preeminent military force to subdue and neutralize all "evildoers" and adversaries everywhere in the world, the American public should be told now. Such an undertaking would be virtually endless and would require the sacrifice of enormous blood and treasure.
With no guarantee of success. And no precedent in history for such a crusade having lasting effect.
People close to the president say that his conversion to evangelical Methodism, after a life of aimless carousing, markedly informs his policies, both foreign and domestic. In the soon-to-be-published The Faith of George W. Bush (Tarcher/Penguin), a sympathetic account of this religious journey, author Stephen Mansfield writes (in the advance proofs) that in the election year 2000, Bush told Texas preacher James Robison, one of his spiritual mentors: "I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. . . . I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
Mansfield also reports: "Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president. And he framed America's challenges in nearly biblical language. Saddam Hussein is an evildoer. He has to go." The author concludes: " . . . the Bush administration does deeply reflect its leader, and this means that policy, even in military matters, will be processed in terms of the personal, in terms of the moral, and in terms of a sense of divine purpose that propels the present to meet the challenges of its time."
Some who read this article may choose to view it as the partisan perspective of a political liberal. But I have experienced wars-in India and Indochina-and have measured their results. And most of the men and women who are advocating the Bush Doctrine have not. You will find few generals among them. They are, instead, academics and think-tank people and born-again missionaries. One must not entertain any illusion that they are only opportunists in search of power, for most of them truly believe in their vision of a world crusade under the serious, and they now have power at the top.
I believe that last week's blitz of aggressive speeches and spin by the president and his chief counselors removed all doubt of his intentions.
"As long as George W. Bush is president of the United States," Vice President Cheney told the friendly Heritage Foundation, "this country will not permit gathering threats to become certain tragedies." The president himself must tell us now what this vow entails.
The public relations deluge by Bush, Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld seemed to be aimed at denying any policy fumbles and insisting that the liberal press was ignoring the positive developments in Iraq.
Mr. Cheney, the president's usual attack dog, aimed his sharpest and most sneering words at those who offer dissent about the administration's foreign and economic policies. Perhaps seeking to stifle such criticism, he raised the specter of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction that "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." His implication was that Saddam Hussein in particular had presented this threat-when virtually all the available intelligence shows that Iraq's weapons programs had been crippled or drastically diminished by UN inspections and economic sanctions imposed after the first Gulf war in 1991.
But beyond all the distortions and exaggerations and falsehoods the Bush people engaged in to rally public support for the Iraq war, what I have never understood, from the 9-11 day of tragedy onward, is why this White House has not called on the American people to be part of the war effort, to make the sacrifices civilians have always made when this country is at war.
There has been no call for rationing or conservation of critical supplies, such as gasoline. There has been no call for obligatory national service in community aid projects or emergency services. As he sent 150,000 soldiers into battle and now asks them to remain in harm's way longer than expected, the president never raised even the possibility of reinstating the military draft, perhaps the most democratizing influence in the nation's history. Instead, he has cut taxes hugely, mostly for affluent Americans, saying this would put money into circulation and create jobs. Since Bush began the tax cutting two and a half years ago, 2.7 million jobs have disappeared.
All this I don't understand. If it's a crisis-and global terrorism surely is-then why hasn't the president acted accordingly? What he did do, when he sent out those first tax rebate checks, was to tell us to go shopping. Buy clothes for the kids, tires for the car-this would get the economy humming. How does that measure up as a thoughtful, farsighted fiscal plan?
In effect, George Bush says, believe in me and I will lead you out of darkness. But he doesn't tell us any details. And it's in the details where the true costs are buried-human costs and the cost to our notion of ourselves as helpers and sharers, not slayers. No one seems to be asking themselves: If in the end the crusade is victorious, what is it we will have won? The White House never asked that question in Vietnam either.
For those who would dispute the assertion that the Bush Doctrine is a global military-based policy and is not just about liberating the Iraqi people, it's crucial to look back to the policy's origins and examine its founding documents.
The Bush Doctrine did get its birth push from Iraq-specifically from the outcome of the 1991 Gulf war, when the U.S.-led military coalition forced Saddam Hussein's troops out of Kuwait but stopped short of toppling the dictator and his oppressive government. The president then was a different George Bush, the father of the current president. The father ordered the military not to move on Baghdad, saying that the UN resolution underpinning the allied coalition did not authorize a regime change. Dick Cheney was the first George Bush's Pentagon chief. He said nothing critical at the time, but apparently he came to regret the failure to get rid of the Baghdad dictator.
A few years later, in June 1997, a group of neoconservatives formed an entity called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and issued a Statement of Principles. "The history of the 20th Century," the statement said, "should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire." One of its formal principles called for a major increase in defense spending "to carry out our global responsibilities today." Others cited the "need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values" and underscored "America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles." This, the statement said, constituted "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."
Among the 25 signatories to the PNAC founding statement were Dick Cheney, I. Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff), Donald Rumsfeld (who was also defense secretary under President Ford), and Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's No. 2 at the Pentagon, who was head of the Pentagon policy team in the first Bush presidency, reporting to Cheney, who was then defense secretary). Obviously, this fraternity has been marinating together for a long time. Other signers whose names might ring familiar were Elliot Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, and Norman Podhoretz.
Three years and several aggressive position papers later-in September 2000, just two months before George W. Bush, the son, was elected president-the PNAC put military flesh on its statement of principles with a detailed 81-page report, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." The report set several "core missions" for U.S. military forces, which included maintaining nuclear superiority, expanding the armed forces by 200,000 active-duty personnel, and "repositioning" those forces "to respond to 21st century strategic realities."
The most startling mission is described as follows: "Fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." The report depicts these potential wars as "large scale" and "spread across [the] globe."
Another escalation proposed for the military by the PNAC is to "perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions."
As for homeland security, the PNAC report says: "Develop and deploy global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for U.S. power projection around the world. Control the new 'international commons' of space and 'cyberspace,' and pave the way for the creation of a new military service-U.S. Space Forces-with the mission of space control."
Perhaps the eeriest sentence in the report is found on page 51: "The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor."
Apparently for the neoconservative civilians who are running the Iraq campaign, 9-11 was that catalyzing event-for they are now operating at full speed toward multiple, simultaneous wars. The PNAC documents can be found online at newamericancentury.org.
In the end, the answers lie with this president-and later maybe with Congress and the American voters. Is he so committed to this imperial policy that he is unable to consider rethinking it? In short, is his mind closed? And if so, how many wars will he take us into?
These are not questions in a college debate, where the answers have no consequences. When a president's closest advisers and military planners are patrons of a policy that speaks matter-of-factly of fighting multiple, simultaneous, large-scale wars across the globe, people have a right to be told about it.
In his new book, Winning Modern Wars, retired general Wesley Clark, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, offered a window into the Bush serial-war planning. He writes that serious planning for the Iraq war had already begun only two months after the 9-11 attack, and adds:
"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan. . . . I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."
A five-year military campaign. Seven countries. How far has the White House taken this plan? And how long can the president keep the nation in the dark, emerging from his White House cocoon only to speak to us in slogans and the sterile language of pep rallies?
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Clark Wants Civilian Reserve to Provide National Service
October 15, 2003
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/politics/campaigns/15CLAR.html
Gen. Wesley K. Clark called yesterday for a national service program, envisioning a voluntary civilian reserve that would allow people to be activated in times of national need.
General Clark, who is retired from the Army, was the latest Democrat to embrace the concept of national service. Under his proposal, people would register their skills and talents and be on call for five years. A tour of service would be six months.
"I believe the call to service is the highest calling any American can answer," he said to an enthusiastic and overflowing audience at Hunter College in Manhattan, "that your time and talent and energy are the greatest gifts you can give your country."
Tasks would include helping after an earthquake or forest fire in the United States. Overseas, volunteers might help a nascent democracy trying to establish a constitution.
The speech was the first of four major addresses by General Clark - the others are on health care, the economy and national security - that he plans to give over the next month to define his candidacy and try to distinguish it from that of his eight rivals for the Democratic nomination. General Clark criticized President Bush yesterday for allowing Congress to cut the budget for AmeriCorps, a volunteer service program started under President Bill Clinton as a domestic counterpart to the Peace Corps.
He said his service plan would allow Americans to donate their skills for six months into established and coordinated programs run by nonprofit organizations, nongovernmental organizations or the government. They would receive the same health care coverage as the National Guard and would be able to return to their jobs.
General Clark was on active duty for 34 years and has made the call to service a cornerstone of his presidential candidacy, which began 28 days ago.
But his character has been questioned by some top military officials, notably Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said at a forum in California last month that he had reservations about General Clark's character and integrity. General Shelton has declined to elaborate.
Representative Charles B. Rangel, a Manhattan Democrat who has helped spearhead support for General Clark, accused General Shelton yesterday of "character assassination." Speaking to reporters as the audience in a Hunter College auditorium waited for General Clark to appear, Mr. Rangel said, "For someone to say this and not to specifically identify what those problems were, I have no respect for that type of character assassination."
He added that the real "character defect" was in a person who would allude to such faults but not explain them.
General Shelton did not return a phone call yesterday and has declined repeated requests to explain his comments.
National service programs have been especially popular with Democratic presidential candidates. Senator John Edwards of North Carolina has proposed a community corps for high school students that would give grants to states that require students to participate in some form of community service to graduate.
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts has called for a similar high school program as well as a chance for college students to earn the equivalent of their state's four-year public college tuition in exchange for two years of service.
General Clark's plan would allow the president to call up 5,000 people for national emergencies.
In the Senate, John McCain, the maverick Republican of Arizona, who spoke repeatedly of such service during his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign, has joined with two Democrats, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Evan Bayh of Indiana, to introduce a national service program. But that effort has stalled as Republicans in Congress have been highly critical of AmeriCorps, saying the agency was poorly managed and lacked financial controls. AmeriCorps members serve up to a year and receive a $4,725 educational stipend for performing tasks like cleaning parks or teaching at-risk children.
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WAR COSTS
Democrats Lean Against Bush Spending Request
October 15, 2003
By DAVID FIRESTONE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/middleeast/15COST.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 - At least half the Democrats in the House are expected to vote against President Bush's $87 billion spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan later this week, and scores of others will support it only under protest, according to lawmakers and Congressional officials.
The spending bill will almost certainly pass both houses with virtually unanimous Republican support, but since President Bush announced the size of the spending request on Sept. 7, enthusiasm has diminished considerably across the political spectrum, reflecting its unpopularity around the country. A sizable though smaller proportion of Senate Democrats may also vote no on Thursday or Friday. The number is likely to grow if either chamber refuses to accept amendments that would require Iraq to repay part of the $20 billion in reconstruction aid.
The Senate voted on Tuesday night 57-to-39 against a Democratic amendment to use future Iraqi oil revenues to pay for the reconstruction.
Earlier on Tuesday, Senator John Edwards, Democrat of North Carolina, became the first presidential candidate in the Senate to oppose the bill, saying that he supported the war but not what he called the haphazard approach to reconstruction.
"It's clear to me there is not going to be a change of direction unless somebody stands up to him and says no," Mr. Edwards said while campaigning in New Hampshire, referring to the president.
Among other Democratic candidates, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts said recently that he was leaning toward voting against the bill, and Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio said he would vote against it.
A year after a contentious Congressional vote to authorize the invasion of Iraq, members of both parties say they have heard an enormous amount of opposition from constituents who have read the details of the administration's ambitious plan to rebuild Iraq at a time of record-high budget deficits. Many conservative Democrats say they would readily vote against the reconstruction aid if it were a separate bill, but feel obliged to vote for the entire package in order to avoid being charged by Republicans with abandoning the troops.
"We've got to support whatever the troops need, but they're going to make us swallow a pretty bitter $20 billion pill to do it," said Representative John S. Tanner, a moderate Democrat from Tennessee who said he would reluctantly vote for the bill. "The voters know that piece has a lot of fat and pork in it, and that it's helping some American contractors do pretty well with their no-bid contracts. But the Republicans have put us between a rock and a hard place." Mr. Tanner was one of 31 members of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative and moderate House Democrats, who wrote to President Bush on Tuesday demanding that he find a way to keep the Iraq bill from increasing the deficit. The coalition members, who often support the president's initiatives, also said the administration needs to supply a better justification for spending such a large amount.
"Many of the items in the reconstruction package are not limited to war reconstruction, and are more appropriately the responsibility of the Iraqi provisional government or have extremely inflated costs," the letter said.
While most Blue Dog members are expected to vote for the bill in the end, many other Democrats say they will not do so. The 39 members of the Congressional Black Caucus are considered likely to vote unanimously against the bill no matter what amendments are added, as will scores of other Democratic members. "It's increasingly clear that this administration and this president cannot be trusted with the money, even for the troops," said Representative Janice D. Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois.
As many as a dozen Democratic senators are expected to vote against the spending bill, but the percentage voting no will probably be less than in the House. Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, said Tuesday that he expected close votes this week on Democratic amendments to lend the money to Iraq, increase the amount of detailed spending information provided by the administration, and improve veterans health care. He did not say how he would vote, but predicted that a majority of Democratic Senators would eventually vote to approve the bill.
Democrats had hoped to split the reconstruction aid from the $67 billion in military funds, but that move was fiercely resisted by Republicans who knew that a combination of the two was the only way the reconstruction financing would pass.
Many conservative Republicans have also expressed strong misgivings about the reconstruction aid and its effect on the deficit, but have been pressured by the White House into dropping amendments requiring Iraqi repayment.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Calling for Reconciliation, New Liberian Leader Takes Office
October 15, 2003
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/africa/15LIBE.html
MONROVIA, Liberia, Oct. 14 - Urging forgiveness and rebuking lawlessness, Charles Gyude Bryant, a businessman, took power on Tuesday afternoon, charged with leading a government of national reconciliation for this war-weary nation.
"The war is over, my people - never again," Mr. Bryant announced in the rotunda of the National Assembly, packed with United Nations officials, rebel leaders in suits and the presidents of Nigeria and Ghana. "Those grievances that motivated you to take up arms against your own people and government are now on the political table. You have been brought into the government."
Mr. Bryant, who once sold tugboats to the Liberian Port Authority, was chosen in August by representatives of Liberia's warring factions to serve as chairman of an interim government until elections are held in 2005. His formidable first task is to cobble together a coalition cabinet composed of people loyal to the former Liberian warlord-turned-president, Charles G. Taylor, and the two armed guerrilla groups that sought to oust him. Rebuilding a battered, war-weary nation comes next.
"What we are asking is for each of us to look into the mirror," Mr. Bryant said, "see the enemy in us and show some willingness to forgive brother and sister."
Mr. Bryant laid out an ambitious agenda for reconstruction, intended both to drum up popular support at home and draw much needed development aid from abroad. He promised to end "a denigrating politics of patronage and tribalism," to comb the country for weapons and to set up an independent judiciary. Then, to resounding applause, he vowed to take action to lower the prices of rice and fuel.
Greed and conflict have reduced Liberia's three million citizens to among the most destitute in the world, despite the country's rich trove of rubber, timber, gold and iron ore. Founded by former American slaves more than 150 years ago, Liberia has known little but on-and-off war for the past 14 years. Unemployment is estimated to hover at around 85 percent, and a third of its people are believed to have been displaced from their homes.
Mr. Taylor ceded power on Aug. 11 to his vice president, Moses Z. Blah, who stepped down on Tuesday afternoon to make way for the new government.
Mr. Taylor's departure had been hastened by mounting international pressure, a pinching economic embargo and two separate rebel movements, supported by neighboring Guinea and Ivory Coast.
Mr. Taylor, currently in exile in southeastern Nigeria, has been charged with war crimes by a United Nations-backed tribunal.
In his first statement since leaving his country, Mr. Taylor pledged his support for Mr. Bryant. He denied charges by United Nations officials that he continues to meddle in Liberian affairs. "I pledge my all to peace and the peace-building process now unfolding in Liberia," he said. "This is my native land where I have to return one day, live, die and be buried."
Among the guests at the inauguration ceremony was the former first lady, Jewel Taylor, who sat on the dais with the other dignitaries, fanning herself.
Asked whether her husband still intended to return, Mrs. Taylor said they were not discussing it. "Let's see how the indictment goes," she said, referring to the war crimes charges. "If the indictment is dropped, he is a free man. I pray for that."
--------
New Leader Takes Office In Liberia
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26598-2003Oct14.html
MONROVIA, Liberia, Oct. 14 -- Businessman Gyude Bryant took office as Liberia's interim leader Tuesday under red, white and blue bunting in the looted capitol rotunda, inheriting a nation in ruins after years of civil war and rebellion.
Bryant, a low-key political reformer welcomed as a neutral figure in the country's power struggles, was sworn in two months after Charles Taylor, the president, was ushered into exile under international pressure as rebels surrounded Monrovia.
"Never again will we Liberians use war as a way of addressing our concerns," said Bryant, 54, pledging to guide the devastated country out of its "state of despair."
Bryant took an oath as chairman, rather than president, of the two-year transitional government, charged with guiding the country toward elections in 2005.
Taylor issued a statement on the eve of the inauguration lauding Bryant -- and himself, for clearing the way for Bryant. "My coming to Nigeria is an integral part of the peace process," Taylor said in a statement read over the telephone by spokesman Vaani Passawe.
-------- arms
U.S. World Leader in Arms Sales, Saudi Arabia number 1 Buyer
Agence France-Presse
Wednesday 15 October 2003
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/101903F.shtml
The United States sells more arms than any other country, and Saudi Arabia leads the world for buying arms among developing countries, a report from the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) said Wednesday.
The United States holds a 40.3 percent market share in arms sales, raking in 10.241 billion dollars (8.8 billion euros) from sales in 2002, according to the IISS annual report "The Military Balance 2003-2004", on arms around the world.
Saudi Arabia spent an estimated 5.2 billion dollars in 2002 buying weapons, despite having reduced arms purchases from the 1995-1998 period, the report said.
Britain, the world's second-largest arms seller, sold 4.7 billion dollars worth of weapons in 2002 and has a 18.5 percent market share. It is followed by Russia (3.1 billion dollars and 12.2 percent market share) and Francebillion dollars and 7.1 percent market share).
China comes fifth down the list selling 800 million dollars worth of arms in 2002 (3.1 percent market share), followed by Ukraine at 600 million dollars (the report did not publish the country's market share), Germany at 500 million dollars (two percent market share) and Italy at 400 million dollars (1.6 percent market share).
Israel, the world's ninth-largest arms seller, brought in 300 million dollars from sales in 2002, followed by Brazil at 200 million dollars.
Following on the heals of Saudi Arabia, Egypt was the second-largest buyer of arms among developing countries, spending 2.1 billion dollars in 2002.
Kuwait was in third at 1.3 billion dollars, followed by China (1.2 billion dollars) and Taiwan (1.1 billion dollars).
The Arab Emirates and India each spent 900 million dollars on weapons.
Israel spent 700 million dollars on weapons purchases abroad in 2002, followed by South Korea and Pakistan which each spent 600 million dollars. Saudi Arabia has recently slowed its weapons purchases, buying 26.6 billion dollars in arms in 1999-2002 compared to 38 billion in
Israel has stepped up is purchases, buying 4.3 billion dollars in weapons in 1999-2002, compared to 2.9 billion in 1995-1998.
-------- asia
APEC: Security Essential for Prosperity
October 15, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-APEC.html
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Pacific Rim officials met under tight security Wednesday to discuss a range of mutual political and trade worries and acknowledged a sad fact of the early 21st century: Terror threatens economic growth.
Host government Thailand insisted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation grouping was not being transformed into ``a security forum.''
``Leaders must address these security issues to ensure that we can trade freely and safely,'' said Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai. ``We have to admit that security issues, terrorism and transnational crime are important issues affecting our economies.''
Laying the groundwork for next week's annual summit of APEC leaders, representatives from 21 regional economies approved an action plan for improving regional counterterrorism measures and agreed to discuss banning the production, transport and sales of manned portable, shoulder-fired air-defense systems.
Delegates also agreed Wednesday to set up a task force, headed by a U.S. official, to improve health security in the region that was hit hard by the SARS crisis.
The concern was over not just ``natural diseases, but man-made ones,'' Thai Foreign Ministry spokesman Sihasak Phuangketkeow said. ``We need to strengthen the capacity of countries in the region to deal with these diseases.''
The security action plan presented to the delegates, and posted on APEC's Web site, will be presented to regional ministers and then to leaders in summit talks next Monday and Tuesday. President Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will attend.
The plan includes wide-ranging suggestions for improving security for passenger and cargo transport, energy and food supplies; efforts to fight rampant piracy in Asian waters and computer crimes and work on cutting off financing for terrorist groups.
Bush has been urging APEC members to boost support of the war on terrorism, and the North Korean nuclear weapons crisis was likely to be a focal point for the summit that ends Oct. 21.
While addressing the broader strategic issues, pushing for freer trade remains the top concern in Bangkok, particularly given the collapse of World Trade Organization negotiations just over a month ago in Cancun, Mexico.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has said APEC leaders would ``give priority'' to restarting the WTO talks ``because the world is watching what APEC can do after the Cancun failure.''
APEC's stated goal is for free trade and investment among developed members by 2010, and among developing economies by 2020. The grouping has typically voiced support for WTO moves to reduce barriers to global commerce.
Though the regional summit gives leaders a chance to emphasize their agreement on key issues, both Hu and Koizumi are likely to face heavy pressure from Bush on currency valuations that Washington contends give their nations unfair trade advantages.
``Markets ought to be determining respective currencies,'' Bush said in an interview with Asian journalists Tuesday, on the eve of a nine-day trip through Asia.
APEC members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, United States and Vietnam.
-------- business
Halliburton Accused of Fleecing US Taxpayers by Overcharging for Oil
by Larry Margasak
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
by the Associated Press
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1015-07.htm
WASHINGTON - Two Democratic lawmakers say Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, is gouging U.S. taxpayers while importing gasoline into Iraq. The Houston-based company contends it is paying the best price possible.
Reps. Henry Waxman of California and John Dingell of Michigan complained to the Bush administration that Halliburton's KBR subsidiary is billing the Army between $1.62 and $1.70 per gallon, while the average price for Middle East gasoline is 71 cents.
They also complained that Iraqis are charged between 4 cents and 15 cents at the pump for the imported gasoline.
"Although Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, the U.S. taxpayer is, in effect, subsidizing over 90 percent of the cost of gasoline sold in Iraq," the lawmakers said in the latest Democratic attacks against the Houston company that received a no-bid contract.
The charges cover the purchase and transportation of the petroleum from Kuwait and other countries.
Halliburton, originally hired to extinguish oil fires, has received the expanded role of restoring Iraq's oil industry. The company has been paid $1.4 billion through September for its work.
"KBR is not responsible for establishing the price Iraqi motorists pay for gasoline at the pump," Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said.
She said the company negotiates "fair and competitive prices" with suppliers outside Iraq and must transport the gasoline in a hostile environment.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which chose Halliburton, has received bids for a replacement contract that could be awarded this month.
Corps spokesman Robert Faletti said he could not confirm the figures that Waxman and Dingell cited in a letter to Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
He said, however, that the contract is being audited by Congress and the Army.
In a further move against Halliburton, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., announced Wednesday he would propose barring the government from awarding Iraq reconstruction contracts to companies that maintain close financial ties to the president, vice president or members of the president's Cabinet.
Lautenberg wants the measure added to an $87 billion reconstruction bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Cheney receives deferred payments from Halliburton and also has stock options.
Cheney's office has said the vice president had no role in the contract and that the deferred payments were for his services while he headed the company. He has said he would give the proceeds to charity should he profit from the exercise of stock options.
----
Defense Money Driving General Dynamics
October 15, 2003
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-generaldynamics-earns.html
CHICAGO (Reuters) - General Dynamics Corp. (GD.N), the defense contractor and maker of Gulfstream jets, on Wednesday said quarterly earnings dipped on weak business jet margins but defense revenue was strong and results topped estimates.
General Dynamics, which makes nuclear submarines and tanks, reported net earnings of $262 million, or $1.32 per share, for the third quarter ended Sept. 28, compared with $268 million, or $1.32 per share, a year earlier.
Earnings from continuing operations were $1.28 per share in the quarter, the Falls Church, Virginia-based company said. Wall Street analysts' average earnings estimate was $1.24 per share, according to Reuters Research, a unit of Reuters Group Plc.
``All their military stuff is doing great; it is the commercial that is not,'' said JSA Research analyst Paul Nisbet.
Sales rose 35 percent to $4.4 billion in the quarter from a year earlier, boosted by acquisitions. Sales in the aerospace group, which includes Gulfstream jets, rose 9.3 percent to $808 million, but operating earnings fell 50 percent to $50 million.
General Dynamics, which has made several acquisitions in 2003, has suffered in the business jet market downturn. Despite the weak results, it said Gulfstream operations continued to improve in the quarter through cost cuts, reduced inventory of used planes and more stable prices for both used and new jets.
General Dynamics expects to deliver about 50 of its large, 300 to 500 series, Gulfstream business jets in 2003 and to deliver about 53 of the jets in 2004, Chief Executive Nicholas Chabraja said in a conference call with analysts.
``A modest increase, not even 10 percent, but we see a firming of demand, it is relatively steady,'' Chabraja said.
The outlook does not assume improvement in pricing in 2004 for Gulfstream jets, he added.
General Dynamics is expected to earn $5.40 per share to $5.55 per share in 2004, he said. Wall Street analysts expect the company on average to earn $5.56 a share in 2004, according to Reuters Research.
``I want to be conservative about this,'' Chabraja said. ``I think we're going to have a good year next year.''
The strength in General Dynamics' military business largely offset continued weakness in commercial ship building and business jets. A market glut of used business jets has hurt prices in recent quarters.
Operating margins in aerospace were 6.2 percent for the quarter, down from 13.5 percent a year earlier. The margin was 9.1 percent excluding used jets. Margins can be in the high teens in a strong business jet market, one analyst said.
At the end of the quarter, General Dynamics had a funded backlog of $24.3 billion and total backlog of $38.7 billion, up from a funded backlog of $21.6 billion and total backlog of $29.5 billion a year earlier.
General Dynamics shares were off 16 cents at $84.91 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday afternoon.
-------- iraq
'Those who broke Iraq should pay to fix it'
By Zia Iqbal Shahid
Wednesday October 15, 2003
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2003-daily/15-10-2003/world/w13.htm
BRUSSELS: Prior to an important meeting of the European Union heads of state and government, anti-war EU member states have expressed their 'considered opinion' that "those who broke Iraq should pay to fix it," a prominent EU diplomat told The News.
The heads of state and government from 25 European countries, 15 member states and 10 accession countries of the EU, are scheduled to meet in Brussels on October 16 ( tomorrow) to discuss the critical situation in Iraq and Middle East, while most of the EU member states insist that power should be transferred to the elected representatives of the peoples of Iraq and the environment to implement the Middle Roadmap must be restored as soon as possible.
France and Germany, besides some other member states of the EU are expected to raise their voice in the EU summit in favour of restoration of democracy in Iraq.
France and Germany want the United Nations to have a stronger role in running Iraq and are demanding a quick transfer of power to the Iraqis.
This would be the first meeting at this level during the Italian Presidency of the European Union, which took the office in July 2003.
A source at the EU Presidency told that the EU summit would provide an opportunity to the European Heads of State and Government, to have frank and free exchange of views on the main developments at Union and international level.
The European Council is also expected to consider some issues related to the new EU constitution including affairs related to the future countenance of the EU.
"The EU is very meticulously watching the developments taking place at the Organisation of Islamic Conference summit in Putrajaya, Malaysia.
The views of the Islamic world would also be considered during the process of evolving a common European position on the issues like Iraq and the Middle East," the Union official said.
Observers here in Brussels expect heated debate on the developments taking place in Iraq.
The European Council is meeting after European Union foreign ministers endorsed a pledge of only 200m euros ($236m), which is seen as the tiny proportion of the $55bn that the World Bank says is required over the next four years to rebuild the war-ravaged country.
The European Union is the world's biggest aid donor, but in the case of Iraq EU member states are showing trepidation as some European Union countries, which opposed the war are uncomfortable with the way the United States runs Iraq, and are reluctant to make any major contribution arguing that European Union budget is already stretched with priorities such as Afghanistan, Liberia and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and more funds cannot be made available for reconstruction in Iraq.
----
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE EMPIRE
And it isn't pretty....
by Justin Raimondo
October 15, 2003
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j101503.html
Remember Ali Abbas, the cute little tyke whose arms were blown off by his American "liberators"? He's calling down vengeance on the heads of his tormentors:
"Ali Abbas, the 13-year-old boy who lost both his arms and much of his family in the bombing of Iraq, says he hopes the pilot responsible will be 'burned as I am burned.' Images of Ali crying in pain in a Baghdad hospital drew international attention. British doctors have since fitted him with artificial arms.
"'I keep asking myself why they are bombing Iraqi people. What have we done to them?' said Ali in a television interview due to be broadcast last night. 'I hoped the pilot who hit our house would be burned as I am burned and my family were burned.'"
An eye for an eye is a moral principle not limited to the Judeo-Christian tradition. And he knows who his real enemies are:
"The youngster criticized Britain for its part in the war. 'When I was in the hospital [Britons] sent me letters, but they still helped the Americans,' he said."
How many little Alis are we breeding in Iraq? Will they one day wreak their vengeance in acts of terror yet undreamed of?
Ali's revenge is just a matter of time, and, if we interpret "the pilot" responsible for his mutilation in a metaphorical or symbolic sense, then we don't have long to wait. Because the President of the United States is getting burned in Iraq every day, along with the military forces he commands, by those geniuses over at the American Enterprise Institute, and their neocon amen corner in the administration, who told him that American troops would be greeted as "liberators," that it would be a "cakewalk," and that the entry of our troops into Baghdad was like the march into Paris in the summer of 1944.
Then why are the Iraqis responding as if it's the summer of 1940 - and they're the French Resistance?
Let's look at a typical day in the life of this empire we've suddenly acquired, October 14, 2003, and see if that's what we want to be doing for the next fifty or so years.
A car bomb went off outside the Turkish Embassy, killing two and injuring at least a dozen, the day after Turkey's parliament voted to send "peacekeepers" to Iraq. It was the third such attack in a week. The proposed deployment of 10,000 Turkish troops in Iraq couldn't have provoked the Iraqis more if it had been designed to: even the U.S.-appointed "Iraqi Governing Council" opposes this crazed idea. All Iraqi ethnic groups, but for the Turkmen, are united in their opposition to Turkish troops as occupiers, but the Kurds are particularly perturbed, and with good reason: Ankara's war on the Kurds inside Turkey is a longstanding atrocity, one that has been ignored in the West - except insofar as it involved Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi dictator and the Turkish military, objectively acting in tandem, kept the Kurds in check as long as the Ba'athist regime lasted. But the U.S. invasion has tipped the balance of power in favor of the Kurds - and the Turks, facing an ongoing Kurdish insurgency within their own borders, want to tip it the other way. The Americans, like the Romans, now turn to mercenaries to police their empire.
Modern Turkey has long harbored expansionist designs, and the "transformation" of the Middle East by U.S. policymakers has given Ankara an opening. The "Pan-Turkic" ideology of the 1908 revolution, led by the legendary Ataturk (a.k.a. Mustapha Kemal), was based on a radical irredentism that envisioned the restoration of Turkish rule in the Caucasus, the Crimea, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Siberia, Turkestan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan - and, on the European side of the Bosporus: Bulgaria, Western Thrace, Yugoslavia, Cyprus, and the Aegean islands. This expansionist tendency was held in abeyance, prior to the invasion, but could be potentially unleashed by Turkey's willingness to take casualties in place of the Americans.
The invasion of Iraq had to mean its disintegration as a nation: it was only the Ba'athist ideology of Iraqi nationalism that kept the country together. In addition to the Turkish incursion, and its explosive consequences, this was a day that saw a major outbreak of fighting between rival Shi'ite factions in Karbala, where followers of Muqtada al-Sadr took over the shrine of Imam al-Hussein from fighters loyal to Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani. Casualty figures are rapidly changing, but at least 10 were killed, according to reports, and more than a dozen wounded.
In a separate incident, an American soldier of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was found dead Monday night in the Euphrates River near Hadithah: the cause of death is unclear.
Reports are also just now coming in of 7 attacks over the weekend and into Monday, in which 3 U.S. soldiers were killed and 11 others wounded. And in other news, we learn that Iraq's oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, survived an assassination attempt in Baghdad. He was traveling through Baghdad with a deputy on the Governing Council in a seven-car convoy. And that's just the attacks we know about. Setting the tone for a day of unfolding disaster, MSNBC reports:
"Gunfire rattled in the streets of Baghdad near the Palestine Hotel before dawn Tuesday, sending police rushing to the scene. The cause was unclear, and it was not known whether anyone was hurt."
Twenty-four hours in the lifespan of the Empire - and never a dull moment. Is this what we want?
I'm watching General Barry McCaffrey on MSNBC right now - it's time for my afternoon Buchanan & Press break! - and he's saying that he envisions a 2-to-5 year process of Iraqi-ization, and a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq and Kuwait. But the other guest, Senator Thomas Craig, Republican of Wyoming, didn't seem too happy with that prospect, and said he thought we could put the Iraqis in charge and get out.
It's interesting that we're hearing calls for a withdrawal, albeit muted, coming not from Democrats but from conservative Republicans like Senator Craig, who are looking for an exit strategy. All the Democratic candidates for President, except the minor ones, are calling for "nation-building" in Iraq: Dean, Kerry, Clark, and Lieberman all support the continued presence of U.S. troops. This is seen as a Republican war, yet the Democrats - with the exception of Dean - all supported it, and voted for it, handing the President a blank check. They're whining now that he's written in the sum of $87 billion, but that's just nitpicking: both parties agree on the policy.
Yet Americans do not agree: according to a recent Newsweek poll, the majority, 49 percent, disapprove of Bush's war. Americans are evenly split on our new foreign policy of perpetual bellicosity: 45 percent approve while 44 percent do not.
Who represents the dissenters?
They are locked out of the political system, ignored by both major political parties, and without a voice in Washington. But that is a dangerously elitist policy to pursue, one that could easily provoke a populist revolt. Think of the recent upsurge in California, where voters recalled a sitting governor and went outside the political establishment for new leadership - and then imagine it on a national scale. Lacking a national recall mechanism to rein in the out-of-control clique at the helm of our foreign policy, however, the rising opposition to this rotten war has no legitimate outlet - until the pressure bursts the bounds of legitimacy.
That's what they call a revolution.
--------
Shiite Factions Clash Near Shrine in Iraq
By Karl Vick and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23096-2003Oct14?language=printer
KARBALA, Iraq, Oct. 14 -- Rival Shiite Muslim groups exchanged gunfire overnight in this Shiite holy city, the first serious armed clash between Shiite factions since the Iraq war, and the top U.S. commander in Iraq warned Tuesday that American forces may soon have to move against one of the factions.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez said armed followers of Moqtada Sadr, a young Shiite cleric who has loudly opposed the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, have been regarded for months as an evolving threat to U.S.-led forces. Last week, in what American commanders described as an ambush, Sadr's Imam Mehdi army battled a U.S. patrol in Baghdad, killing two American soldiers.
"They have begun to take some actions that are going to require the coalition to respond very forcefully," Sanchez said in an interview. "Any time you have a militia that has opted to take that sort of step, a confrontation is possible.
"We've stated very clearly over and over again that the standing up of independent militias is not an option here in the country. And we're going to take the necessary steps to ensure that that doesn't happen."
Sanchez spoke in Baghdad shortly before traveling about 60 miles southwest to Karbala, where Sadr's followers and gunmen loyal to more senior clerics engaged in an intense, night-long firefight involving small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. The exchange occurred at Sadr's headquarters, about two blocks from the gold-domed shrine of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad revered by Shiites.
One person was reported killed and more than a dozen were said to be wounded, but the reports could not be immediately confirmed as rumors and anti-Sadr sentiments coursed through Karbala's main bazaar 24 hours after the incident began.
"He's a kid, he's too young," said Karim Kerkushi, hashing over the day's events at a money-changing cart. "He has no authority in Karbala."
Sadr, 30, is the son of the late Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, a cleric whose memory is revered across Iraq's Shiite heartland. But many Iraqis say the younger Sadr has neither the years nor the religious authority to assume the leading role he has presumed to take against the U.S.-led occupation. Last week, he announced that he would form a government to challenge Iraq's Governing Council, whose members were appointed by the U.S.-led occupation authority.
"Any Shiite who cooperates with occupation forces is not a Shiite." Sadr said Tuesday at a news conference in nearby Najaf, another holy city. But he repeatedly insisted that he advocates only "peaceful opposition" to the occupation force unless senior clerics say otherwise.
"Some people think that this is a revolution against the United States," he added. "Let it be revolution."
But in Najaf and Karbala, authority over Iraq's Shiite majority remains in the hands of far more senior clerics, who have remained largely silent on the U.S. occupation while quietly lobbying to ensure Shiites' rights and advantages as Iraq prepares to create a new constitution. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani evidently retains the largest following, along with a handful of other senior clerics.
According to Sistani's deputy in Karbala, Abdel-Mahdi Salami, the clash began after Sadr's followers attempted to assert their authority here three days earlier.
Salami said Sadr's lieutenants arrested another Sistani representative, whom Salami described as "a sheik, an important man." The man was taken to Sadr's Karbala headquarters, a mosque near the shrine of Hussein.
"There were promises they would release him," Salami said. But after two days of negotiations, the sheik remained a prisoner. "So there was a kind of psychological tension," Salami said. "Karbala people felt desperate."
Salami said that on Monday, people had gathered outside the Sadr mosque in a peaceful protest. "The protesters were surprised by gunfire from the mosque," he claimed, adding that the protesters "returned fire."
The captive sheik was released at midnight, Salami said, but the fighting continued until 9 a.m. Tuesday, when Iraqi police finally took control of the situation.
Sadr denied that any clash had occurred, saying he had spoken with Sistani on Tuesday morning.
As dusk fell Tuesday, the city appeared largely calm. Residents and pilgrims strolled through the cheerful sidewalk markets encircling the shrine, and an Iraqi policeman with a bullhorn urged, "Keep quiet. Remember Imam Hussein and be quiet."
At the same hour, however, about 100 young men milled outside Sadr's headquarters, opposite a wall torn open by a rocket-propelled grenade. They crowded around the shuttered gates and pressed questions on passing clerics, who referred them to more senior religious figures.
"Some people try to make strife between sects," said one man, who declined to give his name.
"America is the leader of the strife," said another, visibly angry. "There is no stability. There is no security. They are energizing the terrorist people."
In Baghdad, the Governing Council issued a statement calling events in Karbala "unacceptable and dangerous" -- specifically listing "shooting, kidnapping citizens and taking our government buildings and mosques."
"The Governing Council confirms that there is no power above the law in the new Iraq," the statement added.
In Baghdad, a military officer tracking Sadr's group said U.S. military officials are actually more worried about the militia attacking other Shiite groups than they are about attacks on U.S. forces. "It's not Sadr against the coalition," said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's Shia against the Shia."
The officer said he believes Sadr is actually becoming desperate as his calls for demonstrations draw smaller and smaller crowds. The Thursday attack on U.S. forces, the officer said, "was a plea for propaganda. . . . He's trying to draw attention to himself."
Sanchez said Sadr is not widely popular in the Shiite community and may be trying to engage U.S. forces as a means of attracting support and creating "an excuse for instability."
"There is, in fact, support for the coalition on the part of the Shia community because they can see the potential for the future," Sanchez said. "Are there radical elements out there? Yes, there are, and there are some desperate elements out there that are looking to gain power and prominence and -- just like the former regime loyalists -- are having to resort to violence."
The firefight last week "was a very clear initiative on their part, and that's the dangerous piece: that they're trying to create situations where it will appear as though we are operating against them and create an excuse for instability," Sanchez said.
Loeb reported from Baghdad.
--------
Car Bomb Explodes Outside Turkish Embassy in Baghdad
Suicide Attack Is 3rd in Past Week Against Those Allied With U.S.
By Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23315-2003Oct14.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 14 -- A car bomb exploded outside the Turkish Embassy on Tuesday, killing the suicide bomber and injuring at least two embassy staff members. It was the third car bomb attack in a week against those cooperating with U.S. forces in Iraq.
Witnesses said a Volkswagen Passat racing down the street shortly before 3 p.m. crashed into a concrete barrier and blew up outside the embassy. They said the driver apparently careered out of control before the car could reach the embassy's front gates, where a detonation would have claimed many more lives.
The force of the explosion hurled shrapnel onto rooftops and left a large charred crater in the center of a busy street lined with date palms. The car's twisted undercarriage came to rest about 50 yards away.
The U.S. military said the injured embassy staff members included a Turk and an Iraqi; witnesses at the scene said there were additional victims. Turkey's Foreign Ministry said two Iraqi policemen and an embassy employee were wounded.
The Turkish parliament voted last week to send troops to Iraq to help with postwar peacekeeping and reconstruction, but the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council strenuously objected to the decision.
The U.N. headquarters, the Jordanian Embassy, a Shiite shrine and the Baghdad police headquarters have all been targeted by car bombing attacks. Eight people were killed in the previous incident two days ago at the Baghdad Hotel, which houses civilian contractors and members of the Governing Council. On Thursday, a car bomb ripped through a police station in the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City, killing 10 people including the suicide bomber.
U.S. soldiers with sniffing dogs were outside the Turkish Embassy on Tuesday, checking cars starting at 9 a.m., because of the scheduled arrival of new Iraqi currency at the Rafidian Bank next door, said Sgt. Jarrett Lalas, 37, of the 3rd Battalion, 124th Infantry. When the money was secure, the soldiers dismantled their checkpoint at the bank and drove away; then the bomb exploded, Lalas said.
"For him to have hit it just as we pulled out -- it wasn't us," Lalas said of the intended target.
Elsewhere, the U.S. military reported three additional deaths from non-hostile incidents. Two soldiers from the 1st Armored Division were killed in an accident when their military vehicle collided with a civilian vehicle in the Kadhimiya section of Baghdad on Monday afternoon.
In Haditha, a 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment soldier disappeared in the Euphrates River near the Mudaysis Dam around 9 p.m. Monday. He was found in the water about 20 minutes later and pronounced dead at 9:45 p.m.
In Washington, a Treasury Department official linked a Pakistan-based charity, long associated with the al Qaeda terrorist network, to anti-American efforts in Iraq.
Al Akhtar Trust, which is suspected of raising and moving money for al Qaeda, was attempting to raise funds to finance "obligatory jihad," or holy war, in Iraq, said David Aufhauser, the Treasury Department's counsel general. He said the United Nations was being asked to freeze the charity's assets.
The Treasury statement also said that a financier of the trust was alleged to have ties to the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad and staff writer Douglas Farah in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
U.S., Israel Play Risk
Iraq, Syria . . . Gee, What's Next?
October 15 - 21, 2003
Village Voice Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0342/mondo1.php
hile the Democratic presidential contenders squabble among themselves over an exit strategy from Iraq, most of them agree that Israel had the right to attack Syria last week. That gives Bush a political green light to have at Syria, if not with American troops then at least through Israel.
And thanks to Tom DeLay, invigorated by his recent trip to the region, Congress is near ready to pass legislation giving the president authority to impose sanctions on Syria. The House plans to act this week and the Senate later in the month. Syrians laugh off sanctions on the grounds that they trade with Europe, not the U.S., but Syria is heavily dependent on Iraqi oil, and the U.S. has shut off the pipeline.
Taking out Syria is the next step in the neocon wet dream for remaking the Muslim world. Iran, Saudi Arabia, maybe Jordan, and Libya are the other targets.
Vermont's Howard Dean, lambasted by the other flyweight contenders as a lefty for being against the Iraq war, had this to say on CNN: "If Israel has to defend itself by striking terrorists elsewhere, it's going to have to do that. " Wesley Clark, whom the press is dying to see win, told a group of Iowans, according to C-SPAN, "The Israelis have the right to self-defense. Nobody can deny that. When they receive word that terrorists are coming in to attack and kill innocent Israelis whose only crime is to live in the State of Israel, they not only have a right to strike first, they have an obligation."
Last week there were press reports from Israel describing U.S. troop movements on the Iraq-Syria border, with Americans capturing chiefs of various nomadic tribes who live there and finding large caches of weapons in the process. These tribes are thought to provide a protective umbrella under which foreign fighters and materiel can go into Iraq. While this border stuff was going on, Israel struck at targets inside Syria for the first time in 26 years. Bush welcomed the attack, saying, "We would be doing the same thing."
Israel is becoming more and more active as a U.S. military surrogate in the Middle East. Last weekend Der Spiegel reported that Israel was ready to launch an attack against Iran's nuclear sites to prevent them from becoming operational. And, basing its reports on U.S. government sources, the Los Angeles Times claimed that Israel could fire nuclear-modified U.S.-made Harpoon cruise missiles from its submarines. The Israeli nuclear arsenal is believed to include 100 to 200 warheads that can be delivered by missiles, planes, and submarines. The Israelis claim there are no restrictions on converting Harpoons so that they can deliver nuclear warheads.
Syrian vice president Abdel-Halim Khaddam said in September that U.S. threats were a waste of time because his country's primary commercial partners are in Europe. But there's the matter of that oil pipeline from Iraq to Syria, which in Saddam's day was the source of $1 billion a year for Syria.
A survey last week in Forward, the New York Jewish paper, quoted Dick Gephardt as saying, "This was an attack on terrorism, not on Syria. I hardly think we can disagree with a country that is trying to protect itself from a terror attack. It's self-defense." Said John Kerry: "Israel, of course, has the right to defend itself." A spokesperson for Joe Lieberman said the Connecticut senator "understands why Israel had to do it."
But as the war in the Middle East expands, Israel's role is coming under scrutiny. Israel has been getting about $3 billion in U.S. aid every year, but now because of its own economic problems and the cost of fighting off suicide bombings, it is asking for $4 billion in additional military aid and $8 billion in loan guarantees.
Additional reporting: Ashley Glacel
--------
U.S. Diplomatic Convoy in Gaza Is Attacked, Killing at Least 3
October 15, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS and GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/middleeast/15CND-Gaza.html?hp
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip, Oct. 15 - A large explosion ripped apart a vehicle in a United States diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip this morning, killing three Americans and injuring one in what appeared to be the first direct attack on an American target since the Palestinian uprising started more than three years ago.
The explosion, caused by a roadside bomb or mine, hit the convoy after it had passed through the Erez Crossing, which connects Israel with the Palestinian-ruled Strip, and was traveling on the outskirts of the Palestinian town of Beit Lahiya.
The diplomats were in the narrow, coastal Gaza Strip to speak to Palestinian professors about academic scholarships. The vehicles in the convoy were armored and had diplomatic license plates.
Hours after the blast, the American embassy in Tel Aviv advised Americans to leave the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli radio reporter, Avi Isakarof, who was in the area minutes after the blast, said the charred vehicle had been thrown upside down. Pieces of flesh were strewn nearby, he said.
Palestinian militant groups have launched suicide bombings and other attacks, mostly against Israelis, throughout the uprising for statehood, but it would be the first such direct attack against Americans.
The website of the military wing of the Hamas militant group said Palestinian "resistance" groups rejected the attack and denied carrying it out.
Israeli helicopters circled overhead and a crowd of up to 800 Palestinian youths gathered at the scene of the attack, many shouting "Allahu Akbar," a triumphant chant. Some Palestinians were saying the United States had to pay a price for what it had done to Muslims and in Iraq.
Angry youths stoned foreign journalists and American investigators who had arrived to examine the scene, at a junction in the northern Gaza Strip. Palestinian police opened fire into the air in an apparent attempt to disperse them.
The blast under the driver's seat tore off the entire front of the vehicle. A fire raged from the puddle of fuel that had leaked from the wreckage into the crater of the blast.
In a statement from his office, the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, strongly condemned what he called the "crime."
"We will investigate this from our side," Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
A reporter for The Associated Press at the scene reported there was a gray wire with an on-off switch leading from the scene of the attack to a small concrete room at the side of the road.
Mohammed Radwan, a Palestinian taxi driver, said he was at a Beit Lahiya gas station when the blast went off, according to the A.P.
"I was about to fill up my car with gas when I saw the American convoy passing," Mr. Radwan was quoted as saying. "There was a Palestinian police car in front and then three big cars. When the third one passed, an explosion went off."
"The first two cars drove quickly and stopped far from the explosion," he said. "Palestinian security people jumped out of the car and rushed to the car that had blown up. When I tried to approach them, they shouted at me to leave. I saw two people covered with blood lying next to the car."
After the attack, two vehicles from the convoy returned to Erez Crossing, spattered with blood and pitted with shrapnel. An Israeli soldier donned rubber gloves to pick off a large piece of flesh from the hood.
Israeli forces have carried out large-scale raids in the northern Gaza Strip after Palestinian attacks, including the firing of rockets from nearby fields.
In a separate incident, Hamas's military wing said it had detonated a roadside bomb under a "Zionist jeep" in response to what it called Israel's aggressions against Palestinians in Rafah in the Gaza Strip and Jenin in the West Bank.
An Israeli army spokesman said three soldiers were lightly injured when an "explosive device" struck one of its army vehicles in the northern Gaza Strip 20 minutes after the attack on the American convoy.
--------
At Least 3 Dead as Blast Hits U.S. Convoy in Gaza
October 15, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Gaza-Explosion.html
BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip (AP) -- A massive explosion ripped apart a U.S. diplomatic vehicle Wednesday, killing three Americans and wounding one in the first attack on a U.S. target in three years of Israel-Palestinian fighting.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The attack was condemned by Palestinian officials who said those killed were members of a U.S. monitoring team sent to the region to supervise implementation of a U.S.-backed peace plan.
Wednesday's attack could deal a major blow to Palestinian efforts to bring more international monitors to the region.
The blast went off around 10:15 a.m. Wednesday as a three-car U.S. diplomatic convoy with a Palestinian police escort drove near a gas station on the outskirts of the town of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, along the main north-south road. Israeli reports said the U.S. cars were armored.
U.S. diplomatic sources said the people in the car were security guards for the U.S. diplomats traveling in the other vehicles. In Washington, State Department officials declined to comment.
The explosion apparently was set off by a remote-control roadside bomb. The blast tore the van in half and left the wreckage twisted with the tires up in the air. The pavement was stained with blood and littered with bits of flesh.
An AP reporter saw a gray wire with an on-off switch leading from the scene of the attack to a small concrete room at the side of the road.
Palestinian militants have attacked Israeli army and settler convoys in Gaza repeatedly in the past three years of fighting, both with bombs and gunfire. Islamic militants, responsible for the bulk of the attacks, have said in the past they have no interest in ``exporting'' the conflict by taking aim at non-Israeli targets.
Mohammed Radwan, a Palestinian taxi driver, said he was at the gas station when the blast went off.
``I was about to fill up my car with gas when I saw the American convoy passing,'' Radwan said. ``There was a Palestinian police car in front and then three big (U.S.) cars. When the third one passed, an explosion went off.''
``The first two cars drove quickly and stopped far form the explosion. Palestinian security people jumped out of the car and rushed to the car that had blown up. When I tried to approach them, they shouted at me to leave. I saw two people covered with blood lying next to the car.''
Three Americans were killed and one was wounded, according to Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. officials. The wounded man was initially treated at a Gaza hospital and was awaiting transfer to Soroka Hospital in the Israeli town of Beersheba.
Israeli radio reports said CIA officials were traveling in the convoy. Palestinian officials said the diplomats were U.S. monitors. Some of the monitors are from the CIA.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia denounced the attack. ``We strongly condemn this incident and we will conduct an investigation and we will follow it to find the source of this attack,'' he told reporters in the West Bank.
Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat suggested the blast would undercut the long-standing Palestinian plea for international supervision in the West Bank and Gaza. ``These are American monitors that have come here at our request, Erekat said. ``These people were here to help us.''
Israeli officials said the attack underscored the need to dismantle Palestinian militant groups -- a requirement of the stalled, U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan that Palestinian leaders have refused to carry out.
``What happened is evidence that no one is immune, unfortunately, to Palestinian terrorism, even when we are talking about the representatives of ... the United States, whose entire goal was and remains to advance a peace agreement between the sides,'' said Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
--------
Israel Raids Town in Gaza; Infighting Roils Palestinians
October 15, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/middleeast/15MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Oct. 14 - The Israeli Army raided the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah again on Tuesday in a search for smuggling tunnels, while the military revived a contested tactic by expelling 15 Palestinian detainees from the West Bank to Gaza.
The Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, and his new prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, carried on a running dispute over who would run the Palestinian security forces.
Mr. Arafat said Tuesday that his appointee, Hakam Bilawi, would serve as acting interior minister. But Mr. Qurei, whose candidate has been rejected by Mr. Arafat, said the position would remain vacant in the emergency government that is serving for one month.
Mr. Qurei has threatened to quit when the one-month term expires in early November.
In Rafah, dozens of Israeli tanks and armored troop carriers entered the town before dawn in a renewed search for tunnels used to smuggle weapons from neighboring Egypt, the military said.
Israeli forces demolished at least 10 houses on Tuesday and have destroyed more than 100 houses and killed 8 Palestinians since charging into Rafah last Thursday night, residents and United Nations aid workers say.
Sporadic shooting between masked Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers on Tuesday left several Palestinians wounded, according to Rafah residents.
More than 1,000 Palestinians have been left homeless since the incursion began, with many camping out in schools and public buildings.
Meanwhile, the army said 15 Palestinian detainees from the West Bank, who had been held without charge, had been deported to Gaza. Palestinians and human rights groups have complained about the practice.
--------
U.S. Vetoes Resolution Condemning Israeli Barrier
October 15, 2003
By FELICITY BARRINGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/middleeast/15ISRA.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 14 - The United States vetoed a Syrian-sponsored resolution late Tuesday that declared illegal the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank to deter terrorist attacks.
Four other members of the Security Council - Britain, Bulgaria, Cameroon and Germany - abstained.
Once again, European Union nations like France and Britain ended up on different sides, as did Russia and the United States, two members of a group that is trying to keep viable a peace plan for the Middle East that was originally presented by the United States.
In his remarks to the Council explaining the United States vote, Ambassador John D. Negroponte said the resolution "failed to address both sides of the larger security context in the Middle East, including the devastating suicide attacks that the Israelis have had to endure for the past three years."
An alternative American draft that also condemned three leading terrorist groups and called for the "dismantling of the infrastructure" of terrorism was rejected by the Syrians, who called for an immediate vote on their resolution, which was co-sponsored by Pakistan, Guinea and Malaysia.
Nasser al-Kidwa, the head of the Palestinian observer mission here, told reporters after the vote: "The issue of the expansionist wall will remain an issue of strategic importance. It cannot go on. We have to find a way to rectify what happened tonight in the Security Council."
He added, "With this expansionist wall going on, there is no road map. There is no peace."
The Israeli ambassador, Dan Gillerman, criticized the Palestinian mission and welcomed the veto, saying, "The Security Council has proved today yet again that it is not a rubber stamp for the incessant and hypocritical Palestinian and Syrian whims." Terrorism, he said, is "the very cause of Israeli defensive measures."
--------
Gaza Operation By Israel Leaves Many Homeless
Effort to Find Tunnels in Refugee Camp Is Called Most Destructive Incursion
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26893-2003Oct14?language=printer
RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, Oct. 14 -- Salahuddin Street was a canyon of rubble Tuesday, the guts and souls of a dozen houses bulldozed into hills of splintered furniture, crushed concrete blocks and tattered clothing.
The ravaged street near the Gaza Strip's southern border with Egypt was just a snapshot of a broader swath of devastation: more than 230 homes razed, bulldozed or heavily damaged, according to international aid organizations that describe this as the Israeli military's most destructive incursion into Gaza since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising three years ago.
Eight Palestinians, including two children, have been killed in the operation, which Israeli military officials say is aimed at destroying tunnels used to smuggle weapons into Gaza from Egypt. Three tunnels have been discovered in the five-day operation, according to Israel's military commander in southern Gaza.
Col. Pinky Zoaredez, Israel's commander in southern Gaza, said Palestinians and international aid organizations had "exaggerated the numbers" and that soldiers had destroyed "no more than a dozen houses."
"Our mission is to stop terrorists from smuggling ammunition and weapons from Egypt," Zoaredez said. "We behave very gently with innocent people."
But a Washington Post reporter counted a dozen houses demolished or heavily damaged on three blocks of Salahuddin Street in the Rafah refugee camp's Yibneh neighborhood -- just one of at least a half-dozen communities within the camp that have been attacked by the Israeli forces.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said the Israeli military's actions have left more than 1,200 people homeless, many of whom fled with only the clothing they wore. On Tuesday, more people abandoned houses they feared would collapse because of cracks developing in their walls and foundations.
"We awoke to the sound of bulldozers in front of our house," said Jihad Moghir, 30, who was sleeping Tuesday under a green plastic sheet pitched over wreckage that was once his home. "The kids were terrified. We escaped through a window. What the Israeli forces did here was inhuman."
International human rights and aid organizations condemned Israel for the operation. "The repeated practice by the Israeli army of deliberate and wanton destruction of homes and civilian property . . . constitutes a war crime," Amnesty International said in a statement Tuesday.
[Meanwhile, Israel's military on Tuesday ordered 15 Palestinian detainees expelled from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, an action human rights groups denounced as a violation of international law, according to the Associated Press.
[The military said most are members of Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. None participated directly in attacks on Israelis or had "blood on their hands," but all were accomplices to violence, an army statement said.]
The Rafah refugee camp, a sprawl of apartment buildings and concrete homes that house an estimated 90,000 people, has been the most dangerous and volatile flash point in the Gaza Strip during most of the Palestinian uprising.
Though the impoverished enclave makes up less than one-tenth of Gaza's population, more than half of all the houses destroyed by Israeli military forces in the Gaza Strip in the past three years have been located in the Rafah camp, and 186 of the 928 Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in Gaza were inside the camp or in the adjacent town of Rafah.
Three of the 47 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza over the last three years died in the Rafah area, and Israeli military officials said their patrols in the area are subject to daily attacks by small-arms fire and homemade explosives.
Israeli tanks, armored bulldozers and armored personnel carriers clanked into the Yibneh neighborhood from three directions Friday morning just after midnight, according to residents.
A bulldozer demolished a house near the end of the street to clear a spot for a tank, said Ziad Ahmed, who wears his black beard and curly hair cropped short. Snipers then took over a four-story gray concrete apartment building and knocked holes in the walls to position their guns, he said, pointing out the damage.
As Ahmed conducted a neighborhood tour Tuesday, heavy machine-gun fire rattled from an Israeli lookout position near the metal wall on the Egyptian border and echoed off the concrete buildings of the refugee camp. "This is our life," he said with a shrug.
Almost every house on the street was pockmarked by large-caliber bullets or gored with fat holes ripped by tank shells. In one home, a tank shell had lopped off the head of a peacock painted on a tile mosaic inside a bathroom.
Ali Yousef, his wife and six children were watching television in the early hours Friday after a late supper when they heard the tank at the end of the street firing at their house.
The family clambered out a back window as "the bulldozer came to destroy everything over our heads," Yousef said. "They destroyed everything without any reason."
On Tuesday afternoon, his wife and two daughters hunched on a carpet salvaged from the heaps of concrete. "I lost everything," Yousef said with a sad sweep of his arms.
Hussein Mustafa Awoun, 72, a retired vegetable vendor with a face as wrinkled as an autumn leaf, said he fled his house before dawn Friday. He returned two days later to find his home gutted by fire and sprayed by tank shells and machine-gun bullets. A bulldozer had smashed the front rooms and left a huge palm tree loaded with ripening dates tilting dangerously over the rubble. Inside the house, women's underwear had melted to a clothesline burned in the fire.
For Awoun, who shared the house with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and eight grandchildren, it was the second time Israeli forces had damaged his house. Six months ago, an Israeli demolition team brought down his front room when it blew up a house across the street.
"Even if we build here, they will come again and tear it down," he said. "We're too close to the border."
The military says that in three years, it has uncovered 70 tunnels under the border fence that Palestinians have used for smuggling weapons and other goods from Egypt. Israeli forces have been steadily pushing back neighborhoods of the Rafah camp from the fence. In some areas, two full blocks of homes have been destroyed to create an open area in front of the metal barrier, which is dotted with Israeli guard posts.
"When you're fighting, sometimes you do need to destroy houses and need to open the way to a tunnel," said Zoaredez, the Israeli military commander.
Since Friday, Israeli forces have destroyed 114 houses and seriously damaged another 117 in the neighborhoods of Yibneh and J and O blocks, according to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which administers the camp. Troops are currently razing houses in the nearby Salam and Brazilia neighborhoods, international aid agencies said.
On Tuesday afternoon, Wasfi Abu Heshem, 57, surveyed a dirt pit in the place she once called "my small paradise." The military had bulldozed her house, her son's home next door and nearly 50 olive, orange and other fruit trees in their gardens.
"They thought there was a tunnel here," she said. "I told the soldiers, 'Isn't it a shame to do what you're doing here? What did you find here?' "
" 'We didn't find anything,' one told me," Heshem said. "They were sorry themselves."
Correspondent John Ward Anderson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
-------- latin america
Bolivian Leader Loses Allies as Demonstrations Spread
October 15, 2003
By LARRY ROHTER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/americas/15BOLI.html
LA PAZ, Bolivia, Oct. 14 - Despite moves by the military to tighten its control of the capital, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada's hold on power grew more tenuous on Tuesday, as demonstrations demanding his resignation spread to provincial cities, and important political allies scrambled to distance themselves from him.
"If the solution to preserving Bolivian democracy passes through the resignation of the president, we cannot put that aside," said Manfred Reyes Villa, leader of the conservative New Republican Force, a crucial part of the president's fragile governing coalition. "I've been clear: We have to listen to the people."
Three cabinet ministers from the New Republican Force announced that they were suspending their participation in the government, though not formally stepping down, and a minister representing another party has formally resigned. Their actions came after Vice President Carlos Mesa broke with Mr. Sánchez de Lozada on Monday, accusing him of the indiscriminate use of force to quell the growing protests.
More than 50 people have been killed here since Saturday in clashes between mostly Indian demonstrators carrying sticks and slingshots and the heavily armed troops the president ordered into the streets.
A spokesman for the coroner's office here said "nearly every last one" of the victims had been shot to death, some at point blank range.
The antigovernment demonstrations began nearly a month ago, initially to protest a proposal to build a $5 billion pipeline to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico via a port in Chile.
Groups representing poor Indian peasants who make up a majority of the country's population organized the effort and were soon joined by labor unions, student and community groups and opposition political parties like the Movement Toward Socialism. The forces of globalization have affected every Latin American country in one way or another, but nowhere other than in Bolivia has the conflict erupted with such intensity between the government and the indigenous poor.
But as a result of the recent bloodshed, the focus of the protests has now shifted to demanding the resignation of Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, a 73-year-old millionaire businessman. Elected last year with only 22 percent of the vote, the president has accused his opponents of being part of "a seditious plot" supported by drug lords and leftist guerrillas.
Demonstrators and weeping relatives carried the bodies of some of the dead through the streets of the capital and the nearby suburb of El Alto on Tuesday, chanting "murderers, murderers" and "Goni must go," referring to the president by his nickname. Family members said they were refusing to bury the victims until the coroner's office had certified the cause of death as gunshot wounds, making them eligible for a government indemnity.
Of those known to have been killed, only one has been confirmed to be a soldier. Citing witness accounts, local news organizations reported that he was executed by his commanding officer after refusing to fire on demonstrators.
All of the casualties thus far have occurred in the La Paz metropolitan area, but there were signs that the movement to topple Mr. Sánchez de Lozada was spreading to other parts of the country. Demonstrations took place in Cochabamba and Sucre, two important provincial cities, and labor unions in Oruro announced plans to march on the capital.
As support for Mr. Sánchez de Lozada, a staunch ally in the American war on drugs, was ebbing here, his allies abroad were trying to shore up his position. In Washington, the State Department issued a statement warning that "the United States will not tolerate any interruption of constitutional order and will not support any regime that results from undemocratic means."
With roadblocks having shut all six of the main highways in and out of the capital, La Paz has become a city under siege. Tanks and armored cars moved into position around key buildings, and the military high command issued a statement warning the people to avoid any confrontation with the troops patrolling the eerily quiet streets. As a result, a de facto state of martial law prevailed in many parts of the capital.
-------- nato
The NATO Response Force
October 15, 2003
WASHINGTON TIMES
By Harlan Ullman
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031014-085213-5465r.htm
Today marks a major milestone for the future security of the United States and its NATO allies. In Brunssum, Netherlands, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commissioned its NATO Response Force (NRF). The NRF combines integrated land, sea, air and special forces. After a test period, the high-readiness, highly trained component, about 6,000 troops, will be deployable within five days to a crisis.
This force is expeditionary and rapidly usable virtually around the globe. Organized, trained and equipped for a number of combat and stability missions, the NRF will provide the alliance with new and relevant capabilities for today's challenges. However, within most of NATO's soon-to-be 26 members, there is little public awareness of the NRF. Nor is there much understanding of why this force is important and why the alliance was wise in bringing it into being.
Fifty-four years ago, ten countries met in Washington to create NATO. NATO was established as a military alliance to defend against a military threat - the clear and present danger of the Soviet Union. NATO grew to 13 and then to 16. And, it was the most successful alliance in history. In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. Total and unconditional victory was won without a single shot being fired.
With the demise of its principal enemy, NATO began a long process of re-inventing itself. For five decades, the alliance was based on fighting a big war in Europe against a massive Soviet military attack with conventional and nuclear weapons. NATO was static and reactive, with its forces largely stationed in or near the borders with the Soviet Union and its East European allies. All of that changed, including its membership. NATO expanded eastward, adding three new members. It will admit seven more.
Today, there is no threat remotely approaching the Soviets. The prospect of NATO fighting the European war for which it was originally designed is zero. That world is gone. Yugoslavia in the 1990s was the first of NATO's new challenges. That intervention culminated in the 78-day campaign in Kosovo in 1999, marking the first time NATO went to war as an alliance.
September 11 was the catastrophic demonstration of the dangers and threats that lie ahead. The next day, for the first time in its history, NATO invoked Article 5, the heart of the Washington Treaty. Article 5 effectively meant that an attack against one was an attack against all. All of NATO joined the United States in the war against terror. Clearly, that war extended far beyond NATO's original boundaries.
This August, NATO embarked on another profound departure. A NATO force of nearly 6,000 was dispatched to Afghanistan, where it will remain for a considerable time stabilizing and assisting that country. Unimaginable a decade ago, NATO's boundaries had become essentially global in reach. And, underscoring this new NATO, Gen. James L. Jones was selected as supreme commander, the first time a Marine had been awarded that post.
With the understanding that the security challenges were profoundly changed, NATO agreed last year to form the NRF. That decision, reinforced by the declaration made at NATO's summit in Prague held in November 2002, is as remarkable as NATO actions in the Balkans, the invocation of Article 5 and sending forces to Kabul. Had the NRF been in existence on Sept. 12, as Gen. Jones notes, that force would have no doubt been employed in the fight against terrorism.
But there are obstacles. NATO is based on consensus. Each member holds a veto. Decision-making was purposely glacial, a sensible policy when the enemy was the Soviet Union. And, NATO forces were "heavy" with tanks, fighter aircraft and substantial ground forces to defeat a Soviet attack. But, none of these past virtues is helpful in a world that is dynamic, with dangers entirely different and likely to arise unexpectedly - and probably more than one at a time. The NRF is meant to cope with this world. And the test for the alliance is clear. NATO must transform. There is an overabundance of ground forces, combat aircraft and tanks. Lighter, agile forces more akin to Special Forces are needed. And "niche" capabilities to counter chemical, biological and radiological agents are essential. As postwar Iraq and Afghanistan showed, dealing with failed and failing states after military action is over are part and parcel of what the NRF must do.
Gen. Jones rightly predicts that the NRF is NATO's future. However, negotiating that path with 26 different nations will be daunting. The challenge is making NATO as effective and relevant an alliance in the 21st century as it was in the 20th century. And, Gen. Jones and his military and civilian colleagues will only succeed if each nation fully remains committed to these ambitious goals. That will determine NATO's future, and to a large degree the security of the United States.
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NATO Launches New, Modern Strike Force
October 15, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NATO-Response-Force.html
BRUNSSUM, Netherlands (AP) -- NATO launched its elite rapid-reaction force Wednesday, a prototype unit that will eventually become a 20,000-member force able to deploy in short notice anywhere in the world.
The NATO Response Force's initial core of 9,000 troops, backed by naval and air power, was inaugurated during a ceremony at NATO's northern command, marking an important departure for the 19-member alliance.
For most of its 54-year history, NATO focused on the Soviet threat to Europe. Now it is getting its first multinational military unit combining air, land and sea power for use anywhere in the world on short notice.
``The creation of the initial NATO response force ... is an important sign that the alliance is rapidly changing to meet the new threats of this new century,'' said the top NATO commander, U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones. ``The (force) will give the alliance the military capability to do what it could not do before -- insert military forces into a deteriorating situation earlier in a crisis, with more speed, at greater ranges, with more sustainability than ever before.''
The full force is to become fully operational in October 2006 with 20,000 troops able to deploy within five to 30 days to deal with operations ranging from evacuations and peacekeeping to counterterrorism or high-intensity combat.
Although allied nations have moved swiftly to set up the force, NATO officials say some now need to streamline political procedures to prevent delays in deploying the force. They are particularly concerned by rules in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Turkey, which need parliamentary approval for sending troops into action.
Speaking to reporters, Jones said nations that were not politically ready to deploy troops quickly could be excluded from the new force.
The new force will not be a standing unit, but rather a pool of elite troops trained to work together and ready to respond immediately to a NATO mobilization order. Units from national forces will move in and out of the force in six-month rotations.
Spain will provide the bulk of the troops -- 2,200 -- in the initial force, plus ships, planes and helicopters. It is followed by France with 1,700 and Germany at 1,100. The United States will contribute 300 troops plus a ship and aircraft.
The overall force will be under the operational command of Gen. Sir Jack Deverell, commander of NATO's Northern Forces, while a Turkish general will command the ground troops. A Spanish admiral will command the NATO Respond Force's naval task force.
The infantry will be supported by specialists in handling nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Officials said NATO's Northern Air Command at the Ramstein base in Germany will run the prototype air component. It will comprise combat, transport and reconnaissance planes. When fully operational, the force should be able to fly 200 combat sorties a day.
The prototype force will hold its first maneuvers next month in Turkey.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld first proposed setting the force when he met in Poland last year with other NATO defense ministers. The idea was immediately backed by the allies, who saw the need to transform the old Cold War alliance into one with global reach to confront post-Sept. 11 dangers.
``The (response force) represents ... the vehicle that will drive the full transformation of the alliance from an organization designed for territorial defense to one that can confront today's multiple threats,'' Jones said at the inauguration.
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China Sends Man Into Orbit, Entering U.S.-Russian Club
October 15, 2003
New York Times
By JIM YARDLEY
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/asia/15SPAC.html?hp
BEIJING, Wednesday, Oct. 15 - The Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou 5 blasted off from the Gobi Desert on Wednesday carrying a single astronaut. The launching left government leaders jubilant yet also anxiously awaiting his safe return so China can stake its claim as one of the world's elite space-faring nations.
The launching took place about 9 a.m., according to the state-run television network, CCTV. At about 9:30, the network showed a videotape of the rocket soaring to the heavens.
The Shenzhou 5, or Divine Vessel, is expected to orbit Earth 14 times before returning after a voyage of roughly 21 hours.
If successful, the mission would make China the third nation to send a man into space, coming more than four decades after the Soviet Union and the United States accomplished the feat at the height of the cold war.
The mission also carries broad political significance for the Chinese government, which hopes to win good will and inspire nationalism in its citizens, many of whom regard the Communist Party as an increasingly irrelevant political dinosaur.
Top officials also want to display China's growing technological savvy and stake a claim to being a world power considered equal to the United States.
Until recent days, the mission has been cloaked in secrecy, down to the most basic information, including how many astronauts would be on board. But on Wednesday morning the lone astronaut proved to be Lt. Col. Yang Liwei, 38, who was chosen from a pool of 14.
"I will not disappoint the motherland," Sina.com, the country's leading Web site, quoted him as saying. "I will complete each movement with total concentration. And I will gain honor for the People's Liberation Army and for the Chinese nation."
A former pilot, Colonel Yang became an astronaut after passing an aptitude test in 1993.
Soon after he rose aloft this morning, Colonel Yang was asked by a doctor at the control center about his condition, the New China News Agency reported, and replied, "I feel good and my conditions are normal."
Assuming he can safely return the spacecraft to its landing spot in Inner Mongolia, Mr. Yang would become an instant national hero, putting a human face on a mission that has emphasized the collective technical prowess of the space program, rather than individuals.
"The successful launching of the Shenzhou 5 manned spacecraft is a glory for our great motherland," President Hu Jintao said in comments issued by the New China News Agency, "and it signifies that our country has scored an initial victory in this first effort at manned space flight. It also signifies the Chinese people have made another historically significant step forward in their progress toward conquering the summit of world science and technology."
Such promises do not deter skeptics, who note that the Chinese military is responsible for the space program and worry that the Shenzhou 5 is a part of a program to develop military applications in space.
Other analysts say China is developing military-oriented space technology but say the Shenzhou 5 has little, if any, military application. The mission is expected to conduct some scientific experiments and is carrying seeds for agricultural tests.
The mission would mark the greatest achievement of a space program whose development has been interrupted by the convulsions of contemporary Chinese history. First with the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950's, then later with the Cultural Revolution in the 1970's, China's domestic turmoil slowed, and at some points stopped, the space program.
In the early 1970's, China had started a secret program to send a man into space, even selecting a training group of astronauts before the project was canceled. But in 1992, Jiang Zemin, then the president, who remains the leader of the Chinese military, which oversees the space program, signaled China's renewed ambitions in space with a new program to send a man into orbit.
Since then, China has launched four unmanned spacecraft, beginning with the Shenzhou 1 in November 1999. The final test run for this week's launching was the Shenzhou 4 last December, which Chinese officials say spent seven days in space before returning. In all, putting a man into space took more than a decade.
"China has had a very careful, slow-paced buildup to this launch," said John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "This is the result of a deliberate decision made a decade ago. It's a very comprehensive program."
It also has big ambitions. Compared with the United States, where NASA has an annual budget of roughly $15 billion, the Chinese space budget of $2 billion is small, though it compares favorably with countries like India and Russia. Still, the Chinese plan to begin exploring the moon, to launch a Hubble-like space telescope and, possibly, to construct a rival space station to the existing International Space Station. "The second phase of our program involves more advanced technologies such as space rendezvous and docking, and will also include the establishment of an outer space laboratory system," said Gu Yidong, a high-ranking space official, in an interview this week with the New China News Agency.
Mr. Gu said China ultimately intended to explore and exploit space, particularly for energy resources, suggesting futuristic possibilities like using space as "an ideal industrial base."
The Chinese assert that they were actually first to try to send a man into space. A 16th-century Ming Dynasty artisan, Wan Hu, held kites in each hand and strapped himself to a chair equipped with rockets, according to some historical accounts carried in the state news media.
His servants reportedly lit the gunpowder-fueled rocket as Mr. Wan tried to launch himself into the sky. He failed, dying in the explosion.
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Analysts downplay talk of a space race
China's launch means rise in prestige, but experts say military satellites are bigger concern than human flight
By Brian Berger
SPACE.COM
Oct. 15, 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/980683.asp?0cv=TB10
WASHINGTON - Although China has now joined Russia and the United States as the only nations on Earth capable of launching its citizens into space, U.S. analysts following the Asian space program say they don't see a three-way space race in the making.
MORE THAN 40 years after the Soviet Union and the United States launched its first men into orbit, China has finally followed suit. And like the United States and the Soviet Union before it, China has drawn its first corps of space travelers from among the best fighter pilots its military has to offer.
Policy analysts here say they see the launch itself as something of a belated coup for a nation eager to build up its prestige on the world stage. Much like Beijing being picked to host the Olympic Games in 2008, one analyst said, the successful launch of Shenzhou 5 says to the world, "We have arrived."
"The Chinese have long aspired to be a space power," said Dean Cheng, an Asian affairs specialist at the Center for Naval Analysis here. "This is not some 'Johnny come lately' effort but a program that has consistently received support from the highest levels of Chinese government."
FIRST STEP
The launch of Shenzhou 5, Cheng said, is the first step in a long-term Chinese space program that is to include a space shuttle, space station and aerospace planes that blur the distinction between launch vehicle and aircraft.
Although China is not exactly open about what it spends on space, Cheng estimates that the Chinese space program receives about $1.5 billion to $2 billion annually. That makes China's space spending comparable to Japan's and several times greater than that of cash-strapped Russia.
But it is a fairly modest budget, he said, compared with the $6 billion a year the European Space Agency spends and the $15.5 billion a year NASA gets. Unclassified U.S. military space programs command a further $8.5 billion a year in federal spending.
China's entry into the exclusive club of spacefaring nations comes as the United States is questioning the value of human space flight in light of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy.
"This launch is an important achievement in the history of human exploration," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said Tuesday in a release. "The Chinese people have a long and distinguished history of exploration. NASA wishes China a continued safe human space flight program."
O'Keefe, who is currently participating in a White House-led effort to hash out space policy issues in light of the Columbia accident, recently told reporters that China's entrance into the human spaceflight arena, while historically significant, is not exactly a call to action for the United States.
HAWKS AREN'T HAWKISH
Even fervent China hawks are downplaying the strategic significance of the Shenzhou 5 launch and doubt it will prompt the same kind of reaction that Sputnik did 46 years ago.
At a Sept. 30 panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank here, there was widespread agreement that China's human spaceflight program does not warrant a direct response from the United States. Of greater concern, panelists said, are Chinese advances in the military use of outer space.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Stokes, a Chinese aerospace analyst at the Department of Defense, said China's entry into the human spaceflight arena does not warrant a revamping of the U.S. human spaceflight program. However, Stokes said the Chinese human spaceflight program is part and parcel of the nation's broader ambitions in space that have very clear implications for U.S. national security 10 to 20 years in the future.
He cited as a prime example Chinese strides in long-range ballistic missiles, a capability that, at least in the case of the United States and the Soviet Union, has gone hand in hand with the development of sophisticated space launch capabilities.
Stokes said China also has paid close attention to the critical role space-based assets have played in U.S. military engagements since the 1991 Gulf War and, most recently, the ongoing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stokes said he is less concerned about China joining the human spaceflight club then he is about China's efforts to develop a robust network of military satellites of its own, while at the same time researching ways to take out the other's satellites in the event of a conflict.
Larry Wortzel, vice president for foreign policy and defense studies at the Heritage Foundation, sees the Asian nation's focus on human spaceflight as a positive development for U.S. national security.
"I think it's great for them to throw money at it," Wortzel said during a recent panel discussion on China's space program here. "Every yuan spent on the Shenzou program," Wortzel said, "is a yuan not available to China's military space programs."
Wortzel cautioned U.S. policy makers against knee-jerk reactions to China's burgeoning human spaceflight capabilities.
"This is more a domestic issue than it is a national security or military issue," Wortzel said. "I hope the utility and viability of the U.S. manned space program will be evaluated on its own merits and that we will not be foolish enough to think that this is like Sputnik in [1957]."
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China Launches Its First Manned Space Mission
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26672-2003Oct14.html
BEIJING, Oct. 15 -- China on Wednesday became the third nation to send a man into space, launching a Long March 2F rocket that carried a 38-year-old former fighter pilot on a journey to take him around Earth 14 times, state media reported.
The Chinese space mission, which came 42 years after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American Alan Shepard became the first men in space, was expected to last 21 hours. The capsule, containing the astronaut, known as a taikonaut or yunhangyuan in Chinese, is scheduled to touch down near the Jiuchuan launch station in the Gobi Desert, 1,000 miles west of Beijing.
State media identified the taikonaut as Lt. Col. Yang Liwei, from Manchuria. Yang was described as an athletic former fighter pilot who has an 8-year-old son, likes swimming and skating, and has not seen his younger brother or elder sister in three years while he prepared to become China's first man in space.
Minutes after the launch, a state television announcer said the space capsule and Yang had "entered orbit at 9:10" Wednesday morning. The New China News Agency said Yang "looked composed and at ease."
"I feel good," Yang radioed back from space after 34 minutes in flight.
If successful, the journey of the manned capsule would mark a great step for China in its goal to become a major space explorer for both military and civilian purposes. The space program also underscores China's desire to become recognized as an emerging great power. Chinese scientists have vowed recently that the country would send a rocket to the moon, establish a space station, ring the globe with high-precision satellites and explore the possibility of extracting the moon's mineral wealth, particularly helium-3, a potential energy source.
But in a sign of China's still fragile self-confidence, plans to show the 9 a.m. liftoff live were canceled at the last minute, state-run media said. The launch was shown on China Central Television 40 minutes after it occurred. In 1995, six people died during the explosion of a Long March rocket, carrying an Apstar-2 satellite, in a failed liftoff shown live on Chinese TV.
A smoky trail was visible against a bright, azure northwest China sky as the rocket took off, witnesses near the launch site reported. Weather in the region was clear, with slight winds and a high temperature of 48 degrees Fahrenheit.
President Hu Jintao was at the launch center to watch China's bid to realize a dream that has a long history. A crater on the moon is named after a mythical Chinese explorer, Wan Hu, who, according to legend, died after strapping 47 rockets to a chair in an ill-fated attempt to reach the heavens. China's program to reach the moon is code-named Chang'e, for a fairy who traveled to the moon after mistakenly eating medicine that made her fly.
Hu called the launch Wednesday "the glory of our great motherland" and "a significant historic step of the Chinese people," the New China News Agency reported.
China began a manned space program in 1970 with the launch of a satellite that continues to broadcast the Maoist anthem, "The East is Red," to the heavens. That program was scratched because of lack of cash. Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, resumed the program in 1992, partly as a way to promote nationalism at a time when China was still reeling from the aftershocks of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Jiang is believed to have given the capsules their name, Shenzhou, which means divine vessel. Today's launch was Shenzhou 5; there have been four previous launches of unmanned capsules.
The Shenzhou capsule is generally modeled after the Russian Soyuz program, except that it is 30 percent bigger and China uses the orbit capsule for continued scientific experiments after the recovery vehicle detaches and returns to Earth, according to Qi Faren, the general designer of the Shenzhou spaceship.
China's media appeared poised to turn the launch into a grand campaign touting China's communist system. "I will not disappoint the motherland," Yang was quoted on China's biggest news Web site www.Sina.com, as saying. "I will complete each movement with total concentration. And I will gain honor for the People's Liberation Army and for the Chinese nation." He added, "See you tomorrow."
The space program, which is believed to have a budget of $2 billion a year, is run by the People's Liberation Army.
U.S. experts and Defense Department officials say the Chinese space program has a significant military aspect, particularly in the use of satellites to improve the accuracy of China's missiles. The United States stopped allowing China to launch American satellites in 1998 out of concern that Beijing was using the cooperation as a way to improve the accuracy of its missiles.
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Ex-Chiefs Disagree on Intelligence Overhaul
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26589-2003Oct14.html
A former CIA director yesterday endorsed a drastic overhaul of the nation's intelligence system, while another said radical change could make matters worse.
The opposing views of former directors John M. Deutch and James R. Schlesinger, who testified before a bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, illustrate the depth of disagreement among experts over whether intelligence failures before the attacks can be solved through major reforms.
The debate over the creation of a domestic intelligence agency akin to Britain's is a central question facing the commission, a 10-member panel created by Congress to investigate issues related to the attacks in New York and on the Pentagon.
Deutch, who ran the CIA for two years during the Clinton administration, said that the government should create a domestic intelligence agency to take over counterterrorism responsibilities from the FBI and vest the director of central intelligence with more authority.
Greater centralization "is the best way to improve intelligence and the safety of the American people," Deutch said.
But Schlesinger, who headed the CIA during the Richard M. Nixon years, urged caution. "Tinkering with the organizational structure can help, but by itself will not produce major improvement," Schlesinger said.
Yesterday's hearing -- the fourth held publicly since the panel was formed last year -- was interrupted by a lengthy emergency meeting that involved a "remarkable development" related to disputes over access to documents between the commission and the Bush administration, according to chairman Thomas H. Kean.
A commission spokesman said the development involved an agency other than the White House, but Kean and other members declined to reveal any other details. Kean said the panel will release more information by today. Several administration officials declined to comment or said they were unaware of the dispute.
Kean, a Republican former New Jersey governor, and the commission's vice chairman, former representative Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), have said that the panel's work would be harmed if it does not receive access to crucial administration documents immediately. The commission has subpoena power.
The panel, which has come under sharp criticism from some relatives of Sept. 11 victims for not being aggressive enough in demanding information from the Bush administration, is legislatively required to release a final report in May that will cover broad areas of intelligence policy, border security, airline safety and other matters.
Stephen Push, who heads the group Families of September 11, said he and other relatives are frustrated because "the deadlines always seem to be pushed back" on obtaining key documents, which sources have said include classified presidential daily bulletins issued in the weeks before the attacks.
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Guantanamo Translator Had Hundreds of Secret Files
Wed October 15, 2003
By Greg Frost
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3622239
WORCESTER, Mass. - A civilian translator at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp for al Qaeda and Taliban suspects had hundreds of documents labeled "secret" in his possession when he was arrested last month, an FBI agent said on Wednesday.
Prosecutors have accused Ahmed Fathy Mehalba of lying to federal officials about classified information he was carrying on Sept. 29 when he arrived in the United States from Egypt, where he had been visiting relatives.
The arrest of Mehalba, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Egyptian descent, brought to three the number of people detained after being assigned to work at the U.S. naval base in Cuba where more than 650 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members are held without being charged.
At a probable cause hearing before a federal magistrate judge in Worcester, Massachusetts, FBI Special Agent John Van Kleeff testified that government computer experts had since determined that 368 of 725 files found on a computer disc in Mehalba's possession were labeled "secret."
Some of those 368 files were also labeled "secret/noforn" -- a security term that means no representative of a foreign government is allowed to see the contents, Van Kleeff said in reply to Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Ricciuti.
Neither Van Kleeff nor Ricciuti described in more detail what information was contained in the "secret" files, which were found alongside personal documents stored on one of more than 130 computer discs Mehalba was carrying when arrested at Boston's Logan International Airport.
ACCESS TO CLASSIFIED INFORMATION
Mehalba was charged with making false statements after he initially told customs agents he was not carrying classified information when he arrived in Boston. The agents then found files on the disc suggesting otherwise.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Swartwood said he would determine by the end of the week whether there was probable cause for charging Mehalba, who is being held without bail. If convicted on the charge, Mehalba faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Both prosecutors and Mehalba's attorney, Michael Andrews, agree that the Egyptian-born linguist had access to a wide range of classified information as part of his work at Guantanamo Bay.
However, Ricciuti submitted into evidence several security clearance forms signed by Mehalba indicating the translator knew he was not authorized to travel with such information.
"He was well-advised of the rules regarding disclosure of (classified) information," Ricciuti told the court. "This disc is his own (and had) a huge amount of classified information on it."
Andrews said Mehalba does not know how the information came to be stored on the disc and was "shocked and surprised" when customs agents found it.
Speaking with reporters after the hearing, Andrews said it is possible Mehalba may have "unknowingly" stored the information on the disc when backing up the hard drive of his personal computer, which he sold earlier this year.
Van Kleeff testified that government computer experts had since recovered Mehalba's old computer and found classified documents stored on its hard drive.
The Boston Globe reported earlier this month that the names of suspected terrorists were among the classified information found on the disc, and that federal investigators are trying to track Mehalba's movements over the past two months to see if he may have shared the information.
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U.S. Vetoes U.N. Condemnation of Israel
By NICK WADHAMS
Associated Press Writer
Oct 15, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_ISRAELI_WALL?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- After a U.S. veto in the Security Council, the Palestinians promised to seek a U.N. General Assembly vote on a resolution condemning Israel for building a massive security fence that critics say essentially freezes the Mideast peace process.
The United States was the lone vote against the resolution on the 15-member Security Council Tuesday, though four nations abstained. The vote came after a daylong open debate in which most of the 40 nations that spoke condemned Israel for building the barrier, which cuts into the West Bank, as a grab for land.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the resolution was "unbalanced" and "did not further the goals of peace and security in the region."
The United States suggested additions to the document to call on all parties in the Middle East struggle to dismantle terrorist groups. But the Palestinians and Syria, which had introduced the draft, rejected the changes and went ahead with the vote anyway.
The Palestinian U.N. observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, lamented the American decision and said there can be no Mideast peace process so long as Israel continues building the barrier. "The continuation of the construction of this wall will virtually end the two-state solution and the potential for peace in the region," Al-Kidwa warned. "It is that important."
The request for Security Council action came a week after the Israeli Cabinet approved an extension of the barrier that would sweep around Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank.
Before last week's decision, the barrier - a network of fences, walls, razor wires and trenches - had largely kept to the 1967 Israel-West Bank dividing line known as the "Green Line," diverting in some places a few miles into the West Bank to enclose Jewish settlements.
Israel insisted the barrier is essential to prevent suicide attacks and by doing so would help create an atmosphere conducive to peace talks.
Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman praised the veto. He said the world community should focus on Palestinian bombers killing innocent civilians, not Israel's barrier.
"No lie is so bold and audacious as the one which pretends that Israel's actions occur in a vacuum and are not in response to years and years of terrorism of the most vicious and brutal kind," Gillerman said.
Al-Kidwa said the Palestinians would seek an emergency session of the General Assembly to introduce a similar resolution. Its adoption is certain because there are no vetoes in the 191-member body.
General Assembly resolutions - unlike those of the council - aren't legally binding but carry symbolic weight.
The United States has frequently vetoed Arab-backed resolutions seeking to censure Israel because they did not contain explicit condemnations of terrorist groups.
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, whose country is the only Arab nation on the 15-member council, introduced the draft resolution Thursday on behalf of the 22-member Arab League. After the vote, Mekdad said the U.S. veto damaged Washington's role in efforts toward a lasting Mideast peace.
"To be very frank, the image of the United States as a superpower, as a co-sponsor of the peace process, will definitely suffer," Mekdad said.
The four countries that abstained were Bulgaria, Cameroon, Germany and Britain.
There was almost universal condemnation of the wall during the day's debate. Several countries portrayed it as racist and colonialist, and an overreaction that would turn some parts of the Palestinian territories into "open-air prisons."
Negroponte repeated the U.S. position that the United States doesn't favor the barrier, though he said Israel has the right to protect itself.
"We have urged Israel to consider carefully the consequences of its actions," Negroponte said. "We also urge both parties to avoid actions that exacerbate the situation."
After the open meeting, the Security Council adjourned and diplomats said the United States was proposing changes. Negroponte has insisted any resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must condemn terrorist activities by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups.
Negroponte said the United States would have been open to further discussion but Syria was insistent on a vote. "And under the circumstances we had no choice but to veto it."
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THE RECONSTRUCTION
U.S. Seems Assured of U.N.'s Approval on Plans for Iraq
October 15, 2003
By FELICITY BARRINGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/international/middleeast/15NATI.html?hp
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 14 - The Bush administration is virtually assured of gaining Security Council approval of a revised United Nations resolution on Iraq's future, diplomats here said Tuesday, but it remains unclear whether the measure will be adopted overwhelmingly or in a less convincing, abstention-riddled vote.
The resolution, however it passes, will mark an important step in the administration's attempt to gain broader international backing both for the occupation forces in Iraq and the reconstruction of the country.
A week after it had flirted with abandoning the resolution in the face of objections from Secretary General Kofi Annan and countries like France, the administration produced a new version that made symbolic concessions to some of those concerns. The ambassador to the United Nations, John D. Negroponte, said there would be a vote on Wednesday.
In response, Russia, France and Germany presented amendments Tuesday morning that concede to the American-led coalition control over the gradual transfer of power to Iraqis, but gives the Security Council some oversight authority. In particular, they call on the coalition to give the Council a schedule for the transfer of power.
Under the American draft, the Iraqi Governing Council must produce by Dec. 15 a timetable for drafting a constitution and holding elections - the two steps seen as essential by the United States for a meaningful transfer of authority.
The European amendments were sent to Washington for consideration by the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell at midday, but administration officials made it clear that they had little time or inclination for significant compromises.
Negotiations in the late afternoon among Council members at the American mission closed the gap between the two camps slightly, but one diplomat expressed concern that Washington had not gone far enough to win the broad-based consensus that it seeks. Among other things, the United States remained steadfast in its refusal to be pinned down to any specific timetable for transferring control.
Even so, Washington and London are expected to get enough votes to pass the resolution, although as many as 5 of the 15 members could abstain, including Syria, China and the amendment's three sponsors, diplomats said.
The outline of a compromise seemed clear on Tuesday. The European proposals explicitly acknowledge that any schedule will be based on what the American-led occupation deems practicable. Originally, those countries had sought to transfer some authority to a provisional Iraqi government as soon as possible, perhaps within five months. That effort has now, it seems, been abandoned.
But the French ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sablière, said Tuesday afternoon that the amendments left open the possibility of establishing a provisional government and asked that a precise schedule for the transfer of power to Iraqis be submitted to the Security Council.
He also said that the United Nations should have a direct role in preparing both that timetable and the step-by-step process of drafting a constitution and holding elections. "This would be the minimum," he said. "If the co-sponsors would accept this proposal, then we could have a united Council."
During Council consultations on Tuesday morning, China's ambassador indicated his support of the European amendments. There were informal indications that wavering African and Latin American countries were now on board, after being lobbied by Washington over the weekend, according to diplomats.
Washington's latest revisions were greeted with little enthusiasm Tuesday morning by Mr. Annan, who said he felt the new version did not "represent a major shift in the thinking of the coalition," and warned that "as long as there's an occupation, the resistance will grow."
A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, did not rule out the possibility that some themes in the European amendments could be incorporated in the text but made it clear that others were unacceptable.
The quick back-and-forth on the draft resolutions language underscored the new fever to get the United Nations issue resolved. As little as a week ago, Washington had seriously considered backing away from the resolution, since Mr. Annan had openly expressed his opposition to having the United Nations, already a target of terrorism in Baghdad, go back in as a sidekick to the occupation authority's effort to choreograph a political transition.
Mr. Annan's doubts undermined Washington's support in countries like Chile and Angola, and cast the resolution's passage into doubt last week. A minimum of nine votes is required to pass a resolution in the Council, assuming none of the five permanent members casts a veto.
But Britain, which along with Spain and Cameroon is cosponsoring the resolution, made it clear to Washington that it strongly preferred to work with a new United Nations mandate.
Over the weekend, Mr. Negroponte consulted with his counterparts on the Council; and, in Washington, calls were made to foreign ministries to craft new language that could win the support of all, or almost all, Council members.
The ambassadors of France and Russia on Tuesday welcomed the weekend revisions, but made it clear they felt more was needed. The Russian ambassador, Sergey Lavrov, said some of the elements that are crucial to the success of the Security Council discussions are not very clear, and said that the Russian-French-German amendments would remedy the ambiguities within the framework set up by the United States and Britain.
Ms. Rice, told reporters on Tuesday, "We are looking at what the Russians and others have proposed." But she added, "We think that the resolution that we put forward is a very good resolution."
That draft provides that Iraq's Governing Council, along with the ministers chosen by them, will embody the sovereignty of Iraq.
It also took into account Mr. Annan's security considerations, saying the United Nations should assist in creating a timetable for the drafting of a constitution and the holding of democratic elections as circumstances permit.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Annan said dismissively that the passage providing that the current Iraqi institutions would embody the sovereignty of the country was "a nice phrase," but that "the occupying power will remain the government, whether the resolution is passed or not."
--------
Three Countries Give U.S. a Key Iraq Concession
Greater U.N. Role Will Not Be Sought
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25105-2003Oct14.html
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 14 -- France, Russia and Germany on Tuesday dropped their demands that the United States grant the United Nations a central role in Iraq's reconstruction and yield power to a provisional Iraqi government in the coming months.
The move constituted a major retreat by the Security Council's chief antiwar advocates, and signaled their renewed willingness to consider the merits of a U.S. resolution aimed at conferring greater international legitimacy on its military occupation of Iraq.
All three countries seem willing to accept a resolution that would retain U.S. authority over Iraq's political future while extending only a symbolic measure of sovereignty to Iraqis. But a major sticking point remains: The three governments made new demands, including setting a timetable for ending the U.S. military occupation in Iraq and strengthening the Security Council's role in monitoring Iraq's political transition.
Still, the shift by the United States' toughest critics in the 15-nation council has placed the Bush administration within reach of a diplomatic victory a week after it was on the verge of withdrawing the resolution, officials here said. Although U.S. officials acknowledge adopting the resolution is unlikely to bring new troops or resources from other countries, they say the U.N. imprimatur would help legitimize the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi Governing Council -- and help defuse opposition in Iraq.
Late Tuesday, John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said he would call for a Security Council vote Wednesday. U.S. officials wanted a vote before President Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell leave Thursday for Asia on separate trips.
The Bush administration refused to incorporate the French, Russian and German demands for a timetable for the transfer of power in a revised text presented to the council last night -- and indicated the United States would soon call their bluff.
"We will look for people to face reality and decide whether they will support this process or not," a senior U.S. official said.
The administration arrived at this point with an intensive diplomatic campaign. It was designed, in the words of a senior U.S. official, to neutralize the resolution's chief critic, France, by accommodating suggestions from Russia and Germany that were "more practical, more realistic and easier to take into account."
U.S. diplomats also addressed concerns by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that it would be too dangerous to send U.N. workers back into Iraq for the time being. Under the language of the resolution being promoted by the United States, Annan can delay sending U.N. personnel into Iraq to assume a political role "until circumstances permit."
Finally, the United States focused on every member of the council -- not just the veto-wielding permanent members -- to guarantee they could obtain at least the nine votes required to pass the resolution.
In a telephone conference call Tuesday morning, French President Jacques Chirac, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to a joint new position that includes six proposed amendments to the U.S. draft resolution.
Their proposal states that the civilian and military authority of the United States and its military allies "shall expire" once an internationally recognized government is sworn in. It calls for establishing a "national-dialogue" to involve a wider cross-section of Iraq's political leaders in the country's negotiations on a new constitution.
It envisions a role for the Security Council, working with the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqi Governing Council, in considering a timetable for a constitution and elections. And it calls on the United States, in consultation with the Iraqi Council and the U.N. secretary general, to "develop a specific schedule" for transferring power to the Iraqi people and submitting it to the U.N. Security Council.
"We think it is moving in the right direction," Sergey Lavrov, Russia's U.N. ambassador, said of the United States' latest draft. But he added: "Some of the elements which are crucial to the success of the Security Council discussions are not very clear . . . so we worked out amendments which are designed to clarify those parts of the resolution."
The Bush administration took some of the provisions on board in its latest draft. But it refused to accept any new timetables and rejected a proposed role for the Secretary General in reporting to the council when an internationally recognized government has been sworn in and the U.N.-mandated multinational force expires. The United States insisted that the mandate should be allowed to continue if requested by a new Iraqi government.
Annan said he was disappointed with the resolution because it does not set the stage for a swift transfer of power to a provisional Iraqi government, but said he could live with it.
Staff writer Glenn Kessler contributed to this report.
-------- us
Ground Truth
Voices on the ground: Stripes' survey of nearly 2,000 troops in Iraq finds morale varies as servicemembers face vastly different experiences
by David Josar
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
by Stars & Stripes
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1015-08.htm
In northern Iraq, just outside Tikrit, a soldier from the 101st Airborne sleeps every night in a sleeping bag under camouflaged netting in an open field. Every meal comes in brown plastic, ready to eat. At Tallil Air Base, about 600 miles to the south, airmen sleep in double beds complete with government-issued comforters and pillows.
Conditions for U.S. troops in Iraq vary widely, and so, too, does the mood and morale of the individual units scattered throughout the country. For months, Stars and Stripes has received scores of letters from troops complaining about one thing or another connected with their service, as well as scores of letters from troops decrying the claims of the complainers and urging them to just do their duty.
Asked about their personal morale, 34 percent overall rated it as "low" or "very low"
In an effort to feel the pulse of U.S. forces firsthand, Stars and Stripes reporters spent three weeks in August fanning across Iraq. Reporters traveled as far south as the enemy prisoner-of-war camp in Umm Qasr, about 15 miles north of the Kuwait border, and as far north as Mosul, about 70 miles from Turkey. To get a firsthand account of what life was like for American forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom, reporters slept, ate, showered and went on patrol with troops.
They handed out and received responses to nearly 2,000 questionnaires. (The U.S. Air Force allowed reporters to visit Air Force bases, but did not allow airmen to complete the surveys at some of its bases. At one base, reporters were allowed to meet with airmen and ask them the questions on the survey.)
Troops were asked about their morale and their unit's morale. They were asked about their living conditions and whether they thought their commanders were doing anything to improve those conditions. They were asked about their unit's mission and if they felt going to war in Iraq was worthwhile for America.
Of those surveyed:
¶ Many Reserve and National Guard respondents said they were unhappy with a number of things, just as letter writers from those units had said in letters to the newspaper. They said they often felt like second-class soldiers who don't receive the same equipment, support and treatment as their active-duty counterparts.
¶ When asked how worthwhile they thought the war in Iraq was for the United States, the split among all those responding was 67 percent saying it was "worthwhile," "probably worthwhile" or "very worthwhile," with 31 percent saying it was of "little value" or of "no value at all."
¶ Asked about their personal morale, 34 percent overall rated it as "low" or "very low," 27 percent said it was "high" or "very high," and virtually all the rest called it "average." Perceptions of their unit's morale ranked heavier on the "low" side. This question of personal morale elicited widely different responses among the services. Reservists ranked their morale as the lowest by far. Marine and Air Force respondents tended to rate their own morale on the high side, while Army respondents were fairly evenly divided between high and low morale, with most falling in the middle, or "average."
¶ Of all troops surveyed, 72 percent rated living conditions "average" or better. But disparities existed throughout the region. One Army unit could have three hot meals a day and another unit with the same mission subsisted on MREs and rationed bottles of water. Some units, although they had been in Iraq for months, still hadn't had a day off or access to a hot shower. Other troops had been in Iraq a few weeks and were already being allowed to leave on morale trips.
The numbers show that sometimes camp conditions and morale are not always connected. Some Marines surveyed in southern Iraq live in austere conditions but still had overall high morale.
¶ There is a sharp divide between the Air Force and Army. The Army and Air Force share several bases in Iraq, but the Air Force has separate - and superior - living conditions. The Air Force at Tallil Air Base, for example, brought in a Pizza Hut concession but the Army is barred from using it. The Air Force does deploy differently based on its mission, but soldiers, after seeing the contrast, said the division, which at times is a fence topped with barbed wire, undercuts morale and teamwork. The Air Force has its own gyms, morale tents and mess halls.
¶ Noncommissioned officers predict problems in re-enlistment, although military leaders say enlistment rates historically drop after conflicts. Nearly half of the troops surveyed said they do not plan to re-enlist. No re-enlistment figures from Iraq are available at this point, while generally the overall military re-enlistment rates appear to be satisfactory or better.
¶ While from all indications troops in Iraq are doing what needs to be done, slightly more than one-third of those responding to the questionnaire said their mission was for the most part "not clearly defined" or "not at all defined." Sixty-three percent said it was. Again, reservists mostly said that the mission was unclear. Marine and Air Force respondents tended to say that the mission was "mostly clear" or "very clear." As in other questions, Army respondents, the largest group surveyed, were almost evenly split on the question. At the same time, many respondents - mainly from the Reserves and Army - said that what they were doing was not closely related to what they were trained to do. Air Force and Marine respondents mainly tended to see their current mission and their training as more closely aligned. Reporters in the field found that the transition from war-fighting to occupation had led to different tasks. Soldiers in transportation companies were operating equipment they were not trained to drive, for instance. Marines were asked to perform peacekeeping duties they said they had been rarely been asked to do before. In interviews or written responses to the questionnaire, some troops described what they were doing as "busy work."
¶ While supply problems have not crippled operations, they have stymied some units. Troops had plenty of bullets, grenades, weapons and fuel, but they said they did not have enough of the plates that make flak vests impervious to bullets. Units also complained that they were sent into combat without enough medical supplies, and transportation companies resorted to building their own "gun trucks" because there were not enough to provide security for convoys. More than 60 percent of the troops surveyed rated their chain of command's ability to get them supplies as "average" or better. Sixty-three percent of Reserve troops rated that ability as "not good" or "poor," and 27 percent of the Army rated that "not good" or "poor."
¶ In interviews, written comments on questionnaires and letters to the editor, a number of troops complained about having to spend more time in Iraq than they thought necessary or were told they would spend. Most of these were reservists.
Over the next week, Stars and Stripes will present its findings on the issues that the troops in Iraq say are important to them. The series also will show creative means troops come up with to do their jobs - and to have some fun or add levity. And it will present what troops say leaders can do to improve morale and some ways troops keep their own morale high. It will conclude with what is next for troops and bases in Iraq.
Staff writers Jon Anderson, Terry Boyd, Lisa Burgess, Steve Liewer, Marni McEntee and Scott Schonauer contributed to this story.
----
The General and the Governor
Two Measures of American Desperation
By SUNIL K. SHARMA and JOSH FRANK
October 15, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/sharma10152003.html
Enthusiastic support for front-running Democratic presidential contenders Wesley Clark and Howard Dean from liberals and some progressives reveals the dismal state of oppositional politics in America.
Decades of unremitting right wing assaults on every sphere of American life has so jerked the political landscape to the right, that instead of clamoring for sweeping or even revolutionary changes as in days long past, the main battle-cry coming from "the left" is "Anybody But Bush."
Long before the first primary, genuinely progressive platforms of Democratic candidates such as Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich have been deemed unrealistic and unworthy of consideration not only by the media, as can be expected, but by liberal activists and advocacy groups who often concede privately that they prefer a Kucinich, Sharpton or Ralph Nader.
As the US threatens to expand the Empire, with news of American soldiers killed in our illegal occupation of Iraq a daily occurrence a war many Americans are waking up to realize they were deceived into supporting under false pretenses, as the economy continues to go down the toilet (the costs of occupation pushing the decline), and as the wealthiest of Americans are lavished with tax breaks while services benefiting the common good are eviscerated, it's no wonder that Bush's popularity ratings are at pre 9/11 levels. In this degraded climate, simply to say you're an anti-war, anti-Bush candidate is to draw cheers from a battered opposition. And while they may be an improvement over Bush, have our standards so declined that we get weak in the knees when business-as-usual candidates like Clark and Dean summersault over a low hurdle?
Another White Knight from Little Rock
Four-star general Wesley Clark first came to public attention as the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the US war on Serbia in 1999, and was until recently a CNN military analyst. Early this year, a grassroots campaign to draft Clark to run for the presidency formed and, mostly through the internet, garnered many signatures. Their efforts received an unlikely boost in the form of a letter from left-liberal author and filmmaker Michael Moore urging Clark to run. Moore claims that his article/letter helped generate 30,000 letters to the Draft Clark campaign and, sure enough, a few days later Clark declared his candidacy. Yet a look at the real Wesley Clark's past makes us wonder why so many liberals and erstwhile progressives like Moore are so gaga over Clark.
It's often said that Clark is "our best hope" to beat Bush because he's a general, and no one can tarnish his anti-Bush positions on Persian Gulf Slaughter II, the Patriot Act, and other reactionary policies with the charge that he's an "unpatriotic", "anti-American" loon (as Dean is sometimes categorized). It's a rather strange assertion considering there have only been six generals elected as president in American history, Eisenhower being the most recent, Andrew Jackson being the last Democrat. Generals who've been elected were major war heroes like George Washington and Ike. Nobody thinks Clark inhabits that pantheon.
Clark's decision to run as a Democrat is but a recent development, and his allegiance to the Party is questionable at best. Clark's first presidential vote was for Richard Nixon. He subsequently voted twice for Ronald Reagan and then for George Bush the Elder. Up until just two years ago, Clark was delivering speeches at GOP fundraisers in his home state of Arkansas, fuelling speculation he was considering a run for the Oval Office as a Republican. In a speech he gave at a fundraiser for the Pulaski County Republican Party, May 11, 2001, Clark praised Ronald Reagan's Cold War actions, Bush Sr.'s foreign policy, and singled out the current administration's hyper-unilateralist national security team: "We're going to be active, we're going to be forward engaged. But if you look around the world, there's a lot of work to be done. And I'm very glad we've got the great team in office: men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Paul O'Neill -- people I know very well -- our president, George W. Bush. We need them there, because we've got some tough challenges ahead in Europe."
Clark only declared himself a Democrat this past August. Why the decision to run as a Democrat? A hint can be found in a recent Newsweek article. After 9/11, Clark had expected the Bush Administration to enlist him in their "war on terror."
"After all, he'd been NATO commander and the investment firm he now worked for had strong Bush ties. But when GOP friends inquired, they were told: forget it. Word was that Karl Rove, the president's political mastermind, had blocked the idea. Clark was furious. [Clark] happened to chat with two prominent Republicans, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and Marc Holtzman. . . . "I would have been a Republican," Clark told them, "if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls." Soon thereafter, in fact, Clark quit his day job and began seriously planning to enter the presidential race -- as a Democrat. Clark late last week insisted the remark was a "humorous tweak." The two others said it was anything but. "He went into detail about his grievances," Holtzman said. "Clark wasn't joking. We were really shocked." (Newsweek, September 29, 2003)
"Anti-War" Ain't What it Used to Be
So why are liberals and progressives so star struck over Clark? One is the widespread perception that, as Michael Moore writes in his aforementioned letter, Clark "oppose[s] war." As the media watchdog group FAIR reveals in a review of statements made by Clark before, during and after the Iraq war, if Clark is "anti-war" then clearly the term has been gutted of any meaning.
- In an article published in The Times of London, April 10, Clark savors America's great "victory" over Iraq: "Liberation is at hand. Liberation--the powerful balm that justifies painful sacrifice, erases lingering doubt and reinforces bold actions. Already the scent of victory is in the air. Yet a bit more work and some careful reckoning need to be done before we take our triumph. . . . President Bush and Tony Blair should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt."
- As the US and its client Israel are presently focusing the crosshairs on Syria and Iran, we have Clark writing in the same article: "But the operation in Iraq will also serve as a launching pad for further diplomatic overtures, pressures and even military actions against others in the region who have supported terrorism and garnered weapons of mass destruction. Don't look for stability as a Western goal. Governments in Syria and Iran will be put on notice--indeed, may have been already--that they are 'next' if they fail to comply with Washington's concerns."
Sounds straight out of the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century playbook.
Many Clark supporters were stunned when he told the New York Times on September 19 that he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to attack Iraq: "At the time, I probably would have voted for it, but I think that's too simple a question." After pausing to consider his statement, Clark repeated: "I don't know if I would have or not. I've said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position--on balance, I probably would have voted for it."
In response to the shocked reaction among supporters to the "antiwar" candidate's statement, Clark backpedaled the next day: "Let's make one thing real clear, I would never have voted for this war." "I've gotten a very consistent record on this. There was no imminent threat. This was not a case of pre-emptive war. I would have voted for the right kind of leverage to get a diplomatic solution, an international solution to the challenge of Saddam Hussein."
Clark's claim to having a consistent record is simply false. In October 2002, Clark traveled to New Hampshire to endorse Katrina Swett's run for Congress. The Union Leader newspaper reported that, "Clark, who supports a congressional resolution that would give President Bush authority to use military force against Iraq, said if Swett were in Congress this week, he would advise her to vote for the resolution, but only after vigorous debate." (October 10, 2002)
You're Either With Us, Against Us
Clark's oft-repeated claim that the US should act in concert with the international community to a reach a diplomatic solution on Iraq is belied by statements he made on CNN before the war:
- "I probably wouldn't have made the moves that got us to this point. But just assuming that we're here at this point, then I think that the president is going to have to move ahead, despite the fact that the allies have reservations." (1/21/03)
- "The credibility of the United States is on the line, and Saddam Hussein has these weapons and so, you know, we're going to go ahead and do this and the rest of the world's got to get with us.... The U.N. has got to come in and belly up to the bar on this. But the president of the United States has put his credibility on the line, too. And so this is the time that these nations around the world, and the United Nations, are going to have to look at this evidence and decide who they line up with." (2/5/03)
And let's not forget that as Supreme Commander of NATO, Clark led an undeclared war against Serbia that was never approved by the UN. Before the Kosovo War commenced in March 1999, Clark repeatedly called for US air strikes against Serbia.
Maximum Violence
It's instructive to look at Clark's actions during the Kosovo War as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. Clark waged a brutal air war against Serbia that brought death and destruction mostly to civilians and the infrastructure that was their life support but, by most post-war accounts, left the Serbian military relatively unscathed. "We're going to systematically and progressively attack, disrupt, degrade, devastate and ultimately, unless President Milosevic complies with the demands of the international community, we're going to destroy his forces and their facilities and support." It's clear that Clark included as legitimate targets schools, bridges, hospitals, electrical facilities, market places, trains, refugee convoys, and media outlets. Clark bombed Serbia with "an almost sadistic fanaticism" (William Blum), making profligate use of deadly cluster bombs and depleted uranium shell, of the sort now ravaging Iraq. The Washington Post reports Clark "would rise out of his seat and slap the table. 'I've got to get the maximum violence out of this campaign-now!"
Independent estimates of the civilian death toll in the Kosovo War range from over 500-2000, yet Clark in testimony to Congress said there were between 20 to 30 instances of "collateral damage."
Clark's attempts to cover up instances of intentional NATO bombings of civilian targets have been exposed, though not properly publicized. In one case, fourteen people were killed in Grdenicka, Serbia on April 12, 1999 when a US jet bombed a passenger train crossing a bridge. Clark claimed the atrocity was a tragic mistake, as the pilot was firing on the bridge and the train only came into view after the bombs had been dropped. He showed two video films shot from the nose of the remote control-guided bombs to support his claim, which were later found to have been doctored. In fact, the train could be seen on the bridge when the pilot bombed it, and he turned around to make a second sweep on the burning bridge, dropping a bomb directly on the carriage.
This is the anti-war, anti-unilateralist candidate? Orwell must be rolling over in his grave.
Flunking Howard Dean's Foreign Policy
By now we have all heard of him. He has rallied progressives with his populist rhetoric, and media hounds have praised him from coast to coast-his name is Howard Dean, and he wants your vote for President of the United States.
Iraq Debauchery
Ex-Governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, catapulted onto the national stage when he announced his position opposing Bush's unilateral attack on Iraq. He was the first Democrat to enter the race for the White House, and therefore the first Presidential candidate to speak out in opposition to Bush's dubious war. However, he was never wholeheartedly opposed to dethroning Saddam. And like Wesley Clark, he's swapped positions more than once.
Dean announced back in September 2002 that if Saddam didn't comply with United Nations demands, the US reserved the right to "go into Iraq." Dean claimed he would have gladly endorsed a multilateral effort aimed at destroying Saddam's regime. And on CBS's Meet the Press last July, he said that the United States must up its pressure on Saudi Arabia and Iran. "We have to be very, very careful of Iran," he said, Bush "is too beholden to the Saudis and the Iranians."
And as the quagmire in Iraq thickens, Dean has boasted to the Washington Post that he has no intentions of bringing US troops home. Later Dean decided to flip-flop that stance, and stated in a New York Primary debate, "We need more troops. They're going to be foreign troops (in Iraq), not more American troops, as they should have been in the first place. Ours need to come home." So which is it? It seems according to Howard Dean that the Iraq disorder must go on at all costs. He is just not quite sure whose soldiers should do the occupying.
When drilled during that same debate about Bush's $87 billion Iraq package, Dean said that he would support it, and that "we have no choice...we have to support our troops." So do we support our troops by bringing them home, or by financing the occupation? He hasn't clarified.
More recently, in an October issue of the Jewish Week, Dean was quoted as saying that he has been very clear in his support for "targeted assassinations" of Palestinian terror suspects. He believes these men are, "enemy combatants in a war," and added that, "Israel has every right to shoot them before they can shoot Israelis."
Dean's Sharon Love Affair
Dean's not-so-progressive stance on the Israel/Palestine conflict may be for a good (or not so good) reason. Dean's campaign fundraiser, Steven Grossman, is the ex-director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential Israeli lobbying force in the United States-ranked number four on Forbes top twenty-five most giving organizations in Washington. AIPAC's unwavering ideology includes defending Ariel Sharon at every mishap. Grossman himself spent many nights in the Clinton White House-and it's a certainty he'll be doing the same during a Dean tenure.
In an interview with The Forward magazine, Dean admitted that his position on Israel was "closer to AIPAC's" than Palestinian advocates. He has also announced his support for the wall now separating Palestinians from their homeland, as well as championing Israel for taking their battles over the border into Syria. "If Israel has to defend itself by striking terrorists elsewhere, it's going to have to do that," Dean said in a CNN interview with Judy Woodruff, "terrorism has no place in bringing peace in the Middle East nations have the right to defend themselves just as we defended ourselves by going into Afghanistan to get rid of Al Qaeda."
Dean is also opposed to curtailing any of Israel's loan guarantees from the United States. Even though he's claimed he'll take an "even-handed" approach to the bloody conflict, Dean has made it clear he'll support the billion dollar US loan guarantees to Israel. His own campaign website exclaims that the United States should "maintain its historic special relationship with the state of Israel, providing a guarantee of its long-term defense and security."
Why all the Hype?
So how did Dean get labeled a progressive antiwar candidate? Dean wonders himself, "[I'm] out here talking about a balanced budget and a healthcare system run by the private sector," Dean said in a New York Times article, "It's pathetic I'm considered the most progressive candidate." He's even remarked on the campaign trail that he doesn't "think the Democrats are going to be able to beat the President with the equivalent of Bush-Lite." So why isn't he offering us a clear alternative, or at least acknowledging they exist?
Don't count on Dean for that. It is unlikely he'll be hailing the true progressives in the Democratic Primaries-Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton-anytime soon. Why would he point his supporters to their camps? Dean's generous patrons have anteed up over ten and a half million dollars in small donations since his campaign's inception. Their loyalty has pushed the ex-Governor into top contention for the Democratic nomination for President.
Looking over some of Dean's hawkish foreign policy positions, it's difficult to see what all the hype is about. The Right has so controlled the political landscape in the US, that Howard Dean and Wesley Clark look decent to some progressives. Even if either pull it off by winning their party's nomination, and unseat Bush-the Left will still not be "victorious."
Desperate Americans
It's hard to imagine that either Dean or Clark would be monumentally different than George W. Bush. Perhaps they would. However, its clear our struggles must continue well beyond the 2004 elections. The Democrats may save us from Bush, but with the likes of Governor Dean and General Clark leading the oppositional pack-its apparent the Democrats won't be able to save us from themselves.
Sunil K. Sharma is the editor of Dissident Voice, a radical on-line newsletter that is "dedicated to challenging the lies of the corporate press and the privileged classes it serves." ()
Josh Frank is a writer and activist living in New York City. This article will appear in the upcoming issue of Left-Turn Magazine.
They can be reached at: frank_joshua@hotmail.com
-------- propaganda wars
Judge Orders Reporters to Reveal Sources
4 News Organizations Told to Identify Officials Interviewed in Wen Ho Lee Reports
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26919-2003Oct14.html
A federal judge has set the stage for an unusual clash over assertions by reporters for four news organizations that they need not disclose the names of their sources, a traditional journalistic practice that underpins much of news reporting in Washington.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson late last week ordered journalists at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and Cable News Network to reveal who in the government may have disclosed derogatory information to them about Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear weapons scientist who was the chief suspect in an espionage case.
Lee has sued the government to recover damages for alleged harm to his reputation caused by leaks of confidential information from the government's espionage investigation. His lawyers have encountered what the judge described as "a pattern of denials, vague or evasive answers, and stonewalling" on the part of the government officials they questioned.
That gives Lee's attorneys the right, Jackson said, to demand that certain journalists who wrote about the case say which officials might have provided the information.
"This is kind of bad news," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Washington-based Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She said it is highly unusual for a judge to order so many reporters at once to divulge their sources and almost unprecedented in a case in which no criminal actions are alleged.
No similar case has been adjudicated in Washington since 1981, and media legal experts forecast a battle between the court and the news organizations, which traditionally have refused to comply with court orders to name confidential sources. All four companies had sought to quash the subpoenas, but Jackson ordered they must go forward.
His Oct. 9 decision was mailed and reached the companies yesterday. The Associated Press's assistant general counsel, Dave Tomlin, said the parties are deciding whether to appeal the order. He suggested, however, that Lee's attorneys had not met tests established by court opinions as a condition for compelling the disclosures.
Catherine Mathis, spokeswoman for the New York Times, said, "We continue to believe that the confidentiality of our sources is critical to providing the public with important information and plan to seek an appeal."
At the heart of the dispute is some flawed reporting about the government's investigation of alleged espionage, which officials asserted had produced an unexpected advance in the design of Chinese nuclear warheads. The case electrified Washington after various news organizations in early 1999 named Lee, a Taiwanese-born scientist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, as the chief suspect.
Lee pleaded guilty to a single felony count of copying classified documents onto computer tapes without authorization. But the case brought mostly embarrassment to everyone involved. The FBI acknowledged that it botched the investigation by focusing on Lee to the exclusion of others, and in 2000 dropped 59 counts of felony espionage it had lodged against him.
The bungling led to congressional hearings, internal investigations and a judge's eventual statement that the government had "embarrassed this entire nation." The government, in turn, blamed its errors partly on the frenzied atmosphere stirred by overzealous news coverage.
The New York Times, in an unusually lengthy editor's note in September 2000, said it had "found some things we wish we had done differently in the course of the coverage to give Dr. Lee the full benefit of the doubt."
Lee's lawsuit against the Energy Department and the FBI alleges violations of the Privacy Act, which bars unauthorized disclosure of certain personal information by government agencies. Lee said various disclosures about him were orchestrated to cover the government's embarrassment about security lapses at Los Alamos, and he alleged harm to his reputation, emotional distress and financial loss.
Jackson's decision states that federal and Supreme Court opinions have held that reporters lack an absolute right to withhold information about their sources, and that they must yield in lawsuits brought in federal court once plaintiffs have proven the source information is central to their case and exhausted alternative means of obtaining the information.
In this case, Jackson said, 20 depositions of current and former officials at the FBI, Energy Department, Justice Department and U.S. attorney's office in New Mexico, where Los Alamos is located, yielded no useful information. "At the moment, only the journalists can testify as to whether defendants were the sources for the various news stories," he said in ordering them to submit to depositions and provide pertinent records.
Charles Tobin, attorney for Pierre Thomas, who was reporting for CNN at the time, said he was "disappointed" by the judge's order. "We're studying the judge's decision and weighing our options." Heather Hersh Gilhooly and Brian Sun, attorneys for Lee, said they were reviewing Jackson's order and declined to comment.
Only one reporter who was subpoenaed has agreed to answer questions from Lee's attorneys, but said he would not name anonymous sources. Ian Hoffman, a former reporter for the Albuquerque Journal, said he decided to do so because a government official he had quoted in an article about Lee maintained falsely to have never spoken with Hoffman. "In circumstances such as that, we needed to break with tradition and address it," Hoffman said in an interview last night.
Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Name Sources, Judge Orders Five Reporters
October 15, 2003
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/national/15PRES.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 - A federal judge has ordered five reporters, including two from The New York Times, to disclose the confidential sources they used in preparing articles about Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the former scientist at the nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.
The judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson of Federal District Court here, ordered the reporters on Friday to disclose their sources' names and provide Dr. Lee's lawyers with notes and other materials compiled in their newsgathering.
Judge Jackson ruled that First Amendment protections that shield journalists from government interference were outweighed in this specific case by the need of Dr. Lee's lawyers to provide evidence of government leaks in their suit against the government.
The judge did not give a deadline for compliance.
Dr. Lee, a former scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, is suing the Energy and Justice Departments for reportedly providing reporters confidential information about him, including federal agents' suspicions that he stole nuclear secrets from his workplace.
Dr. Lee was indicted on 59 felony counts in 1999, but after he spent nearly nine months in solitary confinement, no evidence of espionage emerged. He was released after pleading guilty to one felony count of mishandling nuclear weapons data. In his ruling, Judge Jackson said the case had "embarrassed our entire nation."
A spokeswoman for The Times, Catherine J. Mathis, said the newspaper would appeal. The reporters for The Times, Jeff Gerth and James Risen, were named in the order, along with Robert Drogin of The Los Angeles Times, H. Josef Hebert of The Associated Press and Pierre Thomas of CNN, who moved to ABC.
"We believe," Ms. Mathis said, "that the confidentiality of sources is critical to our ability to provide the public with important news."
Several federal officials, including former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who is now governor of New Mexico, have said in depositions that they do not recall divulging information about Dr. Lee to reporters. Other officials have denied leaking the information.
Dave Tomlin, assistant general counsel of The A.P., said his organization was still deciding whether to appeal.
"Before the First Amendment lets you compel reporters to reveal sources," Mr. Tomlin said, "we think you have to do more than get a small handful of government officials to shrug their shoulders and claim they don't know or can't remember."
A lawyer for The Los Angeles Times, Lee Levine, said the newspaper had not decided how to proceed.
"We are still studying the decision," Mr. Levine said.
CNN declined to comment.
-------- drug war
High court backs states' pot statutes
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20031015/frontpage/124466-66345.jpg
SAN FRANCISCO -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a Justice Department effort to punish doctors in Washington and other states for recommending marijuana or even discussing the drug's benefits with their patients.
The justices, in declining to review an appellate decision favoring the doctors, handed a big victory to medical marijuana patients in nine states that allow the infirm to smoke or grow marijuana with a doctor's permission.
Besides Washington, those states are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada and Oregon. Thirty-five states have passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value, while federal law declares marijuana an illegal drug with no medical benefit.
The administration had sought to punish doctors who recommend or discuss marijuana by revoking the Drug Enforcement Administration licenses, effectively barring them from practicing medicine. A ruling in favor of the feds would have gutted state marijuana laws, which generally depend on a patient's ability to get a doctor's recommendation.
"This is so incredible," said California cancer patient Angel Raich, who smokes marijuana daily with a doctor's recommendation. "Hopefully, there'll be more doctors now that will feel safer in recommending cannabis to patients who need it."
--------
U.S. Appeal Of Marijuana Case Rejected
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23746-2003Oct14.html
The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will let stand a federal appeals court ruling that bars the federal government from punishing doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients.
Without comment, the court refused to hear the Bush administration's challenge of a ruling last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that upheld a federal district court injunction blocking Washington's efforts to prevent doctors from telling patients marijuana might help them. The federal policy violated the constitutional guarantee of free speech, the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit court ruled.
The decision came as a surprise defeat for the federal government in its battle against the "medical marijuana" movement. In his appeal petition to the court, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, using the kind of language that often persuades the justices to hear an appeal by the government, had called the 9th Circuit decision "an issue of exceptional and continuing importance" that "impairs the Executive's authority to enforce the law in an area vital to the public health and safety."
Instead, the court took a step whose immediate political and practical impact is favorable to the campaign for medical marijuana. The principal effect is to allow doctors to recommend marijuana to patients -- but not to provide it to them.
That is important because medical marijuana laws generally permit the possession of small amounts of marijuana only with some form of written authorization from a doctor, though in California an oral recommendation suffices.
"If there can be no recommendation, there can be no patients who benefit," said Graham Boyd, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who urged the Supreme Court to reject the government's appeal. But now doctors can make such recommendations, even in writing, without fear of federal investigation, Boyd said.
"I can do my job again and have real conversations with my patients about medical marijuana as part of their treatment options," said Marcus Conant, the San Francisco-based AIDS doctor who filed the case with the support of the ACLU.
The decision leaves intact a 2000 order by a California federal district court that barred the federal government from acting on threats to deny doctors who recommend marijuana the right to prescribe controlled substances or to participate in Medicaid and Medicare.
However, ordinary possession and distribution of marijuana remain illegal under federal and state laws in all nine states -- Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington -- that have medical marijuana laws on the books. Maryland recently enacted a law that permits those convicted of marijuana possession to argue for a reduced sentence based on medical need.
Though federal prosecutions of people for possession of small amounts of marijuana are rare, the threat of federal legal action against those who supply marijuana to people with a doctor's note remains. In 2001, the Supreme Court upheld a Justice Department effort to shut down an Oakland "cannabis club," ruling that there is no "medical necessity" exception to the federal ban on marijuana possession.
Advocates of medical marijuana laws say that smoking marijuana is often the only way that patients with cancer or AIDS can cope with pain or relieve nausea.
But the Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it, says that federal law still classifies marijuana as a substance with "no currently accepted medical use" and "a high potential for abuse."
After voters in California and Arizona adopted medical marijuana ballot initiatives in 1996, the Clinton administration warned doctors that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would strip away the right to prescribe federally controlled medication from the prescription license of any physician found "recommending or prescribing" marijuana. Doctors who recommend marijuana could also face criminal prosecution and exclusion from Medicaid and Medicare, the statement added.
The Department of Health and Human Services followed with a Feb. 27, 1997, letter to medical association leaders around the country saying that the federal government "encourage[s] physicians to talk with patients about their concerns" but that doctors "may not intentionally provide their patients with oral or written statements in order to enable them to obtain controlled substances in violation of federal law."
But these policies never took effect because, in early 1997, Conant and others sued in federal district court and obtained a court order barring them.
The case is Walters v. Conant, No. 03-40.
--------
SUPREME COURT ROUNDUP
Justices Say Doctors May Not Be Punished for Recommending Medical Marijuana
October 15, 2003
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/national/15SCOT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 - The Supreme Court, in a silent rebuff on Tuesday to federal policy on medical marijuana, let stand an appeals court ruling that doctors may not be investigated, threatened or punished by federal regulators for recommending marijuana as a medical treatment for their patients.
As a result, doctors in California and six other Western states where voters or legislators have approved marijuana for medical uses like pain relief may now discuss it freely with their patients without fear of jeopardizing their federal licenses to prescribe drugs. Advocates of medical marijuana greeted the court's action as a significant and surprising victory.
In 1996, immediately after California voters approved a medical marijuana initiative known as the Compassionate Use Act, the Clinton administration warned doctors that recommending marijuana ``will lead to administrative action by the Drug Enforcement Administration to revoke the practitioner's registration.'' The Bush administration carried the policy forward and appealed the ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last October that the federal policy violated both the free speech rights of doctors and the ``principles of federalism.''
While states have authority to issue licenses to practice medicine, it is the Drug Enforcement Administration that issues licenses to prescribe drugs, without which doctors could not remain in business as a practical matter.
The Supreme Court's action, which it took without comment, was unexpected, given that the court is nearly always willing to defer to the executive branch at least to the extent of giving a hearing to a government policy that a lower court has invalidated. The justices may have been persuaded by the appeals court's strong opinion, which was joined by all three members of a panel that included one of the Ninth Circuit's most liberal members, Senior Judge Betty B. Fletcher, and one of its most conservative, Judge Alex Kozinski.
Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder wrote the opinion, which said the government was impermissibly seeking to ``punish physicians on the basis of the content of doctor-patient communications'' and to condemn a particular viewpoint, which she said was ``especially troubling.'' In a concurring opinion, Judge Kozinski said the case was squarely governed by the Supreme Court's states'-rights rulings in a series of recent federalism decisions. The Ninth Circuit upheld an earlier ruling by a federal district judge, William H. Alsup, in San Francisco.
Under California's law, a patient whose doctor has approved or recommended marijuana will not be prosecuted by state law enforcement authorities. Of the nine states within the Ninth Circuit, seven - Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, in addition to California - authorize the medical use of marijuana, as do Maine, Colorado and Maryland.
In the California case, Walters v. Conant, No. 03-40, 10 doctors, 6 patients and 2 organizations brought a class-action lawsuit in 1997 to challenge the Clinton administration policy. One of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Daniel N. Abrahamson of the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group, said on Tuesday that about 20,000 Californians were using marijuana for medical purposes.
Another of the lawyers, Graham Boyd, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Drug Policy Litigation Project, said that had the court taken the case and overturned the Ninth Circuit, ``it would have been the end of medical marijuana in one fell swoop.''
In its Supreme Court appeal, the Bush administration called the Ninth Circuit's ruling "an unprecedented judicial intrusion on the executive branch's investigatory authority.''
There were also these other developments on an unusually busy day at the court.
--------
Backers of Medical Marijuana Hail Ruling
October 15, 2003
By DEAN E. MURPHY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/national/15RULI.html
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 14 - Ever since voters in California approved a 1996 ballot measure that legalized some medicinal uses of marijuana, the state has been locked in a legal and cultural battle with the federal government.
Federal agents have raided farms where medicinal marijuana is grown, closed cooperatives where it is distributed and threatened to punish doctors who discussed it with their patients, all because federal law prohibits distribution or use of marijuana regardless of state law.
Throughout it all, proponents of medicinal marijuana in California and more than a half dozen other states with similar laws have had little to celebrate. But on Tuesday, telephones were ringing and congratulatory e-mail flying as doctors, patients and other advocates of medicinal marijuana rejoiced at a major legal victory that effectively allows doctors to recommend the drug to patients.
"I was speechless, I was thrilled when I heard the news," said Daniel J. Kane, 43, of Oakland, who first used marijuana for medicinal purposes about 10 years ago when he was suffering from AIDS wasting syndrome. "Even now, I get this sort of tingling in my body thinking about what we have achieved."
The highly emotional victory came when the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a federal appeals court ruling last October that the federal government may not revoke the licenses of doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients. The Bush administration had sought to have the ruling overturned.
The ruling, by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, came in a lawsuit filed in 1997 by a group of doctors and patients, including Mr. Kane, after the Clinton administration threatened to revoke doctors' licenses in such circumstances. Since Mr. Bush took office in 2001, his administration has pursued the same policy.
The California law, known as Proposition 215, says doctors cannot be punished for recommending marijuana for medical purposes. Over the weekend, Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation intended to help carry out the law.
"I think you will now see more movement in California and other states to make medical marijuana more of a reality," said Daniel N. Abrahamson, director of legal affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, an advocacy group, which along with the American Civil Liberties Union represented the doctors and patients in the lawsuit. "I have heard from dozens of patients today who are breathing a huge collective sigh of relief."
Nowhere was the excitement greater than in the San Francisco Bay area, where the Drug Policy Alliance estimates the vast majority of medicinal marijuana patients in the state reside - about 10,000 - and where the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department have concentrated their efforts to stamp out the drug's cultivation and distribution.
Marijuana has been particularly popular as a pain reliever and appetite stimulant for people with H.I.V., AIDS and various forms of cancer. It can be administered in a number of ways, from smoking like a cigarette to mixing with tea.
"It is a real relief," Dr. Milton Estes, the medical director of the Forensic AIDS Project at San Francisco's Department of Public Health, said of the Supreme Court's action. "I can only hope it will send a message to the federal government and the attorney general that every day people with common sense understand that this is not the place for the federal government to be wielding its weight and force against people with chronic diseases."
Ed Rosenthal, the celebrity author of marijuana books and advice columns who was convicted in January in federal court of marijuana cultivation and conspiracy, said the federal government had been given "a clear signal to stay out of the state's business." Mr. Rosenthal had been growing marijuana in Oakland for medicinal purposes under the state law.
"For the first time, many doctors will start writing recommendations for cannabis," Mr. Rosenthal said. "Up until this point, they have been afraid."
The reaction among some patients who have used marijuana was deeply emotional. Michael Ferrucci, 51, who runs a music store in Livermore and who has had lung and testicular cancer, credits the drug with saving his life. Nonetheless, he said, it has carried a social and legal stigma that has been difficult to bear at times.
"I consider this an important step in turning the attitudes of Americans around," Mr. Ferrucci said. "It has been far more beneficial to me than other medications they have recommended to me, including powerful narcotics like morphine, Demoral and codeine."
Judith S. Cushner, 58, a preschool director in San Francisco who has had breast and uterine cancer, welcomed the court victory as having "separated the politics from the medicine." But Ms. Cushner said she was saddened by the time it took to resolve the matter in the courts. She said many people who might have benefited from the drug chose not to use it because they feared for their doctors.
"There are people who would be alive today if they had felt comfortable discussing it with their physicians," Ms. Cushner said. "It took seven years to get this far. Cancer moves a lot faster than that."
California's attorney general, Bill Lockyer, said that he hoped the court action Tuesday and the new state legislation would cause the federal government to back off its "overbearing enforcement practices."
But Richard Meyer, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, said the federal government's basic view of marijuana had not changed.
"Marijuana is still an illegal drug," Mr. Meyer said. "We will continue doing our job."
-------- homeland security
Fire Dept. Drill on Bioterror Is Set for Today
October 15, 2003
By MICHELLE O'DONNELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/nyregion/15FIRE.html
The Fire Department will simulate its response to a bioterror attack today on Staten Island, conducting practice smallpox vaccine inoculations on every firefighter and emergency service worker in the borough.
In reality, the estimated 700 emergency workers participating will get their annual flu shots, but the exercise is meant to test how quickly members could be vaccinated in the event of an outbreak.
As part of the drill, which will be held on the grounds of Seaview Hospital, the department will call off-duty firefighters at home to report to work, in a procedure known as recall.
After its catastrophic losses on Sept. 11, 2001, the department was faulted for its sweeping recall of members to the World Trade Center site, which left other parts of the city vulnerable, according to an independent management consultant hired by the city. The department has since revamped its procedures to include smaller recalls that would not drain emergency workers from entire city neighborhoods.
"What we're going to try to do is test our ability to pass out vaccines to our members in a rapid fashion," said Dr. Kerry J. Kelly, the department's chief medical officer and one of the officials overseeing the daylong drill. She added that it was critical for the department to have a swift plan in place so firefighters and emergency medical workers could be inoculated and continue to perform their rescue duties.
Since Sept. 11 and the anthrax scares of two years ago, the department has held several drills to test its ability to respond to future terror attacks. Not all have gone smoothly, according to participants and observers, who cited, in particular, problems at a hazardous-materials drill on a Brooklyn pier last spring that was held jointly with the Police Department. But department officials say they intend to use frequent drills to identify problems in the response.
"This is a drill exercise and we've tried to include as many real-life elements as possible," Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said in an e-mail message. "We hope to take away important lessons and useful practices that will help us in future planning."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Isolated hamlet in Indian forest gets electricity from seed-powered generator
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
By S. Srinivasan,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-10-15/s_9390.asp
KAMMEGUDA, India - Deep in the tropical forests of southern India, the Kolam people were untouched by telephones, cars, or television, and they went to bed at dusk because there was no electricity.
Their village is still far from a road or a power line. Yet for the past year, dozens of 40-watt light bulbs have begun to glow in the mud-and-bamboo huts after the sun sets.
The villagers have found that electricity grows on trees - specifically the seeds of the Karanji trees in the nearby forest, which they're turning into biodiesel fuel to power a generator.
Instead of going to sleep at sunset, children are now busy practicing their alphabet in the community center each evening, writing their names on black slates and showing them to proud village elders, who never went to school.
"Our place has changed a lot," said Kammeguda's oldest man, Aathram Maru Patel, who does not recall his age and has never been away from the village.
The Kolams gather the seeds from the surrounding forest and take a few hours to extract the oil, using a mill powered by the generator that provides the electricity. There is substantially less pollution than from petroleum-based diesel and no power bill.
"With lights, we can chase away snakes and animals that stray into our village in the night. We can catch the occasional thief also," said Lakshmi Bai, chosen by her community to manage the tiny power station. "Earlier, we used to put our children to sleep early, but now we make them study under the lights," she said.
Udupi Shrinivasa, a gray-haired, bespectacled mechanical engineering professor at the Indian Institute of Science, walked into the village more than a year ago and lit up the Kolams' lives.
For years, he had been teaching the institute's students about the mechanics of the diesel engine and the plan of its German inventor, Rudolph Diesel, for it to run on vegetable oils as a source of cheap energy.
Researchers around the world are working on replacing oil-based diesel with biodiesel fuels, which can be made from a variety of agricultural products from animal fat to soybeans, and Shrinivasa decided to apply that idea for the benefit of power-starved Indians.
"All we did was to take this rudimentary technology to people who had no means of getting all the energy they needed," he said at his office in Bangalore, 560 miles south of this village in Andhra Pradesh state.
Until about 10 years ago the Kolams hunted animals for food and lived in isolation. The state government then weaned the tribe away from hunting and they now keep poultry and cattle. The electrical system has brought further change, and people from other villages in the forest are coming to see the lights of Kammeguda.
At sunset, the generator starts up and lights about 60 bulbs in 35 households, the 100-square-foot community center with bamboo walls, and the village's single lane. As children study in the center, people sing community prayers and women paint their palms with decorative patterns of henna, a bright red, herbal paste.
Women no longer have to walk several miles to fetch water. The generator runs a pump that draws underground water for storage in an overhead tank.
Next on the village's wish list is a television set and a video cassette player.
Shrinivasa says the experiment in Kammeguda points to a possible solution of the power shortages that hinder economic expansion in India, home to 1 billion people. And biodiesel generators also could help cut India's annual $18 billion bill for oil imports, he said.
Fifty-five percent of all rural households - 77 million village homes - do not have electricity. Even in the cities, only 87 percent of people have connections, and there are frequent power outages. For cooking, lighting, and heat, most villagers have to use firewood or kerosene, a dirty-burning fossil fuel whose sulfur and carbon monoxide can cause skin irritation and respiratory problems. Kammeguda's 120 inhabitants have put that behind them.
"Years ago, they lived primitive lives," said Raj Prakash, an officer with the government's tribal development agency, which began working with the Kolams a decade ago. "We worked with them patiently to change many of their practices. They started wearing full clothes, putting their children in school, vaccinating them against diseases, and cultivating crops. Now, electricity has made them ask for more."
Working with Shrinivasa, the agency has helped the villagers grow Karanji trees and manage the project. Ten thousand trees planted by the Kolams last year will start yielding seeds soon. The generator also is proving a boon for neighboring tribes, who also are making seed oil and selling it to the Kolams.
Suryakala, a 7-year-old in Kammeguda, is happy she can devote more time to studying. She says her father has always told her that God provided from the jungle everything the villagers needed - and now she has proof.
"God has given us light so that we can study," she said.
-------- energy
Pet Projects Flood Energy Bill Before Crucial Wednesday Session
October 15, 2003
By CARL HULSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/15/politics/15ENER.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 - When a group of senior Republican senators gathered recently to promote their vision of an energy policy, they pushed a very junior party member, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, to the microphones first to discuss the benefits of a proposed natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48.
"It will be the largest project of its kind in the history of the country. Huge," said Ms. Murkowski, whose re-election prospects next year could turn on her ability to claim credit for winning federal aid for the proposed $20 billion 3,500-mile pipeline.
Ms. Murkowski is not alone among House and the Senate members who have personal stakes in the energy bill. The measure, which Republican leaders hope to break loose on Wednesday, is packed with pet projects, with total spending estimated by Taxpayers for Common Sense at $60 billion and growing.
"It is just chockablock full of favors to the oil and gas industry," said David Alberswerth, who has been following the sections on public lands for the Wilderness Society.
The authors hope that individual projects and initiatives - a reactor here, a coal plant there, a boost in the use of corn-based ethanol - will help persuade lawmakers to vote for legislation that is encountering growing opposition. Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, are scheduled to bring together the chief negotiators on Wednesday to try to iron out the sticking points.
The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, said on Tuesday that he had "warned the leaders in both the Senate and the House that they are precariously close to losing support on our side for energy legislation because of the reckless way with which they've negotiated the bill itself and for many of the provisions that may be included in the end."
But Mr. Daschle, a chief promoter of the plan to aid corn growers by increasing ethanol production, would not say whether he was willing to filibuster the measure if it had objectionable provisions along with the ethanol plan.
Broad measures like the energy bill can present difficult choices for lawmakers who have only an up-or-down vote on a final proposal that can include elements that they do not like coupled with one or two that are extremely dear to their hearts. Republican lawmakers and aides drawing up the plan have made no secret of their strategy to incorporate projects sought by lawmakers to build methodically a majority for the proposal and make certain that they can overcome any filibuster.
Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, a Republican considered a crucial vote on energy and environmental issues, has indicated that he would have a difficult time opposing the bill now that its authors have included an $800 million loan guarantee for a coal gasification plant to be built in an economically troubled part of his state.
Strong backers of the energy plan are in position to advance their goals, as well. Senator Larry E. Craig, the Idaho Republican who is on the House-Senate conference committee that is writing the measure, is the chief proponent of a proposal to spend more than $1 billion in Idaho to build a nuclear reactor that could produce hydrogen, as well as electricity.
Representatives of interest groups combing through the measure say it would make available billions of dollars for other research and development and tax breaks for successful energy producers that appear to be ill timed.
"How can we afford these direct subsidies to these robust industries when we have record deficits?" asked Keith Ashdown, the vice president for policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, who cited potential subsidies for the Alaska pipeline as particularly egregious.
Ms. Murkowski and Senator Ted Stevens, another Alaska Republican, have made the pipeline subsidies a top requirement for their support of the bill, particularly when it appears that the authors will have to drop a plan for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, another priority of the Alaska lawmakers. But the pipeline has also become an obstacle in advancing the legislation. Though lawmakers have agreed to require a route that the Alaska lawmakers favor, House members and the White House have balked at a plan to provide the companies that build the line with tax credits if the price of natural gas falls below a certain level.
Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is the Senate leader of the energy talks, said on Tuesday that the tax breaks would not be in the measure, though it would offer loan guarantees to the pipeline builders. Critics have said the tax credits could cost taxpayers billions of dollars if the price of natural gas falls.
Efforts to woo lawmakers with special provisions can backfire. In a push to win the backing of Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, Republicans writing the bill tried to satisfy his goal of restricting gas drilling on some public land along the eastern front of the Rockies. Mr. Baucus ended up objecting to the language, saying it fell far short of his expectations.
"These provisions," a spokesman for Mr. Baucus said, "are almost worse than having nothing at all."
-------- environment
Marine species are at risk as sea meadows destroyed
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
By Jeremy Lovell,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2003-10-15/s_9424.asp
LONDON - Seagrass, a vital but largely overlooked component of the world's oceans, is being destroyed by ignorance and inaction, threatening millions of people and many species of marine animals, according to a new report published Wednesday.
The vast sub-aquatic meadows that grow on shallow shelves around the continents are in their own way as important to coastal waters as trees are to the above ground environment, says the report from the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Center. They purify the water, protect the soil, and provide breeding and feeding grounds for many species, it added in a World Atlas of Seagrasses.
"The grasses are the basis for many marine food chains, are good refuges for young fish, stabilize the sandy soils in which they grow and filter the water," said Ed Green, co-editor of the atlas, the first comprehensive study of the world's seagrasses.
Sea Turtles and Dugongs depend on the sub-sea meadows, and many other species live and breed there, while thousands of subsistence fishers and their families in Africa and Asia pluck their living from among the green fronds.
Furthermore, the livelihoods of millions more people who make their living from tourism are being put at risk from the destruction by leisure craft of the seagrass meadows whose dense rooting systems halt coastal erosion.
But seagrasses, a group of 60 flowering plants that live exclusively under water, are the poor cousins of marine conservation, coming a distant third behind coral reefs and kelp beds in the planning and execution of protected zones.
"They are very fragile indeed," Green said. "They are sensitive to eutrophication - nutrient pollution from the land from farming, industry, and housing - which causes algae to bloom and effectively suffocates the seagrass beds. They are also destroyed by land reclamation projects such as coastal housing developments and new airports."
The atlas estimates that the global area covered by seagrasses is just 68,350 square miles - two-thirds the area of the United Kingdom - and that it has shrunk 15 percent in the past 10 years.
"But that average hides huge variations," Green said. "In some areas the loss is a lot less, but in others it is huge. In some of these places it is already too late. In others like Canada, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates the situation is not too bad if action is taken now."
The seas around Denmark have been virtually denuded of seagrass meadows over the past 40 years through pollution and land reclamation. The Mediterranean off the southern coast of France has likewise suffered badly, as has the eastern seaboard of the United States.
"Politicians have tended to react to public pressure - and coral and kelp have held their attention to the detriment of seagrass," Green said. "We are not asking for them to be forgotten and attention to be focused only on seagrass. What we want is a holistic approach, seeing them all as linked."
--------
Democrats Decry EPA Ads on Bill Lawmakers Cite Anti-Lobbying Laws
By Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 15, 2003; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26595-2003Oct14.html
House Democrats charged yesterday that the Environmental Protection Agency misused public funds to promote the Bush administration's premier clean air legislation in Spanish-language media and may have violated federal anti-lobbying laws.
The EPA recently began running Spanish-language public service commercials on the Hispanic Radio Network boosting the administration's "Clear Skies" legislation, which is pending in Congress. On Sept. 30, the EPA bought a full-page ad in a new Spanish-language newspaper published by the Dallas Morning News. The ad promised "cleaner air, better health, a brighter future for the United States" under the legislation.
The campaign was launched to coincide with National Hispanic Heritage Month, EPA spokeswoman Lisa Harrison said, and is meant to help "educate and inform" people about key environmental issues. She denied that the agency violated federal laws.
In a letter to acting EPA Administrator Marianne L. Horinko, Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), John D. Dingell (Mich) and David R. Obey (Wis.) said the government advertising was designed to influence millions of people about the pending bill.
"We are concerned that EPA's Clear Skies advertising campaign constitutes an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars, quite possibly in violation of federal law," the Democratic lawmakers said.
Congress's appropriations measure for the EPA prohibits the agency from using government funds for publicity purposes or to prepare or distribute TV or radio presentations designed to support or defeat legislation. A federal statute also prohibits federal officials from engaging in campaigns on pending legislative matters.
Waxman, Dingell and Obey urged the agency to withdraw the remaining public service commercials while Congress investigates the advertising campaign.
Harrison said EPA officials, including the general counsel, believe the public service announcements are appropriate because "they inform public opinion on Clear Skies legislation," but that "they do not expressly request members of the public to contact Congress in support of Clear Skies."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Bolivian Protesters Vow More Marches
By KEVIN GRAY
Associated Press Writer
Oct 15, 2003
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BOLIVIA_PROTESTS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- Protesters promised a new wave of demonstrations against Bolivia's president, putting more pressure on his increasingly fragile coalition government after deadly street riots swept this poor Andean nation.
Indian farmers joined urban labor groups and popular protest movements bent on driving President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada from power.
The capital took on airs of a ghost town Tuesday, emptied of traffic. Schools, shops, banks and businesses were shuttered. Protesters manned barricades of burning debris on major highways, shutting down La Paz and the capital's sister city of El Alto.
At least 16 deaths have been reported by authorities in three weeks of street rioting and clashes with troops and police. Local press reports suggested the death toll has risen to as many as 63. The government refused to confirm the figure.
"Presidente, you have to go!" the demonstrators shouted from barricades they fortified by dragging huge cement blocks into intersections.
The protests began in mid-September in angry opposition to President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado's plans to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico, what he billed as a way to raise badly needed export revenue for Bolivia, the poorest country in South America.
The move ignited long-simmering discontent against his democratically elected 14-month-old government. Bolivia has 8.8 million people, but its poor Indian majority has been showing growing disenchantment with free market reforms and U.S.-backed plans to eradicate coca leaf growing in this Andean mountain nation.
Although the president announced Monday he was shelving the plan, he has vowed he will not resign and has remained secluded at his heavily guarded compound in a suburb of the capital.
A leader of Bolivia's Indigenous majority, Evo Morales, said a left-leaning Bolivian workers' movement that he commands is preparing new demonstrations against the president's rule. He did not elaborate.
But two columns of protesters marched Wednesday toward the capital from the mining center of Oruro in the south and the jungle lowlands of Los Yungas north of the capital.
The protesters are promising to keep up their protests until the president leaves office. Demonstrations also have been reported in the major cities of Cochabamba and Sucre.
Pressure against Sanchez de Lozada arose in his ruling coalition government.
Manfred Reyes Villa, a key member of the governing coalition, said he urged Sanchez de Lozada to call a referendum on the gas export plan and a legislative assembly "to help calm the country."
Reyes Villa said he was planning to meet with the president on both issues Wednesday.
But Morales, the most powerful Indian opposition leader, said the president had to step down to avoid further conflict.
Opponents to the gas plan objected to the use of neighboring Chile as the main port of export and argued the $5 billion project would only benefit the country's wealthy.
A U.S.-educated millionaire, Sanchez de Lozada served as president from 1993 to 1997. Now 73, he took office for a second term in August 2002 after narrowly defeating Morales, a radical congressman.
A former mining executive who has the backing of the United States, the president partially privatized many of Bolivia's state-owned industries in his first term. For his second term, he promised a similar free market plan.
Lady Gutierrez, a 20-year-old student, said she was planning to join the demonstrations because she felt the president wasn't helping the poor.
"There's too much poverty in Bolivia and too few people who want to do something to about it," Gutierrez said.
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Saudi protesters demand reforms
By John R. Bradley
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 15, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031014-092554-5920r.htm
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia - Hundreds of Saudis marched down the main avenue of the capital, Riyadh, yesterday in an unprecedented demonstration timed to coincide with the opening of the kingdom's first human rights conference.
The U.S., German and British embassies, meanwhile, warned the expatriate community yesterday that there was credible evidence of a terrorist plot against the capital's two landmark skyscrapers.
It was next to one of them, the Kingdom Tower, that demonstrators chanting "Allahu Akbar," or "God is Great," were dispersed by anti-riot police, who fired shots into the air two hours after the protest began.
Several demonstrators were arrested and taken away in buses, but witnesses said many were released after a few hours.
Traffic in the city center was brought to a standstill, and there was a heavy presence of special security forces throughout the capital.
The protest was organized by Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih, head of the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform. He is calling for the ruling Saud dynasty to be overthrown.
It is not clear how much support Mr. al-Faqih has in Saudi Arabia. Despite months of promoting the protest through a radio station he controls, only a few hundred Saudis turned out to demonstrate.
Interior Minister Prince Nayef had told reporters in Riyadh before the protest: "These calls [for a demonstration] are worthless barking, and I think only the ignorant will respond to them. This is illegal, and we hope the Saudi citizens will rise above it."
Reformist intellectuals in the kingdom, who have petitioned the de facto ruler thrice this year to push for greater reforms, have unconditionally distanced themselves from Mr. al-Faqih. Most of the demonstrators yesterday were under age 30.
For the past week, Saudis in the capital have been driving past a huge banner with the words "Human Rights." It was hung there not by the protesters calling for greater reforms, but by the Saudi government.
In a country in which locals are often reluctant even to mention the phrase "human rights" in public, the significance of Saudi Arabia playing host to the Human Rights in Peace and War Conference - organized by the Saudi Red Crescent Society - cannot be underestimated.
The demonstration yesterday also was historic. But no one was surprised that the Saudi government refused to let it gather momentum.
While the Saud family is now committed to ushering in a cautious program of constitutional reforms, it knows it must address key economic and social issues gradually, so as not to provoke a backlash from any of the Islamic state's many constituents.
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EGYPT - Students protest Israeli raids
October 15, 2003
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/briefly.htm
CAIRO - Thousands of Egyptian university students staged campus protests yesterday against Israeli raids on Palestinian targets in the Gaza Strip and Syria, official sources and organizers said.
A rally at Ain Shams University in northern Cairo proceeded peacefully, ending with an appeal to Arab heads of state to respond to the latest Israeli attacks, Egypt's state-run Middle East News Agency said.
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Saudi Arabia Arrests 150 Protesters
Wed Oct 15,
AP
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=20&u=/ap/saudi_protest
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi police arrested up to 150 people for staging a rare public protest in the capital to call for reforms in the conservative Islamic kingdom, the interior minister said Wednesday.
Tuesday's protest in central Riyadh was the first such large-scale demonstration in a kingdom that has been under internal and external pressure to reform.
After demonstrators blocked traffic, police fired tear gas and moved in, arresting "no more than 150 individuals who gathered carrying banners," the interior minister, Prince Nayef, told the official Saudi Press Agency. Witnesses had said there were hundreds of protesters, men and women, most of them young.
"What happened was just a limited gathering in al-Olaya street," Nayef told the agency. "They are a small bunch ... this won't happen again."
Saudi Arabia's chief cleric Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheik condemned the illegal protests in comments published in a Saudi daily Wednesday, saying people with complaints should take them to government officials, not to the streets.
Al-Sheik told Al-Jazeera newspaper that the protests were "chaotic acts" that "do not represent our pious society."
The royal family is under pressure to bring democratic reform to the country - especially since the Sept. 11 terror attacks - 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi - and increasing terrorist violence at home.
On Monday, the government announced it would hold the kingdom's first-ever elections, a vote to select members of 14 municipal councils.
Tuesday's protest appeared to be in response to repeated calls for political and economic reforms by the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia.
The group, founded in 1996, is one of the better known dissident groups, bringing together a number of Saudi intellectuals to support a more liberal, moderate system of government.
Saudi Arabia does not have a constitution or elected legislature. Public gatherings to discuss political or social issues are illegal, and writers and editors are often banned or fired over articles deemed offensive to the country's powerful religious establishment.
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