Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
U.S. Takes Softer Tone on Iran, Once in the 'Axis of Evil'
U.S. Ready to Resume Talks With Iran, Armitage Says
Iraqis Removed Arms Material, U.S. Aide Says
Weapons Searchers May Switch to Security
KEDO Suspends NK Reactor Project
Nuclear Waste Dump Opening May Be Delayed
DOE: Savannah River Nuclear Fuel Storage Safer
Bush's Urgent Task: To Calm Public's Growing Impatience
MILITARY
Two C.I.A. Operatives Killed in an Ambush in Afghanistan
2 CIA Employees Killed in Ambush
Lockheed Reports Higher Revenue But Lower Profit
Air Force Gives New Assessment of Tanker Corrosion
Rumsfeld confers at Pentagon with his Chinese counterpart
Two More U.S. Soldiers Killed as Violence Continues in Iraq
American Soldiers Kill Six Iraqi Civilians
Truck Bomb Near Fallujah Police Station Kills Four
Israelis Kill Palestinian Near Gaza Fence
Arafat Asks Palestinian Premier to Remain
Landmine Mania: America's Love Affair with Anti-Personnel Mines
Commanders Doubt Syria Is Entry Point
Iraqis tell grim stories of U.S.-run camps
Spy chief says Iraq moved weapons
Pentagon ignored rules to check soldiers' health
Bush Says He Sees No Need in Iraq for Adding G.I.'s
Bush Vows U.S. Will Stay in Iraq
Pentagon Manages War Coverage By Limiting Coffin Pictures
Speeches Called Propaganda
Bush Steps Away From Victory Banner
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Justice Dept. Tightens Security in C.I.A. Leak Case
Arms Merchant May Be Freed
Clark Lays Responsibility for 9/11 at Bush's Feet
ENERGY AND OTHER
Canadian Firm Wins $1 Million Federal High-Tech Solar Contract
Kazakh dam condemns most of the shrunken Aral Sea to oblivion
ACTIVISTS
Protests target Laos
Kazakhs honor Nunn
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- iran
U.S. Takes Softer Tone on Iran, Once in the 'Axis of Evil'
October 29, 2003
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/international/middleeast/29DIPL.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The Bush administration assured Iran on Tuesday that the United States did not favor "regime change" in Tehran and signaled a new willingness to engage in a dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program, its alleged support of terrorism and other issues.
The administration's newly conciliatory approach toward Iran, enunciated by Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, resolved at least part of a contentious internal debate among aides to President Bush, administration officials said.
The officials said Iran's nuclear program and the safe haven it is said to have offered members of Al Qaeda remain major obstacles to improving relations but that entering into conversations with Iran on those and other issues was also considered urgent.
The change in tone comes slightly less than two years after Mr. Bush, in his 2002 State of the Union address, grouped Iran with Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil."
American envoys still held occasional talks with Iran until May, when Washington cut them off after a series of bombings in Saudi Arabia linked to groups based in Iran.
In his Senate testimony, Mr. Armitage said the United States "must keep all available options on the table" toward Iran. He did not specify these options, but they were understood to include the use of force if necessary.
"At the same time," he added, "we are prepared to engage in limited discussions with the government of Iran about areas of mutual interest, as appropriate. We have not, however, entered into any broad dialogue with the aim of normalizing relations."
Like North Korea, Iran has provoked an intense debate between hard-liners and advocates of diplomacy within the Bush administration. Many at the State Department favor diplomatic contacts because of the range of issues requiring cooperation with Iran.
The biggest point of contention within the administration is over Iran's nuclear program. Hard-liners, many of them at the Defense Department, favor a more confrontational policy toward Tehran, including sending the issue to the United Nations Security Council for consideration of possible sanctions.
Last week, however, a delegation of envoys from France, Russia and Britain won Iran's agreement to accept new international inspections of some of its nuclear facilities and to suspend production of enriched uranium, a fuel for potential use in making weapons.
The administration has been careful to say that these steps must be verified. A similarly skeptical response has followed Iran's promises to avoid contact with Al Qaeda.
Mr. Armitage said the administration believed that "elements of the Iranian regime" helped both Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam, which the administration links to Al Qaeda, "transit and find safe haven in Iran, despite Iran's official condemnation of these groups."
Administration officials say that, with anti-American violence rising in Iraq, it is imperative to deal with Iran over the future makeup of Iraq. The Iranian government wields influence on Shiite groups seeking to establish an Islamic government.
American officials have labeled as "unhelpful" some of Iran's recent actions in support of these groups.
Many administration officials say a Shiite-dominated government is inevitable in Iraq, partly because Shiites predominate. Some fear that a Shiite government that imposed its will on the Sunni minority would accelerate the violence in central Iraq.
Administration officials said Mr. Armitage's testimony was approved by the White House after a number of recent small steps by Iran, including reports over the weekend that it had released a list of Qaeda members, formerly based in Iran, who had been returned to their countries of origin.
There appeared to be disagreement in the administration over the significance of the list. One senior American official said that it indicated a small but positive step by Iran to address American concerns.
But another said it was merely a list of militants returned to Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries, with no indication of what happened to them after that.
Mr. Armitage said that, on the positive side, Iran had supported the American-led ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the formation of the Iraqi Governing Council, whose members were chosen by the American occupation authorities.
Iran also surprised some American officials by showing up last week at the Madrid conference of international donors to Iraq and contributing aid.
The Governing Council is discussing a deal to ship oil to Iran and receive electricity in return, one administration official said, a step that L. Paul Bremer III, the occupation administrator, has not yet sought to block.
Mr. Armitage was asked Tuesday by Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, if "regime change" was American policy in Iran. "No, sir," Mr. Armitage replied, adding that "our policy is to try to eliminate the ability of Iran to carry forward with disruptive policies."
Administration officials said one reason the United States does not favor changing governments as a solution in Iran is that any government - even a secular Western-oriented one - would probably continue the quest for nuclear weapons.
Mr. Armitage said that was a product of Iran's longstanding ambition to be a major force in the region and its self-regard as the modern heir to ancient Persian longings for greatness - what he called "an innate grandeur still in the dreams of Persepolis and all of that."
The other major issue is Iran's support of Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Islamic militant groups that have carried out attacks in Israel. Administration officials say they have made no headway on persuading Iran to end its support of these groups.
----
U.S. Ready to Resume Talks With Iran, Armitage Says
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31357-2003Oct28.html
Six months after halting talks with Iran, the Bush administration said yesterday that it is prepared to resume discreet discussions with the Islamic republic over Iraq, Afghanistan and other issues.
"We are prepared to engage in limited discussions with the government of Iran about areas of mutual interest as appropriate," Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said in testimony prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But he stressed that the talks would not be a "broad dialogue with the aim of normalizing relations," which were terminated after the 1979 revolution.
U.S. and Iranian officials had met several times in Geneva both before and after the war in Iraq, with the last session taking place May 3. But the administration halted the contacts after the May 12 bombings of residential compounds in Saudi Arabia, alleging that Iran was harboring al Qaeda operatives responsible for the attacks.
The Iranians have denied the charge and have repeatedly pressed the administration to restart the contacts. Iran, which shares a long border with Iraq, has sought to demonstrate its willingness to cooperate with the administration, including recognizing the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and contributing resources for Iraq at a donors conference last week in Madrid.
The Bush administration has urged Iran to turn over al Qaeda members. Armitage in his testimony linked Iran's cooperation on al Qaeda to better relations with the United States, saying "resolution of this issue would be an important step in U.S.-Iranian relations." But he told reporters that it is not a prerequisite to restarting the talks.
Iran has privately suggested to the administration that it will turn over al Qaeda members in exchange for captured members of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that had operated out of Iraq. Armitage ruled out such a deal yesterday, "because we can't be sure of the way they'd be treated," referring to the MEK members. He said officials were questioning MEK members to determine who had terrorist connections. "In my understanding, a certain number of those do," he said, adding that they will face charges.
Under questioning, Armitage said it was a mistake for the U.S. military to have arranged a cease-fire agreement with the MEK during the war, a decision that alarmed Iran. "We shouldn't have been signing a cease-fire with a foreign terrorist organization," he said.
-------- iraq / inspections
WEAPONS SEARCH
Iraqis Removed Arms Material, U.S. Aide Says
October 29, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/politics/29WEAP.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.
The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material "unquestionably" had been moved out of Iraq.
"I think people below the Saddam Hussein-and-his-sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to destroy and disperse," General Clapper, who leads the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said at a breakfast with reporters.
He said he was providing a personal assessment. But he said "the obvious conclusion one draws" was that there "may have been people leaving the scene, fleeing Iraq, and unquestionably, I am sure, material." A spokesman for General Clapper's agency, David Burpee, said he could not provide further evidence to support the general's statement.
But other American intelligence officials said General Clapper's theory was among those being pursued in Iraq by David Kay, a former United Nations weapons inspector who is leading the American effort to uncover the weapons cited by the Bush administration as the major reason for going to war against Iraq.
General Clapper's comments came as the Central Intelligence Agency prepared to defend its prewar assertions that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and that it sought to reconstitute its nuclear program. The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, has written a letter to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence saying the agency will be ready to provide an assessment by late November.
In the letter, the contents of which were described by several intelligence officials on Tuesday, Mr. Tenet proposed that a team headed by John McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, provide a briefing for the committee after Nov. 20, when the agency's internal review is expected to be completed.
General Clapper's agency is responsible for interpreting satellite photographs and other imagery. He declined to answer a question about whether he believed that illicit Iraqi weapons material might have been smuggled into any other country.
--------
WASHINGTON
Weapons Searchers May Switch to Security
October 29, 2003
By ERIC SCHMITT and DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/international/29ATTA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The Bush administration is weighing whether to shift scarce intelligence resources in Iraq away from the search for unconventional weapons in order to bolster counterinsurgency efforts, American officials said on Tuesday.
The shift of some intelligence officers, linguists and other specialists could reinforce efforts to identify and remove those attacking American soldiers, international workers and Iraqi civilians, the officials said. But, they said, the Central Intelligence Agency is wary about undermining the search for chemical and biological weapons and evidence of Iraq's suspected nuclear program.
"There are competing demands for the services of a finite number of individuals," a senior American official said. "Obviously, you don't want to fail to support the security needs in Baghdad, but on the other hand you don't want to fail to support the weapons hunt."
For that reason, a senior Defense Department official said, another option would be to keep the weapons mission intact and add resources to the counterinsurgency fight.
At the same time, Pentagon officials are seeking to accelerate the training and fielding of Iraqi security forces and to sharpen the intelligence needed to combat the insurgents, who seem determined to make Iraq ungovernable, administration officials said.
In a second day of high-level meetings at the Pentagon to refine American plans, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met on Tuesday with Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top commander of American forces in Iraq; and L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq.
At the White House, President Bush said that the military's strategy in Iraq - to act quickly on fresh intelligence to kill or capture guerrillas - would remain the same, but on-the-ground tactics would shift to combat an elusive and adapting foe.
"We're constantly looking at the enemy and adjusting," Mr. Bush said without disclosing details.
The administration's effort to shift intelligence resources to combat the insurgents drew strong support on Capitol Hill. Some Congressional officials said that in particular, specialists involved in the hunt for nuclear weapons were being underutilized and could be shifted to other duties.
"The question of additional intelligence to deal with these rising attacks is imperative," said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
Military officials emphasized that putting an increasingly Iraqi face on the security structure and establishing a competent Iraqi authority that is not merely symbolic has been a priority for months. But Monday's suicide attacks served to underscore the sense of urgency.
"The more these attacks are allowed to become part of the national psyche, the harder they will be to stop," a senior military official said.
Senior American officers say that most attacks have come from former members of Saddam Hussein's government, but that foreign fighters, criminals and terrorists have also been involved.
Whether the current insurgency remains largely homegrown or shifts to more external forces will drive counterinsurgency tactics on the ground, officials say. Mr. Rumsfeld said this week that there are now about 90,000 Iraqi security and military forces, many of whom join the 1,700 patrols that American forces conduct each day in Iraq.
American officials in Iraq glean intelligence principally from the patrols, interrogations of suspected terrorists captured in raids, tips from Iraqi informants and to some extent, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft and devices.
Since May, the number of tips flowing in to American officials has increased twentyfold, and over time, commanders have weeded out good informants from the bad, said Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, who commands the Fourth Infantry Division, with headquarters in Tikrit. He said the success rate for tips is now about 90 percent, up from about 50 percent six months ago.
American officials cautioned that no final decision had been made about a shift in intelligence resources. They emphasized that any shift away from the search for weapons should in no way be interpreted as representing a lack of faith in the weapons hunt, which has yet to turn up evidence of the chemical and biological arsenal the Bush administration cited as a principal reason for going to war.
American officials have declined to say how many intelligence officers, linguists and other experts are assigned to the weapons hunt and other intelligence-gathering efforts in Iraq. They have also refused to provide even a rough breakdown of the current allocation of resources between the weapons hunt and counterinsurgency.
The Iraq Survey Group, a team led by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is carrying out the weapons search, numbers 1,400 military and civilian personnel, but that includes those performing support and security duties as well as intelligence and translation functions.
Some military officers have complained, however, that the weapons hunt has been given priority in the competition for resources.
Earlier this summer, the high priority placed by the military on the search for Saddam Hussein and his sons meant that that task was given priority, military officers have said. But some intelligence personnel who had been working on that task appear to have since been reassigned to the weapons hunt, according to two senior government officials.
James R. Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who is head of the Defense Imagery and Mapping Agency, said on Tuesday that the challenges facing the intelligence community in Iraq were of "a very different paradigm" from those faced in seeking information about a conventional military foe.
"Now we're in the mode of looking for individuals who don't present obvious signatures, from an imagery standpoint," General Clapper said. He suggested that satellites and other airborne platforms were not well suited to the task. "There's a huge premium now on melding the signal intelligence, the human intelligence, and to do it rapidly," he said.
-------- korea
KEDO Suspends NK Reactor Project
10-29-2003
(Yonhap)
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200310/kt2003102919534611990.htm
TOKYO -- The international consortium financing the construction of light-water reactors in North Korea decided to suspend the project for the moment, a Japanese daily reported on Wednesday.
Executive members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) _ which includes South Korea, Japan, the United States and the European Union _ will clarify the decision during unofficial talks set to open in New York on Monday, the Asahi Shimbun said.
The paper added that Charles Kartman, KEDO's executive director, will issue a final decision after explaining the consortium's position to North Korea during his visit to Pyongyang around Nov. 15.
The reactor project was an incentive for North Korea to freeze and eventually dismantle its plutonium-based nuclear program under a 1994 accord called the ``Agreed Framework.'' But the future of the project has been thrown into doubt by serious delays and the deepening nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
The project is already several years behind schedule because of funding and other problems. South Korea maintains that the $4.6 billion project should not be terminated. But given US calls for the project to end, the suspension at the least was inevitable.
YMCA Calls for Political Reform
In the face of a seemingly endless string of bribe scandals involving key lawmakers and conglomerates, the National Council of YMCAs yesterday stood up to call for blanket reform in the political arena. It has collected 2003 signatures from its members around the nation supporting the call.
The civic group requested that political parties come clean about the fundraising during the last president election, stop the war of attrition on the presidential confidence vote, and establish a national committee for political reform.
The group also urged the political sector to disclose all information on campaign financing for the last presidential election.
The civic group suggested that political parties should form a national committee for reform under the direction of the National Assembly Speaker by the first week of November. One of the nation's oldest civic groups, the YMCA also urged parties to halt the dispute over the confidence vote, calling it a waste of scarce time and resources that should be spent on more pressing governance issues.
It said it would push ahead with the campaign at its 57 branch offices around the nation next month and plans to conduct surveys of 226 lawmakers on political reform. Survey results will be released on Nov. 4.
NK-Japan Trade Down
SEOUL (Yonhap) -- The volume of trade between North Korea and Japan in the first six months of the year totaled $134 million, far lower than the $154 million low point registered for the same period in 1999, a South Korean trade agency said yesterday.
The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said North Korea imported $45.9 million worth of goods from Japan in the first half, down 15 percent from the same period a year earlier, while exporting to its neighbor $88.4 million in goods, down 25 percent.
The government agency attributed the steep drop in trade to strengthened quarantine and inspection procedures in Japan on goods imported from North Korea.
Also, the recent hard-line stance taken by the Japanese government against the communist state in connection with the abduction of Japanese during previous decades dampened trade relations between the two countries, KOTRA said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Nuclear Waste Dump Opening May Be Delayed
Associated Press
10/29/03
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3324098,00.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) - A federal appeals court ruling could delay plans to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump over conflict of interest charges facing the government's former law firm.
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday sent the case back to U.S. District Court to determine if the Energy Department had ruled out any conflict of interest before hiring its legal counsel, the Chicago-based firm Winston & Strawn.
The firm, which spent two years preparing the department's application for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission permit, withdrew as counsel in November 2001 after the allegations were raised. The firm had lobbied for a pro-nuclear group and had previously done work for a Yucca Mountain contractor.
If a judge finds the Energy Department didn't consider the potential conflict before hiring the firm, the contract could be given to another law firm, the Las Vegas Sun reported in Wednesday's editions.
That could mean a delay in the project because all of Winston's work could be reviewed, said Washington attorney Joe Egan, who works for Nevada on its opposition to the nuclear waste site, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
``This is amazing,'' Egan said. ``This is a blow-out victory for Nevada.''
The court's ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by LeBoeuf, Lamb, Green and MacRae, a law firm that had bid and lost the contract.
The appeals court ruled the Energy Department must provide evidence that the law firm was qualified to bid despite the conflict. If it cannot, the court could award the contract to LeBoeuf, the judges said.
The Energy Department, which has been without a legal counsel since the law firm left, plans to submit its application by the end of 2004, and hopes to open Yucca Mountain by 2010.
Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis wouldn't comment on the ruling, but said it should not delay the Yucca Mountain project.
``We are reviewing the court's decision,'' Davis said. ``Our plan remains to submit a license application to the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) by the end of 2004.''
-------- south carolina
DOE: Savannah River Nuclear Fuel Storage Safer
WASHINGTON, DC,
October 29, 2003
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2003/2003-10-29-09.asp#anchor4
The Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the removal of the last unit of spent nuclear fuel from the Savannah River Site's Receiving Basin for Offsite Fuels.
All of the fuel was moved from the 40 year old underwater storage basin and placed in what the DOE says is "safer interim storage" in a newly modified underwater basin in preparation for RBOF's closure.
"I am pleased to see the change in landscape of how legacy waste and materials are now handled so that future generations will not be unduly burdened with the hazards and costs of winning the Cold War," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said.
Spent nuclear fuel currently stored at the Savannah River Site is from the site's production reactors, and from domestic and foreign research reactor programs. All of this fuel is now stored in the newer of the two water filled concrete storage basins, which were intended originally for interim storage while spent fuel awaited processing in a chemical separations facility.
The Receiving Basin for Offsite Fuels (RBOF) began receiving fuel in the early 1960s. As the RBOF basin neared capacity, L-Basin was modified to become the primary receiving facility in 1997. In order to continue to meet the long term objectives of the research reactor fuel program, a variety of facility improvement projects continue to be implemented.
To reduce long term facility operating cost, a project is underway to consolidate fuel storage into one facility. Plans are to de-inventory the RBOF storage basin by shipping fuels currently stored in RBOF to L-Basin by 2007.
The RBOF de-inventory project fuel consists of three major components. They include the shipment of Aluminum (Al) based fuels, shipment of non-Al fuels, and shipment of processable fuels to the site's chemical separations facilities for processing and disposal.
The bulk of the aluminum based spent nuclear fuel shipment was completed between February 1997 and May 2001 with the movement of approximately 3,800 Material Test Reactor assemblies and 14 High Flux Isotope Reactor cores.
During the 1990s, experts forecast that L-Basin would reach full capacity in FY2002. A project was started in FY2000 to design and install new fuel storage racks in L-Basin to provide adequate storage capacity through FY2009.
Spent fuel from Savannah River Site operations is also stored in the K Area Disassembly Basin. In addition, studies are underway to find alternative technologies, such as dry cask storage, for the spent fuel.
Secretary Abraham said today, "I am especially proud of our workers in the field who are driving hard to move from a culture of risk management to one of risk reduction while keeping safety paramount."
-------- us politics
NEWS ANALYSIS: THE OUTLOOK
Bush's Urgent Task: To Calm Public's Growing Impatience
October 29, 2003
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/politics/29ASSE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - Early on Tuesday morning, as many Americans were scanning newspaper headlines about the latest wave of deadly bombings in Iraq, President Bush met with his press secretary and his communications director in the Oval Office. He told them, aides said, that he wanted to hold a full-scale news conference a few hours later.
The idea had been under consideration for several weeks, but it was only after the attacks in Baghdad on Monday that Mr. Bush decided to take his message directly to the voters and the world.
For weeks, while opinion polls showed diminished support for his postwar leadership, he had accused the press of filtering out good news from Iraq and overplaying the bad.
The decision reflects how urgent it is for the White House to keep public opinion about Iraq from deteriorating to the point that it could limit the president's policy choices and threaten his chances for re-election.
With Election Day just over a year away, Mr. Bush will come under increasing pressure to start showing results in Iraq and bringing troops home. But, faced with an evolving threat that will require military flexibility, he also may be counting on an electorate patient enough to deal with what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld now calls a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The president will be called on to show results for the $87 billion that Congress is close to granting him for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As long as Iraq remains Topic A, Mr. Bush may have to struggle to focus public attention on an issue that might otherwise dominate the political landscape: the rapidly improving economy, a subject on which he got not a single question at the news conference.
And despite his efforts to remain above the partisan fray, he will inevitably have to begin responding to the increasingly unified Democratic attacks on his handling of postwar Iraq.
White House officials said Mr. Bush was not just speaking to voters at home. They said he was also addressing Iraqis who might wonder about the American commitment to ensuring them a chance for a peaceful future, and governments weighing whether it was worthwhile to support the United States in Iraq with money and military forces.
"At these moments of testing, where the terrorists try to create chaos and fear, where they want America to blink, it's very important for the American public and the Iraqi people to hear that we are resolved to see this through," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.
"He was more inclined to do it after the events of the last 48 hours," Mr. Bartlett said of Mr. Bush's decision after the bombings to call a news conference. "When there are significant events like this, both good and bad, tough days as well as good days, it's important, it's the role of the president, to put it into context."
Mr. Bush, who returned on Friday from a grueling weeklong trip through Asia, seemed tired throughout the 48-minute question and answer session in the Rose Garden, and his responses often sounded more dutiful than passionate. He stumbled over his lines at times, and his usual good-natured jousting with reporters occasionally turned snippy.
Despite his longstanding attempts to cast his foreign policy as conducted without regard to polls or domestic politics, he was drawn into rare comments about the electoral implications of a drawn-out conflict in Iraq.
Mr. Bush said he expected the American people to be patient because they were "able to differentiate between politics and reality," suggesting that he would cast criticism of his leadership as partisan and unfounded.
On Monday, Mr. Bush suggested that the latest violence in Iraq was a sign of progress, saying that "the more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react."
That formulation left even some Republicans wincing, and he recalibrated it on Tuesday, saying terrorists "are targeting the very success and freedom we're providing to the Iraqi people."
But the president made it clear that he saw his strategy as slowly but surely proving successful, and said he was looking forward to defending it "right in the mix" of election-year politics.
"I'll say that the world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership, and America is more secure," Mr. Bush said, describing how he will run on his record. "That will be how I'll begin describing our foreign policy."
Democrats scoffed.
"This president appears to lack the leadership skills required to do what is necessary to successfully stabilize and reconstruct Iraq before the window of opportunity closes," Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement.
"Instead," Mr. Dean said, "President Bush seems content to pursue the current flawed plan, unwilling to do what is necessary to encourage our friends and allies to assist, incapable of taking the steps necessary to expedite the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, and content to direct billions of dollars to special interests like Halliburton."
White House officials said Mr. Bush's slide in the polls appeared to have stabilized, although no survey results have yet been made public that would gauge American opinion since the most recent spate of attacks in Baghdad.
Mr. Bartlett said the White House was comfortable with the state of public opinion about Iraq "considering the climate we're in."
The question, now, is whether Mr. Bush can improve the climate.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Two C.I.A. Operatives Killed in an Ambush in Afghanistan
October 29, 2003
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/international/asia/29INTE.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - Two Central Intelligence Agency operatives were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan over the weekend, the agency said Tuesday, bringing to four the number of C.I.A. operatives acknowledged to have been killed in the line of duty since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The two men were described by the agency as veterans of military Special Operations units who were killed while tracking terrorists in the region of Shkin, a village in southeastern Afghanistan. A statement released by the agency said they were working as contractors for the agency's Directorate of Operations, which conducts clandestine intelligence gathering and other covert activities.
The two were identified as William Carlson, 43, of Southern Pines, N.C., and Christopher Glenn Mueller, 32, of San Diego. The C.I.A. does not normally identify its covert employees, but the agency said in the statement that it had decided to release their names after consulting with the men's families and determining that the information would not jeopardize continuing operations.
The C.I.A. statement quoted George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, as paying tribute to Mr. Carlson and Mr. Mueller as men "who were defined by dedication and courage." As contractors, they were not staff employees of the C.I.A., and agency officials declined to comment on the nature of their employment.
But other intelligence officials said that they understood that the two men were members of the Special Operations Group, which can conduct commando-style paramilitary operations.
The agency said that Mr. Carlson had been a veteran of Army Special Operations and that Mr. Mueller had experience in Navy Special Operations. "These two men were no strangers to the hardships of service to country," Mr. Tenet said in the statement. "They had been counted among the best of America's military."
The other C.I.A. operatives acknowledged by the agency to have been killed since the Sept. 11 attacks are Johnny Micheal Spann, a paramilitary officer who was killed during an uprising of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners in northern Afghanistan in November 2001, and Helge Boes, who died in a training accident in eastern Afghanistan last February.
The region where Mr. Carlson and Mr. Mueller were operating is near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, a stronghold for members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other anti-American fighters.
The agency did not provide details about the military operation in which the two men were killed.
18 Rebels Die in Firefight
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 28 (AP) - American-led troops and Afghan militiamen killed 18 rebels during a six-hour firefight near the Pakistan border, calling in airstrikes to help repel the attackers, the United States military said Tuesday.
Six Afghan militiamen were wounded in the fighting, which began Saturday morning, the allied leadership said in a statement. There were no allied casualties.
The American-backed Afghan militiamen were patrolling in Paktika Province when they ran into as many as 25 rebel fighters early Saturday, the military said.
Muhammad Ali Jalali, the governor of Paktika, said Tuesday that a separate battle on Saturday in the Gomal District left 10 rebels dead.
--------
2 CIA Employees Killed in Ambush
Ex-Special Forces Officers Worked in Eastern Afghanistan
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31906-2003Oct28.html
Two former Special Forces officers working as contract employees in counterterrorism for the CIA were killed in an ambush in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, the agency announced yesterday.
William Carlson and Christopher Glenn Mueller died while "tracking terrorists operating in the region" near the village of Shkin, the agency said in an unusual announcement made after consultations with the families of the dead officers. Carlson, 43, of Southern Pines, N.C., had served in Army Special Operations, while Mueller, 32, from San Diego, had been in Navy Special Operations.
"These two men were no strangers to the hardships of service to country. They had been counted among the best of America's military," Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet said.
The two were involved in what became a six-hour firefight between Taliban rebels and U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces on Saturday. Eighteen Taliban fighters were killed while six Afghan militia soldiers were wounded, according to a coalition statement.
Taliban rebels have dramatically stepped up operations recently. Last month, a U.S. soldier was killed and two others wounded in another action near Shkin. In April, two other U.S. soldiers were killed in a firefight near Shkin while they were investigating suspicious activity at the site of a rocket attack.
Agency officials would not disclose details of the mission that Carlson and Mueller were on except to say they worked for the Directorate of Operations, which carries out clandestine intelligence gathering and covert operations.
Shkin is six miles from the Pakistani border and home to a key firebase that is manned by U.S. military and CIA operatives trying to control infiltration along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and to aid in the complex, ongoing search for Osama bin Laden, according to military and congressional sources.
A publication of the 82nd Airborne Division in July described the Shkin base as "a mud fortress that resembles the Alamo." As for the area, one officer described it as "the front line on the war on terrorism right now because we believe that the bad guys are very nearby."
Two other CIA operatives have been killed since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Johnny Michael Spann, another former military officer, was killed in an uprising at a prison in northern Afghanistan in November 2001. Helge Boes died in February when a grenade detonated prematurely during a live-fire exercise in eastern Afghanistan.
Tenet said Carlson and Mueller "were defined by dedication and courage." He said, "Their sacrifice -- for the peoples of the United States and Afghanistan -- must never be forgotten."
-------- business
Lockheed Reports Higher Revenue But Lower Profit
More Money Came From Pentagon
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page E06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31649-2003Oct28.html
Lockheed Martin Corp. said yesterday that its third-quarter profit fell 25 percent, but revenue climbed 23 percent because of accelerated Pentagon spending on fighter jets and information technology.
Bethesda-based Lockheed reported profit of $217 million (48 cents a share), down from $290 million (64 cents) last year. The company attributed the decline to a non-cash $83 million after-tax charge related to the early retirement of nearly $1 billion in debt, and to the growing cost of its pension accounts.
Lockheed reported an $80 million pension expense for the quarter, compared with $64 million in pension income for the same period last year. For the year, the company expects to contribute $185 million to employee pension accounts, which have been hit hard by slumping stock prices. Most of the company's pension contributions will be reimbursed by the government, said Jim Ryan, Lockheed's vice president of investor relations.
Analysts played down the profit decline and focused instead on the company's strong revenue performance. Lockheed's sales totaled $8.1 billion, a quarterly record, compared with $6.5 billion in the third quarter of last year.
"It was another solid operating quarter for the largest defense company," David Peterson, a defense analyst at Banc of America Securities LLC, said in a research report.
Lockheed's aeronautics unit, which is responsible for the F/A-22 and Joint Strike Fighter programs, underpinned the revenue gain with a 60 percent jump in sales to $2.7 billion from $1.7 billion.
The continuing popularity of the 25-year-old F-16 accounted for $515 million of the increase. Lockheed delivered 25 of the planes to mostly foreign buyers during the quarter compared with six in the same quarter last year.
Lockheed's newest unit, integrated systems and solutions, formed in response to the Pentagon's growing demand for information technology and systems integration, reported a 30 percent increase in revenue to $922 million compared with $709 million last year.
Government demand for satellites and rocket launches continued to offset a slump in the commercial space business. Revenue in satellites and launches increased 12 percent to $1.5 billion from $1.34 billion last year.
In the past year, Lockheed has streamlined its commercial space business and sees signs of recovery in the sector, company officials said. Lockheed has four commercial satellite orders this year. It had none last year.
"It looks like there is some life in the commercial satellite market after all," said Eric C. Hugel, aerospace and defense analyst for Stephens Inc. "That business looks like it has stabilized and should be improving going forward."
Lockheed's government space business also will receive a boost from a recent Air Force decision to shift 10 government launches from Boeing Co. to Lockheed. A government inquiry found that Boeing employees were in possession of proprietary Lockheed documents during a contract competition.
In September, Lockheed announced that a NASA satellite it manufactured had been dropped on the production floor because it was not properly secured. During the quarter, the company returned $30 million in profit it had received. "I think that is a fair thing in light of the situation," said Christopher E. Kubasik, Lockheed's chief financial officer.
Staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
--------
Air Force Gives New Assessment of Tanker Corrosion
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31341-2003Oct28.html
The Air Force disclosed yesterday that components in its refueling tankers have only occasionally been replaced because of age-related corrosion, an issue at the heart of a congressional debate about the urgency of replacing the tanker fleet with new aircraft built by Boeing Co.
The Air Force made the disclosure to the Senate Armed Services Committee, after deleting the information from data given to the committee last week. The information was revealed after Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), a critic of the Air Force's tanker plans, raised the possibility of issuing a subpoena for it.
The backdrop for the debate is a deal, authorized by Congress two years ago but not yet funded, to replace at least 100 Air Force KC-135 tankers with modified Boeing 767s at a cost of more than $20 billion, using the largest lease ever signed by the government. The Bush administration justified the deal partly by citing the danger of age-related corrosion in the tanker fleet.
The Air Force has not performed a comprehensive study of the incidence of corrosion, but Air Force Secretary James G. Roche told Congress last month that he believes "corrosion is significant, pervasive and presents an unacceptable risk." That is why, he said, the Air Force backed a lease that would get new tankers into service sooner than a purchase that would cost about $6 billion less.
John Ullyot, a spokesman for Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), said yesterday after seeing the new data that "the committee has an overall concern about corrosion data expressed by the Air Force, and we have asked for a study to verify the numbers."
McCain said: "The data is very revealing. It clearly indicates [corrosion] is a negligible concern."
The Air Force initially told Congress that the information supplied yesterday had been destroyed and that the people who prepared it were on leave or otherwise unavailable for comment, McCain said.
McCain also said some Air Force technicians had told congressional staff members they were proud of their ability to keep age-related corrosion in the existing tankers very low, a point at odds with the contentions of top Air Force officials in Washington.
McCain and a handful of other congressional critics have said for more than a year that the leasing arrangement is wasteful, that the new planes are too expensive and that the existing fleet is in much better shape than the Air Force states. They also assert that the Defense Department has plenty of time to buy planes because corrosion problems are manageable now.
The new numbers, prepared by Air Force logistics officials, are not comprehensive. They are based on the service records of 260 planes that went through four separate maintenance depots for routine servicing between 2001 and 2003.
Four of the aircraft's nine major components were replaced because of corrosion in less than 2 percent of the fleet. Two components were replaced in about 6 percent of the planes, and two others were replaced in about 10 percent. One component was replaced in about 18 percent of the planes.
The rate of defects in yesterday's data was higher than the rate stated by Air Force technicians at a maintenance depot in Oklahoma City on Oct. 10, during a visit by Republican and Democratic Senate staff members, according to congressional staff from both parties. "It doesn't appear to make [the Air Force's] case all that much stronger," a Democratic staff member said.
A senior Air Force official involved in aircraft maintenance declined to respond to the congressional comments. Speaking on the condition that he not be named, he said the data indicated that the problem of corrosion was "manageable, but it costs a lot" to refurbish and rehabilitate tankers.
The cost of refurbishing 88 tankers at the Oklahoma City depot was at least $2 million, for example, according to the data.
The Air Force concluded in a major study of its tanker fleet in early 2001 that "the 'fatigue life' of the KC-135, with adjustments made for the effect of corrosion on crack growth, should permit the aircraft to remain viable through the year 2040." But in September 2002, as the lease deal encountered substantial resistance in Congress, the Air Force backed away from this conclusion, saying it "cannot accurately predict the extent or cost of corrosion."
The Congressional Research Service has cast doubt on the Air Force concern, noting that corrosion prediction is well established in many industries and that the Air Force itself has some good models. "Civil authorities find aircraft corrosion to be a known and treatable problem," it said in a report several weeks ago.
-------- china
Rumsfeld confers at Pentagon with his Chinese counterpart
October 29, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031028-103856-6025r.htm
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld met yesterday with China's defense minister for the first high-level military exchange since the U.S.-China crisis involving a midair collision in April 2001.
The defense secretary met for an hour with Chinese Gen. Cao Gangchuan, who was appointed defense minister as part of a leadership change in March.
Gen. Cao is scheduled to meet with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice today and may meet President Bush. He also will meet with State Department officials.
Pentagon spokesmen declined to discuss specifics of Mr. Rumsfeld's meeting.
Gen. Cao was greeted outside the Pentagon by Mr. Rumsfeld and a military honor cordon. The general's delegation included more than a dozen Chinese military officers, including Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, the Chinese military's deputy chief of staff for intelligence.
Chinese leaders in past talks vigorously opposed U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.
Mr. Bush has offered to sell Taiwan an array of advanced arms, including guided-missile destroyers, submarines, patrol aircraft and military electronics. Beijing views the island as a breakaway province.
The Pentagon issued a statement after the meeting saying the two officials "discussed a wide range of global and regional security issues, including the state of bilateral military relations between the U.S. and China."
The statement said the talks were "productive and constructive" and "both sides have agreed to arrange further visits of the military leaders in 2004."
Mr. Rumsfeld curtailed U.S.-China military exchanges after the Chinese military imprisoned 24 U.S. service members who were aboard a damaged surveillance aircraft that made an emergency landing at a Chinese military base on Hainan island.
The EP-3E surveillance plane was hit by a Chinese F-8 jet. The propeller aircraft had been monitoring China's coast from international airspace.
The imprisonment was the first international crisis for the Bush administration, which negotiated the release of the crew after 11 days.
Gen. Cao is a key Chinese military leader who was behind the purchase of most of China's advanced weapons systems from Russia, according to defense officials. He is vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Central Military Commission, the party organ that controls the military.
Mr. Rumsfeld said during an interview Thursday with The Washington Times that he could not gauge whether the visit by Gen. Cao signals that U.S.-China military ties are back on track. "I'm not in a position to compare. That's not a useful thing for me to try to do."
Asked if the military exchanges with China are useful, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "I think certainly the ones we're having are appropriate and logical and beneficial from our standpoint."
Critics of past military exchanges with the country have said the Chinese have been shown advanced U.S. military facilities, which could be useful to Beijing's military modernization. By contrast, visits to China by U.S. military officials have been severely restricted and designed to play down China's military buildup.
-------- iraq
Two More U.S. Soldiers Killed as Violence Continues in Iraq
October 29, 2003
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/international/middleeast/29CND-IRAQ.html
Two American soldiers were killed when their tank hit an explosive device north of Baghdad Tuesday night, the military said today.
The deaths of the 4th Infantry Division soldiers were the latest in a string of fatalities this week among occupation troops in Iraq and those working with them - from a rocket attack on a Baghdad hotel in which an American soldier was killed on Sunday to a series of car bombings on Monday and Tuesday in which at least 38 people were killed.
A United States Central Command statement today said the two soldiers were killed and one wounded when their tank hit an "unidentified explosive device." The Associated Press quoted a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division, Maj. Josslyn Aberle, as saying that the Abrams tank had struck a land mine or roadside bomb during a patrol near Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad.
Also today, Ukrainian peacekeepers were wounded when attackers disabled their armored personnel carriers and then opened fire at them, The A.P. reported. A spokesman said the attack on the Ukrainians occurred after two of their armored personnel carriers rolled over land mines near Suwayrah about 40 miles southeast of Baghdad, the A.P. reported. Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the disembarked soldiers, the spokesman said.
About 1,650 Ukrainians are serving in the Polish-led stabilization force patrolling central and southern Iraq.
The deaths of the American soldiers came on the same day that President Bush vowed that the United States would "stay the course" in Iraq until stability is restored. Mr. Bush also said that he saw no need for additional American troops in Iraq despite the series of bomb and rocket attacks in Baghdad over the past three days.
The president said the recent attacks were probably the work of remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party as well as "foreign terrorists" trying to intimidate American forces into pulling out.
"Iraq is dangerous, and it's dangerous because terrorists want us to leave," Mr. Bush said during a Rose Garden news conference. "And we're not leaving."
According to a survey by Reuters, the deaths of the two soldiers on Tuesday brings to 116 the number of American combat fatalities since hostilities were declared over - higher than the wartime death toll of 115. It quoted unofficial figures from academics and peace activists for the Iraqi civilian death toll of up to 9,587.
--------
IRAQI DEATHS
American Soldiers Kill Six Iraqi Civilians After a Bomb Explosion Near a U.S. Convoy
October 29, 2003
By ALEX BERENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/international/middleeast/29IRAQ.html
FALLUJA, Iraq, Oct. 28 - American soldiers killed six civilians just west of this city on Monday after a roadside bomb exploded near their convoy, according to town officials and witnesses.
The soldiers, who were on the main road to Falluja when the bomb exploded, fired on a minivan heading in the opposite direction on a different road more than 100 yards away, witnesses said. Their accounts were corroborated by Taha Badewi, the mayor of Falluja, and Jalal Sabri Khamis, the chief of police.
A spokesman for the American military in Baghdad offered only a general response to questions about the incident, saying he had no details about what had happened but he believed the use of force was justified. The spokesman, who insisted on anonymity, said no one from the 82nd Airborne Division, which patrols Falluja, was available for comment.
The base in Falluja where the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne live was under mortar attack at dusk on Tuesday when a reporter and photographer approached seeking comment on the incident. Guards at the base's gate said no one was immediately available for comment.
In the past, commenting on incidents in which Iraqi police or civilians were killed, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of allied forces in Iraq, has said the rules governing American troops here allow them to use overwhelming force on any entity considered hostile, even if it does not represent an immediate threat and is near civilians.
Falluja, in central Iraq, is a center of resistance to the American occupation and has been the scene of repeated violence over the past several months, including a car bomb Tuesday that killed four people.
The shooting on Monday in Falluja occurred about 7:30 a.m. near the intersection of two roads just west of a bridge over the Euphrates River, witnesses and the two town officials said.
An American convoy of about eight vehicles was traveling east toward Falluja, on a road where United States patrols are often attacked. Two bombs planted in the center median exploded, damaging one of the vehicles but not stopping the convoy's progress, witnesses said.
Still heading east, the convoy began to fire, shooting at several vehicles heading southwest, away from the patrol, on a nearby road, said Amir Ahmed Saleh, a passenger in a vehicle on that road.
The convoy's targets included a minivan carrying employees of Iraq's state oil company, Mr. Saleh said. He was a passenger in a second minivan being used by the oil company.
The minivan in which Mr Saleh was riding was ahead of the minivan that was shot, and Mr. Saleh was unhurt.
The American fire devastated the minivan, which crashed into a lamppost by the side of the road, Mr Saleh said.
Four people in the minivan died, and two were severely wounded, Mr. Saleh said. He showed what he said were photographs of the shattered van that he had taken immediately after the incident. The photographs show a gruesome scene. Pieces of bodies cover the van's seats, sharing space with a set of brown prayer beads. A headless, legless torso lies on the ground beside the van. There was no independent means of confirming that the van pictured was the one involved in the incident.
Hassan Hussein, who lives across the road from the spot where the minivan crashed into the lamppost, corroborated Mr. Saleh's account, as did Abbas Hussein, one of Mr. Hussein's neighbors. At least two other cars were also hit, killing two more people, the men said.
"There was an explosion," said Mr. Badewi, the mayor. Referring to the American troops, he added, "They accused some people in their cars of shooting at them, and they opened fire on them."
Colonel Khamis, the police chief, said of the American forces: "When they're subjected to attack, they start shooting indiscriminately. The minibus was heading to Ramadi - they didn't have any link with the issue."
Mr. Badewi said that he had pleaded with American commanders to restrain their troops, but that they had refused. "We've talked about this reaction, and so many people and clerics have talked to them," he said.
"They say, `This is our way.' "
The political allegiance of the two Iraqi officials was not clear, but they seemed generally moderate in their view of the American occupation.
Three American soldiers from the 82nd Airborne have been killed around Falluja since mid-September, according to casualty reports from the United States military. The city is in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, an area west and north of Baghdad that is a stronghold of support for the ousted former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein.
Guerrillas in the area regularly fire mortars at a base the 82nd maintains just east of Falluja and attack American patrols with roadside bombs and grenades.
Mr. Hussein said he blamed the United States for the violence that has plagued Falluja, including the car bomb on Tuesday that killed four people and wounded four more.
"First they said they want to protect the Iraqi people, but then they destroy us," he said. "The only one who is hurting us is the Americans themselves."
Since early September, soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division have killed more than 20 civilians and Iraqi police officers in and around Falluja in incidents where the victims have put up little or no resistance, according to accounts from witnesses. American military officers have said the shootings were justified under American rules of engagement, but have provided scant details.
--------
Truck Bomb Near Fallujah Police Station Kills Four
Attacks Against Troops Totaled 36 on Monday
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28115-2003Oct28?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq, Oct. 28 -- A truck bomb exploded near a police station in this restive city on Tuesday afternoon, killing at least four people one day after multiple car bombings in Baghdad left about three dozen dead.
The blast unleashed shrapnel and fire across a crowded intersection near the city's central market, blowing apart two pedestrians and setting several cars on fire.
Although the bomb was significantly smaller than those that exploded in Baghdad on Monday, the attack was similar to the blasts in the capital in its proximity to the police station. On Monday, suicide attackers detonated explosives packed into vehicles in front of three police stations and the local headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, killing at least 35 people and wounding more than 200.
As American and Iraqi investigators combed through the debris in Baghdad, the U.S. military reported another in a string of assassinations of Iraqis cooperating with occupation forces. The U.S.-appointed deputy mayor of Baghdad, Faris Abdul Razzaq Assam, was shot to death in a cafe on Sunday after he returned from an international donors' conference in Madrid, officials announced Tuesday.
A U.S. military spokesman said occupation soldiers came under attack 36 times on Monday -- the highest one-day total reported since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1. The incidents included a rocket-propelled grenade strike that killed one soldier and wounded six others in Baghdad. The soldiers, from the Army's 1st Armored Division, had been destroying roadside bombs when they were ambushed, a military spokesman said.
At the sites of Monday's bombings, survivors spent the day questioning whether their security was adequate and what they would do now that their colleagues were dead, their buildings destroyed and their institutions clearly in the cross hairs of fighters intent on disrupting the U.S.-led occupation. At the three bombed police stations, officers accused U.S. soldiers of not providing adequate security and serving as a magnet for terrorists. At the Red Cross, employees salvaged documents from their offices and weighed whether to remain in this violence-wracked country.
"I hope that we can stay," said Nada Doumani, a Red Cross spokeswoman. "At the same time, we're not ready to sacrifice more people."
The explosion in Fallujah occurred about 200 yards from the main police station. Police and hospital officials said at least four people were killed and six were wounded in the blast. It was not immediately clear whether the bomber stayed in his Chinese-made FAW pickup truck or exited shortly before the detonation.
"All we saw was a huge ball of fire," said Dhari Khamis Ahmed, a taxi driver who was stuck in traffic near the site of the explosion. "It was a very big blast."
Ahmed, whose ankle-length tunic was spattered with blood, said he saw several critically injured people on the street. An hour after the blast, people in the tense crowd that had converged on the site shouted as they found body parts.
Fallujah, located about 35 miles west of Baghdad, has been the scene of numerous attacks against U.S. forces, as well as against Iraqis who are working for the American occupation authorities. The city is dominated by Sunni Muslims who received favorable treatment under former president Saddam Hussein.
But prior attacks in Fallujah typically have involved roadside bombs or grenades, not car bombs.
"This is new for us," said Fallujah's mayor, Taha Bedawi. "It is very worrisome."
The crowd that gathered around the truck's mangled chassis cast blame as wide as the wave of shrapnel. Some suggested an American conspiracy, noting that FAW pickup trucks have been seen going out of a nearby U.S. base. Others faulted militiamen from neighboring Iran, while a few said it might be the work of extremists from other parts of Iraq.
"It's definitely not someone from Fallujah," said Mahmud Faisal, a student. "People from here would never do something like this."
Bedawi called the bomber "a coward."
"Whoever did this has no religion," the mayor said. "This is against Islam and against the people of Iraq."
A U.S. general and a top Iraqi security official asserted that non-Iraqi militants carried out the sophisticated and coordinated bombings on Monday, although Pentagon officials said it was too early to rule out Hussein loyalists.
A day after the car bombings, the carnage cast a pall over the neighborhoods where the three Baghdad police stations were attacked.
In Shaab, a working-class area on the city's outskirts, residents restrung electrical wires and shoveled bricks, concrete and debris into the median of a four-lane avenue. Alleys that ran along the main street were blocked with stones, tires and trunks of palm trees. Along one sidewalk, flies gathered on a pool of dried blood.
Throughout the day, crowds gathered along a barbed-wire barricade, staring in silence at the bomb crater and the sheared-off facades of two buildings.
At the morgue in central Baghdad, families arrived to claim their dead. At the gate, Karim Abed Thamed kneeled on the ground after learning that the body of his brother, Jumaa, was inside. He was one of the guards killed at the Red Cross headquarters.
Thamed buried his face in his hands.
"My brother!" he shouted over and over, sobbing uncontrollably. "My brother!"
The three police stations targeted by the bombers appeared to have far fewer fortifications than others in the capital. None had the tall concrete blast walls that have been erected around some facilities. One, the Khadra police station, had only a row of short concrete blocks to keep vehicles away.
At the New Baghdad station, where officers foiled a fourth attack, police hurriedly erected additional fortifications. Seventeen metal barricades were placed along the entrance to the main road that passed the station. Coils of barbed wire were strung along alleys. But police said they expected the defenses to do only so much.
"We're expecting anything," said Yasser Abdel-Moneim, a 24-year-old officer carrying his AK-47 assault rifle outside the station's entrance. His colleague, Chassib Odeh, 45, said all the officers had returned to work Tuesday. But like Abdel-Moneim, he had no expectations that the attacks had ended.
"This one failed, but maybe the next one will succeed," Odeh said. "It will continue. The enemy will keep trying."
The bombing's aftermath appeared to reinforce sentiments among some police officers that were voiced in the streets hours after the attacks.
At the Kindi Hospital, where many of the wounded from the Shaab bombing were taken, Mohammed Arsan Zubeidi, 23, sat in his bed with a bandage over his head. He was on the station's second floor when the bomb detonated. His right ear was severed. A day later, dried blood was still caked on both arms, his right shoulder and his face.
He graduated from the police academy two months ago, but said he would not return once he recovered. His job at the family's clothing store was safer, he said.
"When I'm on duty, when the Americans are with me, I feel in danger," he said.
Zubeidi ticked off a series of warnings that preceded the bombing. Last week, a leaflet made the rounds of the neighborhood, signed by a group that identified itself as mujaheddin, or Islamic holy warriors. The typewritten letter, heavy on religious rhetoric, vowed to kill any officer who worked with U.S. forces.
But Zubeidi held his American counterparts responsible as well. Two days before the attack, they opened the main road in front of the police station, he said, in an effort to return life to normal in the neighborhood.
"I blame the Americans," Zubeidi said. "Why? They lifted the roadblocks. If they had kept the barriers on the street, there would not have been much damage. The blast would have been far away."
Shadid reported from Baghdad. Staff writer Theola Labbé in Baghdad contributed to this report
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis Kill Palestinian Near Gaza Fence
October 29, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man and wounded another Wednesday after the pair crossed into a restricted area around the fence that separates Gaza from Israel, military sources said.
In the West Bank, Palestinian gunmen ambushed an Israeli car near the Jewish settlement of Kadim, wounding one passenger seriously, police and rescue workers said. Jewish settlers have been targeted in the area several times over the past three years of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia -- who was asked by Arafat on Tuesday to continue in the post -- said truce talks with Hamas have been ``constructive.'' Qureia said he hoped to reach a cease-fire with Palestinian militant groups and then broaden the deal into a mutual truce with Israel.
``I don't have American and Israeli assurances. I want Palestinian assurances, and if I get these Palestinian assurances, then there will be no problem,'' Qureia said. ``If we unite, we will open roads; if we don't unite, we will close the roads on ourselves.''
The truce talks are part of ongoing efforts to restart the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan, which has bogged down amid violence and efforts to form a stable Palestinian government.
Qureia currently heads an emergency Cabinet that will expire Nov. 4. There has been some uncertainty over whether Qureia, upset by arguments with Arafat, would agree to continue in the job.
In Gaza, troops opened fire early Wednesday on two people who approached the border fence near Nahal Oz, entering the 500-foot-wide restricted zone, the army said.
One man was killed and the other wounded. The men had no weapons but planted a 44-pound explosive device, the military said, adding that the device was later neutralized by the army.
The dead man's family identified him as Mohammed Awad, 26, a supporter of the Islamic Jihad militant group.
The army said militants often planned attacks in the area, and three soldiers were wounded during an attack there last month.
Also in Gaza, Israeli soldiers fired machine guns near the Gaza-Egypt border, wounding five people, including a 14-year-old boy, Palestinian hospital officials said. The army said troops returned fire at gunmen who shot at them.
Israeli officials said they were considering slightly easing month-old closures that have kept millions of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank out of Israel and confined many to their West Bank communities.
Army officials have expressed concern that the continuing restrictions are fostering hatred of Israel, strengthening militant groups and creating the kind of atmosphere that leads to more attacks, according to media reports.
Army officials were trying to persuade the government to lift the closures, which were placed on Palestinians before the Jewish New Year holiday last month because of increased concerns about attacks.
The restrictions have kept many Palestinian farmers from their fields, badly damaging the annual olive harvest.
Officials were considering letting 3,000 West Bank merchants enter Israel and allowing 1,500 Palestinians to enter the Israeli-controlled Atarot industrial park in the West Bank, but cities would remain surrounded, according to Army radio.
Some in the government have been reluctant to relax the current restrictions for fear of more attacks.
``It's very clear that any pressure on the Palestinian population is obviously going to, in the end, create new terror. It's not a simple dilemma, how we should deal with this,'' Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim told Army radio.
Meanwhile, 16-year-old Salah Assad died Wednesday of shrapnel injuries he suffered during an Israeli missile strike last week in the Nusseirat refugee camp, bringing the number killed in the attack to 12.
-------
Arafat Asks Palestinian Premier to Remain
Associated Press
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31540-2003Oct28.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Oct. 28 -- Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, asked Ahmed Qureia on Tuesday to stay on as prime minister and form a new government, officials said, but their dispute over control of the security forces remained unresolved.
There were conflicting accounts of a meeting Tuesday of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership, headed by Arafat. While two officials who attended the meeting said Qureia had accepted Arafat's offer, the prime minister said he had not received a formal invitation.
Even if Qureia accepts, the lingering disagreement over the security forces threatened to lead to further confrontation and continued deadlock over a U.S.-backed peace plan that envisions a Palestinian state by 2005.
Qureia currently heads an emergency cabinet whose term expires Nov. 4. There had been uncertainty over whether Qureia would agree to continue in the job.
Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath and Abbas Zaki, a senior PLO official, said Qureia had accepted Arafat's invitation. "The plan is to have this government ready" by the time the emergency cabinet's term expires, Shaath said.
Qureia said he had not received a formal offer, which must come in writing, but indicated he would accept. "If things move in that direction, I think we will continue," he said.
Qureia's previous efforts to form a larger government have failed because of wrangling over appointments. In particular, Qureia had been unable to agree with Arafat on the key post of interior minister, who would control the various Palestinian security agencies.
-------- landmines
Landmine Mania: America's Love Affair with Anti-Personnel Mines
"A landmine is the most excellent of soldiers, for it is ever courageous, never sleeps, never misses." Khmer Rouge General
10/29/2003
Pravda
http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/387/11173_Antiperson.html
The United States is 1 of 45 countries that refuses to sign the 1997 Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines (APM-s) and on their Destruction. 137 countries have bound themselves to the rigorous provisions of that treaty. But the Pentagon, never seeing a weapon system it didn-t like, and the Bush Administration, never having seen a treaty it liked, remain unmoved by the suffering caused by APM-s. Article 1 of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty demands that ?each State Party undertakes never under any circumstances to use anti-personnel mines.¦ Article 4 of the Mine Ban Treaty requires that all States Parties destroy their stockpiles of APM-s. The Pentagon is skittish about signing the Treaty as it fears such a precedent will trigger similar campaigns against other US weapons systems most notably those dependent on depleted uranium.
Even though the US is the largest contributor to demining and mine awareness programs ($80 million in FY 2002), it has reduced funding by close to $24 million less over the last two year period. But that-s not a great surprise given that private industry is stepping into what is a lucrative and eternal mine-clearing business. With an estimated 40-50 million APM-s below ground around the globe, for-profit demining companies stand to make a killing.
Terrified Pentagon
The Pentagon, and its allies in the US Congress, has traditionally been averse to signing any piece of international legislation that, in their view, limits the use of military capability and that may place American commanders under the spotlight of an International Tribunal. Indeed, APM-s remain an active part of US military doctrine as the US retains a stockpile of 10.4 million APM-s. US military forces in Afghanistan are making use of minefields sown by the former Soviet military for perimeter defense, refusing to de-mine them. And the US military pre-positioned, but did apparently did not use, 90,000 APM-s in and around the 2003 Iraq theater of operations. That, even though al least 31 US military personnel have been killed or injured by APM-s in Iraq and Afghanistan since the start of 2003.
More significantly, according to 1997 Nobel Laureate Jody Williams of the International Committee to Ban Landmines (ICBL), and driving force behind the Mine Ban Treaty, ?The military is terrified to give into society-s wishes.¦ Williams is one of only three American women to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She indicated that the Pentagon understands that the Mine Ban Treaty ?has been one of the few examples of successful multilateralism in today-s world¦. According to Williams, the Pentagon under Bush has recommended abandoning the US policy goal of joining the Mine Ban Treaty by 2006 as it has virtually all other international agreements.
The ICBL is composed of 1,400 citizen groups in over 90 countries that brought pressure to bear on their governments through grass-roots campaigning ultimately bringing world attention to APM-s. Remarkably, just 8 full-time staff members oversee the ICBL. According to Williams, The Pentagon recognizes that other favored weapons systems may find themselves subjected to citizen-based campaigns similar to the ICBL which shattered accepted arms control negotiations standards by working around governmental institutions in the United States and the rest of the world. ?If you ban US landmines, then maybe other weapons may be the subject of further campaigns.¦
?The United States has not renounced APM production and they are keeping their options open,¦ said Stephen Goose of Human Rights Watch at a recent press conference publicizing the 2003 edition of the Landmine Monitor Report: Toward a Mine Free World. The United States is not alone. ?Lack of adherence is notable among major antipersonnel mine stockpilers particularly China, Russia, the United States, Ukraine, India and Pakistan. These six are estimated to hold more than 185 million stockpiled antipersonnel landmines, roughly 90 percent of the world-s total.¦
The Pentagon has deflected domestic and international pressure to sign the Mine Ban Treaty first and foremost because it views APM-s as an ?essential capability¦ that must be maintained and be readily available for use in military operations. To deploy or not to deploy depends on the best judgment of US battlefield commanders. ?Should an operational commander determine that the use of APM-s are required to support operations or to protect U.S. men and women in uniform, he can request authority to use them in accordance with pre-established rules,¦ said a DOD Official.
The Pentagon maintains that the Mine Ban Treaty does not adequately consider legitimate US national security requirements, nor does it fully address humanitarian concerns raised by the use of APM-s and anti-tank mines. The Pentagon endorses the Amended Mines Protocol II--enacted in May 1996--which it believes will establish reasonable standards on the use of landmines in order to minimize risks to noncombatants. The Protocol is part of the larger United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons, to which the United States has acceded and has been a state party since 1980. ?Unlike the Mine Ban Treaty, the Protocol includes restrictions on anti-tank mines as well as anti-personnel landmines. It also restricts the use of booby-traps and other devices that the Ottawa Convention [Mine Ban Treaty] does not address. In addition to many states that are parties to the Mine Ban Treaty, state parties to the Protocol include key landmine producers and users, such as China, South Korea, India and Pakistan that are not parties to the Mine Ban Treaty,¦ said a DOD Official.
The Pentagon supports the United States- effort to press for other international measures to reduce further the risks to civilians worldwide. ?We are working with other state parties to the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons to adopt tighter restrictions on the use of anti-tank landmines, similar to those applicable to anti-personnel landmines. The Ottawa Convention does not address anti-tank mines. We are also working with state parties on an instrument to deal with explosive remnants of war. This instrument would deal with the humanitarian problems posed by all types of munitions,¦ said a DOD Official.
But according to Goose of the ICBL, the value of the Protocol is limited almost exclusively to curbing the use of anti-tank mines. In his view, the Mine Ban Treaty has far more extensive obligations while the Protocol is full of loopholes. ?The reality is that at the end of the negotiations, state-s parties to that Protocol realized that the agreement being finalized was wholly insufficient to meet the need to ban APM-s. In other words, the parties recognized before the ink was dry that the Protocol was not the answer. And in some ways, the Protocol contains justifications for producing more APM-s. India, Pakistan and Russia increased production in 2001 and 2002. The US just hasn-t learned.?
Bad Company
The United States keeps the company of Cuba, Libya, Iran and Syria, among others (www.icbl.org), who want to retain the right to use APM-s. The US has ignored the entreaties of NGO-s like the ICBL and trusted allies such as the United Kingdom (State Party since 1998) and Spain (State Party since 1999). It has also deflected the views of its own military commanders. On March 19, 2001, Lieutenant General Hal Moore, USA (Ret.), and seven other senior US military officers sent a letter to President Bush urging his administration to sign on to the Mine Ban Treaty.
?We feel strongly that it is in the best interests of the American soldier and our country that you "fast-track" US accession to the Mine Ban Treaty. APM are outmoded weapons that have, time and again, proved to be a liability to our own troops. We believe that the military, diplomatic, and humanitarian advantages of speedy US accession far outweigh the minimal military utility of these weapons.¦ They went on to rebut the oft-cited Korea Argument which states that APM-s are critical to the defense of Korea. ?Several of us are former commanders of elements of I-Corps (USA/ROK group), and believe that APM are not in any way critical or decisive in maintaining the peninsula's security. In fact, freshly scattered mixed systems would slow a US and ROK counter-invasion by inhibiting the operational tempo of friendly armor and dismounted infantry units.¦
According to Goose, ?The United States has been in compliance with some provisions of the Mine Ban Treaty for years. They are doing the right thing but can-t seem to make the leap to sign the treaty. That-s interesting because if they did they could bring China, Russia and other non-signatories on board. The United States could exercise some real leadership if they did,¦ said Goose, ?We wait with baited breath¦
No Loopholes The Bush Administration was scheduled to release new directives on APM-s in the latter part of 2003 that would halt any effort to develop alternatives to APM-s. ?I-ve heard some discouraging things from the Pentagon and it may be that the US will roll back its current policies,¦ Goose.
The current APM policy is outlined in Presidential Decision Directive 64 issued by Former President Bill Clinton in 1998. In that Directive, the United States committed itself to signing the Mine Ban Treaty by 2006 if suitable alternatives could be found. But in May of 2002, the Pentagon stated that it could not meet the 2006 deadline since it has been unable to design and field a satisfactory self-destructing alternative to the ?dumb¦ APM-s currently in stock. Additionally, the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty States Parties have taken a skeptical view of next-generation APM-s promoted by the United States and there-s little wiggle room for its negotiators. On a positive note, the United States extended the legislative moratorium on the export of landmines until October 2008 although it is sullied with the brand producer and stockpiler of APM-s.
According to Human Rights Watch, Mine Ban Treaty participants rejected U.S. demands that ?smart¦ APM-s like the CBU-89 Gator Mine System-- a 1,000-pound cluster munition containing 22 antipersonnel mines and 72 antitank mines?be exempted from the Mine Ban Treaty. The use of self-destructing and self-neutralizing APM-s, said Human Rights Watch officials, will not prevent new mine victims and the clearance task will be just as time-consuming and costly, perhaps even more so. Their rationale follows.
• Self-destruct mechanisms are not 100 percent reliable. The Landmine Protocol of the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons (to which the United States is a State Party) allows a 10 percent failure rate. • The mines are scattered (or remotely-delivered) from the air with little precision, there is no way to accurately mark or map or fence the mined areas to keep civilians out. • Civilians in the mined areas face the danger not only of accidentally detonating mines that have failed to self-destruct, but of coming upon hundreds of those mines randomly self-destructing at unknown times. • The mines still deny land to civilians. Because they are remotely delivered, they are found on the surface of the ground, not buried. If they are aware the area is mined, civilians will not enter it, knowing that the visible mines may still be dangerous and fearing the presence, in many places, of mines that have been overgrown or otherwise obscured. • Mines that have failed to self-destruct but have self-deactivated will have to be treated by deminers as live mines that may potentially explode. Thus, an area that has unexploded mines in it will have to be cleared with the same care as any other minefield. The time and cost will be similar. • The clearance job may be made more difficult by the large numbers of mines present (given the propensity to use thousands at a time in remote-delivery systems). U.S. Gator mines were still being cleared from Kuwait several years after Operation Desert Storm.
Alternative APM-s The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA)--along with team leaders SAIC, Alliant-Technologies and Sandia National Labs?continue to push forward with the Self Healing Minefield System (SHMS). It consists of surface scattered and networked antitank mines that can detect an enemy attack of the minefield and respond autonomously, by having a fraction of the mines airlift themselves?through the use of microrockets?into the breach. SHMS uses a man-in-the-loop concept allowing remote control detonation of the ordnance. DARPA claims that after 30 days, the SHMS will self-destruct and not pose any danger to US troops or civilians. Such a system may meet the provisions of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty but it is far from being field-ready.
Novel technologies such as the Taser Anti-Personnel Munition (TAPM) are being developed jointly by industry participants General Dynamics, Ordnance and Tactical Systems and TASER International. Rick Smith, CEO of TASER indicated that TAPM is a hand emplaced remote control activated device that fires two tethered darts up to 21 feet. Military personnel place the devices in an array and remotely activate them. When infrared sensors located within the devices are self-activated, they release darts with up to 50,000 volts of electricity. ?It-s like shooting a pair of jumper cables at a person.¦ Temporary and painful paralysis ensues, evidently with no loss of life. Smith mentioned that US Marines he spoke with returning from the war in Iraq indicated that they lost a lot of sleep patrolling perimeters. ?While TAPM would not obviate the need for personnel to do that, it may let them make better use of their time. Further, TAPM meets the political requirements of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty will providing area of denial capabilities that the US military needs.¦
Technology Overwhelmed Eradication of APM-s in the field is a painstaking process from both a cost and time perspective. A United Nations report titled The Impact of Armed Conflict on Children indicated that it costs as little as $3 each to manufacture an APM but can cost up to $1,000 to remove just one. APM-s can be spread at rates of over 1,000 per minute, but it may take a skilled expert an entire day just to clear by hand 20-50 square meters of mine-contaminated land. A RAND report titled Alternatives for Landmine Detection (www.rand.org), indicated there are approximately 40-50 million APM-s still lying in wait for new victims. A mere 100,000 per year are removed from minefields the world over. According to the RAND study, ?at that rate clearing 45-50 million APM-s will require 450-500 years assuming no new APM-s are laid.¦
Unfortunately, there is no reliable or suitable replacement for bomb sniffing canines and their human handlers, or those brave souls on bended knees probing underground with 15th Century tools for 21st Century weapons. And there is no substitute for the Mine Ban Treaty of 1997 which attempts to rid the world of APM-s. The US continues to give the middle finger to the rest of the world.
John Stanton
John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in political and security matters. He is the author (with Wayne Madsen) of America-s Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II.
-------- mideast
Commanders Doubt Syria Is Entry Point
Officers See No Sign Of Foreign Fighters
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31535-2003Oct28?language=printer
SINJAR, Iraq -- Commanders of U.S. military forces responsible for monitoring the border between Iraq and Syria say there is no evidence from human intelligence sources or radar surveillance aircraft indicating that significant numbers of foreign fighters are crossing into Iraq illegally.
U.S. and Iraqi forces are working together to secure Iraq's borders against infiltration by foreigners intent on assisting attacks against troops and civilians associated with the occupation. U.S. officials blamed foreign fighters for four suicide car bombings in Baghdad on Monday that killed at least 35 people.
Along Iraq's 300-mile border with Syria, the 101st Airborne Division is guarding the northern portion of the frontier and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is watching the southern portion.
A 60-mile stretch of border north of the Euphrates River remains unpatrolled by U.S. forces or Iraqi border police but is being monitored by air. Under a project that the U.S. military calls Operation Chamberlain, sophisticated Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) planes are gathering information about vehicle movement and relaying it to ground forces.
Commanders from the 101st Airborne repeated this week that neither the aircraft nor human intelligence sources show significant infiltration from Syria. Foreign fighters could still be reaching Baghdad from Syria, Jordan, Turkey or Kuwait by passing through border posts with valid or forged travel documents, but concerns about illegal infiltration along the Syrian border appear unfounded, the officers said.
"If somebody is saying the Ho Chi Minh Trail runs through my area of operations, I'm going to tell them they're wrong," said Lt. Col. Joseph Buche, commander of the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne's 3rd Battalion, referring to the infiltration route through Laos used by North Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War.
When a JSTARS aircraft recently detected what radar operators thought was a 10- to 20-vehicle convoy moving across the border, Buche took troops out to the exact grid coordinates where the infiltration supposedly occurred. He found two five-foot dirt berms that run along the border, one on the Iraqi side and one on the Syrian side, intact, and there were no visible tire marks indicating that any vehicles had come across.
"In my opinion, there's no way 10 to 20 vehicles crossed at that grid at that time," said Buche, 41, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin. "There may have been 10 or 20 vehicles that moved in that area, but they didn't come across the border."
Buche's patrols work with 498 Iraqi border policemen whom they have trained. The Iraqis, most of them former members of the Iraqi military, occupy 18 forts along the border from here to Turkey.
"We're not the U.S. border control on the southern U.S. border," Buche said, "but it's an exponential increase [in control] from where it was in April."
This is nowhere more evident than in Rabiah, the northernmost legal border crossing into Syria. "Basically, when we got here [in April], it was pretty wide open," said Lt. Eric Alexander, describing a scene in which only Syrian guards, working in the shadows of a huge mural of President Bashar Assad, exercised any control and could have let anyone they pleased enter Iraq.
Now, with as many as 800 trucks crossing the border in both directions on some days, a newly organized Iraqi customs service searches everything from truck beds to personal luggage, inspects travel documents and charges fees ranging from $10 to $40 on all trucks entering or leaving Iraq.
Col. Michael Linnington, a brigade commander responsible for securing an area three-quarters the size of New Jersey with 4,000 soldiers, recalled the guidance he received in early May from his boss, Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of the 101st Airborne: "We need to open the border for trade with Syria. Go out and open the border."
In a deal brokered by Petraeus, Iraq now trades Syria 4,500 barrels of oil per day for 50 to 70 megawatts of electric generating capacity needed to provide power for Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, and the surrounding area.
Two weeks ago, Petraeus's decision to open the border and his support for the energy swap were criticized by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), who said in a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that free trade with Syria violated the spirit of legislation, recently passed by the House, that would place sanctions on Syria for supporting Islamic militant groups.
Malek Ahmed Ghalab, an Iraqi lawyer from Mosul who manages the customs house at the Rabiah border crossing, said free trade does benefit Syria -- but it benefits Iraq even more. "The drivers have work, the merchants are happy and it's making life better," he said.
There is enough small-scale benzene and cigarette smuggling going on between Iraq and Syria to indicate that it is possible to cross the border illegally. South of Buche's area of operations, Lt. Col. Henry Arnold's battalion detained six Iraqis smuggling cigarettes from Syria.
"They had machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades," said Arnold, who recently received a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound suffered during an attack on one of his command posts. But he ultimately decided to let the men go, concluding that their weapons were for protection, not terrorist attacks.
Arnold's current focus is the 60-mile, unpatrolled gap that separates his sector from that patrolled by the 3rd Armored Cavalry. Arnold said that he could send ground patrols into the area to try to determine whether foreign fighters are crossing on foot in significant numbers. "But they'll see me going in, and I'll sit out in the desert for a couple of days and I won't get a thing," said Arnold, 39, a Florida State graduate who is married to an Army lawyer.
So, using 101st Airborne helicopter units made available to him through Operation Chamberlain, Arnold said his battalion would conduct a nighttime air assault into the region and establish a series of observation posts that should give him a sense of what's going on in this part of the desert, if anything.
"For the most part, I have geography working for me out here because there's no sanctuary for the bad guys to go to," he said.
The ultimate answer for controlling the Iraq-Syria border is not more U.S. troops, but more Iraqi border police, said Arnold. His troops have already trained 250 Iraqi border guards, commanded by Malik Noori Jadan, a former Iraqi army major.
"I think he needs 1,000 men so he can push further south" into the unpatrolled gap, Arnold said. "If I had $1 million, I could hire and train and properly equip a force large enough to patrol all the way down to where I tie in with the 3rd ACR. There are plenty of men like him, who are good and patriotic enough to do the job."
-------- prisoners of war
Iraqis tell grim stories of U.S.-run camps
Former Iraqi detainees tell of riots, punishment in the sun, good Americans and pitiless ones
Oct. 29, 2003
Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1067425356615&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968705899037
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - In Iraq's American detention camps, forbidden talk can earn a prisoner hours bound and stretched out in the sun, and detainees swinging tent poles rise up regularly against their jailers, according to recently released Iraqis.
In these secretive islands in a scorched landscape, "they don't respect anyone, old or young," Rahad Naif said of his U.S. Army guards. He and others told of detainees in wheelchairs, and of a man carried into a stifling hot tent in his sickbed. "They humiliate everybody.''
Naif, 31, is one of three brothers - butchers from the east Baghdad slums - who were thrown into the three biggest detention centers by the Americans in July after a nasty quarrel with an influential neighbor. They never faced charges; the last brother was finally freed Oct. 15.
The camps and prisons hold a mixed population: curfew-breakers and drivers who tried to evade U.S. checkpoints, suspected common criminals, anti-U.S. resistance fighters, and many of deposed President Saddam Hussein's Baath Party leadership.
A Naif brother released last month, Hassan, 32, said there are "good people" among the U.S. guards, like an older man the Iraqis respectfully dubbed "al-Haji" - "Pilgrim." Ex-detainees also say conditions improve at times, as new underwear, toothbrushes and other supplies arrive; some facilities are better than others, and none compares with Saddam's bloody political prisons. On Oct. 1, the most notorious U.S. center, the Baghdad airport's overcrowded Camp Cropper, was closed.
For the third brother, however, the bitterness is too fresh.
"They confined us like sheep," the newly freed Saad Naif, 38, said of the Americans. "They hit people. They humiliated people.''
Although details cannot be otherwise confirmed, the accounts by a half dozen former detainees in Associated Press interviews corroborated each other on key points, and meshed with what Amnesty International has heard from released Iraqis. The human rights group has accounts of detainee uprisings, punishment by exposure to the sun, and other examples of what it calls "inhumane conditions.''
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the U.S. Army commander of Iraq's detention facilities, has said prisoners are treated humanely and fairly. Specific questions about AP's ex-detainee accounts were submitted to the U.S. command on Oct. 18, but no response has been received.
Two pending U.S. military legal cases may offer a glimpse at problems in the detention system: In one, four soldiers are accused of beating Iraqi prisoners; in the other, two Marines are charged in connection with an Iraqi's death in detention.
The number of prisoners is in dispute. The U.S. command says it holds 5,500, but some lawyers and other Iraqis believe the figure is higher. In toppling the Saddam government last April, the U.S.-British invasion force inherited a legal vacuum and began incarcerating ordinary criminals with prisoners of war and less well-defined detainees.
Iraq's chief U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, says he has moved to speed up release of unjustly held Iraqis, and Iraqi lawyers and judges are slowly taking on criminal cases. The International Committee of the Red Cross, responsible under international law for inspecting wartime prison camps, says the listing and processing of detainees has improved in recent weeks.
The Baghdad spokeswoman for the ICRC, whose representatives are the only outsiders allowed into the camps, said the organization's policy does not allow any public comment on any abuse or other poor conditions detected. Nada Doumani noted, however, that the law - the Geneva Conventions - forbids all physical pressure on detainees.
The ICRC's decision to reduce its Baghdad staff, because of the bombing of its headquarters, may limit its ability to visit detention sites.
Baathists deemed "high-value detainees" by the Americans have been concentrated at a detention site in southern Iraq called Camp Bucca.
Before he was moved to Camp Bucca, one of them, former Parliament speaker Saadoun Hammadi, shared a tent with more than 100 men at the Baghdad airport camp and "was in miserable condition, very thin," said a former tentmate, Hassan Ali Muslim.
Hammadi, a man in his late 60s who once served as prime minister, "didn't speak with anybody. In the morning and afternoon, he walked alone for an hour, back and forth along the fence," Muslim said. The famous Baath politician was dressed in shorts, his dyed hair had gone white, and he'd grown a long beard, the freed detainee said.
At Camp Bucca, in the wastes near Basra, "we were suffering, sitting in the desert," said one of the Naif brothers, Rahad, who was released from Bucca on Sept. 22.
Water was the first concern for internees everywhere, especially as summer temperatures topped 120 degrees. There was never enough to drink and wash with, they said.
"They'd give us hot water while we'd see them drinking cold water," said Ra'id Mohammed Hassan, 41, freed from Bucca on Oct. 15 after two months' detention for having a weapon in his car.
Rahad Naif said 1,000 men in his section at Bucca had to share just 10 water taps. "They would come, especially the Kuwaiti translators, and throw ice into the sand just to make us suffer psychologically," Naif said.
At the airport's Camp Cropper, Muslim, a 28-year-old factory worker, tried to keep a bottle filled and hidden from thieves. When the Americans finally erected a tank for showers, there was so little water the detainees got into vicious arguments over it, he said. Skin diseases became common, he said.
The ex-prisoners, uniformly, said the sick men among them were the camps' saddest sight. "There were crippled people at Bucca. Some were in wheelchairs," said Rahad Naif. He said two died in the next tent while he was there.
"At the airport, they brought in a chronically ill man in a bed and put him near me. He was very sick," Hassan Naif said. One crippled man had to be carried up the steps to a toilet, he said.
The prisoners staged protests or hunger strikes demanding better care for their sick comrades. At other times, they would erupt in anger over their own plight.
"Twenty or so of us would start shouting, `Get us out! Let us go!'," said Muslim, who was freed Sept. 20 after two months' detention, accused of attempted carjacking.
"The demonstrations happened almost every day at Bucca," said Rahad Naif, who described scenes in which military police countered with the tools of U.S. prison guards.
"Sometimes we'd fight the Americans with tent poles. The Americans would come at us behind riot shields, firing plastic bullets and electric pistols (stun guns). We can't fight against that. We knew they'd win. We'd never manage to get out.''
The ex-detainees said the common punishment, even for such lesser infractions as shouting over to the next tent or stealing food, was "The Gardens" - a razor-wire enclosure where prisoners were made to lie face down on the burning sand for two or three hours, hands bound.
They said they would also be punished by having rations reduced or withdrawn, or by being denied two staples - cigarettes and tea. They were allotted two cigarettes a day.
At Camp Cropper, Muslim said, he endured four days in solitary confinement, in a dark, sweltering 3-by-6-foot cell, after a confrontation with a notoriously tough guard over cigarettes.
"It felt like my skin was melting," he said of the heat in the cell. A doctor came on the second day to check on him, and the Americans apologized after he was freed, Muslim said. The guard responsible was moved elsewhere, he said.
"There are some good ones who don't like to punish people,'' Hassan Naif said of his time at Cropper. "There was an old black soldier we called `al-Haji' who argued with the other Americans if they weren't respecting our rights.''
But much of what detainees saw was intolerable, Naif said, "especially when we saw Iraqi women punished in the same way as men.''
When one detainee shouted to his sister in a nearby women's tent, the guards punished the woman, Naif said. Seeing her lying bound in the sun, the brother angrily started to cross the razor wire ringing his tent, "and they shot him in the shoulder," Naif said.
"The worst thing was their treatment of the women," said Saad Naif, who spent time both at the airport and at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where tents spread across the prison yards.
"Innocent women were kept for months in the same clothes," he said. He said he remembered in particular an elderly woman "whose hands were tied up and she was lying in the dust.''
Saad Naif said he saw a prisoner shot dead at Abu Ghraib when he approached the razor wire.
Amnesty International says it has received credible reports of such shootings. AP queried the U.S. command here about deaths in the camps, but got no response.
Not knowing what they were charged with and when they might be released, detainees grew angrier and more depressed, said Ziad Tarik, 24, a friend who was swept up with the three Naif brothers after the fateful quarrel and spent more than a month at Abu Ghraib before abruptly being freed.
"They interrogated me about Saddam's family, about Al Qaeda terrorists, about weapons markets - things I know nothing about,'' he said. "I thought they'd ask me about my case. Why was I arrested?''
"There's no law," Rahad Naif said. "It's up to them. It's arbitrary.''
Tarik gave an example: An Iraqi colonel was released from Abu Ghraib, but the Americans still hold his wife and, according to Tarik, "she didn't do anything." That account could not be verified.
The Naif brothers' mother, black-veiled Fawzia Ibrahim, 59, said she feels "like a bird" since their release, but she dreads the memory of the mid-July night when 16 U.S. soldiers, with Iraqi police, stormed into her house to take her sons away.
"Death would be better than the Americans again!" she said.
Ex-detainee Muslim says he knows of a worse fate - to have been imprisoned under Saddam Hussein, as his late father was for three months in 1995. Torture and summary execution became routine in the Baathist political prison system.
"Compared to Saddam, the Americans are better," he said.
-------- spies
Spy chief says Iraq moved weapons
October 29, 2003
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031028-103836-1404r.htm
Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation's top satellite spy director said yesterday.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.
Other goods probably were sent throughout Iraq in small quantities and documents probably were stashed in the homes of weapons scientists, Gen. Clapper told defense reporters at a breakfast.
Gen. Clapper said he is not surprised that U.S. and allied forces have not found weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq because "it's a big place."
"Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to dispose of the evidence," he said.
Congress is investigating whether U.S. intelligence agencies overstated information indicating that Iraq had hidden its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has defended the intelligence agencies on prewar reports that the weapons were there.
Iraqi government officials "below the Saddam Hussein and the sons level saw what was coming and decided the best thing to do was to dispose, destroy and disperse," he said.
Gen. Clapper said he felt strongly that the satellite imagery of Iraq's weapons facilities before the war was "accurate and balanced."
"Based on what we saw prior to the onset of hostilities, we certainly felt there were indications of [weapons of mass destruction] activity," said the retired general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Gen. Clapper said the judgment was based on analysis of spy satellite photographs and was not proof of "what was going on inside of buildings."
He also said the Iraqi government carried out operations after the fall of Baghdad in April to cover up the hidden weapons programs. The chaos following might have included both looting and "organized dispersal made to look like looting," he said.
"So by the time that we got to a lot of these facilities, that we had previously identified as suspect facilities, there wasn't that much there to look at," he said.
Valuable documents on Iraq's weapons were destroyed or lost in the chaos, which included burning of major government ministries.
Saddam began dispersing his weapons and sending elements of his chemical, biological and nuclear programs out of the country in the weeks before the war, he said.
The dispersal included moving both weapons and equipment as well as documents. The activity began before the United Nations began arms inspections last fall.
"What we saw with the avoidance of inspections, there was clearly an effort to disperse, bury, conceal certain equipment prior to inspections," Gen. Clapper said.
As for shipping weapons out of Iraq, he said, there is "no question" that people and material were taken to Syria. He said he did not know whether material also was moved to Iran.
Convoys of vehicles, mostly commercial trucks, were spotted going into Syria from Iraq shortly before the start of the war March 19 and during the conflict, he said.
-------- us
Pentagon ignored rules to check soldiers' health
Probers to see if lapse affected Iraq force
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
BY ROBERT COHEN
STAR-LEDGER WASHINGTON BUREAU, NJ.com
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-11/106741127660800.xml
WASHINGTON -- Congress will investigate whether soldiers sent to Iraq received mandatory health assessments, a concern raised by the disclosure that the Pentagon widely ignored proper medical procedures for those sent earlier to Afghanistan and Kosovo.
Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th Dist.), chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, said yesterday the General Accounting Office uncovered a "shocking" failure by the Department of Defense to follow the health screening and immunization rules for active-duty soldiers deployed overseas from 2001 through mid-2002.
He said this lapse may have been repeated for those sent to fight in Iraq, and his committee requested a new, comprehensive probe by the GAO, the investigation arm of Congress.
"The failure of DOD to faithfully implement their own health care regulations for troops before and after deployment to Kosovo and Afghanistan is completely unacceptable," the Mercer County-based congressman said.
"We need to ensure such failures are no longer occurring and have asked GAO to determine whether our servicemen and women now in Iraq were properly screened before they arrived and whether they are being properly cared for both during and after their service to our nation."
In a report released this month, the GAO warned the Pentagon's failure to conduct health assessments for active-duty soldiers before deployment and after returning home from the former Yugoslav province of Kosovo and from Afghanistan could lead to a repeat of the Persian Gulf War experience.
During the decade that followed the 1991 conflict, tens of thousands of veterans described chronic illnesses that came to be generally known as Gulf War syndrome. They attributed these illnesses to their military service but faced great difficulty getting veterans' benefits because they lacked pre-deployment and post-deployment health data to prove their claims. In response, Congress enacted legislation in 1997 to establish a system for assessing the medical condition of servicemen and women before and after their deployment overseas.
The GAO said the Pentagon's failure to follow that requirement in the Afghanistan and Kosovo deployments raises the possibility that active-duty Army and Air Force service members with health problems were improperly sent overseas.
During a recent congressional hearing on veterans health care, Edward Wyatt Jr., principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, acknowledged the past lapses but said the health screenings have now become a "high priority."
Ellen Embrey, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for force health protection, could not say yesterday whether the health assessment rules were fully followed for soldiers being sent to Iraq. But she added corrective actions were instituted in May and that every effort now is being made to ensure the proper procedures.
She said soldiers returning from overseas, including Iraq, are required to get face-to-face health assessments from medical professionals, mental health evaluations and a review of possible environmental and occupational exposures. She said there is "significant leadership interest" in ensuring such health reviews.
The GAO in its latest report looked at the medical records of 1,071 servicemen and women out of a sample of 8,742 at Fort Drum in New York, Fort Campbell in Kentucky, Travis Air Force Base in California and Hurlburt Field in Florida. The survey covered Jan. 1, 2001, through May 31, 2002.
The investigators found that the portion of Army and Air Force service members missing one or both of their health assessments ranged from 38 percent at Travis Air Force Base to 98 percent at Fort Campbell.
Moreover, the GAO said service members who failed to receive at least one of the required pre-deployment immunizations ranged from 14 percent at Hurlburt Field to a high of 46 percent at Fort Campbell.
In addition, the GAO found the Pentagon failed to maintain a complete, centralized database of service members' health assessments and immunizations as required.
Dennis Cullinan, director of national legislative service for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, described the Pentagon's failure as evidence of "institutional callousness."
"This will make it much more difficult for many service members to identify health problems associated with their service and receive the benefits they deserve," said Cullinan.
Steve Robertson, legislative director for the American Legion, said it is too early to tell the magnitude of the future health and disability claims.
"Our folks are trying to monitor the situation across the nation, but we won't know until veterans start coming forward and saying they have problems that are not getting addressed," said Robertson. "We are keeping our antennas up."
----
THE WHITE HOUSE
Bush Says He Sees No Need in Iraq for Adding G.I.'s
October 29, 2003
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/politics/29PREX.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - President Bush said Tuesday that he saw no need for additional American troops in Iraq despite a lethal series of bomb and rocket attacks in Baghdad over the past three days, but he vowed that the United States "will stay the course" until stability is restored.
The president said the recent attacks were probably the work of remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party as well as "foreign terrorists" who were trying to intimidate American forces into pulling out.
"Iraq is dangerous, and it's dangerous because terrorists want us to leave," Mr. Bush said during a 48-minute Rose Garden news conference, his most extensive question-and-answer session with the news media since July. "And we're not leaving."
Mr. Bush did not specify where he thought the foreign terrorists had originated. But he suggested that the attackers were crossing into Iraq from Syria and Iran. "We're working closely with those countries to let them know that we expect them to enforce borders, prevent people from coming across borders, if in fact we catch them doing that," Mr. Bush said.
He added, "We are mindful of the fact that some might want to come into Iraq to attack and to create conditions of fear and chaos."
Mr. Bush's comments put him at odds with a military official on the ground in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the commander of the First Armored Division, who said Sunday that he had not seen "any infusion of foreign fighters" in Baghdad. But Mr. Bush's remarks were consistent with recent statements from other military officials and L. Paul Bremer III, the top American civilian administrator in Iraq, who said Sunday that terrorists had infiltrated Iraq from Syria and Iran.
The president also declined to commit himself to turn over highly classified intelligence reports to a bipartisan federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, even though the panel has threatened the White House with a subpoena. Mr. Bush only said that he wanted to be "helpful" to the panel's leaders, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, and that he wanted to reach a "proper accord" that would allow them to see some of the documents they have requested.
But Iraq dominated Mr. Bush's news conference. White House officials announced it only an hour and a half in advance, on another morning when a suicide car bombing, this one in Falluja, complicated the administration's efforts to get out its good-news message about restored electricity and reopened schools.
Mr. Bush, who returned late last week from a 26,000-mile, six-nation trip across Asia, appeared subdued and sometimes short-tempered with the drumbeat of questions about the American-led occupation. He declined a request to promise that a year from now he will have reduced the number of American troops in Iraq, calling it "a trick question, so I won't answer it."
Mr. Bush also indicated that he was not considering sending in additional American troops to help restore order, but said he was not the one making the decision.
"That's a decision by John Abizaid," Mr. Bush said, referring to the senior American commander in the region. "He makes that - General Abizaid makes the decision as to whether or not he needs more troops. I've constantly asked the secretary of defense, as well as when I was visiting with General Abizaid, does he have what it takes to do his mission? And he told me he does."
The president's news conference came nearly the six months after his triumphal landing on the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln, on May 1, when he stood under a large "Mission Accomplished" banner and declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. Asked if his comments that day had been premature, Mr. Bush responded testily that the "Mission Accomplished" banner had not been put up by the White House advance staff.
Mr. Bush said in any case that his speech on the carrier was the right thing to do. "We had just come off a very successful military operation," he said. "I was there to thank the troops." He added: "My statement was a clear statement, basically recognizing that this phase of the war for Iraq was over and there was a lot of dangerous work. And it's proved to be right. It is dangerous in Iraq."
Once again, the president called Iraq the "new front" in the campaign against terrorism. In his most animated moment of the news conference, he declared: "We must never forget the lessons of September the 11th. The terrorists will strike, and they will kill innocent life, not only in front of a Red Cross headquarters - they will strike and kill in America, too."
The president defended his request to Congress for $20 billion in grants to help rebuild Iraq, saying that he expected the House and Senate to approve it, and that a "free and peaceful" Iraq was essential to stability in the Middle East. "That's why I've asked the American people to foot the tab for $20 billion of reconstruction," Mr. Bush said.
On Capitol Hill, action on an $87 billion emergency spending bill that includes the $20 billion in reconstruction for Iraq was postponed after Democratic senators on the joint House-Senate conference committee complained that they had not been informed about agreements reached by Republican leaders of the committee. Negotiations were to resume on Wednesday.
In his news conference, the president said $13 billion pledged for Iraqi reconstruction from nations at a recent conference of donors in Madrid, most of it in loans, "may be just only a beginning."
But he voiced some apprehension that the suicide bombings over the last 48 hours in Iraq, which left more than 38 dead and more than 200 injured, might stop other kinds of international aid. Asked if the attacks might discourage countries from contributing troops or manpower, Mr. Bush replied, "I hope not."
He added: "That's what the terrorists want. They want countries to say, `Oh, gosh, we better not send anybody there because somebody might get hurt.' "
The president also further distanced himself from recent comments by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, the deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence and war-fighting supports. General Boykin has compared the battle against Islamic militants to a Christian struggle against Satan and has said at evangelical meetings that a Muslim militia leader in Somalia worshiped an "idol" and not "a real god."
Mr. Bush said General Boykin's remarks did not "reflect my point of view, or the view of this administration." But he did not address a question about whether the general should resign or be disciplined.
At the White House on Tuesday night, Mr. Bush celebrated his third annual iftar dinner, an occasion to break the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In a toast, he said that "America rejects all forms of ethnic and religious bigotry," and that "we welcome the values of every responsible citizen, no matter the land of their birth."
Islam, Mr. Bush said, "is a religion that brings hope and comfort to good people across America and around the world."
--------
Bush Vows U.S. Will Stay in Iraq
President Calls Situation 'Dangerous,' Blames Attacks on Baathists, Foreigners
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29010-2003Oct28?language=printer
President Bush acknowledged yesterday that there is dangerous resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq but vowed to Americans and Iraqis: "We're not leaving."
At a late-morning news conference in the Rose Garden, the president softened previous assertions about events in Iraq, including a May 1 victory speech, a "bring 'em on" taunt to Iraqi militants and his assertion Monday that violence in Iraq indicated American progress.
Bush, facing questions even from Republican lawmakers about whether he has leveled with the public about Iraq, repeatedly described the situation there as "dangerous."
"I can't put it any more plainly: Iraq is a dangerous place," Bush said. "That's leveling. It is a dangerous place."
At the same time, he previewed a 2004 reelection strategy that labels as a success his performance in Iraq and in foreign policy generally. "I'll say that the world is more peaceful and more free under my leadership, and America is more secure," he said. "And that will be how I'll begin describing our foreign policy."
Bush's 10th presidential news conference came days after he passed the 1,000-day milestone in office. Appearing relaxed but speaking in more somber tones than he often does, Bush likened the militants in Iraq to the hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001, and said he believes that both Baathist Party remnants and foreigners are responsible for recent guerrilla attacks.
Fielding questions on a range of subjects, Bush supported the decision by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), his brother, to order feeding for a severely brain-damaged woman; said that he will sign a newly passed ban on what abortion foes call a "partial-birth" procedure but that he does not believe the country is ready for further restrictions; and declined to say what papers he will relinquish to a commission probing intelligence failures before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The president endeavored to calibrate and qualify claims he has made about Iraq. He defended his May 1 speech, on an aircraft carrier beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner, when he declared that "in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," and that "the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror."
"My statement was a clear statement, basically recognizing that this phase of the war for Iraq was over and there is a lot of dangerous work, and it's proved to be right," he said. But Bush scaled back his previous claim of victory. "Iraq is a front on the war on terror," he said, "and we will win this particular battle on the war on terror."
Bush said his staff was not responsible for the banner on the ship. "The 'Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished," he said. "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff -- they weren't that ingenious, by the way."
That disavowal drew a complaint from retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, a Democratic presidential candidate, who said Bush should not be "blaming the troops on the aircraft carrier."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan later acknowledged that the sign was produced by the White House. He said the warship's crew, at sea for 10 months, had requested it. "The original idea for the banner was suggested by those on the ship," McClellan said. "They asked if we would take care of the production of the banner. The banner was a way to commemorate the sailors and crew onboard the ship and the fact that they had accomplished their mission after a lengthy deployment."
Answering critics' accusations that he lacks a clear strategy in Iraq, Bush said in an opening statement that "our purpose is clear and certain." The enemy in Iraq has an equally clear purpose, he said. "The terrorists rely on the death of innocent people to create the conditions of fear that therefore will cause people to lose their will," he said. "That's their strategy. And it's a pretty clear strategy to me."
Bush said the military will change "tactics" to respond to suicide attacks with more checkpoints and hardening of targets, but he asserted: "The strategy remains the same." It includes getting more "actionable intelligence" to thwart attacks, he said.
The president declined to say whether he will reduce the number of troops in Iraq in the next year, calling it "a trick question." He also did not directly answer when asked whether he is considering sending more troops to help restore order, saying that is up to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East. Bush said he has "constantly asked" Abizaid and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld if they "have what it takes," and he said they have assured him they do.
Referring to those behind the attacks in Iraq, Bush said the government is "trying to determine the nature of who these people were." He said he "would assume" they include a combination of terrorists who have come in from other countries and remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baathist government. He said they are trying to create "conditions of fear and retreat" with attacks that killed three dozen people on Monday and four more in a suicide car bombing yesterday. "It's the same mentality, by the way, that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001," he said.
In a still-verdant Rose Garden beneath a light overcast, Bush faced occasionally blunt and skeptical questioning but did not acknowledge any shortfall in his prewar assessments or his planning. Bush defended his decision to depose Hussein even though no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq. He said the chief U.S. weapons inspector, David Kay, had found evidence of a "clear violation" of United Nations resolutions, which was enough for war.
Twice using the Latin "casus belli" (cause for war), Bush said: "In other words, he had a weapons program, he's disguised a weapons program, he had ambitions."
Bush sought to defuse questions about the decision early this month by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to create a cross-agency Iraq Stabilization Group to coordinate postwar policy, without consulting Rumsfeld. With Rice standing nearby, her arms crossed and her head cocked to one side, Bush said part of her job is "to help unstick things that may get stuck . . . She's an unsticker."
On other matters, Bush said he believes he can reach an accommodation with leaders of a federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks who have threatened to subpoena White House documents, including relevant back copies of the sensitive intelligence report called the President's Daily Brief.
"We're working out the procedures," he said. "I do want to be helpful." Bush said he wants to avoid a precedent that would "politicize" intelligence briefings.
Asked about the Justice Department investigation into an administration leak of a CIA agent's identity, Bush dismissed the notion that he could ask his aides to sign affidavits stating whether they were involved. "The best group of people to do that, so that you believe the answer, is the professionals at the Justice Department," he replied. "They're moving forward with the investigation."
Bush restated his plan to sign a ban that Congress has passed on what abortion critics refer to as "partial-birth" procedures. But he added: "I don't think the culture has changed to the extent that the American people or the Congress would totally ban abortions." That was similar to what he said during the presidential campaign, when he said banning abortion was a "noble goal" but "we got to change a lot of minds before we get there in America."
On a day that a private research group reported a September rebound in consumer confidence amid signs of improvement in the job market, Bush said in his opening statement that he sees "broad and gathering strength" in the economy. "All of us can be optimistic about the future of the economy, but we cannot be complacent," he said.
Bush generally has shied from extended news conferences in favor of shorter informal sessions. His 10 news conferences are the least any president has held at this point in his first term in the past 50 years, according to Towson University scholar Martha Joynt Kumar.
Yesterday, however, Bush responded to 18 questions over 48 minutes and at times bantered with reporters, suggesting that one questioner has "a face for radio." He jokingly invited reporters to lunch after the session, depending on a reporter's question. After the reporter asked how Bush squared his claim that the campaign season has not begun with the $80 million Bush has raised in campaign funds, the president retorted: "You're not invited to lunch."
-------- propaganda wars
Pentagon Manages War Coverage By Limiting Coffin Pictures
'Body Count' News Fueled Antiwar Sentiment During Vietnam Campaign
Helen Thomas - hthomas@hearstdc.com
October 29, 2003
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/2593688/detail.html
WASHINGTON -- One of the lessons the U.S. government apparently learned from the Vietnam War is this: Don't let the American public see coffins arriving home with U.S. casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Coffin images during the Vietnam era -- along with photos and video of body bags in the field and military officials talking constantly about "body counts" -- had a tremendous impact in prompting antiwar sentiment at home.
In a move by the Bush administration to suppress distressing images of war, the Defense Department issued a directive last March on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq that declared:
"There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein (Germany) airbase or Dover (Del.) base, (and) to include interim stops."
There have always been some media restrictions at Dover Air Force Base -- the site of the largest Defense Department mortuary for the remains of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. But the new rule expands the blackout to all military bases.
Under the Pentagon clamp down, American fatalities will be reduced to statistics and the public will see little of the human side of the war.
Some in the Pentagon still blame the news media for the loss of South Vietnam. In a never-again mood after that war, the U.S. military planners designed the blueprint for future wars to limit media access -- as we saw later in Grenada and the first Gulf War.
Lt. Col. Cynthia Colin, a Defense Department spokeswoman, says the ban on media coverage stems from a compassion for the families, "to protect their wishes and privacy during the time of greatest loss and grief."
During Desert Storm in 1991, the first Persian Gulf war, several media organizations sued the Defense Department to gain access to Dover, arguing that the First Amendment barred the restrictions that the military imposed on the media.
But a U.S. District Court judge denied their claim, saying that the media did not have the right to view the return of coffins at Dover.
That ruling was upheld in 1996 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit which agreed that the government's policy reduced hardships on families and protects their privacy.
Individual graveside ceremonies can be covered by the press with the permission of the relatives.
It is a deeply emotional experience for a president to attend a memorial service for those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the country.
Of all the decisions a president has to make, the question of war has got to be the most wrenching. That's why it should not be left to one person. I hope Congress someday will reassert its constitutional right to declare war. That right hasn't been invoked since World War II and the congressional default gives U.S. presidents power that the founding fathers never intended them to have.
President Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for the Iraqi war dead but he has met with some of their families. On Memorial Day, he spoke of their sacrifices.
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan attended heartbreaking services at Camp Lejeune, N.C., for the 241 service members killed in Beirut when a car bomb demolished the Marine barracks there.
He also was on hand at Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987 to eulogize the men killed aboard the USS Stark.
I'll never forget the child who cried out during one of the memorial services: "I want my daddy."
I can understand why the White House and the Pentagon want to shut down coffin coverage on the nightly news.
The photos would be disturbing to anyone and -- if the war goes on much longer -- politically damaging to the president. But the families of the fallen Americans should not have to grieve alone. We can only share by knowing.
----
Speeches Called Propaganda
U.S. Team in Iraq Cites Western Journalism as Model
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 29, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31353-2003Oct28.html
For the past few weeks, Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer has appeared every Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. on IMN, the Pentagon-run television network, with a taped message to the Iraqi people about what is going on in their country.
The speeches, dubbed in Arabic, are much like President Bush's weekly Saturday radio address, according to Gary Thatcher, the former CBS producer who is head of strategic communications for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq. "We are here to set an example of journalism in the Western tradition," he said.
To many Iraqis, though, Bremer's prime-time addresses are more reminiscent of the regular television appearances of former president Saddam Hussein, according to both American and Iraqi media specialists who have studied IMN, the Iraqi Media Network. Iraqis see the station not as a vehicle for free speech but "as the mouthpiece of the CPA," the BBC World Service Trust reported after studying the stations this summer.
In last week's address just before the holy month of Ramadan, Bremer repeatedly referred to Hussein as "the evil one." "You must not lose hope, because you have seen the evil one go," Bremer said at one point. "You, the Iraqi people, whom the evil one was bound to protect, he instead tortured, he instead murdered. You, the Iraqi people, whom the evil one was bound to feed, he instead starved."
Flynt L. Leverett, a former CIA Middle East counterterrorism analyst who served on the Bush National Security Council and is now at the Brookings Institution, said: "He is using religious and cultural symbolism, but it is an obvious resort to propaganda. It is not inappropriate, there is a war going on, but he is doing it in so obvious a way."
That view -- that IMN is a vehicle for propaganda -- is one of many ironies in the U.S.-led coalition's attempt to create a free, Iraqi media operation out of the rubble of Hussein's defunct Ministry of Information.
The fledgling IMN has taken over Hussein's 18 television stations, his government radio stations and al-Sabah, the 60,000-circulation national newspaper now published on what was the same site of the newspaper founded by Hussein's son Uday. Since this spring, management has been contracted out to Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a San Diego-based defense contractor with a $40 million-plus budget and no experience in media development. SAIC, in turn, has been overseen in Washington by the Defense Department's office that specializes in psychological warfare operations, or psyops.
Lately, IMN is known as "psyops on steroids" in parts of the Pentagon, because there is an additional $100 million in the Iraq supplemental appropriation bill before Congress to pay the winner of a new contract, beginning in January, to create a "world-class" media operation. Twenty-three bidders, including SAIC, and some U.S. and foreign journalistic organizations are to meet in Baghdad next month to discuss plans for turning the enterprise around.
At the heart of its difficulties is that IMN is supposed to promote U.S. goals and provide an alternative to often critical Arab-world media while evolving into Iraq's version of a free press.
"They need psyops to get their message across and at the same time allegedly want to create an indigenous, independent media . . . goals that are counterintuitive," said a senior congressional aide familiar with the program.
The tools used to accomplish these goals reflect the paradox: The New York advertising agency J. Walter Thompson is designing a new logo, graphics and programming schedule for a network whose staff and even broadcast frequencies are much the same as they were under Hussein.
"IMN is a big source of announcements of services and curfews by CPA," said one Iraqi working with a British team training journalists outside Baghdad. "But it is manned by many of the old Iraqi Information Ministry who have the mentality . . . of the past."
Charles Heatly, a British citizen who is the CPA spokesman for IMN, said in a telephone interview from Baghdad: "There has always been a debate because our two aims are conflicting. But we are very slowly going to develop into an independent voice to be seen and liked."
IMN needs to move quickly if it wants to counter critical coverage of U.S. and coalition efforts by the Arabic-language satellite channels of al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya. About 35 percent of Iraqi homes have satellite receivers, which were banned during Hussein's rule, but that number is growing rapidly. A recent poll showed that Iraqis who can get satellite television choose the Arab stations over IMN by more than 2 to 1. Meanwhile, Iran has built a powerful television transmitter on the Iran-Iraq border, and its al-Alam channel can now be received in Baghdad.
In a telephone interview from Iraq's capital, Thatcher said IMN's news operation is being directed by a former CNN International executive editor, and pointed to U.S.-style practices: "We give [IMN crews] special access" to CPA news conferences, he said, "but don't tell them how to cover it." And he said members of the U.S.-appointed Iraq Governing Council -- all of whom are potential candidates whenever elections may be held -- have been warned "that it is not appropriate for them to control" political coverage.
He also said, "The Pentagon as an institution has never attempted to influence content since I have been here."
Others who have studied the situation say Thatcher's operation has begun to exercise more control over what IMN's 18 local stations can broadcast. The central network broadcasts 18 hours of feed a day, including a two-hour news block. Only 30 minutes is cut out for local news coverage, and all programming has to be approved in Baghdad.
Even in Mosul, where the local station has been operated under the watchful eye of Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, the Baghdad office has sent IMN technicians to improve the signal between Baghdad and Mosul and kept two on the scene to make certain that more network material is carried over the station.
In Afghanistan, in contrast, money both from the U.S. Agency for International Development and from nonprofit organizations has been used to develop local stations outside the central government's control, according to David Hoffman, president of Internews Network, an international nonprofit organization that has helped develop open media in 45 countries since 1992. The IMN situation is "the worst mess I have ever seen in my life," Hoffman said.
Thatcher agreed that the local stations had to take the network feed from Baghdad but that he was encouraging local stations to develop programming and preempt when reasonable.
But, he added, "there ought to be one channel where Iraqis can find out what is going on with national reach, and that's IMN."
--------
Bush Steps Away From Victory Banner
October 29, 2003
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/politics/29BANN.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - The triumphal "Mission Accomplished" banner was the pride of the White House advance team, the image makers who set the stage for the president's close-ups. On May 1, on a golden Pacific evening aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln, they made sure that the banner was perfectly captured in the camera shots of President Bush's speech declaring major combat in Iraq at an end.
But on Tuesday in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush publicly disavowed the banner that had come to symbolize what his critics said was a premature declaration that the United States had prevailed.
"The `Mission Accomplished' sign, of course, was put up by the members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, saying that their mission was accomplished," Mr. Bush told reporters. "I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff. They weren't that ingenious, by the way."
Well, yes and no. After the news conference, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, carefully elaborated on the president's words.
The banner "was suggested by those on the ship," he said. "They asked us to do the production of the banner, and we did. They're the ones who put it up."
The man responsible for the banner, Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer now with the White House communications office, was traveling overseas on Tuesday and declined to answer questions. He is known for the production of the sophisticated backdrops that appear behind Mr. Bush with the White House message of the day, like "Helping Small Business," repeated over and over.
Mr. Bush's Democratic competitors for president immediately pounced on his disavowal.
Gen. Wesley K. Clark, for one, said that Mr. Bush's comments blaming the sailors "for something his advance team staged" were "outrageous."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- justice
Justice Dept. Tightens Security in C.I.A. Leak Case
October 29, 2003
By DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/politics/29LEAK.html
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 - Justice Department and F.B.I. officials have imposed tighter secrecy restrictions over the inquiry into the leak of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, government officials said on Tuesday. In an unusual step, they have removed the director of the F.B.I's Washington office from the list of officials with access to the case.
The official, Michael A. Mason, one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most senior managers, was taken off the list in an effort to restrict information about the case, the officials said.
Customarily, a senior official like Mr. Mason would have full access to details of the case, which is being investigated mainly by agents from his office, although it is being supervised by F.B.I. headquarters. One bureau official said Mr. Mason had asked to be removed, although others said the decision was based on whether the officials had "a need to know."
Investigators are trying to determine whether it was White House officials or others who told the columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of a former ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, as Mr. Novak wrote in his syndicated column in July. Mr. Wilson has been critical of the administration's Iraq policies.
At a news conference on Tuesday, President Bush was asked why he had not directed White House staff members to sign affidavits saying that they were not behind the leak.
"The best group of people to do that so that you believe the answer is the professionals at the Justice Department," Mr. Bush said. "And they're moving forward with the investigation. It's a criminal investigation. It is an important investigation. I'd like to know if somebody in my White House did leak sensitive information."
Democrats have said that Attorney General John Ashcroft's relationship with the White House creates a conflict of interest and that he should recuse himself or appoint a special counsel to lead the inquiry.
On Tuesday, Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who has criticized Mr. Ashcroft's refusal to seek a special counsel, said that because of the leak case, he might oppose Mr. Bush's nominee for deputy attorney general, James B. Comey, now the United States attorney in Manhattan, unless Mr. Comey could provide "satisfactory answers" about the independence of the investigation.
Mr. Schumer is a senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and Mr. Comey is scheduled to appear before the panel on Wednesday for a confirmation hearing. The two met on Tuesday for about 45 minutes to discuss the issue, and Mr. Schumer said that while he considered the prosecutor "a man of high integrity," he had concerns about how the leak investigation would be handled.
The decision to drop Mr. Mason and other officials from the list was made after Mr. Ashcroft emphasized to subordinates the importance of avoiding leaks in the case, one of the most politically delicate investigations of his tenure. Those authorized to receive information have signed nondisclosure agreements, in addition to those they might have signed as a condition of employment.
Mr. Mason is a highly regarded agent who recently took over the prestigious Washington job after heading the bureau's office in Sacramento. Several officials said that his removal from the list was an effort to tighten security around the case and was not intended as a slight.
Federal investigators have instructed four government entities - the White House, the C.I.A., the Defense Department and the State Department - not to destroy records that could be considered relevant to the inquiry.
Some investigators have said the F.B.I. is making steady progress in determining who disclosed the information to Mr. Novak, following a paper trail of meetings of Bush administration officials in which Mr. Wilson was discussed. Others have expressed less certainty about the status of the inquiry, suggesting that those who leak information are rarely discovered and even more rarely prosecuted.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Arms Merchant May Be Freed
Reuters
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33197-2003Oct29.html
HOUSTON, Oct. 28 -- A federal judge has thrown out the 1983 conviction of former CIA operative Edwin P. Wilson for selling 20 tons of plastic explosives to Libya, finding that prosecutors knowingly used false testimony and hid evidence that supported his defense.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes's opinion, written Monday and made public Tuesday, vacates Wilson's conviction.
Wilson, 75, has been in prison since 1982, serving 52 years for three convictions, including the arms sales to Libya. His attorney thinks Wilson could be released if the government does not appeal the decision, which was scathing in its condemnation of prosecutorial methods. The Justice Department said it has not decided whether to appeal.
Wilson joined the CIA in 1955 and ran front companies for it before parlaying his expertise into a lucrative arms-trading career. He testified he had been freelancing for the CIA since retiring in 1971.
Hughes found that federal prosecutors, led by Theodore Greenberg, knew that but introduced a false affidavit from the CIA's No. 3 official, Charles A. Briggs, saying the agency had not asked Wilson to perform "any services, directly or indirectly."
Hughes called Briggs's false affidavit "nothing but a lie" and noted that the rereading of it in court persuaded the juror holding out against conviction to change her mind.
-------- terrorism
Clark Lays Responsibility for 9/11 at Bush's Feet
October 29, 2003
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
The New York Times
DURHAM, N.H., Oct. 28 - In a blistering review of President Bush's national security policy, Gen. Wesley K. Clark said on Tuesday that the administration could not "walk away from its responsibilities for 9/11."
"You can't blame something like this on lower-level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated in memos with each other," said the retired general, the latest entrant in the Democratic presidential field. "It goes back to what our great president Harry Truman said with the sign on his desk: `The buck stops here.' And it sure is clear to me that when it comes to our nation's national security, the buck rests with the commander in chief, right on George W. Bush's desk."
"And," he added, "we've got to say again and again and again, until the American people understand: strong rhetoric in the aftermath is no substitute for wise leadership."
General Clark's remarks were his most scathing of the campaign to date and went further than those of a number of other Democratic candidates in laying blame on the administration for intelligence failures.
He delivered those remarks in a private room at the University of New Hampshire here, reading from a teleprompter in giving a keynote speech, beamed to Washington by satellite, to a conference sponsored by The American Prospect, a liberal magazine, and two research groups.
That speech fell on the same day that General Clark, filling in more details of his domestic agenda, also delivered a major address here outlining his health care plan. He proposed spending $695 billion over 10 years, partly to guarantee coverage to all 13.1 million uninsured Americans under 22 years old, subsidize insurance for those who have difficulty paying for it and place a greater emphasis on preventive care.
His plan would allow people who have no insurance through employment to buy coverage from the same system available to members of Congress. It would also make liberal use of child tax credits. In all, he said, it would mean insurance for 31.8 million of the 43 million now uninsured.
In seeking to offer insurance for everyone under 22, General Clark was closely emulating a plan put forth by a presidential campaign rival, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who would provide insurance for everyone under 21. But General Clark's aides said his plan would cover more uninsured than the plans of other candidates and would cost less than those proposed by everyone except Senator Edwards and a third candidate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.
In any case, General Clark's criticism of the conduct of the war in Iraq and his evident fury at Mr. Bush, which he took several opportunities to express, overshadowed his health care program, presented to an audience at the university here before he went on the attack by satellite.
Right after the health care speech, the general introduced some new confusion into his stance on the administration's request for $87 billion in emergency spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. He has said that he opposes the request, and he repeated that position on Tuesday. But he told one woman who asked him what he would do about Iraq, "We broke the dishes, we're going to pay for them."
Asked later by reporters to reconcile his opposition to the $87 billion request with his assertion that the United States should pay for the damage, he said, "Eventually we're going to have to do our part in the reconstruction of Iraq." But, he added, he will not support any appropriation until Mr. Bush has a strategy for getting out.
General Clark asserted that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "had to leak his own memo," in which he gave a bleaker assessment of the administration's progress in Iraq than he has in public statements. The candidate said Mr. Rumsfeld had leaked the memorandum "because no one would have believed him that we've been two years in the war on terror and we don't have a strategy and we don't know how to measure success."
Asked how he knew that Mr. Rumsfeld was behind the leak, he replied, "Well, that's what the rumor is, and it's been talked about on the Sunday talk shows."
But that was only one arrow from a full quiver that General Clark aimed at the administration on Tuesday. In his address by satellite to Washington, he said the nation was now exposed to risk because the armed forces were fully committed in Iraq and "we have no real reserves, either physical or, unfortunately, intellectual."
As the accusations flew, the general's organization announced an addition to his camp. James P. Rubin, a State Department spokesman in the Clinton administration, will serve without pay as senior foreign policy adviser.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Canadian Firm Wins $1 Million Federal High-Tech Solar Contract
LIVERMORE, California, (ENS)
October 29, 2003
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2003/2003-10-29-09.asp#anchor8
Xantrex Technology Inc. has received an award of $1 million from Sandia National Laboratories to develop a high reliability inverter for distributed power applications.
An inverter is needed to convert the direct current (DC) energy generated by solar modules into alternating current (AC) energy, which can be sent to the electricity grid.
The project is part of the U.S. Energy Department Solar Energy Technologies' initiative to increase the use of photovoltaic power systems by improving reliability, reducing cost and increasing performance.
Xantrex develops, manufactures and markets advanced power electronic and control products for the distributed, mobile and programmable power markets. The company's products convert raw electrical power from any central, distributed, or backup power source into the form of power required by electronic and electrical equipment.
Privately owned with 600 employees and revenues of US$105 million in 2002, Xantrex is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia and has other facilities in Arlington, Washington; Livermore, California; Miami, Florida and Barcelona, Spain.
Under the Sandia contract, Xantrex will complete the design and development of a high reliability 5 kilowatt inverter and 40 amp maximum power point tracking charge controller as well as other accessories for the solar and distributed power markets.
Xantrex is building on its own proof of concept designs with the goal of achieving products with an exceptionally long field life, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
"Our goal is to encourage adoption of solar and other renewable energy systems by significantly improving the reliability of power electronics used in renewable energy production," said Ward Bower of Sandia National Laboratories.
"We expect this program will result in a mature product series of inverters with designs that can lead to scalable outputs ranging from two to 500 kVA (Kilo Volt-Amps)," said Bower.
"Xantrex is excited to have Sandia's support to develop next generation technologies and successfully deliver them to the marketplace," said Ray Hudson, Xantrex vice president of Advanced Technology. "We are confident the high reliability inverters we develop will form the key building blocks for off-grid, back up and hybrid power systems in years to come."
The first production units are expected to be introduced in 2005.
Sandia is a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory and is managed by Lockheed Martin Corp. Sandia partners with a variety of government, industry and academic institutions to accomplish its work. Xantrex has worked with Sandia's Solar Technologies Department on a number of successful projects in the past.
Sandia National Laboratories' Solar Programs and Solar Technologies Departments are involved in a wide range of national research, design and development projects focused on a "systems driven approach" to improving component and system performance, reliability and cost for photovoltaic technologies.
-------- environment
Kazakh dam condemns most of the shrunken Aral Sea to oblivion
Desperate step after water row with Uzbeks
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Wednesday October 29, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,13369,1073009,00.html
A seven-mile dam is being built across a small northern section of the shrunken Aral Sea in Central Asia, which is described as the world's worst environmental disaster. The saline inland sea, divided between the former Soviet states of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has been drying out for 25 years, since the USSR began a vast irrigation scheme drawing water from its two tributary rivers to grow cotton and rice in the desert.
Rescue schemes tried in the past decade have failed and one of the two rivers has ceased to flow. In some places the depth of water has fallen from 54 metres (177ft) to 28 metres and the retreat has left the hulks of ships marooned in a desert wasteland.
Now Kazakhstan, which relied on the sea for fish, has decided to abandon most of the sea by building a dam to impound the waters of the second main river. It is part of a water battle with Uzbekistan, which itself stopped the flow into the south of the Aral from the Amu-Daria.
Tension between the two countries has been increased by a number of border incidents, and Uzbekistan has barred the whole of its part of the sea to visitors and aid agencies. The last outsider to visit the area said people who used to be fishermen and farmers now survived only on food aid in a salt desert.
Cancer and liver and kidney failure are commonplace in adults and children. Protesters in Uzbekistan have been jailed.
Kazakhstan says its river, the Syr-Daria, cannot by itself keep the whole sea alive. The water is in effect being wasted in the southern "dead zone".
It is spending £50m of its newly acquired oil wealth on reducing losses to the Syr-Daria from irrigation and winter flooding. And by building a dam across what is now a narrow neck of dry land it hopes to restore the fishery and reduce dust storms.The World Bank is helping to fund the dam.
Five countries - Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan - use the two rivers for irriga tion and have done so for centuries. But the area irrigated was expanded from 6m hectares (15m acres) in the 1960s to 8m and the sea began to shrink. It is reduced to three separate parts, and is still evaporating.
A British diplomat in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, said "There is tension now over water, within 10 years if nothing changes there will be armed conflict."
Sirodjidin Aslow, chairman of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea who has an office in Dushanbe, is trying to solve the problem.
"Soviet planning and the competition for water between these five states has turned the Aral Sea into trash," he said. "To restore the sea we need 1,000 cubic kilometres of inflow a year, but we have barely one tenth of that - 110 cubic kilometres - and all that is from the north.
"The south gets only a trickle, if that. The shore line has receded on average by 250 kilometres ... The level of salination has increased dramatically and the waters leave behind a salt paste containing pesticides and other minerals."
The northern part was in better condition because there was still some river inflow and three fish species survived, but the south was virtually dead. All five states contribute to the fund and have signed more than a dozen action plans.
Mr Aslow said: "We have a new 14-point action plan with a total of 58 projects which involve growing less thirsty crops and we believe we can cut the water use by half with modern irrigation methods. We have to persuade the countries involved not to use the water saved for yet more irrigation."
An aid worker who was one of the last to visit the southern Aral region said: "The people are in a terrible state, drinking out of muddy ditches, which is all that remains of a once mighty river. We had a plan to relocate the people but Uzbekistan refused to agree and threw us out. No one has any idea what happened to the people we were trying to help."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Protests target Laos
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
October 29, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy.htm
Leading members of the Senate demanded an explanation from the Laotian ambassador about reports that his government is starving opponents of the communist regime, as immigrants from the Southeast Asian nation protested outside the Laotian Embassy yesterday.
The demonstrators also targeted the Vietnamese Embassy to protest that government's military aid to the Laotian army, and the State Department to denounce Bush administration efforts to gain congressional approval of normal trade relations with Laos.
The protests, organized by the United Lao Congress for Democracy and the National Center for Public Policy Analysis, came as Laotian Foreign Minister Somsavat Lengsavat was thought to be in Washington to lobby for the trade measure, protest leaders said. The Laotian Embassy did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Douglas Hartwick, the U.S. ambassador to Laos, was at the State Department during the protest but avoided the demonstrators as he left. The protesters want Mr. Hartwick recalled to show U.S. displeasure with the Laotian government. Mr. Hartwick last month signed a bilateral trade deal with Laos, the first step in the trade-normalization process.
Democratic Sens. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin and Dianne Feinstein of California organized Friday's letter to Ambassador Phanthong Phommahaxay, which the protesters released yesterday.
Mr. Feingold, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Mrs. Feinstein, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, cited an Oct. 2 report by Amnesty International that denounced Laos for using "starvation as a weapon of war against civilians."
The senators and five of their colleagues who also signed the letter said the Amnesty report supports complaints they have received from constituents about human rights abuses against the ethnic Hmong community in Laos.
Thousands of Hmong families are caught up in a conflict between government troops and a small Hmong uprising of rebels equipped mostly with weapons left over from the Vietnam War.
Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Feingold said many of their constituents "claim that the Lao government is killing innocent civilians and that Hmong are suffering from malnutrition and starvation without access to medical attention."
They also referred to reports in May and June in Time magazine's Asian edition that said Laotian troops "hunted down and surrounded a 'ragtag army with wailing families in tow' and appeared to be on the brink of slaughtering them."
"Starvation as a weapon of war is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which Laos has ratified," the senators said in their letter. "We urge you to investigate the treatment of the Hmong in the jungles of Laos and put a stop to any practices violating international law."
----
Kazakhs honor Nunn
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
October 29, 2003
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy.htm
The ambassador of Kazakhstan this week presented former Sen. Sam Nunn with his country's highest honor for a foreigner to recognize the Georgia Democrat for helping eliminate nuclear weapons in the former Soviet republic.
Ambassador Kanat Saudabayev said the Central Asian nation inherited the world's fourth-largest nuclear arsenal after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1991, Mr. Nunn, then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, co-sponsored a bill that helped pay for the destruction of Soviet nuclear weapons.
"The names of Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar are inscribed in the history of this country in golden letters," the ambassador said at the awards presentation at the University of Georgia.
Mr. Lugar, now chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, received the award on a visit to Kazakhstan in August.
• Call Embassy Row at 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.