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NUCLEAR
Call for stop to Woomera nuclear waste plan
Atomic Veterans revisited through depleted uranium
EU Ministers Arrive in Iran for Nuclear Talks
Iran to Meet With European Leaders
Japan: N. Korea Might Have Tested Missile
A nuclear arms race
Bush offers guarantees to N. Korea
N Korea tests surface-to-ship missile
Did N Korea launch a missile?
Bush Says Pact With N. Korea Possible
Bush Proposes a Security Accord for North Korea
Federal deficit hits record $374.2 billion
MILITARY
Afghan troops okay: specialists
At issue is defense or destruction of the Constitution
In a New Attack, G.I. Is Killed, 5 Are Wounded in Falluja
G.I.'s Escape Roadside Bombing, but 2 Are Killed in Northern Iraq
Two U.S. Soldiers Killed In Ambush Near Kirkuk
Israeli women won't see combat
Families seek truth over Israeli deaths
5 Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza Kill at Least 11 Palestinians
Israel Kills 10, Wounds 100 in Gaza Air Raids
Israeli Raids in Gaza Kill 10, Wound 100
Pakistanis Cross Border With Ease to Join Taliban
China space program shows careful development
Last Titan II Rocket Blasts Off
US Troops Continue to Destroy Iraqi Flora, Crops
Army seeks to reduce patient backlog at base
Bush's News War
Elite U.S. Unit Killed Hundreds of Vietnamese Civilians, Report Says
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Right to an Attorney Comes at a Price
Internet Trafficking in Narcotics Has Surged
Internet Cases
9/11 Restrictions Harm Arab World, Report Says
ENERGY AND OTHER
China to Put Corn Into Gas Tanks to Clean Up
Tiny tubes squeeze electricity from water
Bangkok Evicts the Poor Before Economic Summit
ACTIVISTS
Ellsberg Sees Iraq, Vietnam Parallels
Anti-nuclear activist claims radiation rising
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- australia
Call for stop to Woomera nuclear waste plan
Mon, 20 Oct 2003
Australian Broadcasting
http://abc.net.au/news/australia/sa/metsa-20oct2003-5.htm
There are calls for an injunction to stop the Federal Government's low level nuclear waste repository planned for Woomera in South Australia's north because the licence application for the dump differs vastly to what was originally planned.
Dr Dennis Matthews, a former senior chemistry lecturer at Flinders University, says 95 per cent of the waste destined for the dump has been deemed too highly radioactive to be stored there. He says this means the repository would only marginally reduce the amount of radioactive material stored at locations around Australia.
Dr Matthews says plutonium has also been added to the list of material to be stored at the Woomera site, which significantly alters the licence application.
"I think it's a total waste of money and I think it's a political exercise," he said.
A government consultant on the repository, Dr Keith Lokan, says he is not aware that any plutonium is going to be stored at the dump, but in the case that it is, it would not be harmful.
-------- depleted uranium
Atomic Veterans revisited through depleted uranium exposure
By Vincent L Guarisco
Axis of Logic
October 20, 2003
"I ask you, what is the difference between 30 million people dead and 130 million people dead? . . . With 30 million dead, the United States can survive . . ."-Edward Teller, nuclear physicist and 'father' of the H-Bomb
Welcome to the 21st century uranium slaughtergate, an age-old curse where the forsaken still inherit a radiated death sentence after more than 50 years of tearful grave digging.
I am the offspring of an Atomic Veteran, and I have been in "shock and awe" my entire life over the hushed-up military practice of wanton execution-I have had to come to grips with the reality that our government criminally maims, disables and kills anyone at will and with impunity.
History is a useful prognostic tool if those who record it archive it with accuracy and without revision. But as long as recorded history continues to be twisted and suppressed by those above the law, our nation will never learn anything from its mistakes. America will continue to stumble on blindly-repeatedly victimized by those who write this fairy tale from hell with pens literally dipped in the spilled blood of its citizens.
Honesty is the best policy for recording the past, as well as the present and future-whether good or bad. However, since it becomes more apparent every day that pathological liars are in control, it is my opinion that today's historians, educators and most media outlets have missed their true calling. If the massive "containment wall" they have efficiently constructed around the many injustices heaped on Atomic Veterans is any proof, they would make wonderful bricklayers. This insidious atrocity continues to be one of our nation's best-kept secrets, and to this day, not one person has ever been held accountable for the many crimes committed against these people who served their country so valiantly.
My father, Navy Seaman Anthony Guarisco, was one of those heroes. His personal experience, during a horrible event many years ago that all subsequent leaders have worked overtime to conceal, remains like an evil anchor that weighs upon the hearts and souls of all men. He was just one of thousands of sailors imperially ordered to the atomic gallows of Bikini Atoll in 1946 at "Operation Crossroads."
For those of you who never heard of this hideous event--it was the largest nuclear atmospheric test ever conducted by the United States Government. It involved 45,400 men, 220 ships, and 160 aircraft using two 21-kiloton nuclear devices very similar to those dropped on Japan in 1945. The tests were conducted against an array of more than 90 target ships in the lagoon of Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific.
One would think that surely the military brass and War Department had satisfied their thirst for blood after nuking 65,000 Japanese civilians at the end of WWII. Sorry, that was simply not the case.
Soon after WWII, more than 45,000 exhausted war-fatigued combat vets were ordered to the Marshall Islands. Having traveled a tough road, most thought the worst was behind them; they thought this next mission was a pleasure cruise--and why the hell not, they had just finished fighting a very brutal war defeating the Japanese. However, little did they know they were being herded like fatlings for the kill. Not for one minute did any of them even remotely suspect foul play. Why should they? They were heroes who had just defended the most honorable nation in the world, for Christ sake!
Unfortunately, hero status holds little or no weight for those in power. In far too many instances, Uncle Sam has his own special way of showing gratitude to those who serve their country. Sadly, more and more it seems that, in order to receive it, you have to first bend over and grab your ankles. My father best describes their generous gratitude for services rendered:
"Before heading out for the Marshall Islands they loaded our ship to the gills with beer and other alcohol beverages-heck, we thought we were going to one big party! After we arrived at Bikini and dropped anchor in our designated position, all of us were ordered up on deck so we could view the horrific mushroom cloud event.
"As the first bomb was exploding I looked over at the guy next me and I was horrified to see his entire skeletal frame like an eerie X-ray. It scared me and I quickly cupped my hands over my face to cover my eyes. When I did this--I could see all the bones in my hands. I was totally overwhelmed with fear. It was at that moment that I knew something was very, very wrong with all of this. My ship was only a few miles away from the first detonation. We were very close-so close that water from the blast splashed up on our ship drenching everyone on deck, myself included. After that, they decided to move us a little further back for the next one.
"When I saw this explosion, it came home to me what had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I could see how 55,000-65,000 people could die in less than one-and-a-half seconds. It was very awesome. When I saw the second explosion, which was on the water, I saw a target array of approximately 100 ships go up in the air like little toys. I saw the US Arkansas go up about 200 feet in the air and come down in two pieces.
"I saw aircraft carriers flinging around as if they were toys. We went back into the 'ground zero' area immediately after each of the detonations, and I spent a total of 67 days in the Bikini lagoon within one mile of the epicenter. I became very ill approximately four or five days after the second detonation, with symptoms similar to a severe case of influenza. My entire body was covered with welts; I urinated blood. It was very scary. I was very sick for about seven to ten days before I finally began to feel a little better."
My father wasn't the only one-he said others on his ship experienced the same debilitating effects. For many years he maintained the hope that, if there was anything wrong, his government would surely let him know. But he found out years later that's not how it is. This government and the US military have steadfastly refused throughout the years to say anything to anybody exposed to high levels or even low levels of radiation. For almost as many years, I watched my father struggle with denial-after the sacrifices he had made for his country, it was difficult for him to finally come to grips with the fact that he was dealing with people who really were not interested in anything else but waiting for him to die.
The United States Government calls Operation Crossroads a "Test." My father says, "Those of us whose lives were destroyed call this deadly 'operation' by its true name-Premeditated Slaughter."
Many years have passed since that horrible event at Bikini Atoll. Most have forgotten what should never have been forgotten-the reality of how impervious our government can be when critiquing the killing effectiveness of its own weapons of mass destruction. How insignificant we really are to those who hold their finger on the button.
To my knowledge, my father, who was aboard LST #388, is the last living survivor from his ship at Operation Crossroads. To this day the government still maintains his radiation exposure at Bikini never exceeded the allowable limits, therefore disregarding his many significant health problems as being service related.
After more then 50 years of fighting his case, my father was finally awarded a service-connected disability claim for PTSD (Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder). How ironic--they drove him crazy before they awarded him. Back home, we have an old-fashioned saying for that-it's called getting f-ked and then kicked out, without so much as a goodbye kiss . . .
Having a father who was subjected to such betrayal did not create pleasant childhood memories, but as an adult I can appreciate the knowledge associated with knowing how our government operates. It always puts an evil little smirk on my face to hear President Bush rave about how cruel Saddam Hussein is for gassing Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war, or how cruel he was for gassing the Kurds at Halabja in 1988. I can't help thinking-Saddam doesn't hold a water pistol next to you, pal.
Ok, so here we are in the 21st century. Does anyone truly believe that our government and military apparatus has grown a conscience since then? More explicitly, does anyone think they would purposely contaminate or expose GIs to harmful radiation, biological warfare or anything else and not mention the deadly health consequences of their actions?
The answer is yes. US troops may not bear witness to mushroom fireballs bursting in air, but in Iraq they're getting exposed to radiation on a daily basis, and many other deadly toxins as well.
Army health physicist Dr. Doug Rokke was sent to the Middle East to salvage depleted uranium (DU)-contaminated tanks after Gulf War I. His Geiger counters revealed that the war zones of Iraq and Kuwait were contaminated with up to 300 millirems an hour in beta and gamma radiation plus thousands to millions of counts per minute in alpha radiation. Rokke recently told the media: "The whole area is still trashed. It is hotter than heck over there still. This stuff doesn't go away."
In November, 2002, Rokke told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Verified adverse health effects from personal experience, from physicians and from personal reports from individuals with known DU exposures include reactive airway disease, neurological abnormalities, kidney stones and chronic kidney pain, rashes, vision degradation and night-vision losses, lymphoma, various forms of skin and organ cancer, neuropsychological disorders, uranium in semen, sexual dysfunction and birth defects in offspring."
Rokke has also told the Defense Department of his findings-many times. He said, "We warned them in 1991 after the Gulf War, but because of liability issues, they continue to ignore the problem."
More than 320 tons of DU was used against Iraq in 1991. A 1998 report by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances confirms that inhaling DU causes symptoms identical to those claimed by many sick vets with Gulf War Syndrome. The Gulf War Veterans Association reports that at least 300,000 Gulf War I vets have now developed incapacitating illnesses.
To date, 209,000 vets have filed claims for disability benefits based on service-connected injuries and illnesses from combat in that war. Can you imagine how many claims will be processed this round? Whoa, I dare not imagine.
More than 10 years ago, defense contractors introduced this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon's weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid-fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute. Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped. The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU. These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them. The A-10 "tank buster" aircraft fires DU shells as well.
Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers are supposed to wear radiation protection gear. Unfortunately, battle ready soldiers are not supplied with the needed protection gear for handling ammo and other munitions.
DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their usage breaks all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons aimed at causing unnecessary suffering.
Nearly half of Rokke's cleanup team is dead, and most of the others-including Rokke-have serious health problems. Rokke, who has been sounding the alarm for more than a decade, says he has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts and kidney problems. He blames his health problems on exposure to DU. "This whole thing is a crime against God and humanity," he said.
The Bush-Cheney cartel has no shame! They have sent coalition forces into a depleted uranium (DU) toxic wasteland, an "enlistment" gift that will keep on giving for a lifetime. There is no escape, soldiers are inhaling and ingesting DU dust every day, even in the cities, and the potential risk for cancer and other diseases is so high it staggers the imagination. It truly is a death sentence for everyone involved.
For the love of sanity, for the love of life, Americans must demand that our troops be immediately brought home! We must march in the streets, scream out our windows-do whatever it takes to stop this madness. I have been to the funerals; I have seen firsthand what happens to loved ones whose lives are destroyed. It cannot be allowed to contin
-------- iran
EU Ministers Arrive in Iran for Nuclear Talks
October 20, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - British, French and German foreign ministers converged on Tehran on Tuesday with a carrot and stick proposal aimed at persuading Iran to dispel all doubts its nuclear program could be used to make atomic bombs.
Diplomats said the key issue in Tuesday's talks would be whether Iran insisted on continuing its plans to master the entire nuclear fuel cycle, including enriching uranium. Recent signals from Tehran suggest possible moves to compromise.
The EU ministers are visiting Iran less than two weeks before an October 31 deadline set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for Tehran to disprove U.S.-led allegations it is conducting a covert nuclear arms program.
``The IAEA resolution...imposed very serious obligations on Iran and it's for Iran to show toElBaradei and the IAEA board in early November that it is complying,'' British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters en route to Tehran. ``Our trip is intended to encourage them to do so.''
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer arrived in Tehran a few hours before Straw while France's Dominique de Villepin was due to land shortly before the talks begin on Tuesday morning.
Underscoring a notably softer tone from Iran in recent days over the nuclear issue, President Mohammad Khatami hinted for the first time on Sunday that Tehran could mothball uranium enrichment facilities it began building in 1985. Some Western powers fear they could be used to produce weapons-grade uranium.
Asked if Iran may stop enriching uranium, he told reporters: ``We will do whatever is necessary to solve the problems.''
But a British official played down the prospect of a breakthrough at the Tehran talks.
TANGIBLE RESULT
``What we hope is that the net contribution of all these efforts is we end up with Iran abandoning whatever aspirations it has in the nuclear weapons stakes,'' he said.
``We're not going to judge it by whether there is a tangible result tomorrow. It may be that the tangible result is reflected in the ElBaradei report,'' to the IAEA board on November 20.
Iran insists its sophisticated network of nuclear facilities is aimed at generating electricity, not making bombs.
ElBaradei has warned Iran's case may go to the U.N. Security Council if he is unable to verify in his November report that Iran has no intention of building nuclear arms.
U.N. inspectors have found arms-grade enriched uranium at two Iranian facilities this year, but Iran blames this on contamination from machinery it bought on the black market. Low grade enriched uranium is used as fuel in atomic reactors but highly enriched uranium can be used to make atomic weapons.
Diplomats said the EU ministers would demand Iran cooperate fully with the IAEA, accept tougher U.N. inspections and halt uranium enrichment.
In return, the ministers would offer to recognize Iran's right to a civilian nuclear energy program, give some technical assistance and guarantee Iran's access to imported fuel for nuclear power plants.
A breakthrough on Iran's nuclear program would be a major coup for the three big European Union powers, whose opinions on the U.S.-led war in Iraq differed markedly. It was not clear whether their initiative was backed by Washington, which has tended to frown on any deal-making with Iran's clerical leaders.
The EU foreign ministers will meet President Khatami, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and Supreme National Security Council chief Hassan Rohani on Tuesday, diplomats said.
ElBaradei, who has described the European initiative as a ``win-win'' scenario, was assured during a visit to Tehran last week that Iran would answer all the IAEA's outstanding questions about its nuclear program and was willing to accept tighter inspections.
--------
Iran to Meet With European Leaders
October 20, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-EU-Nuclear.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain agreed Monday to meet Iran's president to discuss an Iranian nuclear program some in the West say is aimed at building weapons.
Iran's Culture Ministry said the three key European Union foreign ministers will meet President Mohammad Khatami Tuesday morning.
In London on Monday, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirmed he would travel to Iran with his French and German counterparts, saying: ``Resolving the doubts surrounding Iran's nuclear program is of grave concern to the EU and the wider international community.''
Germany confirmed Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer would make the trip and France said Foreign Minster Dominique de Villepin was also traveling to Tehran.
``The Iranian authorities seem today ready to announce a certain number of confidence measures in the direction of the international community. It is in this context that the three ministers have decided to go to Tehran,'' the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
A British official speaking on condition of anonymity said the ministers would hold separate meetings with Khatami, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and Hasan Rowhani, head of Iran's National Security Council.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has set an Oct. 31 deadline for Iran to allow unfettered inspections of its nuclear facilities and answer questions about its program. Iran says it is pursuing nuclear technology only to generate power.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi reiterated Sunday that Iran does not acknowledge the deadline by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But Asefi said progress had been achieved during a visit to Tehran last week by IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei.
If the IAEA finds Iran has failed to respond satisfactorily to its demands by the deadline, it is expected to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
Britain, Germany and France have reportedly proposed nuclear cooperation with Iran in return for Tehran agreeing to more intrusive nuclear inspections.
IAEA legal experts ended two days of talks with Iranian officials on Sunday, Tehran radio reported. The team had arrived Saturday to discuss an additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that would allow more intrusive inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities.
The radio quoted Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's IAEA representative, as saying that Iran reiterated that the protocols should not interfere with Iran's national sovereignty and its state secrets.
-------- japan
Japan: N. Korea Might Have Tested Missile
October 20, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-NKorea.html
TOKYO (AP) -- North Korea might have test-fired a short-range missile off its eastern coast on Monday, the Japanese government said, but the report was not confirmed. It was the first suspected missile launch by Pyongyang since a test in April.
Cabinet Office spokesman Yukinori Morita and the Defense Agency said the government had received an unconfirmed report about a land-to-ship missile being fired into the Japan Sea around noon. But they said the information has not been verified.
The missile would not have posed any immediate security threat to neighboring countries, an agency official said on condition of anonymity. He said the report indicated the missile had a range of about 60 miles. It was believed the firing would have been part of ``routine training,'' he said.
Japanese officials wouldn't say where the report originated.
A spokesman for South Korea's Defense Ministry said he couldn't confirm the missile test had taken place.
The apparent test-launch comes as President Bush met with leaders from 21 nations at the annual Asia-Pacific Cooperation forum in Bangkok, Thailand, where the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea and terror attacks has dominated the agenda.
Pyongyang has conducted similar tests of short-range missiles in the past.
In April, U.S. officials said North Korea test-fired an anti-ship missile off its west coast, in an apparent response to the launch by Tokyo of spy satellites to monitor the isolated communist nation days earlier. Japanese officials initially confirmed the firing, only to deny it hours later.
Tensions have risen in the region since October last year, when Washington said that North Korea admitted running a clandestine nuclear weapons program. North Korea denies making such an admission.
North Korea test-fired two short-range missiles in late February and early March amid tensions over its suspected nuclear weapons programs. Washington and South Korea have criticized the tests as attempts to force the United States into direct talks.
Japan has grown increasingly wary of the North's arsenal in recent years.
In 1998, North Korea fired a long-range missile that flew over Japan and plunged into the Pacific Ocean. It is believed to possess missiles that could reach parts of the United States.
-------- korea
A nuclear arms race
October 20, 2003
Washington Times
By James Goodby/ Kenneth Weisbrode
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20031019-112014-6214r.htm
It is time to admit that Iran will follow North Korea's example and become a de facto nuclear-weapon state in the absence of a U.S. preventive military attack or a powerful international diplomatic offensive. Unilateral U.S. military action against Iran is not in the cards anytime soon, for reasons that the situation in Iraq makes painfully clear.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has said "we never want to do another Iraq," and that was last summer when the level of optimism over the Iraq occupation was much higher than it is now. Multilateral military action is also out of the question: quite simply, there are no volunteers for that job. Diplomacy is the only recourse, but it must rise to the occasion, and it has not, so far.
Iran's response to the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for greater access to its nuclear facilities has already been more sophisticated than Saddam Hussein's was to another sort of deadline. A full acceptance of the IAEA's Oct. 31 deadline for meeting those demands would be a welcome first step. But it will not guarantee the necessary halt to the construction of Iran's uranium enrichment complexes.
Iranian authorities are very unlikely to do that without stronger incentives (or threats) than are now on the table. As for plutonium, Russia is requiring that Iran return the irradiated fuel rods from the reactor Moscow is helping it to build. That would prevent Iran from acquiring bomb-grade plutonium, the other fuel for a nuclear weapon. But a state determined to build a nuclear arsenal could be expected to find ways to circumvent these restrictions as well. The only solution to the problem of nuclear proliferation in Iran must address intentions as well as capabilities.
The United States seems to be banking on its European friends to raise the potential costs to Iran of nuclear weaponization, much as it is now relying upon China to stop North Korea's weapons program. This makes sense, but it is not a complete answer. Pursuit of nuclear weapons is the result of regional insecurity; other players - notably, those closer to home that concern Iran more directly - must be brought into the equation.
If Iran joins Israel as a de facto nuclear weapon state, with three other nuclear weapon states - Russia, India and Pakistan - nearby, it is very unlikely that other nations in the vicinity will be able to resist launching or accelerating their own nuclear weapon programs. It is not at all inconceivable that a Middle East with four, five, or six nuclear weapon states - including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey - will be the reality of the early decades of the 21st century.
Nobody should want that outcome - least of all those who put their trust in a resurrection of the Cold War model of stability. The U.S.-Soviet nuclear standoff was stabilized by very different conditions. The United States and the Soviet Union had no territorial demands against each other and their military forces never engaged in large-scale direct combat with each other. That is not the case in the Middle East. Far from it.
More to the point, a nuclear balance of terror in the Middle East is not inevitable. But American diplomacy is doing too little, too late to reverse course along an all-too-orthodox and pedestrian path. Its main flaw is that it is not truly regional in scope. It asks nothing of Israel, or of Pakistan or India. Vague threats are made against the Syrians, whose alleged nuclear aspirations are unlikely to be diminished by last week's Israeli air attack. Egypt and Saudi Arabia seem not to be on the radar screen in the nuclear field at all.
The United States must offer a broader vision of a nuclear-free region. The presence of American troops in the Middle East makes this the time for both creative thinking and decisive action. The moment will not last too long.
James Goodby is a former U.S. ambassador, currently affiliated with the Brookings Institution and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kenneth Weisbrode is a councilor of the Atlantic Council of the United States.
----
Bush offers guarantees to N. Korea
October 20, 2003
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031020-122539-8221r.htm
BANGKOK - President Bush yesterday softened his hard-line stance on North Korea, offering Stalinist dictator Kim Jong-il written security guarantees if he pledges to abandon his ambition to build nuclear weapons.
But the president vehemently rejected Pyongyang's demand that the United States enter into a formal nonaggression treaty that would prevent the president from striking North Korea if it acts on its increasingly belligerent rhetoric.
"I've said as plainly as I can say that we have no intention of invading North Korea," Mr. Bush said after a meeting with Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. "And I've also said as plainly as I can that we expect North Korea to get rid of her nuclear-weapons ambitions."
In response to a reporter's question, Mr. Bush said: "We will not have a treaty, if that's what you're asking. That's off the table."
But, he said, short of a treaty, "perhaps there are other ways to say exactly what I said publicly" and to put it on paper "with our partners' consent."
The comments mark the first time the president has offered to bend on his stance of offering Mr. Kim nothing until he scraps his nuclear-weapons program. Last week, The Washington Times reported that Pyongyang sees a nonaggression pact as the essential ingredient to defusing the nuclear standoff with the United States.
The pact, which one senior administration official said would amount to an "agreement with a small 'a,' " is viewed in the White House as a binding offer to put into words a pledge Mr. Bush has reiterated often since taking office - the United States has no intention of invading North Korea.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said yesterday that the gentleman's agreement may suffice.
"We believe that we could provide the kind of assurances that the North Koreans say they are looking for, without getting it into the formal process of a treaty ... that will require Senate ratification," Mr. Powell said on the CBS show "Face the Nation."
But he stressed that the United States would first consult close allies in the region before offering the olive branch to Pyongyang.
"I would not want to prejudge right now what other parties might be willing to do," Mr. Powell said on "Fox News Sunday."
Mr. Bush, who presented the idea to Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday, discussed it over breakfast this morning with President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea. Japan and Russia have also been involved in six-party talks with the United States, China and the two Koreas over Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Administration officials said today that discussion of the initiative with those countries was still at an early stage, but Mr. Bush - who conceived the idea last weekend at Camp David - seemed pleased before his breakfast meeting. "We're making good progress on peacefully solving the issue with North Korea," he said.
China, a longtime ally of North Korea, has taken the lead in organizing six-nation talks to defuse the crisis. The first round in August ended with just an agreement to continue talking. No date has been set for the second round.
The United States hopes to present the new proposal at the next round, but will consult with the other parties first.
While the issue is certain to be on the agenda at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting here - with all six leaders of the multiparty talks attending - North Korea said the summit was not the place to discuss the nuclear standoff because it "is an issue to be resolved between us and the United States."
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, however, said that any agreement would not be a bilateral one between the United States and North Korea, but a multilateral accord within the format of the six-party talks.
"With all of the stakeholders at the table, we're more likely to be able to resolve this issue peacefully and to have any resolution of the issue endure," she told ABC's "This Week."
During the lead-up to the Iraq war, North Korea surprised the world by announcing it had secretly restarted its nuclear program. U.S. officials believe the communist country has at least two weapons and may have as many as four.
Earlier this month, North Korea declared that it had finished reprocessing about 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods and diverted plutonium obtained from them to make atomic bombs. The nation's neighbors have grown increasingly wary of Pyongyang's growing belligerence.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, in Bangkok for the APEC meeting, said he wanted to discuss North Korea in talks with China, Russia and South Korea and also at the summit today and tomorrow.
Japan wants a statement similar to one issued last year, warning that North Korea might interpret the absence of a communique as a reason not to resume the talks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the interests of all parties, including North Korea, had to be borne in mind in reaching a solution.
"We will be doing our best to convince our partners, including the participants of the six-party talks, to act correctly, not to spoil the established negotiation process, but to strengthen it," Mr. Putin told Asia-Pacific business leaders.
The Russian president said more nuclear talks could yield "good, positive results" if North Korea's security worries were addressed.
On terrorism, Mr. Bush said he would use the APEC forum to encourage more nations to contribute to Iraq's reconstruction. In a speech to troops at the Royal Thai Army headquarters, Mr. Bush praised Thailand for sending troops to help with Afghanistan's reconstruction.
"We must stay on the offensive until the terrorist threat is fully and finally defeated," the president said.
Mr. Bush announced the United States and Thailand would begin talks on a free-trade deal and promised to increase U.S.-Thai military cooperation.
Protests in Bangkok were light as world leaders gathered. Last night, Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, visited the Emerald Buddha, one of the most sacred images in Thailand. They later dined with the royal family at the Grand Palace.
----
N Korea tests surface-to-ship missile
By North Asia correspondent Mark Simkin,
Australian Broadcasting
Monday, October 20, 2003.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s971113.htm
North Korea has test-fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan.
The incident coincided with the start of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
The surface-to-ship missile was launched from the east coast of North Korea, having a maximum range of around 100 kilometres.
In Seoul, a spokesman for South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the incident appeared to be part of scheduled military exercises.
Pyongyang has test-fired short-range missiles several times this year, although this launch seemed to have been timed to coincide with a meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders in Thailand.
The leaders are expected to spend some time discussing the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
----
Did N Korea launch a missile?
20/10/2003
South Africa News 24
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1433035,00.html
Bangkok, Thailand - US Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed hopes on Monday that the North Korean nuclear crisis could be resolved diplomatically, but the optimism was tempered within hours by a report that the communist state may have test fired a short-range missile.
In a speech to business leaders meeting alongside the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit, Powell poured scorn on Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions and accused North Korea of starving its own people as it pursues a misguided nuclear weapons programme.
"You cannot eat plutonium. You cannot grow a crop because there's a nuclear weapon in a bunker somewhere. It's wasteful of the talent of the North Korean people and what little treasure the North Korean people have."
In Tokyo, Cabinet Office spokesperson Yukinori Morita and the Defence Agency said they had unconfirmed information that North Korea had test-fired a land-to-ship missile off its east coast on Monday.
But they said they had yet to verify the information.
The missile fired into the Japan Sea posed no immediate security threat to neighbouring countries, an agency official said.
The North Korean nuclear crisis has been brought to the forefront of discussions at the Apec summit by US President George W Bush and Powell.
In his speech, Powell gave no details on how the stand-off might end.
But "in the course of the next days and weeks we will be flushing out these ideas with our partners... and pursuing them with the North Koreans," he said.
'No intention of war'
He reiterated Bush's pledge, made here on Sunday, that the United States has no intention of waging war on the reclusive and impoverished North.
"None of us in this conference threatens North Korea," Powell said. "The United States does not threaten North Korea. We have no intention of invading or attacking them."
On Sunday Bush ruled out Pyongyang's demand for a non-aggression treaty but suggested there might be other ways to assure the North's security and persuade it to give up on building nuclear bombs. US official said an agreement that falls short of being a full treaty might be drafted to satisfy Pyongyang.
Powell said Bush had met here with Chinese President Hu Jintao and "presented expanded ideas" of the kinds of security assurances that we night be able to give to North Korea.
"We presented some new ideas as to how we might capture those assurances in a way that would persuade them to end in a verifiable manner their nuclear weapons programmeme," Powell said.
On Monday Bush discussed the crisis in a morning meeting with South Korean President Roh Moon-hyun, who told reporters he appreciated Bush's efforts and that, "this issue is very critical."
--------
Bush Says Pact With N. Korea Possible
Security Guarantee Linked to Steps on Nuclear Programs
By Mike Allen and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50725-2003Oct19?language=printer
BANGKOK, Oct. 20 -- President Bush said Sunday that he is willing to commit to a written guarantee not to attack North Korea in exchange for steps by the country toward abandoning its nuclear weapons programs.
Bush's aides said he wants to have a proposal ready for North Korea to consider by year's end, when administration officials hope to restart the six-nation nuclear talks with North Korea that began haltingly in August.
The new approach constitutes a change for a White House that had resisted offering any concessions to North Korea before it fully ends its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The North had agreed to freeze its programs in 1994 in a deal with the Clinton administration. But a crisis erupted last year when it was learned that North Korea had violated that agreement. The CIA estimates the country already possesses one or two nuclear weapons. Some analysts believe it has added to its stockpile in recent months.
Bush ruled out the idea of a formal nonaggression treaty, which North Korea has insisted must be part of an agreement involving nuclear concessions. "We will not have a treaty," Bush said during Sunday's photo session with Thailand's prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. "That's off the table."
Bush said he would sign a security declaration if it were a joint agreement with the four other countries participating in the talks with North Korea -- China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. A senior administration official said Bush had ruled out a bilateral agreement on the principle that if North Korea violated a multiparty pact, "they would not only be dismissive of the United States, but they would also be dismissive of the other parties that participated in the assurance."
Although Bush aides said allies have encouraged the new approach, the immediate public reaction was restrained. Chinese President Hu Jintao, sitting next to Bush after they met Sunday, said simply that he would continue working to promote the six-party talks process "so as to strive for a peaceful resolution of this issue." Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and Russian President Vladimir Putin made public statements that touched on the North Korean talks, but did not address Bush's plan. Putin said he expects "good, positive results" if the talks continue as they are now structured and take account of North Korea's concerns.
Before a breakfast meeting on Monday with Bush, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun said he was "thankful for Mr. Bush for making more efforts to continue to resume the six-party talks in the near future."
North Korean officials have sought security guarantees since Bush labeled the country part of an "axis of evil" that included Iran and the former government of Iraq. Bush on Sunday reiterated his determination to resolve the North Korean dispute peacefully, and drew a distinction between U.S. policy toward North Korea and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
North Korea's response to Bush's new plan is difficult to predict because it has long sought a formal treaty with the United States. The Clinton administration gave North Korea several written assurances about security, but a multinational guarantee is a new concept.
Bush discussed the possibility of a multilateral security agreement with Hu on the sidelines of an economic summit here in the capital of Thailand. Bush floated the idea with Koizumi on the way to Bangkok last week.
"We think there's an opportunity to move the process forward and we're going to discuss it with our partners," Bush said as he met reporters in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Bush, reiterating a position he first took in February 2002, said he has "no intention of invading North Korea." He said he has made it plain North Korea "must get rid of her weapons program . . . in a verifiable way," and added that he is now considering ways to restate that "on paper, with our partners' consent."
While the administration in the past has said North Korea must verifiably and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear programs before the administration responds, on Sunday aides set no specific prerequisites and hinted at some type of interim agreement.
"We have to see progress before we can take steps," the senior official said. "We're not saying that everything has to be done before we will do anything. In fact, we're saying just the opposite."
The official suggested, however, that the administration would rely on "things that we can see happening on the ground, as opposed to just hollow assurances."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in interviews taped here that the possibilities include a simple pledge that none of the countries would invade North Korea. "We believe that there are models that can be looked at from the past that will allow us to find the kind of security agreement that would contain the assurances that North Korea should find satisfactory," Powell told CNN.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that North Korea "gains nothing from this nuclear weapons program."
"We will not be threatened by it or be made afraid as a result of this program," she said.
The administration began hinting at an openness to a security agreement on Oct. 10, when Powell told wire service reporters that his staff was examining a range of security agreements issued by nations since the turn of the century. He said the research was the result of the fact the North Koreans had "shifted their language" about nonaggression pacts.
Officials said that during a meeting at Camp David the weekend before Bush left for Asia, he formally decided to take the idea to the Chinese. The White House said Bush had a similar discussion with Russian President Putin at Camp David at the end of last month.
Administration officials suggested that they expect China, North Korea's neighbor, to take the lead in trying to convince Pyongyang that the guarantee would be an acceptable solution to the impasse. Officials said the idea had been gradually introduced to the Chinese, with more details provided today. "If they wash their hands of it, it's not going to work," the senior official said.
Powell has been engaged in a long struggle over North Korea with other members of the administration. He has pressed for a cycle of talks that would lead to an agreement, often over the objections of other members of Bush's inner circle. Opponents of talks agreed to the six-way formula only because they were convinced it would fail, according to administration sources.
One administration official said in an interview that foes of the talks believe North Korea ultimately will derail the discussions, either by refusing Bush's offer or displaying a nuclear device -- freeing the administration to take steps to destabilize the government in Pyongyang. Partly for that reason, the administration was vague about details of a possible pledge.
Sunday's announcement was designed to encourage North Korea to return to the six-way nuclear talks, after the North Koreans had sent mixed signals about whether they should continue. It also was an effort to assure allies that the United States has ideas and is willing to engage in substantive negotiations. Many of the U.S. allies made it clear they were disappointed that the administration did not offer a more concrete proposal at the talks in August.
Also Sunday, an administration official briefing reporters after the meeting with Hu said the administration has "initialed an agreement" with the Chinese to set up a joint group of experts "to see how China could move more rapidly towards a genuine floating exchange rate."
Bush has complained that China has cost jobs in the United States by keeping the value of its currency -- the yuan, or renminbi -- artificially low to give Chinese manufacturers an unfair trade advantage.
Some key Bush advisers say it would be helpful for him to demonstrate progress on the issue before next year's election heats up, but no timetable was announced for the expert group. In a speech here on Sunday, Hu appeared to suggest he was resisting pressure to float the yuan. He said that keeping the exchange rate stable "serves China's economic performance and conforms to the requirements" for economic development "in the Asia-Pacific region and the whole world."
During the photo session with the Thai prime minister, Bush was asked what he thinks of a new tape of a voice purported to be Osama bin Laden, aired throughout the Arab world on Saturday. He expressed no skepticism that the voice was bin Laden's. "I think that the bin Laden tape should say to everybody: The war on terror goes on, that there's still a danger for free nations," he said. "And we've got to find them."
-------
Bush Proposes a Security Accord for North Korea
October 20, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/international/asia/20PREX.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BANGKOK, Monday, Oct. 20 - President Bush presented President Hu Jintao of China with a new, if still vague, American plan here on Sunday that would provide a five-nation security guarantee to North Korea - but not a formal nonaggression treaty - if the North dismantles all of its nuclear weapons programs.
Mr. Bush's decision to find a way to provide assurances to North Korea - over the objections of those in his administration who have made it clear that they do not believe the United States should be negotiating with the North at all - is a subtle but important shift in his approach to the North Korean nuclear crisis.
But in one of his longest public discussions of the issue with reporters here on Sunday, Mr. Bush ruled out the main North Korean demand, for a nonaggression treaty with the United States that receives the approval of the Senate, and which could legally bind the United States never to attempt an Iraq-like pre-emptive strike against the North's burgeoning number of nuclear facilities.
"We will not have a treaty, if that's what you're asking," he said Sunday morning during a meeting with Thailand's prime minister, Taksin Shinawata. "That's off the table."
But he added that "perhaps there are other ways we can look at" the issue, which administration officials said included a guarantee of North Korean security by the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.
That is what Mr. Bush talked about on Sunday afternoon with China's new president, and on Monday morning at a breakfast with the South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun. The administration's relationship with Mr. Roh has been strained as the two nations have differed on the strategy for persuading the North to give up its nuclear program.
The meetings are happening on the fringes of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, where economic development is the ostensible main subject of discussion, but where counterterrorism and North Korea are dominating the agenda.
Mr. Bush tucked his dealings with North Korea into a busy day that included sightseeing and the designation of Thailand as a "major non-NATO ally" as a reward for its help in tracking down terror suspects.
On Sunday night, Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, were guests at a lavish state dinner, their second in two nights after a stopover in the Philippines on Saturday. Amid the golden throne rooms and elaborate carved Buddha images of the palace grounds, Mr. Bush and his entourage were each served by their own royal butlers, as golden candelabras flickered in one of the last ornate palaces to remind visitors of a long-past age in Southeast Asia. Mr. Bush, hiding his jet lag better than many of his aides, seemed to enjoy the treatment.
The president's decision to talk to China and other nations about a way to give North Korea a nonaggression agreement - "agreement with a small `a'," one of his senior aides told reporters Sunday night - comes almost exactly a year after Mr. Bush's envoys confronted North Korea with evidence that it had been seeking to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons. For much of the time since, Mr. Bush has refused to budge, saying North Korea created the nuclear tensions and so it must move first to end them.
At a meeting in late August, representatives of the United States, Japan, Russia, China and South Korea met with North Koreans in Beijing in an attempt to persuade the North to dismantle its nuclear program. But both Washington and Pyongyang dug in, and the meeting ended without a commitment on when or if to meet again.
Not surprisingly, many administration officials insisted on Sunday that Mr. Bush was not changing strategies.
But time has not been on Mr. Bush's side. As the administration has argued internally about whether to negotiate with North Korea or seek to cut off its supplies, American intelligence agencies have warned that the North is strengthening its military nuclear capability. Besides two suspected nuclear weapons it built in 1991, there is evidence, but no proof, that it has recently produced enough plutonium fuel to make an additional one or two weapons. Some intelligence analysts believe that the number could be higher.
"You learn this stuff after the fact," said Gary Samore, an expert on nonproliferation in the Clinton administration who is now at the Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "It's enormously difficult to get real-time information that is reliable."
But it is real-time information that the administration desperately needs now, so it can measure whether the North is just stalling in order to finish building its arsenal.
Until now, Mr. Bush had vowed repeatedly that he would not give in to what he has often called blackmail from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, by offering the North tangible benefits before it begins dismantling its two active nuclear programs in a way that can be verified.
Both his State Department and many of America's allies have urged a more flexible stance, at least specifying to the North what it might receive if it terminated those programs.
The essence of Mr. Bush's message on Sunday was that he has now agreed, however reluctantly, that the North's security concerns have to be addressed more seriously. He made the decision at Camp David last weekend, a senior administration official said. If North Korea agreed to accept such a five-nation agreement, the president told Mr. Hu, then it would be under greater pressure not to break that vow, because it would be facing off against China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, in addition to the United States.
That is why Mr. Bush has refused to negotiate alone with the North, and he showed no signs on Sunday of backing away.
"We've seen this movie," one of his top foreign policy advisers told reporters on Sunday night. But two officials acknowledged, in separate interviews, that they believed that Mr. Bush's latest initiative could easily fail. They argued that Mr. Kim, the North's leader, might well decide that the price for an agreement - scrapping not only its nuclear weapons programs, but also all the weapons it has already developed - is simply too high.
"There are a lot of people in the administration who think that the North is bound and determined to plow ahead with its nukes, no matter what," said a senior official in Washington who has joined the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office in opposing virtually any meaningful negotiation with North Korea.
But the official saw merit in the president's approach, he said, because if it failed, North Korea's intentions would be evident to all.
"We could demonstrate to the world that it's time to take more decisive action, from cutting off their oil, to seizing their ships, to having unpleasant things happen to their suspected sites," the official said.
-------- us politics
Federal deficit hits record $374.2 billion
10/20/2003
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-10-20-federal-deficit_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal budget deficit hit a record $374.2 billion in 2003, the administration reported Monday, as the costs of the war in Iraq, a new round of tax cuts and economic weakness pushed the government's red ink to the highest level in history.
Providing a final accounting of the budget year that ended Sept. 30, the administration said that the 2003 deficit was more than double last year's imbalance of $157.8 billion.
In dollar terms, the 2003 figure easily surpassed the old record of $290.4 billion set in 1992 when President Bush's father was president.
However, Bush administration officials noted that the 2003 deficit represented just 3.5% of the country's total economic output, below the 5% and 6% levels hit in the 1980s during the Reagan administration. The administration prefers to link the deficit to total economic output as a better measure of the country's ability to carry the debt burden.
The $374.2 billion deficit figure represented an improvement from the administration's forecast this summer when Bush officials projected the deficit this year would hit $455 billion. Officials credited stronger-than-expected tax collections in recent months in combination with less government spending for the improvement over the summer forecast.
Still, Joshua Bolten, head of the president's Office of Management and Budget, said that the deficit for the current 2004 budget year will rise even higher, topping $500 billion, before stronger economic growth will start the red ink on a downward path. The administration is forecasting that the deficit be cut in half over the next five years.
"We can put the deficit on a responsible downward path if we continue pro-growth economic policies and exercise responsible spending restraint," Bolten said in a statement accompanying the budget figures. "The president's budget does precisely that, halving the deficit from its 2004 peak within five years."
The back-to-back deficits in 2002 and 2003 represent a significant turnaround in the country's fiscal fortunes after four consecutive years of budget surpluses. That was the longest such stretch since the 1920s, as government coffers were swollen by rising income tax revenues, reflecting the record-long 10-year economic expansion which ended with the recession that began in March 2001.
That recession and weak economic growth since then, plus three rounds of tax cuts pushed through Congress by the president and rising government spending to bolster homeland security and fight a global war on terrorism have sent the deficits soaring.
Democrats have zeroed in on the deficits as a symbol of what they contend is Bush's mismanagement of the economy, arguing that the president's emphasis on tax cuts has squandered projected surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion over 10 years.
But administration officials said Monday that Bush's policies were beginning to spur economic growth, which many analysts believe will top 4% at an annual rate over the last six months of this year.
"Today's budget numbers reinforce indications we have seen for some months now; that the economy is well on the path to recovery," said Treasury Secretary John Snow.
-------- MILITARY
----- afghanistan
Afghan troops okay: specialists
By STEPHEN THORNE (CP)
Mon, October 20, 2003
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/10/20/231413-cp.html
KABUL - Besides threats from landmines, unseen enemies and car accidents on busy streets, Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have nothing to worry about but snakes, scorpions and camel spiders, say specialists who just assessed health threats within the troops' working environment.
The multi-disciplinary team spent three weeks conducting an environmental and industrial health hazard study and found Canadian troops face no long-term health hazards in their area of operations in and around the Afghan capital.
The latest laboratory results won't be available for another two months, said the team leader, Capt. Don Saunders, but overall the mission looks clean.
"The only things we noticed were some minor little public health concerns relating to general cleanliness of some of the areas being occupied by Canadians," said Saunders, an engineer.
"But overall we found no immediate . . . risk," including no radiation from spent ammunition and other remnants of previous wars.
The unit conducted air sampling in roughly 70 per cent of the Canadian area of operations but suspect the only threat posed by the dust is to those predisposed to respiratory problems such as asthma and bronchitis.
"There were no contaminants in the dust - no heavy metals, no traces of organic matter, no biological contamination or bacteria count."
Nor did they find any active fecal matter in the dust that permeates virtually everything in Afghanistan.
Saunders said most bacteria does not live long enough in the hot, bright and dry Afghan environment to pose a significant threat to humans. Ultra-violet light - of which there is plenty - kill most bacteria, he said.
The members of 1 Engineering Support Unit out of Moncton, N.B., who also designed the camp in which much of the 1,950-member Canadian contingent lives, consist of an environmental engineer, an occupational safety and preventative medicine technician and a radiological survey technician.
The unit, which also paid a visit last June to the sprawling camp housing Canadian members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, acts as the military's engineering consultants on a variety of matters.
They also assessed an observation post located at a palace ruin nearby; Camp Warehouse, where the Canadian-commanded Kabul Multi-National Brigade is based; ISAF headquarters, home to the Canadian deputy commander of ISAF and his staff, a mountaintop Canadian signals outpost, an ammunition storage site sometimes guarded by Canadians and the Kabul Military Training Centre.
Water from deep aquifers around the main camp was relatively clean, while shallow pools are polluted, said Saunders, whose team brought 30 boxes of equipment, weighing about a tonne.
Assessors found the greatest threats outside of hostile acts and accidents are from scorpions, whose sting is extremely painful but not lethal; camel spiders, whose bite is vicious but not poisonous, and snakes, which include seven kinds of vipers and three kinds of cobras - some potentially fatal.
German technicians at Camp Warehouse in northern Kabul captured four mosquitoes and two carried the malaria virus. Canadians, however, take anti-malarial drugs.
So far, no Canadian has been seriously hurt by anything environmental. Few have even seen snakes in the Canadian camp, though the reconnaissance platoon encountered a 2 1/2-metre cobra on a mission in September.
The most prevalent threat is from disease-laden mice, which abound in some parts of the main Canadian camp, located southwest of Kabul.
The Canadian military began such assessments in 2000 after a federal board of inquiry recommended them in response to complaints by soldiers serving in Croatia between 1993 and 1995. Those serving in the Balkans complained of health problems they blamed on depleted uranium, mainly from spent ammunition.
Saunders said the team considers its work "extremely important."
"The people in the military are its greatest asset and it behoves the military to look after them," he said.
The unit will conduct another assessment when the Canadians pull out of Afghanistan - scheduled for next summer but widely expected to be much farther down the road.
Its reports go to National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa and to Lt.-Col. Don Denne, commander of the battle group that is patrolling city streets and alleyways, mountain passes and dusty goat tracks.
-------- asia
At issue is defense or destruction of the Constitution
Akahata editorial,
October 20, 2003
http://www.japan-press.co.jp/2355/oct20.html
Japan now faces a choice between two roads: one that will remake Japan into a nation that defends the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution for world peace and the other that will adversely revises it in order to constitutionally take part in U.S. wars.
With the governing Liberal Democratic Party putting forward a call for constitutional revision as part of its election policies, the outcome of the coming House of Representatives general election could have a serious effect on Japan in the 21st century and influence the world as well.
The major current of the 21st century
The LDP's campaign platform, known as the Koizumi reform plan,states, "In 2005, the government will make great strides towards constitutional revision." It openly calls for a procedural set up that includes the revision of the Diet Law and the enactment of a National Referendum Law.
The opposition Democratic Party of Japan in its election policies openly calls for a nationwide discussion of the Constitution to be developed into an effort to revise it.
The Japanese Communist Party is confronting these forces calling for constitutional revision.
Why has the LDP begun to include the constitutional revision in its election platform? The reason is that, although Japan has tried to meet the U.S. request for a constitutional revision by stretching the interpretation of the Constitution, Japan can no longer use this method to meet the U.S. demand that Japan take part in U.S. wars abroad.
In fact, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro at his first press conference since he took office stressed that "Japan won't be able to just watch U.S. forces being attacked."
The Koizumi Cabinet insists that the Self-Defense Forces will be sent exclusively to "non-combat zones" in Iraq. If the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution is amended or removed, the SDF will be allowed to join with the U.S. forces to kill people in any battlefield throughout the world.
The LDP Research Commission on the Constitution's draft of constitutional revisions calls for the establishment of a "Self-Defense Army" to be used for Japan's "international contribution."
Similar amendments are being proposed by the governing coalition partners, the Komei and New Conservative parties.
As if in response to the LDP's move, the Democratic Party has begun to call for the SDF to be allowed to take part in multilateral forces in Iraq if they are organized in accordance with a United Nations resolution. The interim report of the DPJ constitution research council also suggests that the preamble and Article 9 of the Constitution might be considered for revision.
A security minister of the DPJ's so-called "next cabinet" says in a magazine that the preamble to the Constitution stipulating "renunciation of war" is important, but no one can rule out a possibility of "war breaking out" and that it is necessary to revise the Constitution to enable Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defense.
These arguments for constitutional revision only pave the way for Japan's participation in war, completely running counter to the needs of the world.
What the international community wants is a way to solve international disputes by peaceful rules based on the U.N. Charter, not by means of war but by Japan's contribution through nonviolence means in compliance with the Japanese Constitution.
Article 9 of the Constitution is the pioneering "treasure for peace" and the pride of the world and is in accord with the world trend in the 21st century. The proponent of Article 9 at the Constituent Assembly stated, "Article 9 expresses Japan's firm determination to take a lead of peace-loving nations along the broad highway of justice."
The Constitution is playing a significant role in preventing Japan from going to war, guaranteeing basic human rights and people's social economic rights, and defending peace and people's livelihoods.
Block adverse revision of the Constitution with people power
The JCP strictly observes all articles of the Constitution, and tries to allow Article 9 and all other peaceful democratic constitutional provisions to guide the Japanese people in politics, the economy, diplomacy, and social life. From this viewpoint, the JCP firmly opposes the adverse revision of the Constitution.
The JCP, as the only party that stood firm against Japan's war of aggression in the pre-war period, makes an all-out effort to thwart any plan to adversely revise the Constitution and calls for broader cooperation to protect the Constitution.
The government is trying to divert Japan's resolve for peace. Standing up squarely against such attempts, the JCP's advance will be important for the defense of peace in Japan and the rest of the world, people's living conditions, and basic civil rights.
-------- iraq
In a New Attack, G.I. Is Killed, 5 Are Wounded in Falluja
October 20, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/international/asia/20CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 20 - An American soldier on patrol in Falluja was killed today and five were wounded after being attacked by an improvised explosive device, followed by small-arms fire.
The soldiers, from the 82nd Airborne Division, came under attack at about 1 p.m. local time, a coalition forces' spokeswoman said. It followed attacks against United States forces elsewhere in Iraq on Saturday that killed two American soldiers and wounded several more.
On Sunday, crowds of young men danced in victory atop the smoking wreckage of an American Army truck demolished in Falluja. It seemed a small miracle that no one was killed or even wounded here on Sunday. A roadside bomb - set against a monument reading "Welcome to Falluja" - exploded on a trailer hauling Hellfire missiles through Falluja, an unstable city west of Baghdad, and then crowds incinerated the entire truck, using gasoline.
When the American soldiers returned several hours later to reclaim what they could and put out the fire, they were attacked again with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, forcing them to retreat.
"This is a victory souvenir," said Hikmat Hammad, 24, holding up a blackened ax taken from the wreck.
As A-10 fighter jets roared overhead, looters rolled off charred wheel rims and a battered steel water tank. A huge cheer and celebratory gunfire went off as several men carted away the tail section of one of the missiles, used to destroy tanks and bunkers.
"There is definitely a fair amount of hostility toward us in this town," said Maj. Tim Watson of the 82nd Airborne Division, who was one of the men who had returned to the wreckage and encountered the second firefight. "We're working our way through that."
The level of threat on several fronts reached a point in the last several days that the Governing Council, appointed by American officials and the highest Iraqi body here, held a special meeting to discuss the "serious security situation prevailing in our precious country."
"The Governing Council calls on all Iraqi citizens to maintain order and repel the conspiracies that are surrounding the country and to maintain the rule of law," read a statement released on Sunday.
"It stresses that no one is above the authority of the law," the statement continued, noting that violators will be "severely punished."
The statement did not say so, but it seemed to open the possibility that American forces and the Iraqi police might respond to a rising confrontation with several militant Shiite clerics who have emerged only in the last two weeks as a new source of instability.
Until now, most of the threats against the American forces and the Iraqis working with them have appeared to come from former members of the government of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, and foreign fighters trickling into Iraq.
But the armed militias of two anti-American Shiite clerics, Moktada al-Sadr and Mahmoud al-Hassani, have killed five Americans in Baghdad and Karbala, south of Baghdad, and speculation is high that the American forces may soon arrest Mr. Hassani and possibly even Mr. Sadr, whose following is larger.
Officials say they do not believe that either man has a substantial following, but they are still concerned about violent street protests, and possible fights with the militias, if either man is taken into custody.
It has been quiet, however, in Sadr City, a stronghold for Mr. Sadr, even though he has called for demonstrations to acclaim a rival government he says he founded, and despite the fact that American soldiers and Iraqi policemen on Thursday pushed his supporters from a district council office they had taken over.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, two American soldiers were killed late Saturday night after their patrol was ambushed with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the military reported on Sunday. One other soldier was wounded.
Since President Bush declared major hostilities over in Iraq on May 1, 107 American soldiers have been killed.
Outside the town of Al Hadid, also north of Baghdad, another American patrol was attacked by a roadside bomb on Sunday night. Soldiers fired back, the military said, killing two of the Iraqi attackers.
Here in Falluja, one hot spot for attacks against American soldiers, the roadside bomb went off at 11 a.m., blasting out bits of concrete and asphalt with a direct hit on the trailer carrying the missiles. One witness said he had seen the two American soldiers in the truck escape into one or more of the three Humvees escorting the missiles.
There were reports, unconfirmed, that at least one Iraqi had been killed in the exchange of fire that erupted after American soldiers returned several hours later. Some of the celebrators chanted in support of Osama bin Laden. An audiotaped call for Iraqis to attack United States soldiers here surfaced on Saturday, and was said to be from Mr. bin Laden.
"This is a good operation," proclaimed Ghassan Ahmed, 22, a student who was among the crowd celebrating the destruction of the the truck. "It's resisting the Americans. They came to occupy us. They didn't come to help."
Lt. Col. Brian Drinkwine, the local battalion commander with the 82nd Airborne, stationed in Falluja, said the attack - and another similar one two days ago - were unusual in that the resisters had normally struck outside the city to avoid hurting Iraqis. He speculated that the attacks might be the work of forces from outside Falluja, possibly foreign or Islamic fighters with less concern about the residents here.
"If the extremists are going to use this as a method to attack us, they're going to start hurting Iraqi people," he said. "And its going to backfire on them."
--------
G.I.'s Escape Roadside Bombing, but 2 Are Killed in Northern Iraq
October 20, 2003
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/international/middleeast/20IRAQ.html
FALLUJA, Iraq, Oct. 19 - Crowds of young men danced in victory atop the smoking wreckage of an American Army truck demolished here on Sunday, as attacks against United States forces elsewhere in Iraq over the last day killed two American soldiers and wounded several more.
It seemed a small miracle that no one was killed or even wounded here. A roadside bomb - set against a monument reading "Welcome to Falluja" - exploded on a trailer hauling Hellfire missiles through this unstable city west of Baghdad, and then crowds incinerated the entire truck, using gasoline.
When the American soldiers returned several hours later to reclaim what they could and put out the fire, they were attacked again with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, forcing them to retreat.
"This is a victory souvenir," said Hikmat Hammad, 24, holding up a blackened ax taken from the wreck.
As A-10 fighter jets roared overhead, looters rolled off charred wheel rims and a battered steel water tank. A huge cheer and celebratory gunfire went off as several men carted away the tail section of one of the missiles, used to destroy tanks and bunkers.
"There is definitely a fair amount of hostility toward us in this town," said Maj. Tim Watson of the 82nd Airborne Division, who was one of the men who had returned to the wreckage and encountered the second firefight. "We're working our way through that."
The level of threat on several fronts reached a point in the last several days that the Governing Council, appointed by American officials and the highest Iraqi body here, held a special meeting to discuss the "serious security situation prevailing in our precious country."
"The Governing Council calls on all Iraqi citizens to maintain order and repel the conspiracies that are surrounding the country and to maintain the rule of law," read a statement released on Sunday.
"It stresses that no one is above the authority of the law," the statement continued, noting that violators will be "severely punished."
The statement did not say so, but it seemed to open the possibility that American forces and the Iraqi police might respond to a rising confrontation with several militant Shiite clerics who have emerged only in the last two weeks as a new source of instability.
Until now, most of the threats against the American forces and the Iraqis working with them have appeared to come from former members of the government of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, and foreign fighters trickling into Iraq.
But the armed militias of two anti-American Shiite clerics, Moktada al-Sadr and Mahmoud al-Hassani, have killed five Americans in Baghdad and Karbala, south of Baghdad, and speculation is high that the American forces may soon arrest Mr. Hassani and possibly even Mr. Sadr, whose following is larger.
Officials say they do not believe that either man has a substantial following, but they are still concerned about violent street protests, and possible fights with the militias, if either man is taken into custody. It has been quiet, however, in Sadr City, a stronghold for Mr. Sadr, even though he has called for demonstrations to acclaim a rival government he says he founded, and despite the fact that American soldiers and Iraqi policemen on Thursday pushed his supporters from a district council office they had taken over.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, two American soldiers were killed late Saturday night after their patrol was ambushed with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the military reported on Sunday. One other soldier was wounded.
Since President Bush declared an end to major hostilities in Iraq on May 1, 106 American soldiers have been killed.
Outside the town of Al Hadid, also north of Baghdad, another American patrol was attacked by a roadside bomb on Sunday night. Soldiers fired back, the military said, killing two of the Iraqi attackers.
Here in Falluja, one hot spot for attacks against American soldiers, the roadside bomb went off at 11 a.m., blasting out bits of concrete and asphalt with a direct hit on the trailer carrying the missiles. One witness said he had seen the two American soldiers in the truck escape into one or more of the three Humvees escorting the missiles.
There were reports, unconfirmed, that at least one Iraqi had been killed in the exchange of fire that erupted after American soldiers returned several hours later. Some of the celebrators chanted in support of Osama bin Laden. An audiotaped call for Iraqis to attack United States soldiers here surfaced on Saturday, and was said to be from Mr. bin Laden.
"This is a good operation," proclaimed Ghassan Ahmed, 22, a student who was among the crowd celebrating the destruction of the the truck. "It's resisting the Americans. They came to occupy us. They didn't come to help."
Lt. Col. Brian Drinkwine, the local battalion commander with the 82nd Airborne, stationed in Falluja, said the attack - and another similar one two days ago - were unusual in that the resisters had normally struck outside the city to avoid hurting Iraqis. He speculated that the attacks might be the work of forces from outside Falluja, possibly foreign or Islamic fighters with less concern about the residents here.
"If the extremists are going to use this as a method to attack us, they're going to start hurting Iraqi people," he said. "And it's going to backfire on them."
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Two U.S. Soldiers Killed In Ambush Near Kirkuk
Iraqis Cheer Attack on Cargo Truck in Fallujah
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50264-2003Oct19.html
BAGHDAD, Oct. 19 -- Two U.S. soldiers on their way to investigate an explosion were killed in an ambush outside the northern oil city of Kirkuk late Saturday, the military announced Sunday. It was the latest in a surge of attacks in what until late September had been a relatively tranquil section of Iraq.
A third soldier from the 173rd Airborne Brigade was wounded in the attack. No other details on the soldiers were available.
U.S. commanders and Iraqi officials have laid responsibility for the attacks in Kirkuk on the arrival of resistance organizers who have traveled north from the so-called Sunni Triangle, where there have long been frequent assaults on U.S. patrols.
In a separate incident, a remote-control device detonated under a U.S. cargo truck and trailer Sunday morning in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. The trailer, laden with Hellfire missiles, caught fire, and was abandoned along with the truck about 100 yards down the road. Bystanders then set upon the prize, splashing the trailer and truck with gasoline and cheering the resulting fireworks show.
"This was carried out at the encouragement of Osama bin Laden," said Mazin Hamid, 35, smiling and holding the hand of his 9-year-old son.
"We are happy he was on television yesterday," Hamid said, referring to an audiotape broadcast Saturday and attributed to the founder of al Qaeda. "He sent greetings to the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. We are now encouraged to expel the Americans from the city. This is moral encouragement."
About three hours after the 11 a.m. explosion, members of the 82nd Airborne Division arrived with Iraqi policemen to try to extinguish the blaze and recover the rig. But the paratroops left after several rocket-propelled grenades were fired at them; officers said they felt constrained about returning fire in the heavily populated area.
Minutes later the crowd climbed onto the wreckage, holding aloft charred missiles and truck parts. A man fired an AK-47 into the air from behind the wheel of a car labeled "Al Anbar Highway Patrol." The crowd scattered for a few minutes when a pair of A-10 Thunderbolt II jets roared overhead, then resumed the revelry.
"As much as bin Laden frightened the Americans, Saddam Hussein is going to do more," said a youth, Saif Khalil.
Vendors in Fallujah reported that among their best-selling CDs are compilations of bin Laden's statements as aired on al-Jazeera.
"We don't want to see Americans here during Ramadan," said Maher Khudeir, 20, of the Muslim holy month that begins late this month and emphasizes daytime fasting and charity.
Another bystander, Mohammed Abid Alwan, 49, predicted that attacks would intensify until the 82nd Airborne released a Sunni cleric, Sheik Jamal Nazal, detained for allegedly encouraging assaults on occupation troops and sheltering resistance fighters in his mosque, Fallujah's largest.
"There's definitely a fair amount of hostility toward us in town," said Maj. Tim Watson at the U.S. base where Nazal is being held, outside Fallujah. "And we're working through that."
In other action in the north early Sunday, U.S. troops were attacked with grenades and small arms and returned fire, killing three Iraqis near Hawija, 150 miles north of Baghdad, the 4th Infantry Division reported, according to the Associated Press.
Other U.S. forces detained five attackers north of Beiji, 120 miles north of Baghdad, after a brief firefight.
Staff writer Vernon Loeb in Tikrit and correspondent Anthony Shadid contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli women won't see combat
October 20, 2003
By Abraham Rabinovich
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031020-122552-3754r.htm
JERUSALEM - Young women who are drafted into the Israeli military will be barred from most combat duties because of a medical study that has determined they are, after all, the weaker sex.
The finding comes at a time when the army already is stretched thin. Several hundred reserve soldiers were called up yesterday to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip because of rising violence and fears of a new wave of Palestinian suicide bombings.
The medical study, carried out by the army medical corps, found that women safely can carry 40 percent of their body weight compared with 55 percent for men.
The fact that military-age women weigh 33 pounds less than men on average makes the average disparity in what they can lift more than 44 pounds.
The study also determined that men could be trained on marches of up to 55 miles, but that marches of more than 32 miles were too arduous for women.
The study, carried out at the request of the General Staff, found that the amount of oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in women's blood was more than 10 percent lower than in men's blood, limiting their ability to undertake extended physical efforts.
Given these limitations, the army doctors recommended that the army bar women from service in front-line infantry units.
They also are to be barred from tank crews, where each member must be capable of carrying out the loader's duties if needed. That task could require lifting dozens of shells and inserting them into the gun breech during battle.
Artillery units, as well as tasks with combat engineers dealing with heavy equipment, would be closed to women for similar reasons.
The findings will complicate the job of military planners, who are faced with growing concern about political violence in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Yesterday, three Israeli soldiers were killed and a fourth was wounded when Palestinian gunmen attacked a foot patrol near the West Bank village of Ein Yabrud, east of Ramallah.
A government official said yesterday that 10 battalions of reserve soldiers would be called up to fill gaps resulting from cuts in defense spending. A military source had told Reuters news agency that only five battalions would be needed.
Asked about the call-up, Israeli army spokeswoman Ruth Yaron told Israeli radio: "We are facing another wave of terror.
"Unfortunately, due to budget cuts ... when we currently face a wave of alerts and attacks, we are forced to recruit reserve troops on too-short notice," she said.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat criticized the decision.
"These actions are consistent with the daily escalation by the Israeli army," he told Reuters. "It's an indication that the Israeli government will continue their aggression, incursions and curfews, and this won't lead us anywhere."
The doctors and physiologists who conducted the medical study said there were no objections to women serving in light infantry units along peacetime borders, in antiaircraft missile units or as radar operators in intelligence units, where they have proved themselves on numerous occasions.
Nor did the medical team recommend barring women from serving as air force pilots or navigators, as a few are doing, or as naval officers.
Women serve extensively as instructors in training camps, but they are not assigned to combat units unless they volunteer for them and qualify. Women are drafted at age 18 for two years and men for three.
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Families seek truth over Israeli deaths
Chris McGreal talks to the relatives of three British and American victims as they struggle to find out how their loved-ones came to die at the hands of the Israeli army
By Chris McGreal
Monday October 20, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1066817,00.html
The family of a British peace activist shot in the head by an Israeli soldier is considering applying to the courts for permission to turn off his life support machine.
Doctors in Britain have told Tom Hurndall's family that he does not feel a thing.But his family find that hard to believe as they watch the twisting body and contorted face of the 22-year-old who is in a "vegetative state" after being shot in April.
"Tom can move, he flails,he turns his head from side to side from his shoulders upwards and grimaces,"said his sister,Sophie,24.
"He looks like he is in agony.He looks like he is in hell. It is the most heart-rending and torturous thing to watch." Ms. Hurndall said the family may seek a court order aiming to end Tom's life. It could take up to six months to obtain, and then a further 14 days for him to die.
"For me, Tom has already died but there's still no closure,"said Sophie. "At the same time,it causes so much suffering and pain going in to see him. It's just an innate instinct to help him,to stop him suffering."
The Hurndalls,from Tufnell Park,north London, are one of three British and American families struggling to extract from the Israeli government and military the truth about how loved ones were killed or horrendously wounded by soldiers.
All three families have accused the authorities of fabricating evidence,suppressing investigations and covering-up deliberate killings. Tom Hurndall's mother,Jocelyn,wrote to Tony Blair last week demanding he exert more pressure on Israel to hold a transparent inquiry.
Writing in today's Guardian, she calls the Israeli government a "deeply immoral regime which is cruel beyond human understanding". The three victims were all shot in Rafah, a refugee camp in southern Gaza which the Israelis call a "war zone":
Tom Hurndall, a student photographer volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement, was shot as he tried to protect children under fire from Israeli soldiers;
James Miller,a 34-year-old British television cameraman, was killed a month later.His relatives are travelling to Israel next week to put pressure on the military to make its inquiry public and to admit it lied about the circumstances of his death;
Rachel Corrie, a young American peace activist, was crushed to death by an Army Bulldozer in March. Her parents are still trying to obtain a copy of the military investigation which cleared the driver.
The Corries had been told the report was secret until they found that the Israeli government was covertly distributing it among members of the US Congress to prevent an independent investigation.
In only one case has there been a proper investigation: the death of Iain Hook from Felixstowe. He was head of the UN rebuilding programme in Jenin when he was shot by an Israeli sniper in November.
The army falsely claimed he was shot while standing among Palestinian gunmen in the UN compound. Israel paid compensation to Hook's family but attached confidentiality clauses which suppressed a public admission of culpability for what some of the UN worker's colleagues have called "cold-blooded murder".
All four families have carried out their own investigations after swiftly losing faith in the Israeli authorities.
"Sincerity isn't a word I would use in conjunction with the Israeli military,"said James Miller's brother,John. "I have absolutely no confidence in what they tell me. I think the Israelis operate a war of attrition that just grinds you down in the hope you'll give up."
The Hurndalls have concluded that Israel has no intention of seriously investigating the shooting of their son, who was wearing a bright orange jacket, and had already carried a small boy to safety and was stooping to pick up a girl when the bullet struck.
The army investigation said that a sniper in a watchtower fired at a man wearing camouflage clothes and carrying a gun. The military came up with five theories for how the student came to be hit,all built around the claim that there was an unidentified gunman on the scene.
His father,Anthony,a lawyer,visited Rafah and compiled his own 50-page report in July. The report, seen by the Guardian, concludes that the army invented the gunman to justify the shooting. Mr Hurndall's report accuses the army of lying, withholding evidence and major factual errors.
"The events described are two different events: one real and the other a fabrication," Mr Hurndall wrote in his report.
"The distance from the tower is about 150 metres [500ft]. For an experienced soldier, it is not possible to believe that he was under any misapprehension that Tom was a Palestinian gunman."
Mr Hurndall wrote that the chiefs of staff had given "the clear signal to their soldiers and to the international community that in Israel soldiers can and do deliberately kill and maim innocent civilians,Palestinian and international, without cause and with impunity".
In May,the Israelis promised the foreign secretary,Jack Straw, that there would be a--"full and transparent inquiry"-- into Tom's shooting, but this has yet to materialise.
In July,the then foreign office minister responsible for the Middle East, Baroness Symons,wrote to the Israeli foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, pressing for a military police criminal investigation after seeing a copy of the Hurndall investigation.
Evidence
"Their report contains very powerful and disturbing photographic evidenceto support the written account that they, and a considerable number of witnesses,have given of Tom's shooting," she wrote.
The Israelis took two months to reply,and then only to say that a decision on a criminal inquiry was still being considered. The Israeli government said it had shown "goodwill" by offering to pay Tom Hurndall's medical and repatriation costs.
But,four months after he was flown home,the family says they have not seen a penny. Nearly six months after James Miller's death, his family is still battling to see the army's investigation. Miller was shot as he left Rafah filming bulldozers destroying homes.
The fatal bullet came from an armoured vehicle he had approached waving a white flag and shouting to the soldiers. The next day,Colonel Avi Levy, Israel's deputy commander in Gaza, said that Miller had walked into a battle.
"Troops in an armoured vehicle were searching for weapons-smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian border when the soldiers came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades. The troops returned fire," he said.
A day later, Col Levy went further and said Miller had been shot --"from behind",--possibly by a Palestinian. Neither claim was true. Video footage suggests there was no gun battle and the only shots came from an Israeli soldier.
The postmortem said that the bullet struck him from the front and ballistics tests showed it came from an Israeli gun. The family's lawyer in Israel, Avigdor Feldman, has called the killing "criminal", saying the soldier had targeted Miller.
Army investigators belatedly ordered the guns of 15 soldiers impounded for ballistics tests, but only nine were secured and they had consecutive serial numbers. They are only likely to be the real weapons used on the night if they were carried by soldiers who joined the army on the same day, were issued guns at the same time and were all assigned to the same unit.
The ballistics tests have yet to be carried out. Miller's brother, John, said the family was given an assurance by the Israeli deputy defence minister, Ze'ev Boim, that the results of the investigation would be released. "We were told we would be able to see it in its entirety.
Ze'ev Boim said it at a press conference in Paris and in an interview on television," he said. "Now they say they won't show it to us because the military police investigation is under way."
Cindy and Craig Corrie have been similarly frustrated. Rachel Corrie, 23,was crushed under the blade of one of the army's monster bulldozers as it prepared to destroy Palestinian homes in Rafah.
The army said the driver had not seen the young woman. The government refuses to let the Corries see the evidence that led the military to clear itself,but Rachel's parents were able to read a copy of a report circulated to the US Congress after meeting a sympathetic congressman who left it on his desk and walked out of the room. "Having read the report we still have questions," said Cindy Corrie, noting that the Israelis changed their account several times and misrepresented evidence.
Mr Corrie said:
"They say that the doctor that did the autopsy said that her death was probably caused by tripping on the debris or perhaps by being covered by the debris. Well, that statement is not in the autopsy."
The Corries were disturbed by an incident as they visited the site of their daughter's death in Rafah. For their own safety, the Israeli army had asked them where they would be and when. The Corries complied.
But in the middle of dinner with a Palestinian family, the Corries looked out of the house to see a bulldozer heading toward the building.
"It was surprisingly aggressive and provocative considering they absolutely knew who we were and why we were there," Mr Corrie said.
The British and American families emphasise that their cases are no worse than the suffering of hundreds of Palestinians whose children have been killed by the army during the three-year intifada.
Even the most blatant cases of extrajudicial killing by soldiers are rarely investigated by the military police, and usually only after adverse publicity. Only 9 soldiers have been charged with illegal killings; so far, there has not been one conviction in three years.
But the families of the foreign victims find it telling that even under diplomatic pressure,and with greater media attention, Israel has shown little interest in getting to the truth that the Hurndalls, Millers and Corries are seeking.
"Our primary objective is to see a criminal prosecution for the chap that pulled a trigger and the person that gave the order, if there was such a person. Secondly, there is an acceptable level of acceptance and apology, and thirdly financial restitution," said John Miller.
"With Iain Hook, the Israelis settled with a gagging order. That shows they have some acceptance but they just don't want negative PR. There's no possibility we'll sign confidentiality clauses that allow them to hide. That's the point of this, that everyone should know what goes on."
Sophie Hurndall agrees. "If we were to accept hush money, it would be totally wrong. What's going on in Palestine is horrific. Tom is a symbol of that horror. If we were to compromise what we could do with that symbol for money, I don't think it's even an option. It would go against everything Tom was and what he believed." Israeli officials said they were unable to comment while investigations continue.
----
5 Israeli Airstrikes in Gaza Kill at Least 11 Palestinians
October 20, 2003
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/international/middleeast/20CND-MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GAZA, Oct. 20 - Israeli warplanes and helicopter gunships struck Gaza five times today, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 90, Palestinian hospital authorities said, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon affirmed Israel's threat of ``removing'' the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat.
Sirens wailed through Gaza City late tonight while Israeli fighter jets continued to tear through the darkness overhead, after one of the most intensive, lethal air barrages of the conflict, now more than three years old.
The deadliest attack of the day came after dark, south of here in the Nuseirat refugee camp. Palestinian witnesses said Israeli helicopters fired at a car, then fired again as a crowd gathered.
Hospital officials said that at least eight people were killed and 70 were wounded. It was not immediately clear how many of the casualties were militants or bystanders. Witnesses said two of the three people inside the car were killed.
The Israeli Army said helicopters fired several missiles at the getaway car of gunmen who fled after being spotted trying to cross the fence that brackets Gaza against the Mediterranean Sea.
Two other gunmen from the same cell were shot near the fence, the army said. It was not immediately certain if they were killed. Residents of the camp crowded around the charred remains of the vehicle, chanting for revenge.
Mr. Sharon's pattern, first as a general and then as a politician, has been to set seemingly audacious goals, or to employ seemingly audacious tactics like the use of warplanes against Palestinian targets, and then, over time, accustom even his sharpest critics to them. Speaking of removing Mr. Arafat in an address to the Israeli Parliament in Jerusalem today, he said: ``Our policy is becoming more and more conceivable to various international bodies. I am convinced our policy will succeed.''
Mr. Sharon, who had appeared to rule out exiling or killing Mr. Arafat in a newspaper interview last week, did not explain what measures Israel might take to remove the longtime Palestinian leader.
``This man is the greatest obstacle to peace,'' he said. ``Therefore, Israel has committed to removing him from the political arena."
Some Arab legislators stalked out of the hall during the remarks on Mr. Arafat, and Shimon Peres, the leader of what has been a moribund opposition, accused Mr. Sharon of squandering an opportunity for peace. ``We are dealing with a nation that is fighting for its freedom, and don't take them lightly,'' Mr. Peres said of the Palestinians.
Ahmed Qurie, who as Palestinian prime minister is leading a faltering government, said today that the world must ``wake up to this aggression.'' He appealed to the Israeli government ``to sit with us to negotiate for a mutual cease fire with all seriousness.''
Israel is demanding that the governing Palestinian Authority break apart militant groups responsible for scores of suicide bombings, saying that a cease-fire would only allow the groups to reload. Palestinian officials say they lack any political support for such a move as long as Palestinians are buffeted by the Israeli military.
Today's bombardment in Gaza came after Palestinian gunmen ambushed and shot dead three Israeli soldiers on a foot patrol on the West Bank Sunday night. It also came after Hamas militants on Sunday fired eight crude rockets over Gaza's fenced boundary into Israel. The rockets did not cause injuries.
Hamas had vowed to retaliate for the killing Saturday of two of its members and a bystander in clashes with Israeli forces in southern Gaza.
Israel's first target today was an unfinished two-story building in the Sajaiya neighborhood of Gaza City, where the Israeli Army and local Palestinians said that Hamas militants were assembling and stockpiling weapons, including their so-called Qassam rockets.
The Israeli warplanes struck at about 8:30 in the morning, dropping bombs that crumpled and scorched the building's concrete walls and shattered windows along the block. One Hamas militant who was inside the building was injured, as were 20 other people, including five children, who were nearby, hospital officials said.
Rawda al-Jamal, a mother of eight, said she was awakened by the roar of American-made F-16 planes, a sound that has become familiar here.
``Suddenly, the windows all broke over us,'' Mrs. Jamal said. ``I ran downstairs, and I saw all my neighbors screaming, and I saw the blood of my child.'' At Shifa hospital here, she held her wailing 1-year-old son, Basil, whose head had been cut by flying glass.
After the missile strike, reporters at the scene saw three men in olive-colored ski masks straining to carry metal barrels from the building to two vehicles, one of them a white Peugeot pickup truck.
Two hours later, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a white Peugeot pickup in traffic on a Gaza street. The attack killed two men inside in the truck, both of them militants from Hamas. Two olive ski masks were spotted in the wreckage.
Another man, the driver of a following car, was also killed in that attack, and nine people were injured.
In the third strike, missiles hit a small building and a car on Gaza City's east side. No one was reported killed or injured. The Israeli Army said the building was used to store weapons and manufacture Qassam rockets
In the last attack of the day, warplanes again bombed the Gaza City building that was struck first this morning, evidently in hopes of destroying any weapons that might remain in the rubble.
Major Sharon Feingold, an Army spokeswoman, said the airstrikes, like an Israeli offensive in southern Gaza to destroy tunnels used to smuggle weapons, were intended to ``to target the arteries, as we see them, of the terrorist infrastructure.''
She expressed regret for any civilian casualties, saying that militants deliberately placed their weapons depots and factories ``well into the heart of Palestinian towns."
The Qassam rockets, which are fashioned from lengths of pipe, have a range of about six miles and are extremely inaccurate. Israel says Hamas has been refining the weapon and increasing its range.
Gaza's fence has stopped Hamas from sending suicide bombers from here into Israel, and Israelis hope that a new barrier being built against West Bank Palestinians will have the same effect there. But the rockets, though largely ineffective so far in terms of inflicting casualties, are introducing a new variable into that calculation.
In a statement on its Web site, Hamas vowed, ``We are going to respond with force to crimes by the Zionist enemy."
The Associated Press reported that its bureau in Beirut received a statement today describing talks between Khaled Mashal, a leader of Hamas, and Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, a leader of the militant group Islamic Jihad. Both men are based in Syria.
In the statement, the two leaders pledged to confront ``Zionist aggression'' and urged ``all factions and resistance forces to coordinate."
Israel accuses Mr. Arafat of fomenting and even directing violence by the Al Aksa Martyrs and other groups. Mr. Arafat denies the accusation and routinely condemns terrorist attacks.
The Israeli government decided to ``remove'' Mr. Arafat on Sept. 11, after two suicide bombings. The decision, which was criticized by numerous foreign governments as potentially destabilizing to the region, was widely mocked within Israel as returning Mr. Arafat to international prominence and causing Palestinians to rally behind him.
For most of the last two years, Israel has confined Mr. Arafat to his ruined compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Though the Bush administration also shuns him, he continues to receive visitors and to communicate with the outside world. Some Israeli officials have said that Israel might ``remove'' Mr. Arafat by jailing him in place, walling him off and cutting his communications.
The Bush administration has pulled back from its aggressive advocacy of a peace initiative here since a reform-minded Palestinian government collapsed on Sept. 6. Last week, an American diplomatic convoy was bombed as it passed through the northern Gaza Strip. The attack left three Americans dead and prompted the United States officials to halt at least temporarily any visits to Gaza and the West Bank.
The Bush administration has withdrawn for consultations its special envoy to support the peace initiative, John S. Wolf. It has not set a date for his return.
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Israel Kills 10, Wounds 100 in Gaza Air Raids
October 20, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
GAZA (Reuters) - Israel killed 10 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and wounded about 100 in the Gaza Strip on Monday in its heaviest air strikes for months, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon renewed a threat to remove Yasser Arafat.
The casualties were inflicted in five air raids over a 12-hour period, which followed an ambush by gunmen who killed three Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and the launch of eight makeshift rockets from Gaza into Israel on Sunday.
The tit-for-tat violence dealt a severe new setback to a stalled U.S.-backed peace plan and touched off new vows of revenge by the Palestinians.
The United States renewed its advice to U.S. citizens to leave the Gaza Strip after last week's roadside bomb attack which killed three U.S. security guards, and urged them to avoid travel to Israel or the West Bank.
In Monday's bloodiest raid, medics said seven people were killed, including a 12-year-old child, and at least 70 wounded in a missile attack after dark on the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
One missile fired by a helicopter gunship hit a car and another slammed into a crowd of people by the road, prompting angry protests and calls for revenge, witnesses said.
``It's a massacre. They slaughtered civilians with no mercy,'' one protester at the scene said. Blood covered the ground near the car and the wounded lay scattered around the vehicle.
The witnesses said all the dead were civilians, although they said the car that was hit was owned by a militant.
The Israeli army said helicopter gunships had chased the car from the border fence with Israel after a group of militants tried to cross into Israel and then fled in the vehicle.
Israel carried out three air strikes in five hours in or near Gaza City earlier in the day, killing two militants and a bystander and wounding 23 people. Three people were hurt in the fifth attack, just outside Gaza City, late in the evening.
Sharon, in a speech to the Israeli parliament that was frequently interrupted by heckling by left-wing and Israeli Arab deputies, said Arafat was ``the biggest obstacle to peace and therefore Israel is determined to bring about his removal from the political arena.''
Despite his harsh words, Sharon said he remained committed to the U.S.-backed Middle East ``road map'' and even saw a real chance for progress toward a peace settlement with the Palestinians in coming months.
NO NEW INITIATIVES
But he offered no new initiatives and reaffirmed many of his hardline policies.
The original decision by Sharon's security cabinet last month to remove Arafat eventually from power provoked an international outcry. The United States, Israel's key ally, opposes exiling Arafat.
``Our views haven't changed...taking actions against Arafat could prove counterproductive and would not be helpful,'' State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said in Washington.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat accused Sharon of undermining peace, and Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie said the air raids would not help efforts to end three years of conflict.
Israel and the United States have tried to sideline Arafat, the 74-year-old symbol of Palestinian nationalism, accusing him of fomenting violence in the three-year-old Palestinian uprising for statehood, an allegation he denies.
In the heaviest morning raid, a helicopter-fired missile hit a mini-van in Gaza City, and two Hamas militants were burned to death in the vehicle. One was identified as Khaled al-Masri, a senior member of the militant Islamic group.
``We will avenge your blood,'' Hamas supporters shouted as followers chanted ``there is no alternative to bombings'' during a funeral march. A man in a nearby car was also killed in the air attack and nine people were wounded, medics said.
Three hours earlier, an Israeli warplane bombed a building next to the home of Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah al-Shami, and the army said it had destroyed a Hamas weapons workshop.
The State Department's travel warning, urging U.S. citizens to leave Gaza, also advised them not to travel to Israel or the West Bank because of ``ongoing violence.'' ``The potential for further terrorist acts remains high,'' it added.
--------
Israeli Raids in Gaza Kill 10, Wound 100
October 20, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?pagewanted=all&position=
NUSSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AP) -- In the bloodiest day in the Gaza Strip in months, Israeli warplanes and helicopters pounded militant targets Monday, killing 10 Palestinians, including seven in a refugee camp where a car was destroyed, and wounding about 100.
The violent Islamic movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad threatened revenge, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged more raids and the State Department advised U.S. citizens to defer travel to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
With prospects for Mideast peace efforts further clouded, U.S. officials confirmed that John Wolf, the head of the team monitoring implementation of the troubled U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan, was not planning to return to the region soon.
The bombing raids Monday came a day after Palestinian militants fired eight homemade rockets from Gaza into southern Israel and Palestinian gunmen ambushed an Israeli patrol in the West Bank, killing three soldiers and seriously wounding a fourth.
Israeli aircraft struck in five separate locations, hitting a suspected Hamas weapons cache twice, another storehouse and a car carrying suspected militants.
The nighttime strike in the Nusseirat camp in central Gaza, in which 75 people were wounded in addition to the seven killed, was the bloodiest since an April missile raid on a Hamas leader in Gaza City killed nine people.
Residents said Israeli helicopters fired three missiles at the main street, destroying a car. An Israeli army statement said the vehicle was carrying members of a Palestinian terrorist squad fleeing after a failed attempt to breach the border fence with Israel a few miles to the northeast.
But Israel's Channel 10 TV said that none of the dead were militants, characterizing the refugee camp strike as a ``mistake.''
Residents said one of the dead was a doctor who was treating victims when a second missile struck. The identity of the other victims was not immediately known.
Hundreds of camp residents carried charred pieces of the vehicle aloft and chanted, ``Revenge, revenge.''
In Gaza City, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a building in the Shajaiyeh neighborhood, the same structure that was hit in an earlier airstrike Monday, residents said. Eleven people were wounded, they said. Israeli military sources said the attack was meant to finish the work of the first one.
The first three airstrikes Monday destroyed two weapons labs and warehouses of Hamas, the military said. Four children and a 70-year-old woman were among 25 wounded. Two missiles exploded on a street crowded with schoolchildren.
During three years of violence, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza have caused dozens of civilian casualties. In April, an air attack killed Hamas leader Said Arabeed and eight other people. In July 2002, 15 people were killed, including nine children, in an airstrike that targeted another Hamas leader, Salah Shehadeh.
Negotiations over implementing the ``road map'' plan, formally presented in June, have sputtered amid violence and political turmoil. The plan calls for an end to the three-year conflict and leads to a Palestinian state in 2005.
Wolf, the head of the team monitoring implementation of the troubled U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan, left for the United States last month, saying at the time he'd be back in 10 days.
A Palestinian bombing attack on a U.S. convoy in Gaza last week, killing three American guards, had led to expectations that the United States would scale back its involvement.
Except for a six-week Palestinian stand-down in the summer, clashes and bombings have continued unabated. Also, the Palestinians have been unable to field a stable government, and with Israel and the United States boycotting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, no recent contacts have been held between Israeli and Palestinian officials.
In a speech to parliament Monday, Sharon called Arafat ``the greatest obstacle to peace.'' Therefore, he added, ``Israel is determined to bring about his removal from the political arena,'' referring to a Cabinet decision last month. In a newspaper interview last week, Sharon had indicated that he had no plan to expel Arafat -- an apparent softening of Israel's position.
Sharon's criticism of Arafat was greeted with catcalls and prompted several Arab legislators to walk out of the chamber. The speech also received a harsh response from Shimon Peres, leader of the opposition Labor Party, who accused Sharon of being insincere in his peacemaking efforts.
``Prime minister, you have missed the opportunity,'' Peres said.
``We are dealing with a nation that is fighting for its freedom, and don't take them lightly,'' said Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel peace prize, of the Palestinians.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, called Sharon's address a ``speech of continuing the use of the most disproportionate use of force against Palestinians and a speech that was determined to undermine hope, peace, and reconciliation.''
The facilities Israel targeted Monday had been used to make and store weapons, including Qassams, the army said. Hamas has fired dozens of Qassams, with a range of about six miles, at Israeli settlements in Gaza and at towns just outside the fence in the past three years.
The airstrikes targeted the ``artery of the weapons chain,'' said an Israeli army spokeswoman, Maj. Sharon Feingold.
Palestinians were harshly critical. Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said that ``the world should wake up to this aggression,'' but that he still hopes to negotiate a truce with Israel.
In the first strike, Israeli warplanes bombed a building under construction in Gaza City that Israel said was a weapons site.
Eleven Palestinians were hurt in the bombing. The alleged weapons workshop was 200 yards from the house of Islamic Jihad leader Abdullah Shami, who was not hurt.
Less than three hours later, two missiles hit a white pickup truck. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the two men in the truck had tried to salvage explosives not destroyed in the initial airstrike.
The two men in the truck and a bystander were killed, and 12 Palestinians were hurt, four seriously. Israel has killed dozens of wanted Palestinians, as well as many bystanders, in targeted attacks.
The pickup had stopped at a traffic light near a gas station on a busy street crowded with schoolchildren, when the missiles hit the front of the vehicle. A kindergarten and an elementary school had just let out students for the day.
``Schoolchildren were trying to cross the road (at the time),'' said bus driver Ahmed Sobeh, who was driving behind the pickup. ``I saw a person in the car being evacuated and his body was completely burned. I also saw a teenager on the side of the street covered with blood but he was alive.''
In the third attack, a missile destroyed a one-room house on the outskirts of Gaza City. A second missile demolished a car parked nearby, Palestinian officials said. The car's passengers apparently fled before the missile hit, witnesses said.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistanis Cross Border With Ease to Join Taliban
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50726-2003Oct19?language=printer
QUETTA, Pakistan -- Abdul Zahir and 14 other Pakistani men set out by bus for Afghanistan last summer, determined to join Taliban forces waging a renewed jihad against U.S. and Afghan government troops.
It was almost too easy.
Stopped by border guards in the town of Chaman, they said they were Afghan refugees returning home on various personal or business errands, Zahir said. "I said I had sold a water buffalo to someone in Afghanistan and I needed to collect my money."
The guards waved them through. A few days later, he and his comrades joined a Taliban unit in the mountains of Zabol province, where they were issued weapons and spent the next 40 days engaged in sporadic combat -- including the ambush of an Afghan army patrol -- before he and several others returned to Pakistan by taxi in late July. Their commander gave them each 250 Pakistani rupees -- about $4.50 -- to cover the fare.
"It's no problem at all to cross back and forth," said Zahir, a 33-year-old apple grower and self-described Taliban recruiter from the remote tribal district of Qila Abdullah along the Afghan border in northern Baluchistan province. "The Americans have robbed us of the right to live, but still we have the right to die, and we are using that right."
U.S. and Afghan officials say that Pakistan's tribal regions -- the border areas of Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province -- have become a logistical and recruiting base for Taliban forces that were driven from power in December 2001 and that have since regrouped.
In recent months, resurgent Taliban forces have stepped up their attacks, particularly in southeastern Afghanistan near Pakistan's border, forcing international aid organizations to limit their operations and raising doubts about the viability of plans to hold national elections in the country next year.
Under pressure from Washington, Pakistan has arrested hundreds of al Qaeda fugitives and deployed thousands of troops to previously autonomous tribal zones with the stated aim of securing its border with Afghanistan. But Afghan and some U.S. officials have suggested that some elements of Pakistan's security forces may be less than enthusiastic about carrying out their orders, particularly with regard to the Taliban.
Pakistani officials deny they are helping the Taliban but acknowledge they have little if any control over the movement of people across the border, even at formal checkpoints. "It is fair to say that at present no immigration controls exist between the two countries," said a senior immigration official in Quetta. "Since forever, Afghans have been crossing the border into Pakistan without passport or visa."
Zahir's story points to the difficult if not impossible task of stopping cross-border movement, given the depth of popular support for the Taliban in Pakistan and the ethnic homogeneity of the population that straddles the rugged, largely unmarked border.
Zahir, a bearded, unassuming man in an embroidered prayer cap who is blind in one eye, agreed to be interviewed on condition that certain identifying details -- including his family name and that of his village -- be withheld. The interview, which took place in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan, was arranged by a prominent politician from the border area. The politician, who spoke on condition of anonymity, is sympathetic to the Taliban and opposes the U.S.-backed government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president.
Zahir's account could not be independently verified. But it was noteworthy for its specifics, as well as for Zahir's lack of bravado. He said that the one time he actually had the enemy in his sights, he missed.
The politician, a former provincial cabinet minister, vouched for the accuracy of Zahir's account, asserting that Zahir and other Taliban representatives in the border areas are openly seeking recruits during visits to madrassas, as Islamic seminaries are known, and at social gatherings such as weddings.
"They are very open," said the politician, adding that he heard one such appeal at a wedding party several weeks ago. "They are offering money and motorcycles to anyone who will go with them for 15 days up to three months."
The Taliban derives its main support from the Pashtun ethnic group that also dominates Pakistan's border areas. It has ideological ties with some of the hard-line religious parties in the six-party alliance -- the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal -- that constitutes the main political opposition to Musharraf's government. The alliance holds power in North-West Frontier Province and is a partner in Baluchistan's provincial government.
"If you talk to us in terms of our sympathies, we are pro-Taliban," said Hafiz Hussain Ahmed Sharodi, Baluchistan's information minister and a turbaned religious scholar who describes the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States as "a conspiracy by Jews to start a war between Muslims and Christians."
An Afghan refugee who does political work for the Taliban in Baluchistan suggested that Pakistan's tribal areas have become less important to the movement as it has reestablished its support network inside Afghanistan over the last six months. In an interview here, the political worker said Taliban commanders "used to hide in the borderlands, but now they have established good contacts with the tribal chiefs and warlords in Afghanistan, so they provide them with shelter now."
The political worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Pakistan's side of the border remains an important source of recruits for the Taliban and "if you go to these tribal areas, you will come to know who is ready to go for jihad."
That is more or less the picture sketched by Zahir, a father of six with a 10th-grade education who makes his living off the 30-acre apple orchard he owns with relatives just a few miles from Afghanistan in Qila Abdullah.
A Pashtun tribesman, he said he identifies more closely with Afghans than with Pakistanis and first offered his services to the Taliban soon after the United States launched its campaign against the movement in the fall of 2001. He joined a Taliban unit in the Afghan provincial capital of Kandahar, he said, and was promptly dispatched to the city of Mazar-e Sharif as part of a mission to deliver money and winter clothing to Taliban forces there. But he saw no action, he said, and as the Taliban resistance collapsed he returned to Pakistan four days before Kandahar fell to U.S.-allied Afghan fighters.
"After I came back I was continuously trying to go back, but the jihad had not yet resumed," he said. Then, in February, Zahir said, he succeeded in meeting a Taliban military commander, who "realized I was a genuine person" with ties to the movement and urged him to "go back and convince other people" to join the jihad.
Over the next few months, Zahir said, he rounded up 14 other men from his village and surrounding areas while he waited for further instructions.
Finally the summons came in the form of a visit from an old Taliban comrade, an Afghan named Abdul Hadi, who approached him in his orchard one day last May, Zahir recalled. "He said: 'We are ready to take you. There are different jobs. You can fight at the front line. You can cook. You can be a male nurse. You can give money. Everything is welcome because jihad has started.' "
At their own expense, Zahir said, he and the 14 others caught the bus for Afghanistan, where at one point they were stopped and searched by a U.S.-Afghan patrol. But they repeated the same stories they had told at the border crossing and were allowed to continue on to the town of Qalat in the border province of Zabol.
After hiking into the mountains, he said, they hooked up with a unit of 120 fighters and were supplied with Kalashnikov assault rifles, hand grenades, rocket launchers and ammunition.
As he described it, the group saw little combat, except for one occasion when it ambushed two Afghan army vehicles about a mile and a half outside the town of Maruf, wounding one soldier and capturing one of the vehicles. Zahir said he fired his weapon but missed his target because he was too far away.
After that battle, he said, the Taliban fighters took refuge in nearby tunnels while U.S. helicopters patrolled the area for two days.
Zahir said he eventually had to return to Pakistan for the simple reason that he was hungry after more than a month of living on flatbread and occasional cups of yogurt milk. "You don't really have enough to eat, so you become weak," he said.
Once he got home, Zahir said, he resumed his recruitment drive and soon lined up six more Pakistanis -- four madrassa students, one farm worker and an English-speaking computer expert -- between the ages of 22 and 30. He said jihad is an easy sell where he lives. "We are basically anti-American," he said. "So what I do is I go and tell these boys, 'The door for jihad is open, and let's go fight Americans.' "
In August, he said, a Taliban commander named Aminullah gave the recruits 1,000 rupees -- about $17 -- each to cover their travel costs to Afghanistan. Four have already left, Zahir said, and he plans to join them soon.
"I'm waiting for their call," he said matter-of-factly. "Where I'm needed I'll go. I'm all set."
Special correspondent Kamran Khan in Karachi contributed to this report.
-------- space
China space program shows careful development
October 20, 2003
By Martin Sieff
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031019-112013-5419r.htm
Can China, with only a fraction of the gross national product of the United States, actually beat America in manned space exploration over the next decade and more? The answer is yes, easily and for many reasons.
China's space program shows every sign of using reliable, mature and inexpensive technology rather than bankrupting itself on showy but dangerous and vastly overambitious technology, such as the U.S. manned space program has relied upon for more than two decades with the space-shuttle program.
The space shuttle was supposed to make space travel routine, cheap and safe. Despite great achievements, it fell short of its goals. Space shuttle flights that were originally supposed to average a dozen or more a year fell from six to four, even before the disintegration of the Columbia during re-entry on Feb. 1.
Far from being cheap, they always cost a billion dollars a flight. Far from being safe, they have so far killed 14 astronauts in two disasters - Columbia this year and Challenger in 1986. That is more than twice the total number of recorded dead cosmonauts from the Soviet and later Russian space program since its inception 42 years ago.
Also, the space-shuttle program cost so much money that it leached resources away from developing any realistic alternatives. Today, the United States has fewer capabilities for manned space exploration than it did 31 years ago at the time of the last manned moon mission, Apollo 17.
By contrast, China's space program is based on the older, safer, more-reliable and cheaper technology the United States developed in the 1960s and that the Soviet space program continued to use for its very limited, but scientifically important, long-duration space-station missions of the 1980s and 1990s.
China's Shenzhou-class capsules have been developed slowly, thoroughly and conservatively, like Boeing developed airliner technology over the past half-century.
As UPI science correspondent Frank Seitzen wrote on July 8, "Shenzhou began development in 1992 and so far has been launched successfully four times, the first of which was in November 1999. Each year, China has flown a new, more capable, unpiloted variant of the ship. Its design closely follows the Russian Soyuz."
Also, as Mr. Seitzen noted, the Shenzhou spacecraft - like the evolution of the Apollo moon ships from the previous tried-and-tested Mercury and Gemini capsules - reflects organic, orderly evolution from the earlier designs it was based upon. "Slightly larger than its Russian counterpart, Shenzhou is constructed of more-advanced materials and lighter component materials than the 30-year-old Soyuz." It also "has larger and more-extensive solar panels than Soyuz."
And in the crucial area of astronaut - or as they say, "taikonaut" - safety, Shenzhou is actually far more advanced than the U.S. shuttle program was in protecting the lives of its crew. As Mr. Seitzen reported, the Long March 2F booster rocket "flies with an abort system that can blast the manned capsule free of the booster in the event of a launching mishap."
That kind of option could have saved the lives of the seven Challenger astronauts had it been part of the shuttle program in the 1980s.
The Chinese have also learned from their Russian mentors in giving priority to producing a reliable and cost-effective "big dumb booster." Their Long March 2E cargo booster, which has been altered to carry the manned Shenzhou spacecraft as the 2F class, is conceptually very similar to the Russian Proton booster.
It is not a spectacular super-rocket that can blast its payload all the way to the Moon as a colossal Saturn V did 34 years ago. But then, even the United States can no longer build Saturn Vs. Too many of the vital plans have been lost through simple bureaucratic incompetence.
What the Long March 2 provides, like the Proton, is a solid workhorse than can be economically produced in sufficient quantities to put crews in space on a regular basis and acquire the crucial program experience and capability that the United States did with its 1965-66 Gemini program.
A cautious but highly competent and ever-developing "tortoise beats hare" design and testing philosophy has guided China's space program over the past decade. This indicates that continued incremental but significant design evolution will lead to improved performance and payload capabilities in years to come.
Still, conventional wisdom maintains China will find it a long road from putting a single taikonaut in orbit to fulfilling its dreams of trumping the United States and Russia with impressive orbiting space stations and an eventual moon base.
But conventional wisdom may very well be wrong.
--------
Last Titan II Rocket Blasts Off
October 20, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Last-Titan-II.html
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- The last Titan II rocket thundered into space carrying a military weather satellite, ending a 15-year program that recycled 13 of the nation's stockpile of Cold War intercontinental ballistic missiles.
``We're closing out 50 years of the Titan program,'' said Col. John Insprucker, the program's director. ``Titan is the first major weapon system we've really brought to the end of its service life in the rocket community.''
The Titan II rockets were part of the nation's Cold War weapons cache, programmed to be launched against the Soviet Union in the event of an attack. Lockheed Martin converted 14 Titan IIs out of the 140 nuclear weapon-tipped ICBMs it originally built.
Saturday's launch was the 13th successful Titan II launch over the past 15 years. The 14th converted rocket is expected to be placed in a museum.
Lockheed Martin expects to launch three more of the larger Titan IV rockets, with the last scheduled for 2005. After that, the Titan family will be retired and replaced by two new rockets, the Boeing Delta 4 and the Lockheed Martin Atlas 5.
-------- us
US Troops Continue to Destroy Iraqi Flora, Crops
By Firas Al-Atraqchi Freelance Columnist
20/10/2003
http://www.islamonline.net/English/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2003/10/article_13.shtml
US soldiers have uprooted ancient groves of date palms.
Day after day, disturbing news continues to emerge from Iraq, detailing the systematic and callous destruction of Iraq's flora and agricultural areas.
Citing security issues, US troops have cut down precious date trees -often the life-sustaining source of many Iraqi villages, burned and razed crops, agricultural yields and fields, drained swamps, and burned grassy knolls where it is alleged that Iraqi 'terrorists' are hiding.
In June, CNN aired a segment on US military efforts to pursue and capture ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In the backdrop, CNN viewers were allowed a three-second glimpse of US soldiers lighting bushes, trees and grassy riverbeds. The bushes came to life in a blazing fire. Presumably, kerosene or some fuel was used. Then CNN cut in with another shot of a US patrol.
The segment showing US soldiers burning the aforementioned areas was never shown again.
Now, evidence is coming to light that US soldiers at the very least are unfazed and negligent of Iraq's agriculture and at the very most carrying out a systematic campaign of punishing farmers and their farmlands on the suspicion that they harbor 'Saddam loyalists' or other anti-American forces.
Ironically, the punitive measures themselves are spawning a new breed of anti-American might that cares little for Saddam and even less for politics.
The psyche of the Middle Eastern farmer, whether it be in Jordan , Upper Egypt or in the Tigris-Euphrates river valleys of Iraq, is that life is based on the land, and the land is the pride and honor of every farmer. When the land is defiled and violated, it becomes incumbent upon the farmer to avenge the honor of his family and tribe.
This is nothing new; it has existed in this fashion since Sumerians began using irrigated farming techniques5 , 000years ago.
Yet, probably because of cultural ignorance, the US forces continue to destroy valuable crops.
"US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops," says journalist Patrick Cockburn in The Independent.
Last week, Israeli forces bulldozed 220 homes in Gaza, leaving some 1,500 Palestinians homeless. Israeli forces cited security concerns: tunnels used to smuggle weapons could have been under these houses. Israeli forces have also been known to blow up the homes of families of suicide bombers.
Collective punishment. But in Iraq it is producing deadly results for US forces.
Farmers have sworn to destroy every American they see, whether it be a journalist, businessman or soldier - it does not matter.
Iraqi farmers have long issued complaints against US forces, dating back to the mid 1990s when the Baathist government accused US and UK fighters of firebombing valuable crop fields in the south and north of the country.
In April 1999, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Iraqi doctors had complained of depleted uranium making its way into the Iraqi food chain and contaminating Iraqi farmland. The doctors cited the unusual rise in stomach cancer and leukemia in farming and rural communities.
According to an investigative article by Jeffery St. Clair in Counterpunch, the war in Iraq has proven particularly difficult for farming communities to stomach. He says that the consequent looting and wanton violence left precious irrigation systems destroyed, warehouses and grain silos unusable, and very little fuel for nearly-defunct tractors and harvesters.
The farmers have not received any assistance or guidance from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) or the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC).
Further adding to the farmers' frustrations is that both the CPA and IGC are about to abolish the food rationing system set up by Saddam's government - a system that the United Nations labeled the most efficient in the world. Economic analysts have warned that this would seriously endanger the livelihood of the 60 per cent of Iraqis who rely on that system for sustenance.
While foreign governments meet to pledge financial assistance to the rebuilding of Iraq (the European Union has promised 234 million dollars, the UK government 300 million dollars), and the US Congress debates demanding that Iraq pay back a suggested 20 -billion-dollar loan, the Iraqi farmer is left in a quagmire. He must care for his extended family and endure constant harassment from US troops who smash their way into the sanctity of his home, rummage through his private things, and see his wife (wives) and female relatives in a private setting. He has no one to voice his concerns to, no one to take up his cause and no one to reimburse his financial losses.
When political commentators question who comprises the Iraqi resistance, they now have their answer. It is not the radical "Islamists," as western media has called them. It is not the misguided impudence of Osama bin Laden's flock. It is not foreign fighters who seek to find Iraq a convenient battleground against all things American.
No, it is the Iraqi farmer, the most basic of the Iraqi peoples - a man who has toiled the land in the tradition of his forefathers, stretching back to the Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires.
Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.
--------
Army seeks to reduce patient backlog at base
Reservists complain about medical treatment, living conditions
From Barbara Starr
CNN Washington Bureau
Monday, October 20, 2003
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/10/20/sick.reservists/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Army will send specialists to help reduce a backlog of National Guardsmen and reservists seeking medical care at Fort Stewart, Georgia, military sources said Monday.
The additional medical personnel will come from the Eisenhower Army Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia, the sources said.
The move is part of an initiative to reduce what Army officials have acknowledged is a backlog problem at Fort Stewart.
Troops have complained of a lack of timely medical care and substandard living conditions. United Press International editor Mark Benjamin first reported on the complaints after a visit to the U.S. Army base in southeast Georgia.
A Fort Stewart spokesman described living conditions as "Spartan" and "austere" but "safe."
"I don't think it's fair to call it substandard," said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified. "There's no squalor in the military barracks. Is it hot? Absolutely."
He added that some barracks are air-conditioned while others are not.
The Army doesn't deny there is a backlog in providing medical care to some troops returning from Iraq but emphasizes that care is provided on the basis of medical need, not whether a soldier is active duty or in the reserves.
A team is being sent to look at the problem at the base and may also decide to recommend the Army sign contracts with private doctors to provide additional care. Another option is to send patients to private-care facilities in nearby Savannah.
Army sources said the backlog in medical appointments is due in part to the 20,000 troops of divisions returning from Iraq who are competing for the same medical care.
But officials said troops in temporary training barracks have been determined not to be in a state of medical crisis. They also said that the conditions are typical for training barracks.
The Fort Stewart spokesman said only a handful of wounded soldiers were in the "medical hold" unit, but he did not have an exact figure.
Soldiers in that unit are deemed too sick to serve. During treatment, a decision is made on whether they will be able to serve again, and the Army then decides what percentage of benefits they are entitled to should they be dismissed from service.
An Army spokesman said he did not know what conditions are like for sick and wounded soldiers and would wait for an assessment team's report. He insisted that the "Army has responsibility to guardsmen, reservists and active duty [soldiers]."
Another soldier who recently left Fort Stewart described the conditions to CNN as "substandard." One sergeant who said she was afraid to give her name cited a general fear among ill soldiers to speak to the media.
"Here we all were overseas ready to get ourselves killed in order to bring democracy to these countries, and we get home, and we don't even have freedom of speech anymore," she said, adding that she has been on medical hold since May after becoming ill in Kuwait.
CNN Producers Laurie Ure and Linda Saether contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
Bush's News War
Fed up with the gloom-and-doom coverage of the conflict, the White House is taking aim at the press
By Richard Wolffe and Rod Nordland
NEWSWEEK
October 20, 2003
http://www.msnbc.com/news/982193.asp?cp1=1
Oct. 27 issue - It started out as a little crowd control in Baghdad. But as U.S. troops entered the streets to restore order earlier this month, the protest turned ugly.
SOMEONE THREW A homemade grenade at the Americans, wounding 13 servicemen. According to the Oct. 8 Daily Threat Assessment-the Coalition's internal casualty report, which was shown to NEWSWEEK-eight soldiers were wounded seriously enough to be evacuated to military hospitals. Yet at a press conference the next day, there was no mention of the attack. Pushed by reporters, U.S. officials would only say the incident was under investigation. It was as if the ambush, and the casualties, had never happened.
In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter. Journalists used to walk freely into the city's hospitals and the morgue to keep count of the day's dead and wounded. Now the hospitals have been declared off-limits and morgue officials turn away reporters who aren't accompanied by a Coalition escort. Iraqi police refer reporters' questions to American forces; the Americans refer them back to the Iraqis.
Reporters and government officials have always squabbled over access; but the news coverage of the messy, ongoing conflict in Iraq has worsened the already tense relationship between the press and the administration. American officials accuse reporters of indulging in a morbid obsession with death and destruction, and ignoring how Iraq has improved since Saddam Hussein was toppled. Reporters grumble that the secretive White House and Pentagon hold back just how grim and chaotic the situation really is.
Senate defies Bush by passing Iraq loans A bipartisan Senate vote to convert half of the administration's $20.3 billion Iraqi rebuilding plan into a loan is a major setback for the president. NBC's Chip Reid reports.
After a summer of sliding polls and an autumn of tough questions in Congress, the White House is hoping to boost public support by convincing Americans that the cynical national press is getting the story wrong. Last week President George W. Bush himself complained about the national media's fixation on bad news, and made a show of going around them by granting interviews with local TV reporters. "I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels," he told one interviewer, "and sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people." Of course, Bush isn't the first president to try sidestepping the national press in favor of local reporters, who tend to be gentler questioners than the reporters who cover him every day. Bill Clinton did it when he thought the White House press corps was treating him harshly. So did the first President Bush.
News management is at the heart of the administration's shake-up of Iraq policy. The National Security Council recently created four new committees to handle the situation in Iraq. One is devoted entirely to media coordination-stopping the bad news from overwhelming the good. Yet White House officials insist their agenda for Iraq is not driven by the need to generate positive campaign coverage. "If this was all about the election, do you think we would have gone to Congress and said, 'We need $87 billion to send 8,000 miles away'?" says one senior administration official. "I don't think so."
Despite their efforts, administration spinners struggle to make themselves heard over the gunfire and suicide bombs in Baghdad. Take one potentially good news story: the arrival of new Iraqi bank notes last week, freshly minted, and minus Saddam's haughty portrait. Administration officials crafted the media rollout for weeks. In theory it was a compelling story. The new bills were printed in five countries, including the U.K., Germany and Sri Lanka (the two Iraqi printing plants weren't up to the job). Piles of old Saddam bank notes were burned, and the new currency was flown into Baghdad onboard 25 jumbo jets. Yet the event was barely covered. USA Today buried a wire story inside, on page 5, while its front page led with hard news: the death of three U.S. soldiers and the hunt for Saddam. "This was an enormous logistical effort that could never have happened in a country in chaos or without the cooperation of the Iraqis," says one senior U.S. official. "Yet it barely breaks through the media."
One new tactic in the media war is to send congressional allies and cabinet secretaries to Baghdad to bypass the American reporters. Commerce Secretary Don Evans flew into Iraq last week to tell investors and voters back home to stop believing the news on TV. (Evans's last high-profile travel was an American road trip to convince voters that the economy was recovering.) "All the TV wants to cover is some sensational, isolated terrorist attack," Evans told NEWSWEEK on his flight back to Washington. "I went over expecting to find an environment where people were frightened. But I found a country that was alive with hope and optimism." Yet reporters who covered the war say that some of the Coalition's achievements are less impressive than they sound. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, proudly announced the reopening of Iraq's schools this month, while White House officials point to the opening of Iraq's 240 hospitals. In fact, many schools were already open in May, once major combat ended, and no major hospital closed during the war. But that didn't stop a group of Republican senators from tearing into American reporters covering Iraq earlier this month. "I was not told by the media... that thousands and thousands of Iraqi schoolchildren went back to school," said Larry Craig of Idaho, who recently toured Iraq. The senator neglected to mention that he slept both nights of his trip in Kuwait, not Iraq.
With Howard Fineman
-------- war crimes
Elite U.S. Unit Killed Hundreds of Vietnamese Civilians, Report Says
Army Investigation Into 1967 Rampage Was Closed Without Charges
Associated Press
Monday, October 20, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50263-2003Oct19?language=printer
TOLEDO, Oct. 19 -- An elite unit of U.S. soldiers mutilated and killed hundreds of unarmed villagers over seven months in 1967 during the Vietnam War, and an Army investigation was closed with no charges filed, the Blade newspaper reported Sunday.
Soldiers of the Tiger Force unit of the Army's 101st Airborne Division dropped grenades into bunkers where villagers -- including women and children -- hid, and shot farmers without warning, the newspaper reported. Soldiers told the Blade that they severed ears from the dead and strung them on shoelaces to wear around their necks.
The Army's 41/2-year investigation, never before made public, was initiated by a soldier outraged at the killings. The probe substantiated 20 war crimes by 18 soldiers and reached the Pentagon and White House before it was closed in 1975, the Blade said.
William Doyle, a former Tiger Force sergeant now living in Willow Springs, Mo., said he killed so many civilians in 1967 he lost count.
"We didn't expect to live. Nobody out there with any brains expected to live," he told the newspaper. "The way to live is to kill because you don't have to worry about anybody who's dead."
In an eight-month investigation, the Blade reviewed thousands of classified Army documents, National Archives records and radio logs and interviewed former members of the unit and relatives of those who died.
Tiger Force, a unit of 45 volunteers, was created to spy on forces of North Vietnam in South Vietnam's central highlands.
The Blade said it is not known how many Vietnamese civilians were killed.
Records show at least 78 were shot or stabbed, the newspaper said. Based on interviews with former Tiger Force soldiers and Vietnamese civilians, it is estimated the unit killed hundreds of unarmed people, the Blade said.
Army spokesman Joe Burlas said that only three Tiger Force members were on active duty during the investigation. He said their commanders, acting on the advice of military attorneys, determined there was not enough evidence for successful prosecution.
The only way to prosecute the soldiers was under court-martial procedures, which apply only to active military members, Burlas said.
He also cited a lack of physical evidence and access to the crime scene because a number of years had passed. He would not comment on why the military did not seek the evidence sooner.
Investigators took 400 sworn statements from witnesses, Burlas said. Some supported one another and some conflicted, he said.
According to the Blade, the rampage began in May 1967. No one knows what set it off. Less than a week after setting up camp in the central highlands, soldiers began torturing and killing prisoners in violation of U.S. military law and the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the newspaper said.
Sgt. Forrest Miller told Army investigators the killing of prisoners was "an unwritten law."
Other soldiers said they sought revenge in the villages after unit members were killed and injured during sniper and grenade attacks.
"Everybody was bloodthirsty at the time, saying, 'We're going to get them back,' " former medic Rion Causey of Livermore, Calif., told the Blade.
Soldiers often cited conflicting views of commanders as a reason they killed unarmed people. Some commanders told investigators that civilians could be targeted in certain circumstances; others said they could never be attacked.
During the Army's investigation, 27 soldiers said severing ears from dead Vietnamese became routine.
"There was a period when just about everyone had a necklace of ears," former platoon medic Larry Cottingham told investigators.
The atrocities carried out by the unit came just months before the killing of about 500 Vietnamese civilians by an Army unit in 1968 at My Lai.
In the years after that, top military officials promised to take war crime accusations seriously. But records from the Tiger Force case show that did not happen, the Blade said.
The newspaper found that commanders knew about the platoon's atrocities and in some cases encouraged the soldiers to continue the violence. Two soldiers who tried to stop the attacks were warned by their commanders to remain quiet before transferring to other units, according to military records.
The newspaper also said Army investigators learned about the atrocities in 1971 but took a year to interview witnesses. Two investigators pretended to look into the allegations while encouraging soldiers to keep quiet, soldiers told the Blade.
Four military legal experts who reviewed the Army's final report for the newspaper questioned the case's abrupt end.
"There should have been a [military grand jury] investigation of some kind done on this," said H. Wayne Elliott, a retired Army officer who teaches military law at the University of Virginia. "I just can't believe this wasn't a pretty high-profile thing in the Pentagon."
Former platoon members still could be prosecuted or sanctioned by the Army, but legal experts say that is unlikely because of the time that has elapsed.
Part of the unit's mission was to force villagers to move to refugee centers so they could not grow rice to feed the enemy. Many refused to go to the centers, which resembled prisons and lacked food.
"They wanted to stay on their land. They took no side in the war," Lu Thuan, 67, a farmer, recalled as he sat in his home in the Song Ve Valley.
The soldiers began burning villages to force the people to leave, the Blade said.
One night, an elderly carpenter was beaten with a rifle before the unit's field commander, Lt. James Hawkins, shot and killed him as he pleaded for his life.
Hawkins denied the allegations when questioned by Army investigators in 1973. But he told the Blade he killed the man because his voice was loud enough to draw enemy attention.
"I eliminated that right there," said Hawkins, who retired from the Army in 1978 and now lives in Orlando.
In another incident, two partially blind men found wandering in the valley were shot to death, records show. While approaching a rice paddy on July 28, 1967, platoon members opened fire on 10 elderly farmers. Four were killed.
Kieu Trac, now 72, recalled watching helplessly as his father fell.
"All they were doing was working in the fields," he said, pointing to the spot where his father and the others were killed. "They thought the soldiers would leave them alone."
William Carpenter, who lives just outside the town of Rayland near the Ohio-West Virginia border, told the newspaper he did not fire his weapon.
"It was wrong," he said. "Those people weren't bothering anybody."
Villagers said they dug dozens of mass graves after the soldiers moved through the valley.
"We wouldn't even have meals because of the smell," said rice farmer Nguyen Dam, 66, interviewed in his home. "I couldn't breathe the air sometimes. There were so many villagers who died, we couldn't bury them one by one."
Of the 43 former platoon members interviewed by the Blade, a dozen expressed remorse for either committing or failing to stop the atrocities, and 10 have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Right to an Attorney Comes at a Price
Minnesota Law Requiring Fees for Public Defenders Is Challenged
By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50679-2003Oct19?language=printer
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Anyone who has ever watched a cop catch a bad guy on television likely has this constitutional right committed to memory: If you can't afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.
But a new Minnesota law that requires poor people to pay as much as $200 for this privilege is under attack by public defenders and some judges, who contend that it undermines the 40-year-old legal tenet established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright.
Minnesota is one of a growing number of states facing enormous budget deficits that are beginning to charge indigents for their constitutional right to legal representation. States including Arkansas, Ohio and New Jersey charge the poor $10 to $200 for lawyers -- fees that proponents argue are nominal and allow everyone to share the burden. Maryland charges adults $50 and juveniles $25; the District and Virginia do not charge.
But opponents say even the smallest of fees can be a burden for the poor.
In district court here the other day, Fayo Umar, 20, a single mother facing misdemeanor traffic charges, considered defending herself to avoid a $50 fee. "I'm not fully employed," said Umar, a refugee from Ethiopia, who works part-time at an airport gift shop while studying for her high school equivalency exam. "I have several expenses, and I send money to my brothers in Kenya in a refugee camp. It would be a burden."
In the end, Ramsey County assistant public defender Mary Mateer offered to speak to prosecutors and judges on her behalf. Since Mateer technically was not appointed to the case, Umar was not charged a fee.
For years, Minnesota law said that indigents could be charged $28 for legal representation but that judges could waive the fee -- and they routinely did. A recent law revamped the fees, so that they ranged from $50 to $200 depending upon the crime that was charged, and made them mandatory. Proponents, who include some public defenders, said it was needed because the state faced a $4.2 billion deficit that could force layoffs of teachers and cut programs for young people and the elderly.
Opponents said the law threatens poor people's access to a fair trial in a complex legal system that sometimes challenges even seasoned attorneys.
"The danger is that people will not avail themselves of the right to counsel to avoid the charge," said Norman Lefstein, dean emeritus at the Indiana University School of Law at Indianapolis. "It really is an effort to squeeze every last cent [from the poor] without regard to the consequences. It's inconsistent with the fundamental right to counsel."
The Gideon case, argued in 1963, involved a Florida man charged with felony breaking-and-entering who lacked money to hire a lawyer. He requested one and was denied because the state at the time provided counsel to the poor only in capital cases.
Gideon defended himself and was convicted. On appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court found that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel was a fundamental right and essential to a fair trial. Justice Hugo L. Black said in the ruling that "lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries."
That rationale, in part, was the basis for a ruling last month by District Judge Richard Hopper in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, that the Minnesota law is unconstitutional. The fees are still being collected across the rest of the state pending appeal.
Unlike the previous fee of $28, Hopper ruled, the new law did not give judges discretion to waive the fee if it would impose "a manifest hardship."
State officials have appealed to the state Supreme Court. They said the law was needed because of budget shortfalls and because large numbers of people who had enough money for lawyers were using public defenders. To qualify for a public lawyer, a single person in Minnesota can earn no more than $13,470 a year; a family of four could earn no more than $27,600.
State Rep. Eric Lipman (R), who wrote a brief defending the law on behalf of himself and four colleagues, said lawmakers have been exasperated by judges who ignored the $28 fee. The new law charges defendants $200 for a felony, $100 for a gross misdemeanor and $50 for a misdemeanor if a public defender is appointed. For those who cannot pay upfront, the fees become debts and could result in civil judgments.
"These are modest amounts," Lipman said. "We're trying to get some balance here. Too many judges just waived the fee as a general rule."
State Public Defender John M. Stuart agreed, rankling many of the line attorneys he supervises.
In an ideal world, Stuart said, the state would take care of the costs and give him the attorneys he needs to represent clients. Instead, the 500 attorneys he supervises are severely overworked, and the only way he can keep attorneys is to charge fees. The average attorney, he said, handles about 915 cases a year, more than twice the number recommended by the American Bar Association.
"This isn't my choice of the way this ought to operate. But if a choice has to be made between [the fee] versus us laying off many, many lawyers and making the quality of services suffer, then I think we have to do whatever has to be done," Stuart said. "The state is broke, so how are we going to operate?"
Geoffrey Isaacman, a public defender in Minneapolis, said fees have a cost in fairness in the legal system. His challenge to the new law on behalf of a woman charged with prostitution resulted in Hopper's ruling that the fees were unconstitutional.
"While it doesn't seem like a lot of money, for a lot of my clients it is a good chunk of their monthly income," he said. "It's another example of a voiceless group of people being singled out because the affluent don't want to have their taxes increased or want a reduction."
At Umar's recent hearing, the immigrant pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for hitting two parked cars. Though public defender Mateer advised her without a fee being charged, Umar still has to pay $100 in court costs.
After the hearing, the judge, George T. Stephenson, said in an interview that many poor people appear before him, and that he and his colleagues used to regularly waive any fee for representation.
"Most judges waived the fee because the money is better used elsewhere," said Stephenson, a former prosecutor. "Most people we see don't have a whole lot of money. And the attorney fee takes away from money for day care, court costs, underlying fines and transportation costs."
-------- drug war
Internet Trafficking in Narcotics Has Surged
By Gilbert M. Gaul and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50567-2003Oct19?language=printer
Second of five articles
LAS VEGAS -- In July 2001, regulators at the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy noticed something unusual among the reams of data that flow into the busy agency each day. Buried along with the other numbers was a report from a small Internet pharmacy that had filled 1,105 prescriptions for painkillers and other dangerous drugs that month.
The same tiny pharmacy had dispensed just 17 prescriptions in the prior six months.
Virtually overnight, prescriptiononline.com had become one of the largest distributors of controlled substances in Nevada. Over the next year, the online pharmacy shipped nearly 5 million doses of highly addictive drugs to customers scattered across the country. By the time regulators shut the Las Vegas firm in January, prescriptiononline.com accounted for 10 percent of all hydrocodone sold in Nevada, regulators said.
It turned out that the booming business was owned by a 23-year-old former restaurant hostess. But it was run by her father, who had been convicted of a felony in 1992.
"For any single pharmacy to account for 10 percent of any drug is incredible," said Louis Ling, general counsel to the Nevada pharmacy board. "The fact that it was a highly addictive painkiller and an Internet site run by a convicted felon was even more troubling. This was unlike anything we had ever seen."
With little notice or meaningful oversight, the Internet has become a pipeline for narcotics and other deadly drugs. Customers can pick from a vast array of painkillers, antidepressants, stimulants and steroids with few controls and virtually no medical monitoring.
There are dozens of legitimate online drugstores and mail-order pharmacies. Unlike rogue sites, they require customers to mail in prescriptions from their doctors. Typically, the legitimate sites offer a full range of medications, with painkillers accounting for less than 20 percent of their business.
In contrast, a majority of the rogue sites' sales are for hydrocodone, Xanax, Valium and a few other addictive drugs. Many work with middlemen who set up the sites' customers with doctors who are veritable script-writing machines. Some of those doctors have financial problems and histories of substance abuse or medical incompetence, records show.
The online merchants now feed a sprawling shadow market for prescription drugs, frustrating medical leaders alarmed by the threat to public health and investigators hard-pressed to keep up with nimble Web sites that can open and close at a moment's notice.
"It's like rabbits," said Wayne A. Michaels, a senior investigator for the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Every day, there are more of them. They're up, they're down, they're foreign, they're domestic."
The agency recently created a six-person task force solely to track the online trade in narcotics. But officials acknowledged the effort is a form of "triage" amid an escalating crisis. "We're afraid it's going to overwhelm us, once we've identified all these sites," said Elizabeth A. Willis, chief of the DEA's drug operations section.
The multimillion-dollar industry has appeared overnight, pumping millions of pills into some of America's smallest and most economically distressed communities.
The Washington Post obtained and analyzed a Nevada pharmacy board database of 30,000 orders filled by prescriptiononline.com. The analysis found that four of every 10 pills poured into four southern states with widely documented prescription-abuse problems. A disproportionate share of those drugs went to customers in small towns.
Some small Tennessee towns received 50 times more painkillers per capita than large cities, the analysis found. For example, Church Hill got 1,013 pills for every 1,000 residents; Nashville, just 26. Bristol got 1,584; Memphis, 14.
"It's a no-brainer why you see high volumes in these little places," said Tammy Meade, a narcotics prosecutor in Nashville. "Users and people who want to get their hands on enough to distribute can't doctor shop in places like that. And if they use the Internet, someone like me . . . is going to have a tougher time finding out."
Stretching from Florida to California, the Internet pipeline has left a trail of deaths, overdoses, addictions and emotionally devastated families.
"It absolutely blew my mind that you could get these drugs online," said Sue R. Townsend, the coroner in Aiken County, S.C. Her son Douglas, 30, died after driving his car into a fence in September 2001. His family said he had taken a generic form of the tranquilizer Xanax, which they said he had purchased from myprivatedoc.com, a now-defunct Web site in Mesa, Ariz. Townsend's family sued the Web site, the pharmacy and the Arizona doctor who wrote the prescription, accusing them of selling the drug without a proper medical consultation. The case was recently settled with no admission of liability.
"Losing Doug has broken our hearts," Sue Townsend said, fighting back tears. "He had a young wife and a baby boy who will never know his daddy. Somehow we have to tell how dangerous this is, because it's happening all over."
In a typical purchase from a rogue site, a customer logs on and orders hydrocodone (generic Vicodin and Lortab). The Web site steers him to a middleman, often another Web site, which arranges a telephone consultation with a doctor. The customer and the doctor talk briefly, after which the doctor writes the prescription and sends it electronically to the Internet pharmacy. The pharmacy ships 60 pills to the customer by overnight mail. Total cost: $290. The pharmacy pockets $190 for the hydrocodone and the doctor and the middleman split the remaining $100 as a consultation fee. There are no face-to-face meetings, lab tests, X-rays or follow-ups.
There are dozens of Web sites selling narcotics in the United States, with scores more operating offshore. Federal prosecutors have shut Web sites, filed indictments and won guilty pleas from several owners. But it often takes years to prove a case. In the meantime, the pills move.
For each site closed, "two or three more open," said Jennifer Bolen, a former federal prosecutor in Knoxville, Tenn. "It is so easy for them to close down a site one day and open a new one the next."
For the DEA, an agency already responsible for everything from drug cartels to street drugs, trying to police the growing number of online pharmacies "is like trying to work every corner drug dealer," said Laura M. Nagel, the agency's deputy assistant administrator. "We can't do it all."
When prosecutors shut the Internet pharmacy operations at thepillbox.com in San Antonio, much of the business shifted to prescriptiononline.com in Las Vegas, records show. When that site was closed two years later, Nevada regulators suspect the business shifted yet again -- this time to Florida.
Some Web sites have dozens or even hundreds of affiliate sites. Others are designed to appear as though they are headquartered in the United States when they are really offshore, in such places as Namibia, Thailand and Sri Lanka. The growing numbers of foreign online pharmacies operate with near impunity. The Food and Drug Administration's strongest recourse is to send a warning letter, which usually is ignored.
"As an investigator, it's incredibly frustrating," said Robert J. West, a special agent with the FDA's Office of Criminal Investigations. "All we can do is bang away and try to draw attention to what these guys are doing. Right now, I don't think people have any idea how widespread or dangerous this is." Little Regulation
States regulate pharmacies, creating widely different rules governing Internet sites. Under-staffed pharmacy boards barely have time to inspect brick-and-mortar pharmacies, let alone virtual ones. Many online pharmacies have ignored state efforts to register them. Only one state -- California -- has a full-time agent investigating doctors writing prescriptions for Internet pharmacies.
The lax oversight comes amid Congress's inability to pass legislation requiring even minimal disclosure by Internet pharmacies.
In 1999, then-Rep. Ron Klink (D-Pa.) issued a warning at a committee hearing: "I am concerned a 'Wild West' world is unfolding before us, where many consumers are accessing potentially dangerous drugs with little or no practical guidance. Yet because it is e-commerce, there is a mentality: It must be progress."
In 2000, the FDA, the General Accounting Office and several House members urged that online pharmacies be required to disclose their owners, locations, doctors, affiliated pharmacies and telephone numbers. But Congress never followed through. Nearly four years later, there is still no disclosure requirement.
"Getting a bill regulating the Internet is about as hard as it gets," said William K. Hubbard, the FDA's senior associate commissioner. "You have all of these people worrying about stifling this wonderful thing . . . and they don't want the bad Feds in there."
A Post reporter sent e-mail asking for identifying information to 15 online pharmacies specializing in painkillers. Only one responded. It declined to say who owns the site or where it is located. One online pharmacy included a telephone number for customer service that linked to a freight forwarding company in Miami. When a reporter called, a secretary said that it moved shipments for a customer in Costa Rica.
In late 1999, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy instituted a voluntary system for certifying online pharmacies, including inspections and disclosure. But of the hundreds of Internet pharmacies now operating, only a "dozen or so" signed up, said Carmen Catizone, the board's executive director. Most of those are large, legitimate sites, such as drugstore.com.
One pharmacy that received certification was prescriptiononline.com. "I can't explain what happened there," Catizone said. "I know we certified it originally, and then later on we got some complaints, and we suspended their certification. Obviously, if we knew then what we do now, we never would have certified them." Easy Licenses
Regulators in Nevada faced a similar situation in April 1999 when Terri Suarez applied for a license to operate an online pharmacy called prescriptiononline.com.
No one at the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy had ever heard of Suarez. She was not a pharmacist. She was not even from Nevada. She was based in Louisiana. But all Suarez had to do to get a license was show that she had a corporation.
"At that time, our whole application was essentially a page and a half," said Ling, the board's counsel. "It was essentially nothing. I don't even think she had to prove she had a business license."
Her application was approved.
Nevada regulators did not know that Suarez operated a closed-door pharmacy in Jefferson, La., called Pharmaceuticals Southwest Inc. On paper, the tiny company was set up to sell discounted drugs to nursing homes. But when an inspector showed up in November 1999, there were no drugs to be found.
"It was definitely a front," Carlos M. Finalet III of the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy said later. "It had no stock. The pharmacist sat there reading a book."
Suarez denied buying any drugs, even when she was confronted with invoices bearing her signature, according to a complaint that the Louisiana board filed against Suarez's company. The board determined that Suarez had indeed purchased drugs -- $1.2 million worth in two months from Bindley Western Industries Inc. But inspectors could not find them.
Based on Suarez's "complete disregard for pharmacy laws," the board revoked the company's license and fined it $100,000. But the board has been unable to collect, and Finalet said Suarez's whereabouts are unknown .
Nevada regulators did not know about Suarez's troubles when her name resurfaced in March 2001. That month, they received notice that she had sold her interest in prescriptiononline.com to Melissa Cosenza, 23.
The regulators blanched. Cosenza's father is Michael R. Cosenza, who has a long history of working at the margins of drug distribution in Nevada and elsewhere.
"We knew immediately that he was using her as a front," Ling said. "What we didn't know was what he was up to."
At a hearing, Melissa Cosenza confirmed that her father was going to be a consultant to prescriptiononline.com. "She had supposedly bought the company for $50,000, payable at $5,000 a year," Ling recalled. "Who buys a pharmacy for $50,000? It sounded as hokey as could be. We started asking her questions. It was pretty obvious she didn't know anything about the business."
In April 2001, Melissa Cosenza submitted an application for a license, stating that she owned all of the company's stock. She gave a home address near San Diego. Under work history, she listed jobs as a restaurant hostess and salon receptionist.
Nevertheless, she qualified for a license. "I suppose it looks pretty embarrassing but really there wasn't much we could do," Ling said. Under the board's existing rules, "I really can't deny someone a license just because they come from a family and I know they are going to do something bad as soon as I give them a license."
Nor was there much the board could do about Michael Cosenza, 60, whose consulting business Med-Pharm Inc. would be running prescriptiononline.com.
Cosenza had pleaded guilty to grand theft in 1992 in Inyo County, Calif., for stealing more than $100,000 from a health care construction project, court records show. He later was incarcerated in 2000 for six months on a charge related to the earlier case. In October of that year, he had that case dismissed and expunged from his record.
"There was no way Michael as a convicted felon could qualify for a license," Ling said. "But under the law at the time, we didn't have the ability to take action against a pharmacy based on who was employed. It's probably still unclear today if we could stop him from operating the company."
It was not the first time Cosenza had worked around his past.
In April 1997, the California Board of Pharmacy said that Cosenza was operating two closed-door pharmacies licensed under the name of his wife, Barbara Jackson Cosenza. According to the board's official accusation, the two pharmacies were supposed to purchase prescription drugs at a discount and sell them to nursing homes.
"In reality, both pharmacies were actually wholesale businesses in which hundreds of thousands of dollars of dangerous drugs were . . . sold to other wholesale companies," the state board alleged. "Some of these drug shipments were delivered to the San Diego office of a courier and picked up by non-licensed agents. . . . Upon occasion, these dangerous drugs stayed with the courier for days without proper storage or supervision by a registered pharmacist."
According to the accusation, Michael Cosenza had held himself out as the owner of the two pharmacies "and conducted business transactions on behalf of both pharmacies." The California regulators said he did not qualify for a license because of his 1992 felony conviction. In December 1998, Cosenza's wife agreed to surrender the two licenses.
In January 2002, Barnes Wholesale Drugs Inc., a California drug distributor, sued Cosenza. The wholesaler charged that it was owed $529,000 for drugs purchased by an Oregon company called Pharmaceuticals Northwest Inc. The firm was run by Cosenza's stepfather, George Kemmler, 74, a retired snack food deliveryman with diabetes and "blindness in one eye." Barnes alleged that Cosenza paid Kemmler $1,500 a month to act as a straw man. Kemmler declined to comment for this article.
Barnes also alleged that the company was diverting drugs meant for nursing homes to another wholesaler in Las Vegas.
In a deposition, Cosenza denied any role in the diversion. He settled the lawsuit in 2002 by agreeing to pay Barnes $514,000. But he fell behind on the payments, and a judgment was entered against him for $658,000.
Cosenza and his daughter declined to be interviewed for this article. In a court filing in 2003, his lawyer said that prescriptiononline.com was a legitimate pharmacy that complied with all of Nevada's laws and regulations. Booming Business
With Michael Cosenza behind it, prescriptiononline.com's business surged. Between July and December 2001, the online pharmacy filled 18,499 prescriptions, compared with just 17 in the prior six months. Nearly all were for controlled substances.
"Normally, with any retail pharmacy, you would expect 15 to 20 percent of the sales to be painkillers," Ling said. "Prescriptiononline turned that upside-down. They reversed the model."
Located in a small business park in northwest Las Vegas, prescriptiononline.com did not employ its own physicians. Unlike some other sites, it relied on doctors to steer business its way. All of those physicians were in other states and were associated with middlemen who arranged brief telephone conversations with patients in return for a fee. Two of the doctors -- Jon S. Opsahl and William Dale from California -- quickly became the two most prolific prescription writers in Nevada, regulators said.
In March 2002, Ling told prescriptiononline.com's attorney that he was concerned about the volume of controlled substances. Sherwood N. Cook wrote back that prescriptiononline.com believed that its product mix was consistent with that of other Internet pharmacies, and that "a majority of the drugs filled by Internet and mail-order pharmacies are controlled substances."
One of prescriptiononline.com's customers was Nancy Harler, a former nurse, of Columbia, S.C. She had been getting her painkillers from thepillbox.com. But after that site's legal problems arose, prescriptiononline.com began filling her orders for hydrocodone.
Harler said she had started ordering hydrocodone online for migraines and arthritis in February 2000. In all, she estimated that she spent $10,000 and used more than 1,500 pills. "It just got to the point where I was no longer in control and knew I needed help," she said.
Harler is now undergoing methadone treatment for her addiction, which she said was fed by the online pharmacies. "If you ask them anything about the money, they say we'll be glad to pull the plug. They know they have addicts on the line," she said.
Most of prescriptiononline.com's customers sought painkillers. The Post's analysis showed nearly 90 percent of the orders were for controlled substances, including hydrocodone and the generic equivalents of Valium and Xanax.
For years, hydrocodone has been one of the most used and abused drugs, according to the DEA. Sales have soared, and so have thefts of the drug and hydrocodone-related emergency room admissions.
The street value of hydrocodone is also climbing, said Tony King, the agent in charge of the DEA's Louisville office. A single generic tablet that costs an online pharmacy 15 cents may be sold to Internet customers for $1.50. On the street, that same tablet may go for "$3 to $5," King said. Overall sales of hydrocodone in Kentucky have doubled in the past four years, to 120 million tablets.
The surge began a few years back, when doctors alarmed by OxyContin abuse began switching patients to hydrocodone, King said. "But hydrocodone is equally dangerous," he said. "It's kind of like: Do you use a .38- or .40-caliber gun to shoot yourself?"
A breakdown of prescriptiononline.com's sales by Zip code revealed that four of every 10 pills flowed into Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana and Kentucky. Those four states routinely rank among the top five nationally in the per-capita use of hydrocodone and Xanax, according to law enforcement data.
The pills poured into small towns. In Hope, Ky., with a population of 152, customers bought 7,910 pills -- an average of 52 pills for each resident. In Gunlock, Ky., population 430, customers bought 2,910 pills, about seven per person. By contrast, in Louisville, Kentucky's biggest city with a population of 206,239, customers bought 5,810 pills, about 0.03 per person.
In some cases, these orders went to multiple customers listed at the same address. For example, over five months 2,030 pills were shipped to five customers at one home in Baileyton, Ala. More than 80 percent were hydrocodone.
In an interview, Opsahl, the California physician who wrote the prescriptions, said he was aware that customers occasionally listed the same address, but not to the extent detailed in The Post analysis. "I didn't have that data at the time," he said, calling the information "very disturbing. You've presented some information that certainly gives me some pause how this whole system can be blatantly abused and easily abused."
Still, Opsahl maintained that most Internet patients have legitimate needs.
That view is not shared by Mike Vories, a physician who runs a pain management clinic in Hazzard, Ky.
"How in the world does an Internet Web site have any control over whether that controlled substance is going to a patient with a legitimate complaint?" he wondered. "Really, come on. Let's call this for what it is. A few maybe are legitimate and have pain. For the majority, it is a source of income." Long Investigation
Alarmed by prescriptiononline.com's sales of controlled substances, Nevada regulators alerted the Las Vegas office of the DEA in the summer of 2001. Ling hoped for quick action. But the investigation stretched over months.
In the fall of 2001, DEA agents made undercover purchases from the Web site. In March 2002, DEA agents searched prescriptiononline.com's small office and seized business records. But the agents allowed the company to remain in business.
It would be 10 months before the DEA took away prescriptiononline.com's license to sell narcotics, declaring it "an imminent danger to the public health and safety" and seizing 21 boxes of drugs worth $143,000. By then, the company had moved about 1.8 million more doses of dangerous drugs.
When the DEA acted, the pharmacy board formally accused prescriptiononline.com of more than two dozen violations, including dispensing dangerous drugs where there was no valid physician-patient relationship.
On Jan. 22, Michael Cosenza and prescriptiononline.com agreed to relinquish the company's license and pay $200,000 in fines. The deal prohibited Cosenza or any member of his family from applying for a pharmacy license in Nevada for two years.
Melissa Cosenza did not attend the hearing.
--------
Internet Cases
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A14
By Gilbert M. Gaul and Mary Pat Flaherty
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50219-2003Oct19.html
THEPILLBOX.COM
Texas pharmacist William A. Stallknecht began selling Viagra online five years ago to customers in Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United States. At first, he was "fabulously successful," his former business partner said. But the market became crowded with other Internet pharmacies. Stallknecht, 57, shifted to selling the painkiller hydrocodone and other controlled substances through his San Antonio Web site. Customers contacting thepillbox.com would be steered to a physician referral service he owned. After a brief telephone conversation, a doctor would write a prescription and fax it to Stallknecht, who received half of the $100 "consulting" fee, as well as any profits from selling the drugs.
Before it was forced to stop selling prescription drugs in November 2001, thepillbox.com generated more than $7.7 million from controlled substances, netting as much as $300,000 a month, according to court records. The online pharmacy sold more than 8.4 million doses of hydrocodone and Diazepam. "It was just an easy way to get drugs, either to abuse it or to sell it," said Jerry Ellis of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Houston office, which conducted an 18-month investigation of the online pharmacy.
In March 2002, the government indicted Stallknecht, three doctors and Brian Hilldebrand, operator of the referral service. All have pleaded guilty to illegally dispensing hydrocodone and are awaiting sentencing. Stallknecht forfeited $1 million and his pharmacy license.
MYPRIVATEDOC.COM
Jeffrey N. Finnell decided to sell prescription drugs online in the summer of 2000. Operating out of his auto repair business in Mesa, Ariz., he and his partner, Patrick Dixon, started myprivatedoc.com and two other Web sites. They quickly attracted thousands of customers seeking an array of painkillers and other controlled substances. Doctors in eight states, including Alaska, Florida and Idaho, wrote the prescriptions. Drugstores in California and Arizona filled the orders.
In June 2002, federal prosecutors in Arizona moved to seize several million dollars in assets from the Web sites, owners, doctors and pharmacies. The prosecutors estimated that in a 14-month period, the operation handled more than 35,000 prescriptions and dispensed 2 million doses of controlled substances. According to court records, the Web sites grossed an estimated $4 million, with Finnell receiving $726,000 and Dixon, $719,000.
In its civil complaint, the government said customers paid inflated prices and tolerated "the delay because either they had no doctor who would prescribe the drugs . . . or they sought to avoid scrutiny."
Finnell declined to be interviewed. Dixon said they started the business to "fill a niche" and voluntarily closed when the DEA informed them they were violating the law.
MEDICATIONSEXPRESS.COM
Food and Drug Administration investigators trolling the Internet discovered Gerald Bevins's Web site in 1998. In October of that year, they boarded his motor home after he wheeled it into the parking lot of a McDonald's near San Diego. Inside, they seized the painkillers Percodan and Darvon, which Bevins had purchased in Mexico.
Along with his wife and daughter, Bevins was operating a mail-order business that sold Mexican drugs. No prescriptions were required. Bevins accepted only money orders. He would either drive to Mexico or use a runner to pick up the drugs, which he then repackaged and shipped via Federal Express. To avoid detection by customs inspectors, he instructed his runners to change license plates before crossing the border, according to his plea agreement.
Bevins imported Ritalin, Valium, Percodan and Clonazepam, a "date rape" drug. He made between $800,000 and $1.5 million in profit.
In September 2001, Bevins was sentenced to two years in federal prison. His wife died before sentencing. His daughter pleaded guilty to helping to bring in "misbranded drugs" and received probation.
SUCCESS123.COM
Carl D. Roberts insists all he wanted to do was help people. After his wife was hit by a drunk driver, he set up a Web site in his home in Powell, Tenn., to find innovative drugs for treating brain injuries. But his site turned into something entirely different, federal prosecutors maintain.
According to court records, success123.com (also known as the Mail Order Pharmacy) was a portal for customers seeking OxyContin. For as much as $500, subscribers could purchase "gold" and "deluxe" memberships that provided exclusive access to suppliers in Mexico, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
Roberts pleaded guilty to dispensing controlled substances in September 2002 and was sentenced to 57 months.
Aiding Roberts with his site were others he met online.
Frank N. Assaf Jr. had connections to a Mexican pharmacist who supplied him with thousands of OxyContin tablets. Gold members e-mailed orders to Assaf.
Between 2000 and 2002, he received about $2.1 million. Assaf kept cash in two safes at his Tucson home and in bank accounts under aliases, including one in Riga, Latvia. In a November 2002 raid, agents found 50,200 pills, ampules and tablets at the house. According to Assaf's computer inventory, two customers had spent more than $50,000 and 22 had spent more than $20,000. In August, Assaf pleaded guilty to illegally distributing OxyContin and was sentenced to 44 months.
NATIONPHARMACY.COM
Investigators were stunned when they visited the tiny storefront offices of the Internet-based pharmacy in Norman, Okla., in December 2000. Barely open two months, it was filling hundreds of prescriptions daily for its nationpharmacy.com Web site, the Internet arm of a brick-and-mortar drugstore called Main Street Pharmacy.
"There were cases of hydrocodone from ceiling to floor in a room that was maybe 8 by 8," said Cindy Hamilton of the Oklahoma State Board of Pharmacy. "You couldn't maneuver."
In March 2001, the state agency revoked the pharmacy's license. The owner, pharmacist Clayton Fuchs, 32, was indicted in Texas on related charges, along with three doctors, two pharmacists and a business partner. The doctors have pleaded guilty. Fuchs is awaiting trial and has appealed the pharmacy board's ruling. According to pharmacy board records, Main Street sold about 1.5 million doses of hydrocodone in four months. Profits from Fuchs's Internet operations were used to purchase a $675,000 house, $505,851 in other real estate, a $92,650 Mercedes, a 2001 BMW and a 1.735-carat diamond ring, the federal indictment states.
Through his lawyer, Fuchs declined to be interviewed.
"That business was like a Home Shopping Network for hydrocodone," said John Duncan, chief agent of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. "All they were doing there was pushing dope."
-------- immigration / refugees
9/11 Restrictions Harm Arab World, Report Says
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50577-2003Oct19?language=printer
Progress in the Arab world is being hindered by the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11, 2001, tightening of visa restrictions and the U.S. government's treatment of terrorism suspects, a team of Arab intellectuals contends in a new report to be released today in Jordan.
Thirty percent fewer Arabs studied in the United States in 2002 than three years earlier, according to the Arab Human Development Report. Some Arab governments also defended draconian measures against opponents by pointing to the stern security measures imposed by the United States and other developed democracies.
"It's 30 percent. Many reformers saw these people as the future hope," Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, director of the United Nations-sponsored report, said in an interview. "They were the ones who advocated reform. They were the ones who had a different vision."
The student numbers could not be independently verified yesterday.
The study, one of a U.N. Development Program series on obstacles to Arab development, comes as President Bush and his foreign policy staff pursue an ambitious project to push democratic change in the Islamic world. It follows an unfavorable assessment of U.S. public diplomacy efforts in Muslim countries by a White House-appointed committee.
The Bush administration contends that security threats posed by Islamic extremists and their political and economic backers justify the strict approach to visas for travel, study and work. Officials defend their counter-terrorism record, including forceful interrogation and lengthy detention of terror suspects, as humane and warranted, though human rights groups and the Justice Department's inspector general have raised questions.
This year's human development study focuses primarily on the failings of Arab societies that have fallen far behind other countries in most measures of human endeavor. The authors blame repressive Arab governments that fear change and resist educational reform and investment in infrastructure, from telephone lines to translators.
Ideology and the self-interest of oligarchies contribute to regressive societies, as do virulent strains of Islam that are used to justify intolerance and defend terrorism, according to the 210-page document, a follow-up to a widely discussed analysis last year. The authors note outside challenges, but emphasize that Arabs must solve their own problems.
Common assertions that Arabs are the victims of world events and immutable structural forces are a "comforting escape" that must be avoided, wrote the group of more than two dozen authors, sponsored by the UNDP and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development.
To shed their backwardness, societies must develop stronger economies and more flexible and efficient political structures, the authors contend in a report drafted primarily for an Arab audience. That will require more open-minded leadership and expanded human freedom -- no small wish list for 22 countries typified by autocratic elites.
Finding a few positive developments in a bleak landscape, the report credits Morocco for legislative elections and a new quota for representation by women. Bahrain repealed its State Security Act and held its first legislative elections in more than 20 years. Access to the media, largely through satellite television, continued to expand.
The U.S.-led overthrow of the Iraqi government is described as a setback. The report also devotes a section to the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
"Many outsiders have interests in the region, and interests in shaping the region," said Khalaf, director of the UNDP's Arab sector and a former deputy prime minister of Jordan. "We want an internal vision."
Last year's report cited three primary problems among the region's 270 million inhabitants: a shortage of freedom, a lack of opportunities for women and poor access to education and knowledge. It described the Arab world as being "at a crossroads" and asked whether inertia would continue to prevail.
This year's effort pays special attention to the third issue, calling for a wider opening to the outside world along with a stronger focus on Arab education and "knowledge" needs, including such fields as the media and scientific research.
The hurdles are huge, the authors maintain. Less than 2 percent of Arab world inhabitants have access to the Internet, because of inferior telephone lines or poverty. Five times as many books are translated in Greece as are translated in Arab countries. The authors describe the translation field as "chaotic."
By way of example, the report cites a 1991 figure indicating that 22 Arab countries produced 6,500 books, compared with 102,000 books published that year in North America. An unusually high percentage of books have a chiefly religious content, while many schools simply do not expect students to read literature.
The quality of education is declining and scientific research is largely stagnant, the report states, while the understanding and usage of classical Arabic is deteriorating.
The authors -- led by Cairo scholar Nader Fergany -- argue that the language needs an overhaul to become more practical and universal.
There has been an explosion of Arab media, particularly television, with about 120 channels transmitted by the region's two main satellite television stations. But the authors note that the majority of media outlets -- many of them government-owned -- offer only thin slices of context, detail or investigation.
The report describes censorship across the cultural landscape, from movies and theater to literature, defining the principal threat as "the dead hand of the state censor."
It charges that Arab artists face "unending social, political and ideological frameworks that are above accountability, and that treat innovation and change as signs of disintegration and unrest."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell faces flak from the Bush administration's intensified scrutiny of Arabs inside the country and its scrutiny of visa applicants abroad. His counterparts from across the world make pleas about individuals and categories of visitors, urging him to intercede.
The visa crackdown and an "erosion of civil and political liberties," the human development report contends, hurt Arabs and Muslims living abroad and interrupted valuable cultural exchanges.
That adds up, the authors say, to lost opportunities for a region that needs all the exposure to outside ideas it can get.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
China to Put Corn Into Gas Tanks to Clean Up
Story by Nao Nakanishi
REUTERS CHINA:
October 20, 2003
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22580/story.htm
JILIN, China - Jilin province, home to China's first car factory and also its biggest corn producer, is putting corn and cars together in a project to ease the country's exploding pollution ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Like many other agriculture giants such as Brazil, the United States, and India, the northeast province is using its huge farm surplus to make organic fuel that cuts pollution, and reduces dependency on petroleum imports at the same time.
Industry sources say, China, which is the world's fastest growing car and energy market, could extend the use of ethanol gasoline throughout the country by 2005 if initial exploratory steps are successful.
An Olympics shrouded in smog is not a scene China wants to show the world, but that is what it will look like, unless the traffic pollution in major cities is brought under control.
Turning grains into fuel also happens to allow the government to continue to subsidize agriculture outside its obligations under the World Trade Organization (WTO), avoiding more social unrest from farmers who are now exposed to global competition.
In Jilin, not far from the provincial capital Changchun, one of the world's largest fuel ethanol plants is currently gearing up for full operation.
From October 18, all car, truck and bus drivers in the province must blend into their gasoline 10 percent of the biofuel distilled from corn. A similar policy nationwide would make a significant dent in regular gasoline consumption, which totaled more than 37 million tonnes last year.
Fuel ethanol cuts greenhouse gas emissions that are held responsible for global warming. It can be produced also from wheat, sugar, rapeseed, palm oil, cassava or even recycled food oil, such as old frying oil collected from fast food restaurants.
SUBSIDIES
Jilin Fuel plant is one of four Chinese ethanol plants under construction, including one in neighboring Heilongjiang, one in the eastern province Anhui, and another in wheat-producing Henan.
"Such projects are viable only in grain-producing areas," Liu Yi, technical department manager told Reuters at the plant in the outskirts of Jilin city, from where the hills of the province's vast corn fields roll off far away and out of sight.
Jilin, which is three times the size of Austria, accounts for more than 10 percent of China's annual corn output of about 120 million tonnes, the second biggest after the United States. It takes about three tonnes of corn to produce one ton of ethanol.
Jilin Fuel will purchase corn from farmers and store it in silos at the sprawling complex. The air here is filled with a sweet smell, similar to a brewery, as it conducts test runs.
The plant cost 1.94 billion yuan (about $235 million) and is equipped with its own power generators as well as water treatment facilities, still a rarity for China.
Along with Beijing, the local government has provided favorable taxes and low-interest loans to the company. It has also promised subsidies to make up for the difference between gasoline and ethanol prices.
Liu calculated ethanol to cost about 4,000 yuan ($484) per tonne, compared with gasoline at 2,700 yuan ($327) a tonne.
With car sales doubling this year to over two million, the International Energy Agency forecast that China would overtake Japan next year as the second largest oil consumer after the United States.
Jilin Fuel Ethanol, a joint venture between the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), China Resources Enterprises Ltd and Jilin Grain Group (JGG), is to convert 900,000 tonnes of corn into 300,000 tonnes of fuel ethanol each year. It plans to double its capacity to 600,000 tonnes after that.
ETHANOL EQUALS HAPPY FARMERS
China has recently been trying to pull back from grain export markets because it cannot continue to pay out the export subsidies it used to under WTO trade rules.
"To help the fuel ethanol company is to help improve farmers income, restructure the old agriculture system and help maintain social stability," Hong Hu, governor of Jilin province, said. "It's a top government agenda item."
Over the past decade, China accumulated massive grains stocks as results of its policy of food security but these are now costing a fortune in storage fees, and are depressing prices of new crop, which hurts farmers.
Jilin alone is estimated to have over 20 million tonnes of corn in stock.
"Maybe they are willing to say 'Okay this is in the name of fuel security and environmental protection ... we'll do this'," said one source in Beijing, who declined to be named. "And if the prices of grains go too high, that's good for the farmers."
----
Tiny tubes squeeze electricity from water
20 October 03
Jenny Hogan
NewScientist.com news service
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994291
An entirely new way of generating electricity has been discovered. The way it works is simple: squeeze water through fine pipelines and an electrical current flows.
If the output can be increased, says Larry Kostiuk of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, then high pressure water could one day be used to power small devices such as mobile phones and calculators.
Turbines are routinely used to convert the energy of flowing water into electricity, but these use the water's motion to drive a dynamo. The new device converts the motion of the water directly into current.
Physicists already knew about an electrical effect that makes it hard to force water through tiny channels. The surface of the channel walls become charged, either because ions from the water stick to them or because some of the material dissolves. This creates an electric field that hinders the flow of charged ions through the channel.
For example, when the channel walls are negatively charged they attract positive ions, which slows down their flow. Negative ions are pushed to the centre of the channel where they travel more quickly. This means negative charge builds up at the far end of the channel and positive at the near end, making it progressively harder to push the water through.
Different angle
This had always been regarded as a problem, but when Kostiuk, an engineer, learnt of the effect from his colleague Daniel Kwok, he saw its potential. "With my background in power I had a different way of looking at it" he told New Scientist. Wiring up the two ends of the channel, he realised, would give the excess charge an escape route and produce a current.
To test the idea, Kostiuk and his team pumped ordinary tap water through a block of glass riddled with half a million holes, each just a hundredth of a millimetre wide. When an electrode was attached to each end they measured a current of a few microamps.
To increase the current, they will need to increase the efficiency of the device. At the moment, says Kostiuk, "it's really pretty pathetic - a fraction of a percent."
But another way to extract more amps would be to increase the number of channels. In this respect, Nature might offer some useful power sources. Where water flows through a porous rock, for example, it squeezes through many tiny channels. Kostiuk suggests that buried electrodes could tap the current this produces.
Jordan MacInnes, an expert in fluid dynamics at the University of Sheffield, UK, expects the effect will be rather small: "It would take years to charge a mobile phone." Forcing the water through at higher pressure could cut this time, MacInnes told New Scientist, but this might raise other engineering problems.
-------- poverty
Bangkok Evicts the Poor Before Economic Summit
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 20, 2003; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50576-2003Oct19.html
BANGKOK, Oct. 20 -- This city of 10 million, known for its endless traffic jams and teeming street life, has been spruced up and locked down in preparation for the 21 leaders attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum that starts Monday. The cleanup has included barring thousands of street vendors from the central city, shipping 10,000 homeless people to army camps and banning more than 500 human rights activists from entering the country.
About 600 Cambodian beggars, mostly women and children, were rounded up and airlifted back home on C-130 Hercules military aircraft. About 3,000 stray dogs were caught and shipped to the countryside. And a banner four stories high and a quarter-mile long, displaying an image of the Grand Palace royal compound, was erected to conceal a slum community that leaders might have otherwise glimpsed.
Political analysts said the elaborate preparations -- which the Thai government justified for security reasons -- are intended to ensure that nothing mars Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's bid to use the APEC gathering to cement his emerging role as Southeast Asia's dominant statesman. But Thaksin's aggressive steps have also stirred concerns that they are a prelude to a broad crackdown on Thailand's active civic groups.
Earlier this month, Thaksin threatened to blacklist any nongovernmental organizations that held protests during the summit, which is being held at government buildings in central Bangkok. He said they would be barred from receiving land title deeds and government funds for poverty eradication programs "on the grounds that these people are not considering the country's image."
Thaksin has been heavily criticized for a campaign against drug dealers this year that left more than 3,000 people dead. The government has said that many were killed in feuds among dealers, with only 100 killed by police in self-defense. But Human Rights Watch charged that many of the deaths were extrajudicial killings.
Kavi Chongkittavorn, editor of the Nation newspaper and a leading political commentator, said Thaksin, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon who took office 21/2 years ago, has the leadership traits of three other statesmen: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, also a business baron; Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a populist; and Robert Mugabe, the dictatorial leader of Zimbabwe. "He hasn't decided yet what sort of leader he wants to be," Kavi said.
"The Thaksin government is bringing back old practices where punishments were meted out at the wish of the rulers without reference to limits imposed by law and morality," said Sunai Phasuk, a political analyst for Forum-Asia.
A European diplomat based here said Thaksin has been able to act more aggressively in the past year because he has consolidated his power by installing people close to him -- including many relatives -- in key military and governmental posts. "Thaksin is really in charge because his people are everywhere," the diplomat said, on condition of anonymity.
Kavi said Thaksin has adroitly courted the Bush administration, which in turn has remained largely silent about Thailand's preparations for the summit. Thailand has actively aided in the war on terrorism, and recently arrested Riduan Isamuddin , alias Hambali, the alleged organizer of the Bail bombings last year. Thailand also had sent about 500 troops to Iraq -- with Thailand footing part of the bill -- even before the most recent U.N. Security Council resolution on the reconstruction of Iraq was approved.
President Bush, who made a state visit to Thailand on Sunday, lavished praise on Thaksin before he arrived in Bangkok. "I do see him [Thaksin] as a very strong leader and a very capable leader," Bush said in a television interview before starting his trip to Asia. "He is not afraid to make tough decisions. He stands his ground in the face of criticism. And so I think he is a very interesting, dynamic leader."
Sitting beside Thaksin after a bilateral meeting Sunday, Bush called him a "very close friend" and thanked him for having "worked so hard to make our stay comfortable and meaningful."
A senior administration official, asked why the United States had not raised questions about Thaksin's crackdown, said it was a "difficult question," adding that "they have done what they thought was appropriate to protect security." Another U.S. official said, "We recognize that there are some difficult decisions that have to be made in hosting a conference of this type."
Kavi, the newspaper editor, also said that unofficial estimates of the money spent by the Thai government to prepare for the summit run as high as $100 million, including the cost of refurbishing buildings.
Poverty activists said the week-long banning of vendors from the city's streets and main park has created tremendous hardship for people who ordinarily make only about $3 or $4 a day. The Rev. Joe Maier, a Catholic priest who has spent 33 years working in the Bangkok slums, said people are suffering because they must borrow money at high rates to make it through the week. "They are discouraged," he said.
When the 200 street children under Maier's care asked whether the leaders were going to visit them in the Klong Toey neighborhood, Maier explained it was a party for important people. But he was moved to throw his own party for the children.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Ellsberg Sees Iraq, Vietnam Parallels
By Associated Press
October 20, 2003
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-ellsberg-award,0,3489995.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines
PARK CITY, Utah -- The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers more than 30 years ago said there are striking parallels between Vietnam and Iraq.
"This war could go on forever, no matter how unpopular it gets. That's very like Vietnam: a stale, hopeless occupation," Daniel Ellsberg, 71, said.
That's not the only similarity, he said.
The Bush administration misled the public about the threat of Saddam Hussein, a tactic similar to what he said the Johnson administration took nearly 40 years before.
"It was clear we were being lied into a war again ... being lied into what amounted to another Tonkin Gulf Resolution, with the Congress signing a blank check. To see Congress sleepwalking into another war was disheartening," Ellsberg said.
The one-time Marine and former military analyst is best known for leaking in 1971 the Pentagon Papers, a top secret Defense Department study on the Vietnam War that he considered proof that American officials were lying about chances for victory.
As a result of attacking Iraq, Bush only gave radicals more reason to hate the United States, and terrorists would love to see him stay in office, Ellsberg said.
"Osama bin Laden couldn't dream of a better recruiting drive," he said.
Ellsberg believes there are many people in the Bush government who stay at their posts because they want to help from the inside, as he hoped to do during Vietnam.
The alternative is to go public and become an outsider forever, a decision he said he never regretted.
"What I'm trying to do is encourage other officials in there now to speak out against the administration," Ellsberg said.
--------
Anti-nuclear activist claims radiation rising
October 20, 2003
(AP)
http://www.thesunlink.com/redesign/2003-10-20/local/288540.shtml
RICHLAND (AP) -- A maverick scientist who once sent radioactive jam to Washington's governor claims radiation is on the rise near salmon spawning areas in the Columbia River.
Norm Buske says he's detected radium-225, a decay product of uranium-233, in the Hanford Reach, where 80 percent of the Columbia's fall Chinook salmon spawn.
Scientists from the Hanford nuclear reservation and the state Health Department dispute Buske's report, published last week with a grant from the Government Accountability Project, an organization of nuclear critics that defends government whistleblowers.
Debra McBaugh, a radiation specialist with the Washington Department of Health, noted that the sampling methods Buske used in his latest study are nonstandard and have not been reviewed by peers.
"We've been sampling since the 1960s out there. If uranium (or radium) had been there in large amounts, we would have seen it," she said.
Buske grabbed national headlines in 1990, when he shipped two jars of "hot" mulberry jam affixed with radiation warning labels to then-Gov. Booth Gardner and U.S. Energy Secretary James Watkins.
The berries came from an area along the Columbia near N Reactor, where radioactive strontium-90 from Hanford ground water was entering the river. In sufficient doses, strontium-90 can cause cancer.
Buske said he pulled the prank to draw attention to contamination at Hanford, the nation's most polluted weapons site.
Since 2001, Buske has had access to the 586-square-mile Hanford site in an agreement between the Government Accountability Project and the U.S. Department of Energy.
His latest work concerns a Cold War program that produced uranium-233 for nuclear weapons. It takes 159,000 years for half of the chemical's radioactivity to decay away.
Buske surmises that about 22 pounds of uranium may have been dumped in the river at old ferry crossings near the defunct D Reactor.
He suspects it was dumped because it contained dangerous fluoride and didn't meet requirements for on-site disposal in tanks or soil.
"There's no proof of that, but radiation patterns in the riverbed suggests it was dumped there," Buske said.
Ted Poston, a senior research scientist with Battelle's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, also questioned Buske's theories.
"The notion that someone could dispose of a fuel rod or element in the river is hard to buy," he said, because whoever did it would have been exposed to radiation.
The Hanford shoreline will be carefully examined over the next decade by several state and federal agencies before any land is released for public use, McBaugh said.
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