Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Schroeder says Germany cannot prevent sale of fuel-rod plant to China
Israel Building Nuclear - Proof Bunker
U.S. and 2 Allies Agree on a Plan for North Korea
U.S. Hopes China Can Get North Korea to Talk Nukes
Envoys Seek to Save N. Korea Nuke Talks
N. Korean Nuclear Reactor Talks to Start
Russia Tests New Role for Cold War Nukes
'Dirty Bomb' Missiles Reported Missing
Denial in the New Millennium
US energy bill may spur nuke plant building
EPA faults DOE cleanup at field lab
Computer disks missing at Los Alamos lab
Lofty Mission
North Anna plan spurs fears
Reactor Vessel Ready For Journey
Dissent in the Bunker
U.S. Gone 'Off a Cliff' In Iraq, Gingrich Says
MILITARY
Afghan Villagers Torn by Grief After U.S. Raid Kills 9 Children
Afghan Warlord Arrested
Bout of Violence Rattles Afghans Attacks,
Liberian Fighters Begin Disarmament
Lockheed Martin Wins Government Contract
Japan recovers 36,000 chemical weapons left by troops in China
Bush warns Taiwan against separation
On Eve of Chinese Premier's Visit, White House Warns Taiwan
Iraqi Exiles Face Uncertainty
In Cairo Talks, Palestinians Fail to Agree on Cease-Fire
Aid Groups Complain of Russian Harassment
Public awareness key to more underground waste storage: nuclear agencies
Turkeys on the Moon... from Michael Moore
War Crimes Court Established for Iraq
Iraq to Create Tribunal to Prosecute Hussein War Crimes
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
New York's Federal Judges Protest Sentencing Procedures
U.S. Is Slow to Upgrade Airport Security Systems
Court May Give More Guidance on Miranda Warnings
Informant's Slaying Becomes Part of Inquiry Into Police Corruption
AP: U.S. Still Holds 8 Iraq Arms Experts
ACTIVISTS
German students strip in protests
Anti-war parents of American soldiers
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- europe
Schroeder says Germany cannot prevent sale of fuel-rod plant to China
2003-12-08
(Xinhuanet)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2003-12/08/content_1218173.htm
BERLIN, Dec. 7 -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder reiterated Sunday that the government could not refuse the sale ofa German nuclear fuel-rod plant to China.
He told ZDF television that the government could not stop the sale of the plutonium facility built by engineering group Siemens.
"We have known for a long time that we would have to fulfill this legal claim," he said.
The planned sale has stirred controversy in Germany as some have fears China could use the plant to produce plutonium for military use. However Siemens said the facility was not suited forthat purpose.
Schroeder announced the sale of the plant during a visit to China last week.
-------- israel
Israel Building Nuclear - Proof Bunker
December 8, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Wartime-Bunker.html
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=721&e=7&u=/ap/20031208/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_wartime_bunker
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel is building a wartime command center under the hills outside Jerusalem that will be able to withstand nuclear, biological or chemical attacks, officials said Monday.
The compound would enable the Israeli prime minister and Cabinet to conduct state affairs during an all-out attack. Israel has been warning of a concerted Iranian effort to acquire nuclear weapons.
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the project has been underway for some time. ``Every country in the world has a bunker for emergency uses to keep functioning,'' he said.
Bulldozers began excavating tunnels outside Jerusalem last year, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Secrecy about the project is tight, but Israeli military censors allowed Channel 10 TV to broadcast some pictures. The report showed the entrance to a network of large dirt tunnels in a hillside, while construction crews worked under cover of darkness.
``With the Iranian threat becoming more urgent, I think it's more important for Israel to have this type of bunker that will be not vulnerable to that kind of attack,'' said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Illan University near Tel Aviv.
The bunker command post would be Israel's second. An underground compound beneath the Tel Aviv headquarters of the Israeli military has been in use for more than 30 years, starting with the 1973 Middle East war.
That bunker was used strictly by the military, not elected officials, and experts worried about the facility's security during the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraqi missiles fired at Tel Aviv landed nearby.
Tunnel excavation alone will cost more than $100 million, while the costs of construction and the communications and ventilation systems are unknown, the officials said.
The project is expected to take several years, media reports said.
-------- korea
U.S. and 2 Allies Agree on a Plan for North Korea
December 8, 2003
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/international/asia/08KORE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 - The Bush administration has agreed with South Korea and Japan to a broadly worded set of principles to end North Korea's nuclear program, calling for a "coordinated" set of steps in which five nations would offer the North a security guarantee as it begins a verifiable disassembly of its nuclear facilities, according to administration and Asian officials.
The statement is being sent to China's leaders on Monday, the officials said, in hopes that Beijing will pass it on this week to Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader. But officials said North Korea might judge the offer far too vague, in part because it sets no timetable for energy or economic aid to the country, and because it would require inspections of suspect facilities that have never before been opened.
The officials said they doubted that a second round of talks with North Korea would take place this month, though a senior administration official said Sunday that it was "still possible."
Notably missing from the joint position, which the three governments are not formally releasing, is any demand that North Korea return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, as called for in the past. North Korea pulled out of the accord early this year, after ejecting international inspectors from Yongbyon, the country's largest known nuclear site. In talks with the United States, Chinese and South Korean officials said they doubted that Mr. Kim would agree to re-enter the treaty.
The omission of that demand may fit well with the plans of the administration's hawks, who say the movements of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were so restricted when they were in North Korea that their presence was nearly useless. They say the administration will insist that any North Korean disarmament be verified by teams of American and Asian inspectors, backed by intelligence gathered by satellites and interviews with North Korean defectors. That demand, they said, would include full inspection of a second nuclear project - detected by American and South Korean intelligence officials last year - where North Korea is suspected of enriching uranium.
"I suspect that's a deal breaker for the North Koreans," one of the administration's more hawkish senior officials said last week. "But we'll see."
Another administration official cautioned Sunday that ultimately the United States might seek North Korea's return to the treaty and "a role for the I.A.E.A.," but said that such demands now "may be too much" for North Korea.
South Korean and Japanese officials conceded that there had been disagreements with Washington over what kind of statement to issue and how specific to be about incentives for North Korea to give up its nuclear program.
"For the parts on which the countries have some disagreements, we used indirect and implicative words," South Korea's deputy foreign minister, Lee Soo Hyuck, said Sunday, according to Reuters.
Speaking at the United Nations on Sunday, China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said, "at present" North Korea did not have an "objective to possess nuclear weapons," a statement that seemed to contradict intelligence reports and North Korea's own claims that it has a small nuclear arsenal. "Their ultimate objective is to have a nuclear-weapons-free Korean Peninsula," Mr. Wen said. He added that North Korea had "expressed the hope that their security concerns should be met."
Asian diplomats involved in the talks said the wording of the joint proposal did not include the kind of assurance that Chinese officials said North Korea would insist upon: a unilateral, explicit renunciation by the Bush administration of any intent to confront North Korea economically or militarily.
American officials feared that such wording would open the way for North Korea to demand an end to the Proliferation Security Initiative, in which the United States is organizing countries to identify and seize materials related to unconventional weapons. Shipments into and out of North Korea are the primary target for that initiative.
While officials say any final agreement would hinge on how each country sequences its concessions, the United States did not agree to any specific timing in the proposal.
Asian officials also said the proposal did not include President Bush's specific language that any disarmament must be "complete, verifiable and irreversible," but American officials said similar language was in the document.
Mr. Bush and the South Korean president, Roh Moo Hyun, have disagreed on the question of whether to offer North Korea specific benefits for disarming. Mr. Roh, who is in a precarious political position at home, has said such incentives would offer Mr. Kim a face-saving way to back down from his rush toward nuclear weapons, and could defuse the situation. Asia experts in the State Department have agreed, saying the administration should be specific and present its best offer now.
But Mr. Bush has repeatedly said he would not give in to what he has called "blackmail" by North Korea, and many in the Pentagon "still don't want any talks at all," one senior White House official said.
China insisted that the United States, Japan and South Korea agree on a statement before a second round of talks with North Korea.
Mr. Bush appeared to pave the way for that statement in October, when he met with President Hu Jintao of China and President Roh. At the time he said the United States would take part in a five-nation security guarantee to North Korea - but not a formal nonaggression treaty - if the North dismantled all of its nuclear weapons programs.
Mr. Bush has said many times that the United States has "no intention" of invading North Korea, but, when pressed, he has said "all options are on the table" if diplomacy failed to result in disarmament. He has rejected North Korea's demand for a country-to-country agreement, insisting that any accord must be reached with the United States and all of North Korea's immediate neighbors: China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. Russia did not play a role in developing this proposal.
"We will not have a treaty, if that's what you're asking," Mr. Bush said at the time. "That's off the table."
Inside the administration, there is active debate over how much time is available to Mr. Bush for negotiations. Many American officials suspect that North Korea is dragging out the talks, perhaps hoping Mr. Bush will not be re-elected. But more likely, they say, North Korea wants to build as many nuclear weapons as possible now, perhaps betting that at least some can be hidden from inspectors.
--------
U.S. Hopes China Can Get North Korea to Talk Nukes
December 8, 2003
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, looking for ways to restart talks with North Korea, is hoping China can persuade Pyongyang to return to six-party negotiations over abandoning its nuclear weapons program, U.S. officials said on Monday.
As President Bush prepared to roll out the red carpet at the White House on Tuesday for Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, U.S. officials were looking to Beijing to use its influence on the North Koreans.
``I think the Chinese know that we're looking for progress and hope that they will be able to convince the North Koreans to come back to the table,'' said a senior Bush administration official.
The United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia are seeking a resumption of talks with North Korea by the end of the year after an inconclusive round last summer, but many officials believe they may not resume until January or February.
``It may be possible to hold six-party talks this month. We'll have to see. We are certainly ready to attend talks without any preconditions,'' said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
The United States is working with its allies on a draft statement offering North Korea security guarantees in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons program.
Bush shifted U.S. policy in October to jump-start the stalled North Korean nuclear talks by expressing willingness to give Pyongyang security assurances in negotiations .
The draft statement is likely to come up in discussions on Tuesday between the U.S. and Chinese delegations.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the draft statement was being prepared for the prospective meeting and that it would ``outline our readiness to prepare a statement on multilateral security assurances.''
``We are prepared to and look forward to returning to six-party talks without preconditions. And we are continuing to have discussions with our partners in these six-party talks about a new round of discussions. Nothing has been set yet,'' McClellan told reporters.
The statement would be issued at the conclusion of a second round of talks, meaning the results would be reached even before the parties convene.
A senior administration official said the statement calls for a series of coordinated steps in exchange for a complete and verifiable elimination of Pyongyang's nuclear program.
North Korea wants simultaneous concessions, which the United States rejects because Pyongyang violated a 1994 agreement not to pursue a nuclear weapons program in exchange for help in developing a civilian nuclear facility.
``The president has been fairly clear that given the history, we can't buy a pig in a poke. We have to somehow condition our actions on actions by the North Koreans,'' a senior U.S. official said.
The United States has consistently ruled out a formal non-aggression pact with North Korea, which Pyongyang has set as a condition for giving up its nuclear weapons program. The CIA believes North Korea has produced one or two nuclear weapons.
Washington has sought a diplomatic solution to the problem presented by North Korea rather than threatening war, as it did against Iraq, over alleged weapons of mass destruction that have never been found.
A key obstacle to a new round of talks is the U.S. demand for an ``effective and irreversible verification regime,'' which experts have said would open the reclusive Stalinist state to unprecedented intrusive inspections.
--------
Envoys Seek to Save N. Korea Nuke Talks
December 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Nuclear.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A U.S.-backed proposal to end the North Korean nuclear crisis calls for ``coordinated steps'' to dismantle Pyongyang's atomic weapons program, an official said Monday.
European diplomats were headed to the North Korean capital in an attempt to salvage a proposed second round of talks by year's end.
The plan, which differs with North Korea's call for ``simultaneous action,'' was being sent Monday to Chinese diplomats in Beijing to be forwarded to the North Korean government for review. If accepted, the proposal could lead to a new round of talks, perhaps by mid-month.
In Washington, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said he believed there still was time for new talks before year's end. ``We'll have to see. We are certainly ready to attend talks without any preconditions,'' Boucher said.
The White House said, however, that talks appeared unlikely before year's end. Nevertheless, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Pyongyang's nuclear program would be among the topics President Bush will bring up when he meets Tuesday with Premier Wen Jiabao.
``We are working very closely and appreciate China's efforts in regards to the six-party talks, and we'll continue to work with them on a new round of talks,'' McClellan said.
The United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas have been trying for weeks to jump-start a second round of six-way talks on easing tensions.
The sides have been split over U.S. security guarantees and how to verify whether North Korea has truly abandoned its nuclear ambitions. Diplomats had envisioned talks in mid-December, but a South Korean official acknowledged Monday ``we don't have much time.''
Details of the proposal, developed last week by the United States, Japan and South Korea, have been kept under wraps by diplomats. But central to the plan is a call for ``coordinated steps'' to resolve the issue, according to a senior official at South Korea's Unification Ministry who is involved in the process and spoke on condition of anonymity.
``Our concept was a staged, or step-by-step, or we now call it coordinated steps,'' he said. ``If you look at the words themselves, they are almost the same.''
``But the problem there was when the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) uses simultaneous, they meant four stages of simultaneous actions. That's not going to be acceptable to us,'' he said.
South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, quoting an unnamed government source, said Monday the three allies agreed to three principles -- a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis, a complete, verifiable and irrevocable dismantling of North Korea's nuclear program, and security assurances for North Korea.
Those goals would be implemented in ``coordinated steps,'' Chosun said.
But notably missing from the reported proposal is a demand that North Korea rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which it quit earlier this year to the world's alarm.
Boucher declined to comment on the treaty issue.
``I'm not going to be able to describe the document in any detail to you at this point, other than to say it deals with the process whereby North Korea would completely, verifiably and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear weapons programs and whereby the six parties could provide security assurances to North Korea as they did that,'' Boucher said.
If Pyongyang accepts the U.S.-backed proposal, another round of six-way talks would convene in Beijing. A first Beijing round ended in August without much progress.
In its offer, North Korea recommended each side take four steps.
North Korea would declare its willingness to give up nuclear development, allow nuclear inspections, give up missiles exports and finally dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities. In return, it demanded economic and humanitarian aid, security assurances, diplomatic ties and new power plants.
To smooth negotiations, European diplomats were to visit North Korea Tuesday in an attempt to persuade the communist country to participate in the second round.
The nine-member European team will stay for three days before making a rare trip through the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea on its way to Seoul for a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan.
South Korean officials have said the U.S.-backed plan would address the main sticking point -- when Washington should give written security assurances to North Korea.
The North wants Washington to issue the assurances simultaneously with a Northern renunciation of its nuclear weapons program, while the United States wants the North to move first.
The Unification Ministry official said the North's reply must come ``quick'' if sides are to salvage talks this month.
The EU mission comes amid fresh criticism of the U.S. posture from North Korea.
North Korea accused Washington on Monday of ``seriously threatening peace and bringing the situation to an extreme pitch of tension'' in its handling of the nuclear crisis since it flared up late last year.
``It is entirely thanks to the peace-loving stand (of North Korea) that a new war did not break out on the Korean peninsula this year, despite such tense military situation,'' KCNA said.
The nuclear crisis began in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea acknowledged having a nuclear weapons program in violation of international agreements.
The United States and its allies suspended oil shipments to the North. North Korea in turn expelled U.N. nuclear inspectors, withdrew from the global nuclear arms-control treaty and said it was building nuclear arms to defend itself from U.S. invasion.
--------
N. Korean Nuclear Reactor Talks to Start
December 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-Reactor.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea will hold talks this week with the U.S.-led consortium that suspended construction of a nuclear reactor because of the communist state's atomic weapons programs, an official said Monday.
Officials from the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization and North Korea will meet over two days starting Wednesday in Kumho, a remote village on North Korea's northeast coast where the consortium had been building two light-water reactors to generate electricity for the impoverished country.
A senior South Korean official involved in the project said the talks would be the first contact between North Korea and the consortium since the nuclear dispute flared a year ago.
The light water reactors were part of a 1994 deal to supply North Korea with electricity in exchange for a promise by the North to stop its weapons development.
But the deal went sour after U.S. officials said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements.
The United States, Japan, the European Union and South Korea belong to the construction consortium. The sides will discuss ``various issues including how to preserve facilities and equipment during the suspension,'' the South Korean official said.
North Korea has said it will not allow KEDO to remove any equipment, facilities, materials or technical documents from the construction site at Kumho, and demands compensation for the suspension.
South Korean officials have said the fate of the North's reactor project will be tied to progress in resolving the dispute over nuclear weapons.
-------- russia
Russia Tests New Role for Cold War Nukes
REUTERS KAZAKHSTAN:
December 8, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23035/newsDate/8-Dec-2003/story.htm
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan - Russia moved closer to obtaining its cheapest rocket yet for commercial satellites after successfully testing on Friday a converted nuclear missile that was decommissioned to meet disarmament treaties.
A Strela (Arrow) modification of a Soviet RS-18 Stiletto missile roared into space from an underground silo at Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, said spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Igor Zatula.
The Stiletto was designed to carry six individually guided nuclear warheads, enough to destroy several Western cities, but may now end up providing satellites for phone networks and television broadcasters in countries it once targeted.
Russia has to dismantle all its ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads in order to meet the terms of the 1993 START-2 strategic arms accord with the United States.
It already launches Proton and Progress rockets from Baikonur, which are both modifications of nuclear rockets, but Russia's military has said decommissioned Stilettos may become the world's cheapest boosters.
"This is the first test launch of this missile, also known by NATO's classification as SS-19 'Stiletto'," Zatula said.
"This booster may be used to launch satellites into space."
Zatula said Strela had delivered a dummy satellite into low orbit, 120-160 km (75-100 miles) above the Earth. He declined to give the weight of the payload and said several more test launches were needed before commercial use could start.
Zatula said that apart from testing Strela's ability to launch satellites, Russia's defense ministry had also successfully checked the reliability and safety of the formidable missile, in service since the 1970s.
-------- terrorism
'Dirty Bomb' Missiles Reported Missing
December 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Dirty-Bomb-Fears.html
CHISINAU, Moldova (AP) -- Dozens of rockets outfitted with so-called dirty bombs -- warheads designed to scatter deadly radioactive material -- appear to be missing in a breakaway region of Moldova, an expert said Monday.
Oazu Nantoi, a political analyst who works at the non-governmental Institute for Policy Studies in Chisinau, said he had seen photocopies of Russian military documents showing that the dirty bomb warheads -- 24 ready to use, 14 dismantled -- were missing from a storage depot near the Trans-Dniester Tiraspol military airport.
Nantoi is a respected expert on the region of Trans-Dniester, which is populated by ethnic Slavs and has been policed by thousands of Russian troops since the region's fight for independence from Moldova 12 years ago. Moldova has strong ethnic and cultural links to neighboring Romania.
The possibility the warheads were missing was first published in The Washington Post on Sunday.
Nantoi said the documents came from a disgruntled Russian military official who claimed he had not received compensation for being exposed to radioactive material.
The possibility of terrorists acquiring dirty bombs is a main concern of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said last week that his agency, which tries to cap the spread of nuclear weapons, is now ``spending a great deal of time working on this threat.''
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and other agencies have expressed repeated concern about reports that the Trans-Dniester region is a major weapons smuggling center.
Moldova is a former Soviet republic and thousands of tons of weapons and ammunition remain stored in Trans-Dniester after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The region has a robust arms industry.
Nantoi said reports first reached him in 1998 that Alazan rockets -- normally used in the former Soviet Union for weather experiments -- had been fitted with warheads modified to carry radioactive material.
Since then, the rockets and warheads appear to have disappeared from their storage area, and ``I could not discover what had happened to them,'' he told the AP.
``We tried to work with Moldovan officials, but there wasn't a clear investigation, because the territory is not controlled by Moldova,'' he said by telephone.
Trans-Dniester does not see itself as part of Moldova. It is not recognized internationally.
Moldova's government declined comment Monday, while an official of the Trans-Dniester Defense Ministry in Tiraspol called the claims ``propaganda from Chisinau.''
OSCE spokesman Claus Neukirch said he was familiar with the reports and that organization military experts were investigating. He declined to give details.
The OSCE, together with Russia and Ukraine, are mediators in the conflict in Trans-Dniester, which broke away ostensibly over fears that Moldova would reunite with Romania.
Some 1,500 people died in the fighting, which ended after a Moscow-brokered truce and the deployment of Russian peacekeepers.
There are still about 2,000 Russian troops in the breakaway region, officially acting as peacekeepers and guarding an estimated 28,660 tons of ammunition.
Russia has promised the OSCE that it would withdraw the troops and ammunition by the end of the year, but progress has been slow.
Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin recently rejected a Russian peace plan, saying it would have given too much autonomy to Trans-Dniester.
--------
Denial in the New Millennium
Nuclear Terror and Psychic Numbing
By CAROL WOLMAN, MD
December 8, 2003
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/wolman12082003.html
Nuclear terror has ruled our lives since 1945. As the types, numbers, delivery methods, and owners of nuclear weapons have proliferated, the terror has deepened. The terror is deeply buried, because it is so painful. For two or three generations now, we have been living on the edge of eco-catastrophe, the possibility of ending all life on earth with a manmade nuclear winter.
Gulf War I introduced of a horrendous new nuclear weapon, depleted uranium. This material causes abortions, birth defects and cancer, as well as lung and kidney ailments. It pollutes the local gene pool forever. We have to accept the enormous damage we have already done. (For the latest information about this material, www.uraniumweaponsconference.de)
NUCLEAR TERROR strikes at the very heart of consciousness, which ultimately is about continuation of the species. As individuals, we are concerned about ourselves. As members of a species, we are concerned about reproduction, about having healthy children and providing for them.
As continuation of the species looks more and more unlikely, we develop more and more PSYCHIC NUMBING- a deep loss of hope for the future: shutting down of the basic biological urge to propagate our kind. We stop having children, or don't care for them. We live in the moment and don't plan for the future of our children, our grandchildren, our planet.
Our psyches are terribly distorted, and the distortions are embedded in the developing brains of everyone born after 1945. Since we all are affected, we don't notice, just as fish aren't aware of water. Perhaps that is why the only consistent voice of sanity in the US Senate these days belongs to a man in his 80's, Senator Robert Byrd of WV.
We are psychically split. We act as if life will go on for many generations to come, ignoring the ever-growing danger of nuclear war. We live AS IF life were the same as it was 100 years ago. Nuclear war is a taboo subject, not fit for polite company. Essentially, we are all living a lie, ignoring the overwhelming threat to continuation of life on earth. Psychic numbing shows up in our trouble making and keeping long term commitments, such as the marriage vow.
AMERICANS tend to identify with America's nuclear weapons, thinking that they meant to defend our country. We plebes don't realize that their real function is to defend the interests of a small group of corporations, the military-aerospace-oil complex. Our role is to be HOSTAGES. The people in power have bunkers and bomb shelters in which to ride out a nuclear war. There is no civil defense for the rest of us. Not only are we targeted, but we pay for the privilege, with our taxes. (The actual price tag for US military spending in fiscal 2004 will be $486 billion, or 56 percent of all federal discretionary spending.) Our DENIAL OF THIS SHATTERING TRUTH IS HEAVILY FOSTERED by the warmongers. We are told by the media, over and over, that we have an enemy, and we need nuclear weapons to protect us. When the Cold War ended, a new threat called terrorism was quickly produced.
As if thought control by the media weren't enough, our culture is geared toward violence and exploitation. Our children are raised on sadistic cartoons and video games. We are taught to channel our aggression into team sports- mostly as spectators- and to always root for the home team. "Us against them" thinking is ingrained, and of course we are always the good guys.
We are also trained to be passive. We are fed all sorts of drugs, legal and illegal, that sedate us or make us crazy. The education system trains our children to sit still and give the right answers. Our diet and lifestyle makes us fat and lazy.
We are also terrorized. Protestors are given harsh sentences these days. Sane leaders who advocate love and peace have been systematically assassinated or killed in mysterious accidents- both Kennedys (3 with John Jr.), ML King, Jr., Mel Carnahan and Paul Wellstone to name a few.
We are socially fragmented. We are encouraged to focus on ourselves and personal success, rather to face our common problems and seek solutions together. The divorce rate is high and children are neglected or abused. The social service system breaks up our families. As we are socially atomized, we feel more and more powerless to deal with the threat of nuclear holocaust.
We are out of touch with our bodies. We sit in cars, in front of TVs and computers, at desks, but we don't experience our physical reality and that of the world around us. No wonder we don't take care of the environment!
We worship money and goods instead of the God of love and truth. After 9-11, the president told us to keep shopping. Our health as a nation is measured by the the stock market rather than by the number of people in prison.
No doubt the reader will think of a dozen more ways in which psychic numbing is maintained, and the belief that nuclear weapons will protect us and not harm us, is fostered. When peace movements arise, as they did in the 60's and prior to the Iraq invasion, they tend to focus on stopping specific wars rather than concentrating on the overriding need to abolish nuclear weapons, once and for all.
THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR HAS INCREASED DRAMATICALLY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM.
The Bush administration is systematically dismantling the international treaties that were painstakingly crafted over the past 40 years to contain and control the use and spread of nuclear weapons.
The ABM treaty was the first target. Signed by the two nuclear giants in 1972 it successfully capped the nuclear arms race for 30 years. It prevented the building of a missile shield, a huge boondoggle much desired by the Bush junta. Although the fight to save the ABM treaty was valiant and nearly succeeded, Bush took advantage of 9-11 to withdraw. A missile shield can never provide the security we had with the treaty structure- at best, it's only 95% effective, and it is years away
Bush's new pre-emptive strike policy, by lumping nuclear weapons with other WMD's and asserting the right to use them against non-nuclear nations, clearly violates the crucial NonProliferation Treaty (NPT), which every nation in the world has signed except for Israel, India and Pakistan. And North Korea just withdrew. According to ElBaradei, head of the international agency set up to inspect and enforce the NPT, 40 or 50 countries could develop nuclear weapons in the next year, if they so chose. Nuclear anarchy, here we come!
The Bush doctrine includes A RELIGIOUS ANGLE. It says that America is a Christian country on a crusade against evil. We are brainwashed into believing that war is peace, lies are truth, and Jesus advocates war and conquest. "Christian" leaders advocate hate and violence, against Muslims, pro-choice advocates, liberals. Here's a description of banner at a pro-Bush rally:
Across the top of the banner, which was clearly professionally made and not hand-lettered, were the block-letter words "SUPPORT PRESIDENT BUSH." Through the center of the banner were black outlines of various weapons, including a thermonuclear bomb. Underneath these images were two more block-letter words: "TRUST JESUS."
The threat of doomsday brings up Biblical imagery in a largely Christian country, where the Bible is still the best selling book. Terms like armageddon and apocalypse have become part of the culture. Conveniently for the warmongers, an interpretation of prophecy has emerged- set out in the popular "Left Behind" books- that culminates in nuclear war, thus justifying and sanctifying the nuclear buildup.
The current right wing "Christian" theology offers people a comforting way of dealing with nuclear terror. Called dispensationalism, it promises that true believers will avoid the travail of the tribulation, and will be transported straight to heaven by Jesus. They won't have to experience nuclear war, which will take place only after they are "raptured up". Of course, this interpretation of the Bible fails to explain how Jesus will rule over the new Jerusalem on a planet totally polluted with gene-destroying radiation.
We PEACE ACTIVISTS, who see through the guff and keep the threat of nuclear war ever in our consciousness, still have our own layers of psychic numbing to go through. How do we avoid despair? How do we talk to the ostriches all around us? How do we find the strength to deal with a police state? How can we look our children in the eye and honestly encourage them to have babies?
We must never forget the urgency of the threat, and the magnitude of the destruction. Let us not be diverted by electoral politics or Michael Jackson, but keep our eye on the sword of Damocles, as we struggle to remove it.
We must keep faith that humanity has enough common sense to avoid catastrophe. Nuclear weapons up to now have provided an iron discipline for mankind, which has developed more self-restraint and international cooperation in the last 50 years than in the preceding 2000. I believe that God will not destroy His creation.
We must bring the damage done to our own troops by depleted uranium to the forefront. Potentially, this slow form of nuclear war affects enough Americans now to create public outrage similar to the Strontium 90 uproar in the late 50's, which led to abolition of aboveground nuclear testing.
We must realize that as peacemakers, we are engaged in spiritual warfare against the warmongers. We must speak the truth, sound the warning, denounce the lying criminals who would destroy us. Our words, our tongues, our writings, are our weapons.
We must love all our neighbors, including the terrorists, the whales and polar bears, and our own great-grandchildren. Only love can overcome the fear and hatred that is driving us to destruction.
We must take responsibility for cleaning up the horrendous mess we have made, and not seek the easy out of mass suicide.
We must be grateful for our successes, and keep our confidence in the face of repression and lost battles. We are the people, we are everywhere, and we will prevail!
We must reclaim the mantle of legitimacy, and not allow the false Christians to steal it from us. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, not of nuclear war.
We are almost at the point of no return. The spiritual battle of Armageddon, between the warmongers and the peacemakers, is raging right now. The warmongers have overreached themselves, but don't know how to turn back. They will hold onto power with all their might.
We must always remember that God is on the side of life. He will not allow a nuclear winter to take place. He told Moses: Deuteronomy 30:19 This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live .
Let us choose life, now and forever. If God is with us, we cannot lose.
Carol Wolman is a psychiatrist. She can be reached at: cwolman@mcn.org
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
US energy bill may spur nuke plant building
Story by Chris Baltimore
REUTERS USA:
December 8, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23039/newsDate/8-Dec-2003/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Tax incentives tucked inside a broad U.S. energy bill stalled in the Senate could tip the scales for utilities to build the first nuclear plant in over 20 years, industry officials and regulators said this week.
The House of Representatives last month passed a $31 billion energy bill which includes $750 million a year in tax breaks for building 6,000 megawatts of new nuclear capacity.
However, Democrats and moderate Republicans in the Senate blocked the bill because it would also shield oil companies from lawsuits for contaminating water with a fuel additive. Senate Republican leaders plan to try again early next year to hold a vote on the energy legislation.
Nils Diaz, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), told reporters at an industry conference this week that incentives offered in the bill "could be a turning point" for nuclear plant building.
"I think the industry is willing to take a small risk but they need reassurance," Diaz said.
An analysis by Westinghouse Electric Co., a unit of British state-owned nuclear company BNFL Plc., found the production credits could boost a plant's profitability by 5 percent, company executive Ed Cummins told a nuclear conference on Friday.
Betsy Moler, a vice president at Midwest utility Exelon Corp. (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , the biggest U.S. nuclear plant operator, told Reuters that the proposed tax credits "clearly tip the scales a bit - whether it is enough remains to be seen."
Soaring construction costs and safety concerns after the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant scared U.S. utilities away from building new plants. Instead, industry has relied almost exclusively on building cheaper, cleaner natural gas-burning plants to meet rising electricity demand.
But due to a growing shortage of natural gas in the United States and concerns over emissions from older coal-fired plants, utilities are looking at the nuclear option again.
"We think maybe we're coming to a time when new nuclear plants will be considered," Cummins said
The prospects for new nuclear plants are closely tied to the price of fuel for competing natural gas generators. New nuclear plants could be viable if natural gas prices are above $3.30-$3.50 per MMBtu, Cummins said - about half the current spot price. Three huge U.S. utilities - Exelon, Entergy Corp. (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Dominion Resources Inc. (D.N: Quote, Profile, Research) - recently asked the NRC for permission to add additional reactor units at existing sites in Illinois, Mississippi and Virginia.
Exelon, Dominion and other utilities also recently bought existing nuclear plants from utilities.
Some of the same utilities could use a new reactor design offered by Westinghouse for a modular plant that is smaller and less complex than the nation's fleet of 103 operating plants.
The design, which the NRC could approve next year, requires less construction, staff and support than existing plants, and utilizes "passive" safety systems that rely on gravity to protect critical systems in the event of a mishap.
-------- california
EPA faults DOE cleanup at field lab
By Kerry Cavanaugh kerry.cavanaugh@dailynews.com
Los Angeles Daily News Staff Writer
Monday, December 08, 2003
http://www.dailynews.com/Stories/0,1413,200%7E20954%7E1818213,00.html?search=filter
The Department of Energy has failed to fulfill its promise to meet stringent standards in cleaning up the former nuclear research site at the Santa Susana Field Lab, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a letter released Monday.
The DOE's final cleanup plan does not aim for a 1-in-a-million cancer risk as required by federal standards, despite a commitment to the community to do so, EPA Waste Management Division Associate Director Arlene Kabei wrote in a letter. In addition, the 290-acre portion of the Boeing lab in the Simi Hills would not be safe for future residential use.
While Kabei could not be reached for comment, neighbors of the field laboratory said her letter clearly pointed out the difference between what the EPA is expecting and what the DOE is willing to do.
"This is a fundamental line in the sand, with the federal environmental agency saying this site isn't safe to release," said Dan Hirsch, a nuclear watchdog who sits on the work group overseeing the cleanup. "This really puts the ball in the lap of legislators to force resolution of the two."
Despite Kabei's concerns, DOE officials repeated earlier statements that they are meeting stringent cleanup requirements at the former nuclear research lab, saying the decontamination plan does meet EPA standards and is fully protective of human health and the environmental.
"The final cleanup level is well within risk range," said DOE Project Manager Mike Lopez, adding that he would specifically address the EPA's letter at a work group meeting Wednesday night.
With the two agencies at loggerheads, Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, is writing a letter to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt on the future of the agency's involvement at the Santa Susana Field Lab.
"There have been rough spots in the past. There may be an impasse here," Gallegly spokesman Tom Pfeifer said Monday. "That's why he's once again going to Mr. Leavitt to seek a solution."
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office said Monday she is writing a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham asking DOE to comply with the EPA's guidelines.
The debate over the cleanup at the lab centers on a few key issues, namely whether an independent survey will be done to determine the extent of soil contamination at the site and how much contaminated soil the DOE eventually has to remove.
The DOE is charged with demolishing and removing buildings where nuclear research was conducted from from the 1950s to 1990s. The property is now owned by the Boeing Co.
The EPA was brought as an independent consultant to oversee the work. The federal environmental agency had serious concerns with DOE and Boeing reports on nuclear contamination at the lab and committed to doing an independent survey analyzing radiation in the soil -- if the DOE would pay the bill.
The DOE decided in September not to fund the study, which has since been canceled.
Without more information of soil contamination, EPA officials said they are not convinced the DOE plan to remove just 2 percent of the nuclear contamination is sufficient.
"They've done considerable amount of characterization," EPA project manager Michael Feeley said of the soil surveys. "But from what we know now, we still think that is incomplete.
For that reason, the EPA is also recommending against building homes on the property some day for fear of radiation exposure. Limited picnicking or camping or other day-use recreational activities would be OK.
-------- new mexico
Computer disks missing at Los Alamos lab
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., (UPI)
Dec. 10
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20031210-125950-5003r.htm
Officials at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Wednesday were trying to track down 10 computer disks missing from the Nonproliferation and Security Center.
The New Mexico lab announced late Tuesday the disks were unaccounted for in a routine audit and may have been destroyed in recent months without the appropriate record keeping.
The contents of the disks were not revealed, although lab officials said the classified status of one disk did not necessarily mean it actually held sensitive weapons data.
Keeping track of the computerized information used at the nation's nuclear labs has become a major priority ever since Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee was suspected of being a Chinese spy three years ago.
Los Alamos carries out sensitive research into a variety of fields including the reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
-------- tennessee
Lofty Mission
Y-12 designing reactor shield for NASA's research of Jupiter moons
By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com
December 8, 2003
Knoxville News-Sentinel
http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/news_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_359_2481288,00.html
The Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge has a history of contributions to the U.S. space program.
The most ballyhooed role came in the late 1960s when Y-12 employees designed and crafted special metal boxes for the Apollo 11 mission. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin used those boxes to store moon rocks they gathered. Other projects included a shield for the first U.S. nuclear reactor in space, the SNAP-10A (Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power) which was launched in 1965 and remains in orbit. Interestingly, the backup reactor for the SNAP-10A was tested in Oak Ridge, and it remains in secure storage at Y-12, largely because the reactor's fuel load consists of uranium that could be used in weapons.
Y-12 is once again supporting the nation's space effort, this time for a project that will explore the icy moons of Jupiter - Europa, Callisto and Ganymede - and look for life in our solar system. The launch for that proposed mission is tentatively scheduled for 2012.
The Oak Ridge plant is working on shielding for a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor that would help propel the spacecraft on its eight-year journey to Jupiter, covering 370 million miles, and then supply power for the electronics and scientific instruments at the faraway destination.
"People here get very, very excited about being able to provide this kind of expertise to NASA,'' said Kevin Finney, Y-12's director of applied technologies.
"It's one of the things that we do that we can talk about publicly," Finney said, making reference to the plant's primary work on nuclear weapons, much of which is classified.
The plant's involvement in the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter program is still at an early stage, consisting mostly of engineering studies to glean information from the archives of previous space-reactor projects.
Y-12's ultimate role in the project is yet to be determined. The current spending level is $500,000 annually, but that could grow into millions of dollars in the next few years.
"We would, at a minimum, expect that we would be involved in making some of the materials," Finney said. "But we could, given our expertise in manufacturing, be asked to do the shield itself."
Tom Berg, the project manager at Y-12, said lithium hydride is a primary material of interest for the shield, which would be used to protect the spacecraft and its instruments from the reactor's high-intensity radiation.
"It's a very lightweight material," Berg said. "It has all the properties you would want."
One of those properties is the ability to absorb neutrons.
Y-12 has long experience with lithium hydride, which was processed in large quantities during the development of thermonuclear weapons.
Finney said Y-12's work with other materials - depleted uranium, tungsten, boron carbide, beryllium and stainless steel - also could be called upon for the space project.
Although the radiation shield sounds simple in concept, it could have as many as 600 parts, Berg said.
"It's really a complex piece of machinery," he said.
The shield itself won't be involved in the space exploration, but Berg noted, "We consider it to be an enabling technology."
The shield would probably be about 11/2 meters in diameter and would weigh approximately 1,000 kilograms. It would be in the shape of two cones with the fat ends joined together and the pointy ends chopped off.
Besides protecting instruments from the reactor's radiation, the shield would deflect space debris from the spacecraft.
Y-12 team members are collaborating with various specialists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on the Jupiter project. ORNL scientists and engineers are studying different designs for the space-bound reactor itself.
"We're starting to get requests from local schools and folks in the community to come talk about this,'' Finney said. "NASA has been extremely supportive because one of their missions is education. It's pretty exciting."
Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329 or munger@knews.com.
-------- virginia
North Anna plan spurs fears
Group to try to stop expansion
By Braxton Williams
Virginia Daily Progress
December 8, 2003
http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CDP%2FMGArticle%2FCDP_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031772518425&path=!frontpage
MINERAL - People from the Charlottesville area and beyond voiced concerns and questions Monday night about the possibility of North Anna nuclear power station adding one or more reactors to its plant near Mineral.
Officials from Dominion Virginia Power, which owns the North Anna facility, maintain that they have no immediate plans to build a new reactor. Securing an early site permit from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission would merely ensure the possibility up to 20 years into the future.
At a public hearing Monday at Louisa County Middle School, roughly 100 people listened attentively as Dominion and NRC officials explained the permit process, which is in its early stages.
Several audience members expressed fears about the environmental impact of adding a new reactor.
Louis Zeller of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League turned a few heads when he said that his organization would try to block the process before Jan. 2, the deadline for intervention.
"We have three ongoing interventions, and every time we do it we get better at it," he said.
Paul Gunter of the Washington-based Nuclear Information Resource Service objected when one of the numerous NRC officials at the hearing told him a safety evaluation report would not be ready before the Jan. 2 deadline.
"It's a bit alarming to us that based on the inability of staff to make the report available to the public that we're denied that opportunity from the get-go," Gunter said.
The NRC official said the early site permit application, which is available to the public, has sufficient technical information on which to base a decision whether to intervene.
Other questions were slightly less trenchant. One Charlottesville resident asked how the company would handle a drought after constructing a new reactor, based on the facility's reliance on water as a coolant.
One Louisa man complained about contaminants found in Lake Anna and their deleterious effects on fish. Andy Kugler, the environmental project manager for the early site permit request, said the facility continually monitors discharge into the lake and its discharge levels are all within limits required for operation.
The environmental review process for the early site permit request will entail information gathering until Jan. 9, and members of the public were shown Monday night how to submit comments to the NRC until then.
The commission will hold another public hearing following the NRC's full technical review of the early site permit application and the issuance of a safety evaluation and environmental impact statement.
NRC officials said they'll issue a draft of their environmental impact statement in October, with a final statement in June 2005. The NRC will make a decision on the matter in June 2006.
Contact
Braxton Williams
(434) 978-7267 or
bwilliams@dailyprogress.com.
-------- us nuc waste
Reactor Vessel Ready For Journey
Heart Of Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Plant Being Shipped To South Carolina For Burial
December 8, 2003
By GARY LIBOW,
Hartford Courant Staff Writer
http://www.ctnow.com/news/local/hc-reactorvessel1207.artdec08,1,5436247.story?coll=hc-headlines-local
HADDAM -- The funeral procession for Connecticut Yankee's massive nuclear reactor pressure vessel will embark soon to the mouth of the Connecticut River.
Then a barge will carry the reactor vessel, which had housed the highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods that helped produce electricity - about a thousand miles southward, as weather permits, along the Atlantic coast on a 10-day trip to the vessel's final resting place in rural South Carolina.
The weekend snowstorm delayed some final preparations for the barge's scheduled departure Tuesday from the decommissioned Haddam Neck plant. Connecticut Yankee is now hoping for a Friday or Saturday departure, company spokeswoman Kelley Smith said Sunday.
The 383-ton reactor vessel, 31 feet high and 161/2 feet in diameter, will be encased in a concrete and steel shroud designed to shield humans and the environment from decades of radiation.
The 820-ton sarcophagus will travel from the decommissioned plant down the river to Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. The Coast Guard plans to accompany the barge on the first leg of the journey.
Burial will be in a 15- to 20-foot-deep trench at the Barnwell Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility, a 235-acre site about 70 miles from Columbia, S.C.
If a tombstone were to be erected, it could well read:
"Here lies the remains of Connecticut Yankee's reactor vessel, born in 1968. Helped produce more than 110 billion kilowatt hours of electricity during 28 years of operation."
It's expected to take 300 years for all of the radioactive isotopes to fully decay.
"Milestone" is how Connecticut Yankee, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the state Department of Environmental Protection describe the passage. The vessel's removal and disposal mark a decommissioning project that is slightly more than half completed, according to the plant's owners.
"The bottom line is that it's a significant milestone," NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said. "This represents one of the most radioactive components left at the site, with the exception of the spent fuel. Once you can remove that, you can proceed with a lot of the decommissioning work."
Michael Firsick, a supervising radiation control physicist with the DEP, plans to conduct a radiological assessment of the vessel package and ensure that it is properly harnessed to the 180-foot long transport barge.
Then he plans to monitor the journey.
"It's symbolic cause it's the reactor," says Firsick. "The decommissioning is not going along at a record pace, but it's methodical. ... Pretty much, from here on, it is removal of buildings and soil."
Smith said Connecticut Yankee plans to forge ahead.
"The removal and shipment of the reactor vessel is one of the more important decommissioning milestones because it provides us unfettered access to the containment dome to conduct a radiological cleanup that will prepare the dome for eventual demolition," Smith said. "This couldn't be accomplished until all the large components in the dome were removed."
Smith said the public will not be exposed to unsafe radiation levels as the vessel is delivered to Barnwell. While there is enhanced security at the decommissioned plant because of the threat of terrorism, Smith said a security detail will not accompany the transport barge.
Connecticut Yankee does not deem the massive package a target, reasoning it's not in a form useful to terrorists, she said.
Sal Mangiagli, an anti-nuclear activist who resides on Old Turnpike Road, argues the packaged reactor vessel remains a threat that compromises the health and safety of the residents of Barnwell, a town with a population of about 5,000.
A cornerstone of the Citizens Awareness Network, Mangiagli, a 48-year-old carpenter, has visited Barnwell three times. He accompanied the delivery of Connecticut Yankee's steam generator to Barnwell to inform the public about what he believes to be the danger of continually burying contaminated nuclear waste there.
"It's a kind of environmental racism," Mangiagli said Friday. "The community is 46 percent African American and it's a poor and rural community."
Barnwell residents are stuck between a "rock and a hard spot," he says.
"They are stuck choosing between having jobs and being concerned about the health of the water, their citizens and their children," Mangiagli said.
Smith defends Connecticut Yankee's decision to use Barnwell, a private facility overseen by South Carolina.
"We believe this is a well-operated and well-monitored facility," Smith counters. "Radioactive waste from hospitals, research and industrial facilities in Connecticut send their low-level radioactive waste to the facility."
The state of Connecticut is a member of a compact with South Carolina to dispose of this material at the Barnwell facility, she said. "This ensures that it does not have to be stored at locations throughout Connecticut."
Connecticut Yankee, which dredged about 600 cubic yards of Connecticut River sediment to create a 75-foot channel for the barge to depart, has worked under strict federal government guidelines.
To ship the reactor vessel, the power company had to document that a human who touched or stood near the packaged reactor vessel would not be harmed.
The government radiation exposure limit is no more than 200 millirems for someone touching the vessel covering, and no more than 10 millirems for a person standing 6 feet away.
The federal transportation plan approved by the Department of Transportation includes safe harbor ports as a contingency for severe weather or loss of backup radio communication, and routine trip status reporting to regulators.
Haddam First Selctman Tony Bondi is pleased the reactor vessel will soon be leaving town. "It will be good that it's gone and decommissioning is going forward," Bondi said.
Once the vessel leaves, Connecticut Yankee's decommissioning plans will progress with transfer of more than 1,000 highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods from an indoor pool to an outdoor storage complex on the plant grounds.
The second of several practice dry runs to assure a safe move is expected to be completed this week. Actual removal of the fuel rods, which will be encased in concrete and steel casks, to the outdoor storage area is targeted to start by early next year.
In the spring, Smith said, Connecticut Yankee will begin demolishing some of the plant structures. After the spent fuel is transferred, she said, the company will be able to demolish the containment dome, spent fuel pool and remaining structures.
-------- us politics
Dissent in the Bunker
Newt Gingrich, a quiet Rumsfeld confidant, thinks the U.S. went 'off a cliff' in Iraq.
A NEWSWEEK exclusive -
12/8/03
By John Barry and Evan Thomas
http://www.msnbc.com/news/1002188.asp
The military has been hitting hard lately in Iraq, using overwhelming firepower to kill the enemy in operations with videogame names like Iron Hammer and Ivy Cyclone II. But behind the scenes, some military experts, including high-ranking officers in U.S. Special Forces (Army Green Berets, Navy SEALs and the like), are beginning to complain that America's strategy in Iraq is wrongheaded.
"THIS IS WHAT Westmoreland was doing in Vietnam," says a top Special Forces commander, referring to the firepower-heavy tactics favored by the military's senior commander in Vietnam, Gen. William Westmoreland, who lost sight of America's essential mission in that lost war: winning the hearts and minds of the people.
One center of private concerns with America's Iraq strategy is the Defense Policy Board, a collection of outside experts-mostly heavyweight conservatives-who regularly consult with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Disquiet in this quarter is particularly significant, since the DPB pushed from the outset for the invasion of Iraq. Last week one of the more colorful and outspoken members of the group, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, went public with his worries and ideas in an interview with NEWSWEEK. He was careful to say that he does not speak about the board's deliberations "on or off the record," but he proceeded to hold forth in his insightful, if mildly bombastic, way about the shortcomings of administration policy in Iraq.
Sitting in his office in downtown Washington, Gingrich searched on his computer for the Web site of the Coalition Provisional Authority, set up in Baghdad to oversee the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq. "I'm told over there that CPA stands for 'Can't Produce Anything'," says Gingrich. "Home page of the New Iraq," he quotes. Then: "The opening quote is, of course, by [CPA chief Paul] Bremer. Next quote is by Bush. Next quote is by U.S. Ambassador Steve Mann." He scrolls down. "Now this is a big breakthrough. They do have the new Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. On the front page. That is a breakthrough," he repeats, adding, sotto voce, "I have been beating the crap out of them for two weeks on this." His basic point: where are the Iraqi faces in the New Iraq? "Americans can't win in Iraq," he says. "Only Iraqis can win in Iraq."
Gingrich argues that the administration has been putting far too much emphasis on a military solution and slighting the political element. "The real key here is not how many enemy do I kill. The real key is how many allies do I grow," he says. "And that is a very important metric that they just don't get." He contends that the civilian-run CPA is fairly isolated and powerless, hunkered down inside its bunker in Baghdad. The military has the money and the daily contact with the locals. But it's using the same tactics in a guerrilla struggle that led to defeat in Vietnam.
"The Army's reaction to Vietnam was not to think about it," he says. Rather than absorb the lessons of counterinsurgency, Gingrich says, the Army adopted "a deliberate strategy of amnesia because people didn't want to ever do it again." The Army rebuilt a superb fighting force for waging a conventional war. "I am very proud of what [Operation Iraqi Freedom commander Gen.] Tommy Franks did-up to the moment of deciding how to transfer power to the Iraqis. Then," said Gingrich, "we go off a cliff."
In essence, the Americans never did transfer power. They disbanded the Iraqi Army and the government, realized that was a mistake, and quickly tried to cobble together an Iraqi police force and military. But the Iraqis in uniform today are seen by too many Iraqi citizens as American collaborators. Gingrich faults the Americans for not quickly establishing some sort of Iraqi government, however imperfect. "The idea that we are going to have a corruption-free, pristine, League of Women Voters government in Iraq on Tuesday is beyond naivete," he scoffs. "It is a self-destructive fantasy." (The White House insists that it is paying close attention to local politics and has speeded up the timetable to turn over power to the Iraqis.)
The rumor mill in the Pentagon suggests that Bush's "exit strategy" is to get American troops coming home in waves by next November's election. Obliquely, Gingrich indicates that would be a huge mistake. The guerrillas cannot be allowed to believe that they only have to outlast the Americans to win. "The only exit strategy is victory," Gingrich says. But not by brute American force. "We are not the enforcers. We are the reinforcers," says Gingrich. "The distinction between these two words is central to the next year in Iraq." Gingrich's voice rang with his customary certainty. Hard to know if Rumsfeld and Bush are listening.
--------
U.S. Gone 'Off a Cliff' In Iraq, Gingrich Says
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44036-2003Dec7.html
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said yesterday that the Bush administration has gone "off a cliff" in postwar Iraq and that "the White House has to get a grip on this."
In a blunt critique by a leading Republican, Gingrich said the administration has failed "to put the Iraqis at the center of this equation. . . . The key to defeating the bad guys is having enough good guys who are Iraqis," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
The administration did not send enough Iraqi Americans there after the war, Gingrich said. On the main online site of the U.S. occupying authority, he added, "up until last week you didn't see a single Iraqi on that Web page," and now there is only one.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. defended the administration's policy. "I think things are going very well in a very tough situation in Iraq. . . . Newt Gingrich is not all-knowing," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who recently returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, hit three Sunday talk shows and said she agreed with Gingrich. She blamed the administration for "miscalculation" and "inept planning" in Iraq, as she put it on ABC's "This Week."
"I do think we need more troops" in Iraq, Clinton said. She said she believes in giving the chief executive the authority to wage war, as her husband did in Bosnia and Kosovo. "But I regret the way the president has used the authority."
Clinton dismissed complaints that she should not have criticized President Bush while in Iraq and blamed a "right-wing apparatus." Clinton said she was merely responding to questions from U.S. troops. "I'm not going to lie to an American soldier," she said on CBS.
On domestic politics, Clinton assailed the administration for "radical ideas" such as eliminating overtime payments for millions of workers. "I thought they wanted to undo everything Bill Clinton had done," she said on NBC. "I took that a little personally. . . . Then I realized they're taking aim at the New Deal."
Clinton laughingly insisted on each program that she would not accept the Democratic presidential nomination, or even the vice presidential nod, in 2004. She declined to comment on the candidacy of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, saying she is not taking sides in the primaries.
Dean, interviewed on "Fox News Sunday," defended his recent statements in New Hampshire that he needed to "teach" Bush about defense because the president "doesn't understand what it takes to defend this country, that you have to have high moral purpose."
"There are not very many countries, after three years of George W. Bush's presidency, where people want to be like us anymore," Dean said. "That is what I mean by the loss of high moral purpose." He also said Bush had backed off efforts to cut combat pay for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dean was asked about his comments on National Public Radio's "The Diane Rehm Show" last week concerning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He said then: "The most interesting theory that I've heard so far -- which is nothing more than a theory, it can't be proved -- is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis."
Dean said yesterday that "I can't imagine the president of the United States doing that," but added that Bush needs to "give the information" to the commission investigating the attacks. Asked why he raised the theory, Dean said: "Because there are people who believe that. We don't know what happened in 9/11."
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie later called Dean "reckless and irresponsible" for "floating this incendiary theory."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghan Villagers Torn by Grief After U.S. Raid Kills 9 Children
December 8, 2003
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/international/asia/08AFGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
HUTALA, Afghanistan, Dec. 7 - Their embroidered caps, shredded with shrapnel, lay beside a half-dozen small rubber galoshes and caked pools of blood. Seven boys and two girls died here on Saturday morning in an American airstrike, and their bodies were still lying in the dust when American soldiers arrived by helicopter to assess the results of the attack three hours later, villagers and American soldiers at the scene said Sunday.
A 25-year-old Afghan man was also killed, the villagers said, while the intended target, a Taliban suspect who lived here and bragged about attacking foreign aid workers, might have gotten away, contrary to official accounts that he, too, was among the dead. Some villagers said the suspect and his family, whose house was unscathed in the attack, had not been seen for weeks.
The attack has raised questions about the quality of American military intelligence and the effectiveness of using air power to kill fugitive members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda who are hiding in villages. Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, said he was "profoundly shocked" at the deaths of the children and had sent a delegation to investigate and to offer help to the families. In an interview with the BBC, Mr. Karzai said future military operations should be better coordinated with the Afghan government.
The American military command expressed regret for the killings and sent officers to this village in a remote area of southern Ghazni Province on Sunday to apologize. But that did little to erase the shock, grief and anger over the dead children.
"As a human, what would you think?" said Khial Muhammad Hoseini, the deputy governor of the province. "Everyone would be angry at this. We cannot afford this sort of thing, killing innocent Afghans."
Villagers said the dead boys, who were 8 to 12 years old, had been in front of a house, and the girls, 9 and 10, had been fetching water from a stream alongside it when two American A-10 attack jets firing rockets and machine guns struck at 10:45 a.m.
"The boys were playing marbles," said one villager, thrusting forward a gnarled hand with three chipped glass marbles he said he had retrieved from the dust.
The rockets made 30 to 40 small craters in the ground around where the children had died. The 10th victim, an uncle of the two girls, rushed toward the stream after the first plane struck and was cut down beside them, said a woman who identified herself as the man's mother and the dead girls' grandmother.
Villagers in this small hamlet about 185 miles south of Kabul in southeastern Afghanistan said they buried the victims on Saturday night. On Sunday afternoon, the men were mourning in an open-air mosque and the women were weeping inside the houses. As some men showed journalists and a government delegation around the scene of the killings, they wondered aloud how the Americans could attack so indiscriminately when searching for just one man who, they said, was not even in the village.
"They bombed this place and said we were giving sanctuary to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but there are no Taliban or Al Qaeda here," said Abdul Majid Farooqi, the school principal and local mullah. "We all support the government."
American officials have said the intended target was a man named Mullah Wazir, a Taliban member believed to have been behind several attacks on aid workers in the region and on construction engineers working on a major American project to rebuild the Kabul-Kandahar road.
The American ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said at a news conference on Sunday in Kabul that Mr. Wazir was a "financier, organizer and facilitator of attacks on aid workers and workers on the highways." Two Indian workers employed on the construction project were reported to have been kidnapped Saturday evening in Zabul Province. There has been a rash of kidnappings and shootings in the area along the road, especially in Zabul Province, just south of here, all apparently attacks by the Taliban to disrupt the reconstruction.
Villagers said Mr. Wazir had left the village two weeks ago with his family after an American airstrike on a nearby field.
American soldiers pointed out the house where the family had been living, which they said had been searched, but was otherwise untouched by the bombardment.
Hundreds of civilians have been killed in American airstrikes in the two years since the United States began its military campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. After several disastrous raids last year in which planes bombed officials loyal to the Karzai government and after one incident that killed 48 civilians at a wedding party last July, the United States had appeared to restrict air assaults to more precise attacks, and only when groups of militants were engaged by coalition troops.
Nevertheless, the Saturday attack is at least the third this year in which civilians have been killed or wounded. Eleven members of one family were killed in April in Paktika, in eastern Afghanistan, when American forces called in airstrikes on militants escaping toward the Pakistani border. Eight people, including women and children, were killed in a village in the northern province of Nuristan on Oct. 30 when American planes bombed their village at night. The United States military acknowledged the April bombing but has not confirmed responsibility for the Nuristan bombing.
This time American soldiers were sent into the village within three hours of the airstrike to assess the scene, Capt. Jorge Cordeiro, the company commander, said in an interview at the scene. Standing amid fruit trees in an orchard slightly away from the village, he spoke as a Chinook helicopter escorted by an Apache helicopter gunship landed. "We came in to secure the site and do an assessment and allow for another team to come in and do the investigation," he said.
The investigation team arrived Sunday and had left by midafternoon, he said. The rest of the company was ready to pull out too, he said, after his men had exploded a number of munitions found in the village. The soldiers had also detained four armed men but said they would probably be released.
There was no further official statement from the United States military, pending the results of the investigation, but Mr. Khalilzad and the Afghan interior minister, Ahmed Ali Jalali, both said Sunday that Mr. Wazir had been killed.
Yet on the ground in the village, residents contradicted that assertion. Captain Cordeiro confirmed that the soldiers had found nine dead children and one dead adult who could have been the target, he said. But he said that the soldiers had not talked to villagers or identified the dead man.
Villagers said he was Abdul Muhammad, 25, who had returned 10 days earlier from Iran, where he had been working for three years digging wells. The woman who identified herself as his mother said she had finally arranged his wedding and he had returned for his engagement party, which was just five days away. "I was so pleased to have my son back," said the woman, who said her name was Guldana. "And now he is dead."
She had lost not only her son in the airstrike but her two granddaughters, Bibi Toara, 10, and Bibi Tamama, 9.
Two brothers in the village, Sarwar Khan and Hamidullah, lost three children between them, they said. "The Americans are all the time making these mistakes," said Mr. Khan, who two sons, Faizullah, 8, and Obeidullah, 10, were killed. "What kind of Al Qaeda are they? Look at their little shoes and hats. Are they terrorists?"
--------
Afghan Warlord Arrested
December 8, 2003
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/international/asia/08STAN.html
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Dec. 7 - A renegade Afghan warlord was arrested in a tribal area of Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, an official said Sunday.
The warlord, Bacha Khan Zadran, whose forces have at times fought alongside American troops but have also battled with the country's American-backed government, was taken into custody around Dec. 1 by Pakistani paramilitary border troops.
Mr. Zadran was detained along with three unidentified Afghans at Dirdoni, a border checkpoint 120 miles southwest of Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province, said Syed Zaheer-ul Islam, a local administrative official.
--------
Bout of Violence Rattles Afghans Attacks,
U.S. Airstrike Cast Pall Over Progress Toward Constitutional Assembly
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43239-2003Dec7?language=printer
KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 7 -- A flurry of terrorist attacks over the past several days, as well as the deaths of nine children Saturday in a U.S. air assault on a village where a lone Taliban fighter was said to be hiding, have cast a jittery pall over preparations for a historic constitutional assembly scheduled to begin Wednesday.
The U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, reacted with unusual sharpness to the Saturday air raid, saying it "follows similar incidents" and "adds to a sense of insecurity and fear in the country." Afghan officials were more restrained in their response.
Security is already tight for the constitutional assembly, with soldiers stationed at many city intersections. Officials have vowed not to let the U.N.-mandated meeting be sabotaged by violence, but they said Sunday that it may now be delayed by several days.
The recent attacks also threatened to overshadow two milestones in the country's reconstruction and pacification: the imminent completion of the 310-mile highway from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar, a U.S.-funded project, and the launching Sunday of a program to disarm and demobilize thousands of militia fighters in Kabul province.
Since Thursday, a bomb planted on a bicycle in downtown Kandahar wounded about 20 people; two Indian highway workers were kidnapped by reported Taliban fighters while buying chickens in a village in Zabol province; and a crew of census takers was ambushed by gunmen in remote Farah province, leaving one dead.
At the same time, U.S. military officials said an American air raid over the village of Atala in southern Ghazni province Saturday inadvertently killed nine children as well as a suspected Taliban fighter whom U.S. forces had targeted. Officials said the man was responsible for a recent ground attack on a U.S. military helicopter. Provincial officials and villagers, however, disputed reports of the man's death.
On Sunday, children's hats and shoes were scattered over a bloody field cratered by the U.S. airstrike on the mountain village, the Associated Press reported.
The U.S. raid immediately evoked comparisons to a U.S. gunship attack in July 2002 that killed 42 villagers in Uruzgan province, as well as an air raid last month that killed several members of a religious leader's family during a U.S.-led anti-terrorist operation in Nurestan province.
Brahimi, the U.N. special representative, urged that lessons "be learned from this episode so it will not be repeated."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was quoted on BBC Afghan-language radio Sunday night as saying he was "shocked and upset" by the deaths, but both he and other Afghan officials refrained from serious criticism of the U.S. military operation.
American military officials here said that the raid was based on "very complete" information that a Taliban fighter known as Mullah Wazir was hiding in the village, and that they had no idea children were in the immediate area. They said U.S. military personnel are in the area to assist the families of the victims.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said he was "deeply saddened" by the "tragic loss of innocent life." He told Afghan journalists that he had personally reviewed U.S. military aerial films of the area, and that they showed no children. He also said Wazir had boasted of killing civilians.
Ali Ahmad Jalali, the Afghan interior minister, said the children were killed "mistakenly," but he said the government had "asked for an explanation" from U.S. military authorities -- who pledged to investigate -- and had sent a team to probe the site. Jalali, who was terse and subdued at a brief news conference, described the targeted Wazir as a "notorious" Taliban terrorist leader.
Haji Assadullah, the governor of Ghazni province, said: "It has not been ascertained if Mullah Wazir was killed or not," but the house targeted in the air attack belonged to him, the Reuters news agency reported.
A resident of the village, Hamidullah, said his 8-year-old son, Habibullah, was among the dead. He said that the man killed along with the children was a cousin of Wazir's, while another villager said Wazir had left the village two weeks ago, according to the Associated Press.
Jalali, the interior minister, also described in some detail the kidnapping Saturday of two Indian highway workers, who he said had left their guarded camp and visited several village markets in Zabol province when their car was stopped by armed men. He said that the Indians were taken away and that several Afghans with them were freed.
"It looks like this was not a planned attack. . . . We are investigating it, and we hope to get to the bottom of it soon," said Jalali, adding that the incident might have links to the same local Taliban commander who kidnapped a Turkish highway engineer in October. The Turk was released unharmed last week after a month in captivity and weeks of negotiations with Afghan officials.
Revived Taliban forces have staged a series of increasingly daring and frequent attacks across southeastern Afghanistan in recent months, apparently attempting to sabotage the government's efforts at political and economic reconstruction and to undermine its relations with other nations. Numerous foreign aid projects have been suspended as a result of the violence.
The bicycle bomb in Kandahar and the kidnapping of the Indian workers followed a series of other attacks and threats by Islamic extremists, including the Nov. 16 slaying of a French woman working for the U.N. refugee agency. Also last week, a rocket landed in a field near the U.S. Embassy here, and authorities discovered a large cache of weapons and ammunition in the Kandahar prison from which 41 Taliban detainees escaped in October.
The U.N. spokesman here, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, said U.N. officials were "deeply shocked" by the Kandahar bombing and other extremist attacks. But he added that "Afghanistan is on the path of reconstruction, and Afghans, their government and their international partners will not be deterred by these despicable acts."
Over the past week, the United Nations has held relatively smooth elections across the country for candidates to the constitutional assembly, known as a loya jirga, with over 19,000 delegates participating. Officials said there have been a few incidents of militia commanders or other ineligible candidates being elected, but that they will be disqualified from attending the assembly.
One purported spokesman for the Taliban Islamic extremist movement told news agencies that anyone attending the assembly "deserves to die."
Officials said Sunday that the loya jirga will now likely be postponed by several days because of logistical issues. The constitutional assembly, a crucial step in Afghanistan's political progress toward national elections next year, had already been postponed once from its original October date.
Meanwhile, 200 soldiers and militiamen in Kabul province turned in their weapons to U.N. officials at a national guard base, beginning a process aimed at eventually demobilizing tens of thousands of fighters in the area. The disarmament of the Kabul area is considered crucial to pacifying and stabilizing the country.
-------- africa
Liberian Fighters Begin Disarmament
More Than 1,000 Surrender Weapons to U.N. in Step Toward Peace
By Jonathan Paye-Layleh
Associated Press
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43939-2003Dec7.html
CAMP SCHIEFFELIN, Liberia, Dec. 7 -- Thrusting their AK-47s in the air one last time, Liberia's fighters started surrendering weapons to United Nations peacekeepers Sunday, a major step toward ending 14 years of bloodshed and one of West Africa's most vicious conflicts.
The U.N.-supervised campaign to disarm 40,000 rebel and government forces nationwide opened with government forces lined up at an army barracks outside the capital, Monrovia.
One by one, more than 1,000 government and allied militia fighters -- among them boys as young as 12 -- handed automatic rifles to blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers.
The fighters then headed off in open trucks to disarmament camps, with sleeping mats and other belongings pinned under their elbows.
"I'm ready to disarm -- some of us have a future," said a 19-year-old soldier, Papa Monger, as crowds of fighters cheered.
U.N. envoy Jacques Klein, observing the disarmament process, repeated the warning he has issued several times to the country: "This is Liberia's last chance."
The start of disarmament follows an Aug. 18 peace deal, reached one week after warlord-turned-president Charles Taylor fled into exile as rebels laid siege to the capital.
Taylor, a Libyan-trained guerrilla fighter, launched the conflict in 1989, with an insurgency bent on taking control of the country. In the 14 years of power struggles that followed, an estimated quarter-million Liberians were killed, and West Africa was flooded with small arms, fueling conflicts across the region.
Taylor now lives in exile in Nigeria.
Klein pledged that disarmament of Liberia's two rebel movements would start by the end of the month. But in an ominous sign, the U.N. envoy said leaders of Liberia's main rebel group had "sabotaged" the start date by refusing to allow disarmament camps in their stronghold, Tubmanburg.
Rebels would start handing over weapons instead in the northern town of Gbarnga and the eastern port of Buchanan, he said.
"The fighters who disarm today will be given an opportunity to begin a new life -- free of fear, free of violence, free of the deprivations of war," Klein declared.
The ceremony Sunday was delayed when fighters initially refused to give up their guns pending payment of a $300 stipend promised by the United Nations to aid their reentry to civilian life.
Holding up their AK-47s, soldiers chanted, "No money, no weapon."
Officials outlined the disarming process to the fighters, by which each of them will receive a $150 payment before and then after three weeks of counseling and training at the containment camps. The fighters backed down and disarming began.
U.N. troops here -- due to grow to 15,000, the world body's largest deployment -- are to oversee the building of a new army for Liberia, after all sides disarm.
Government soldiers and militia fighters lining up to surrender arms included boys who gave their ages as 12, 13 or 14. Some looked younger but said they did not know their age.
Taylor's forces include veterans of his Small Boys Unit -- child fighters who helped carry out many of the most vicious attacks on civilians here, including massacres and rapes.
The conflict destroyed the economy of a country that had started the 20th century as one of Africa's most prosperous and developed nations, leaving a generation knowing nothing but war and violence.
-------- business
Lockheed Martin Wins Government Contract
Dec 10, 2003
(AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LOCKHEED_DEFENSE_CONTRACT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
DENVER -- Lockheed Martin Corp. has won a government contract worth up to $4.6 billion to make target missiles as part of a Pentagon plan to test the nation's missile defense systems.
The contract announced Tuesday initially is worth $210 million over a four-year period. But it can be extended over a decade and carries a $4.6 billion price tag if certain conditions are met.
"Protecting deployed forces, civilian populations and our territory from ballistic missile attack is one of our nation's highest priorities," G. Thomas Marsh, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, said in a statement.
The Bush administration plans to deploy a missile defense system beginning with 10 ground-based interceptor missiles next year and 10 more the following year.
The Pentagon contract calls on Lockheed Martin to design and build missiles that will try to mimic an enemy missile heading for the United States. The Pentagon will try to knock out the dummy missiles with an interceptor.
Lockheed has previously developed 16 test missiles for use by the Pentagon. Production of the new missiles is expected to begin next year.
Aside from Lockheed's facilities in Colorado, the work also will be done in Huntsville, Ala., Albuquerque, N.M., and the Washington, D.C., area. The company is based in Bethesda, Md.
Separately, Lockheed also announced Tuesday it had won a $100 million contract to launch a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO operates the nation's spy satellites.
The Atlas V rocket that will carry the NRO satellite into space will be built at Lockheed's Waterton Canyon facility.
In trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange, Lockheed shares closed down 2 cents at $48.40.
-------- chemical weapons
Japan recovers 36,000 chemical weapons left by troops in China
BEIJING (AFP)
Dec 08, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031208074651.wfdvxqk8.html
Japan has retrieved some 36,000 chemical weapons left by its troops in China, but they are yet to be destroyed as an agreement on how to do it is still being thrashed out, state media reported Monday. A Japanese official working to seal 724 chemical weapons along with five barrels of mustard gas that killed one person and injured 43 in north China in August said progress was nevertheless being made.
"A total of 36,000 chemical weapons including bombs, poisonous fume pipes and iron barrels containing chemical preparations have been retrieved and put under temporary safekeeping," the unnamed official said in an interview with Oriental Outlook magazine, carried by Xinhua on its website.
Japan started on-the-spot investigations in China in 1991 and began work on excavating munitions in northern Heilongjiang in September 2000, following on in eastern Jiangsu and northern Hebei province.
More than 700,000 chemical weapons are estimated by Japan to have been abandoned in China by its armies, although Chinese experts say as many as two million such weapons are still buried, giving China the world's largest stockpile of abandoned chemical weapons.
Attorneys for Chinese plaintiffs who have sued the Japanese government say some 2,000 Chinese have been killed or injured by abandoned chemical weapons and several thousand more have fallen victim to bombs.
Under the UN Chemical Weapons Convention, one of the earliest international treaties aimed at ending the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Japan has until 2007 to destroy them.
But experts say it will take much longer to safely dispose of so many bombs.
The official said both sides have agreed to build a center for the destruction of the weapons around Haerba Ridge in Dunhua city, Jilin province, but problems remained.
"Actually, the retrieved chemical weapons haven't yet been destroyed because decisions haven't been made on what technologies should be adopted for their destruction," said the official.
"What we have done are preparations for detoxification. The Japanese and Chinese sides meet monthly to discuss how to dispose of these chemical weapons and what environmental standards should be complied with.
"Why does the conferring between Japan and China take so much time? It's because the work has no precedent in human history."
He said Japan had committed 21.1 billion yen (192 million dollars) for the year from April 1 to clean up the weapons and the total budget over the past five years was 60 billion yen (547 million dollars).
"We have become deeply conscious that it costs much more time and money to destroy them than to have produced them," he said.
"The Japanese side is making conscientious efforts to accomplish its mission by 2007."
Japan's brutal occupation of Chinese territory before and during World War II remains a source of constant tension between the two countries, with many Chinese accusing Japan of apparent tardiness over the weapons issue.
Beijing has called for more precise information from Tokyo on exactly where the weapons were dumped, but the official said records did not exist.
"Everything was in chaos in WWII," he said. "I'm afraid there was no data arranged at that time and even if, would have been lost by now."
-------- china
Bush warns Taiwan against separation
December 10, 2003
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031210-120913-1273r.htm
President Bush said yesterday he opposes any efforts by Taiwan to separate itself from communist mainland China, a statement that Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said "we very much appreciate."
"We oppose any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo," Mr. Bush said after a private meeting with Mr. Wen during his official state visit to the White House. "The comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose."
Chen Shui-bian, president of the Republic of China (Taiwan), heightened tensions last week by announcing a ballot referendum on March 20 asking voters whether they want to demand that China withdraw hundreds of ballistic missiles aimed across the Taiwan Strait.
The Bush administration considers the referendum provocative and a first step toward a full-fledged independence movement for Taiwan, which has had free elections since 1991.
The "status quo" is a complicated "one-China policy," in which the United States is pledged to defend the quasi-sovereign Taiwan if attacked by the mainland, but recognizes the view of the People's Republic of China that the island is a "renegade province."
The White House earlier this month dispatched a National Security Council aide to Taipei in an effort to warn Mr. Chen against the referendum idea, to little apparent effect.
A senior White House official stressed yesterday that the strong rebuke of Mr. Chen does not change the U.S. commitment to come to Taiwan's aid if needed. "We told the People's Republic of China that if you try to use force or coercion against Taiwan, we will be there," the official said on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Wen expressed his gratitude yesterday for Mr. Bush's strong stance against the referendum, which the Chinese leader - along with senior members of the Bush administration - dismiss as a ploy to help Mr. Chen win a tough re-election battle next year.
"In particular, we very much appreciate the position adopted by President Bush toward the latest moves and developments in Taiwan - that is, the attempt to resort to referendum of various kinds as [an] excuse to pursue Taiwan independence," Mr. Wen told reporters in the Oval Office.
Mr. Wen said China would seek to settle its differences with Taipei peacefully, "so long as there is a glimmer of hope" for doing so.
At a dinner meeting last night, Mr. Wen repeated his pledge to seek peaceful unification.
"However," he said, China's quest for a peaceful solution "time and again has been challenged by Taiwan separatists."
He called the defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity a fundamental issue and referred to the American Civil War as an example of a nation paying a high price to stay united.
Privately, Bush administration officials say they have been trying to preserve the balancing act on Taiwan, opposing unilateral moves by the island toward independence as well as any military attempt by Beijing to reclaim Taiwan.
But the United States has felt compelled in recent days to offer a more explicit warning against action by Taiwan, said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
"We've been forced to react to steps taken by President Chen that seem to be pointing toward independence," the official said.
Asked how Mr. Bush's opposition to an independent and democratic Taiwan squares with his doctrine of spreading freedom around the world, a senior White House official said the president hopes China's economic freedom eventually will lead to political and religious freedom.
"We are in no way abandoning the drive toward democracy," the senior administration official said. "Democracy is alive and well in Taiwan, and the United States is in full support of it, and the president supports freedom throughout the world."
James Lilley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former ambassador to China, said the president's comments against the Taiwan referendum "maybe sounds pretty stark" but "we didn't overwhelm them with our statement."
David M. Lampton, director of Chinese Studies at the Nixon Center and a professor of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said, "Americans have to be a bit modest" when it comes to advancing liberty in China.
Members and supporters of the Falun Gong, a religious group that has been brutally oppressed in China, demonstrated across the street from the White House yesterday as Mr. Bush was meeting with Mr. Wen.
In his address during the official welcoming ceremony, Mr. Bush applauded Beijing for a "growth of economic freedom in China" and said he hoped "that social, political and religious freedoms will grow there as well."
----
On Eve of Chinese Premier's Visit, White House Warns Taiwan
December 8, 2003
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/international/asia/08CND-PREX.html
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 - The Bush administration stepped into the growing tensions between China and Taiwan today by clearly warning Taiwan against holding a referendum that could fuel the island's independence movement and announcing that it was dropping a longstanding American policy of deliberate ambiguity about how it would respond to moves by either side to change the status quo.
With China's new prime minister just hours away from a 19-gun salute on the South Lawn of the White House and a meeting in the Oval Office with President Bush, administration officials said there was no change in the fundamental one-China policy that now reaches back three decades. It repeated that China must not "coerce" Taiwan, that any reunification between the two must be peaceful, and that Taiwan must not provoke a crisis.
But today's statements, which build on a series of signals the administration has been sending for the past week, will be broadly interpreted as a warning to Taiwan that Washington not only opposes independence, but even political discussion or a referendum about the subject.
"What you're seeing here is the dropping of the ambiguity for both sides because we cannot sort of imply to the Taiwan side that we're sort of agnostic towards moves toward Taiwan independence," a senior administration told reporters today. "But at the same time we've got to make it clear to the Chinese that this is not a green light for you to contemplate the use of force or coercion against Taiwan."
A senior member of Bush's foreign policy team, James Moriarty, who runs Asian affairs for the national security council, secretly traveled to Taiwan last week to underscore American opposition to the referendum that Taiwan's president has proposed. The referendum would amount to a condemnation of China's missile buildup along its eastern coast, aimed at Taiwan. But the debate surrounding it would fuel the independence movement.
The actions today is bound to anger conservatives, who have long feared that Washington is backing away from the democratically elected government in Taiwan as China's economic and strategic significance grows.
-------- iraq
POLITICAL LEADERS
Iraqi Exiles Face Uncertainty as Enthusiasm for Them Dims at Home and in Washington
December 8, 2003
By JOEL BRINKLEY and DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/international/middleeast/08EXIL.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 7 - The way the exiles tell it, they are a gift to Iraq, shining role models for the new state.
"People look up to those of us coming from abroad," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council who lived in London for nearly 25 years. He added that the exiles "bring culture and progress and advancement from the West, as well as democracy and respect for human rights."
Half the Governing Council, and nearly all of the top political figures in Iraq today, are former opposition leaders who lived abroad during most of Saddam Hussein's years in power. With Iraq moving toward a new political configuration, Iraqis are debating whether these men are the nation's future or its past.
For the United States, it is an important question because successive administrations have built lasting, interdependent relationships with some of the Iraqi exiles over two decades. American officials acknowledge that a new home-grown Iraqi leadership could be less predictable and, perhaps, less friendly.
Today, most of the former opposition leaders appear intoxicated with their roles as interim leaders after decades in the political wilderness.
Last month, Jalal Talabani, a longtime Kurdish leader, served as president of the Governing Council - the first time, his aides pointed out, that a Kurd had been the nation's leader. He set out on a tour of the region, and the day he returned he remarked, his voice reflecting the wonder of it all, "Who would have thought that a Kurd could lead a delegation to Turkey to improve relations with Iraq?"
Mr. Talabani and other Kurds in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq could not visit the rest of Iraq under Mr. Hussein's government, just as the exiles from abroad could not. They and the exiles have their doubters and detractors, though.
"Most of the Iraqi people are expecting their leaders to come from the parties who worked against the old regime from inside," said Abdul Latif al-Mayah, a political scientist who is a director of the Arab Homeland Studies Center at Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The exile leaders, he added, "have been tested over the last months on the Governing Council and failed to achieve the things they talked about."
Their star has dimmed in Washington, too. Before the war, some Bush administration officials, including Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, advocated creating a provisional Iraqi government made up entirely of Iraqi exiles.
But in general, Bush administration officials now say, enthusiasm for the exiles has diminished over the months of occupation, as they have proved less reliable allies than many American officials had supposed before the war.
Ahmad Chalabi, who had been a favorite among Pentagon officials, is now out of favor among some because of his sharp public criticism of the Bush administration. When he visited Washington in September, he was not granted a meeting with President Bush.
"There's certainly been an evolution in the role of the exiles," a senior administration official said. "In the beginning, people were looking to the exiles because everyone else was the great unknown. Now their prominence and authority has declined somewhat, because the veil has been lifted, and we've found over six months of being in Iraq that there are other people we know and have come to trust."
In truth, most of the leaders Washington has come to know since the war were exiles, too, but they were not among those who curried favor in Washington.
All of these former opposition leaders realize that under the self-government plan they approved on Nov. 15, they may have to win a popular election to remain in power. Most are already campaigning, though none of them are calling it that.
"It's a bit early for campaigning," said Hamid Majeed Mousa, leader of the Iraqi Communist Party, which has a European-style social democratic platform. He lived in Prague and Kurdish-controlled Iraq for several decades.
Though he said he was not campaigning, Mr. Mousa acknowledged "talking to people in different parts of the country."
"We have visited struggling families," he added, with the general goal of "making my party influential and important."
Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish leader on the Governing Council, said he had been on television and visited people in Basra, Najaf and other points in southern Iraq where Kurds had not been able to travel for many years, though he claimed no particular interest in continued national public office. The same is generally true of Mr. Talabani.
Though politicians in most democratic countries do not acknowledge their ambitions until the time is right, it is hard to find a former exile leader who professes any interest in leading the country. Iyad Alawi, for example, is a prominent exile leader who has had close relations with the C.I.A. and who has been vigorously working to establish a national political base since returning last spring. Still, he said: "Things are so confused that I don't want to be a part of it. I think I will move to Lebanon or someplace else in Iraq."
But if they will not acknowledge their ambitions, nearly all the exile leaders are eager to describe their potential constituencies.
"My tribe has 200,000 people in Iraq" and neighboring countries, said Sheik Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, a Governing Council member and tribal leader who lived in Saudi Arabia before the war.
"My tribe is in Nasiriya," Mr. Rubaie said. Gesturing toward his bodyguards, he added, "I've got 16 blood relatives right over there."
While all the exiles believe that they could be elected to the transitional assembly to be chosen in June, they also realize it will be a greater reach to move up to the next stages: the interim government, the government to be elected in 2005 or even the presidency or premiership. Without expressing immediate interest in any of that, many of the former exile leaders promote the things they have learned abroad.
"Living abroad gives us this amazing experience, learning how wonderful democracy is," Mr. Mousa said.
They also said they had acquired an ability to compromise that seems alien to Iraqi culture. "I call it the all-or-nothing phenomenon," Mr. Rubaie said. "Compromise is a dirty word in Arabic. For Iraqis everything is a statement of principle."
As Sheik Yawar put it: "People here speak from their heart. And when you speak from your heart, you have a hard time hearing anyone else."
But for all the talk of their special qualifications, many of these former opposition leaders still betray a certain insecurity about their future.
The Governing Council decided last week that it would try to stay in power after the provisional government is formed in June, despite an earlier agreement to dissolve.
Joel Brinkley reported from Baghdad for this article and Douglas Jehl from Washington.
-------- israel / palestine
In Cairo Talks, Palestinians Fail to Agree on Cease-Fire
December 8, 2003
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/08/international/middleeast/08MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, Dec. 7 - Palestinian factions failed to reach an agreement on Sunday on a truce with Israel after several days of talks in Cairo.
The Egyptian hosts prodded the factions to strike a deal, and the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, also joined the discussions held among a dozen factions. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad, groups that have carried out most of the suicide bombings in Israel, rejected calls for a complete cease-fire.
"Hamas is not ready to make a comprehensive cease-fire," Muhammad Nazzal, a Hamas leader, told The Associated Press.
The failure of the Palestinian factions to reach an agreement was a setback for Mr. Qurei, who is seeking to arrange talks with the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
Mr. Qurei says he wants such a meeting to produce tangible results, and he was hoping to see the Israeli leader with a Palestinian cease-fire pledge in hand.
Top aides to Mr. Sharon and Mr. Qurei met again on Sunday to work on preparations for talks between the prime ministers. But there was no sign that a meeting was likely in the coming days.
The Fatah movement, which is headed by the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, and includes Mr. Qurei, was seeking a complete cease-fire with Israel as part of an effort to restart the Middle East peace plan known as the road map.
The Egyptians, who have brokered meetings among Palestinian factions on several occasions during the Palestinian uprising, also supported this position.
But Hamas and Islamic Jihad were among several groups that said they would accept only a limited truce, and they insisted that Israel meet several conditions, including an end to military raids in Palestinian areas, delegates said.
The groups indicated a willingness to halt suicide bombings and other attacks inside Israel's 1967 borders. But they said they would not call off attacks against Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
"If indeed there is calm and there is no terror, Israel will make every effort to avoid taking action against terrorists," Mr. Sharon said Sunday. "If the terror attacks continue, Israel, feeling itself responsible for the security of its citizens, will surely take action."
The overall level of violence has been down recently. No Palestinian suicide bomber has struck in more than two months, though Israel says its security forces have foiled 20 planned and attempted bombings during that time.
Hamas has not carried out a suicide bombing in nearly three months but continues with other attacks, primarily in the Gaza Strip.
Israel killed two Hamas members on Friday night as they were planting a bomb in Gaza, the military said. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attempted attack.
Palestinian groups declared a truce in June, but after several weeks of relative calm, it collapsed in August with Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military strikes in Palestinian areas.
-------- russia / chechnya
Aid Groups Complain of Russian Harassment
Organizations Helping Chechen Refugees Report Restricted Access, Seized Computers
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43937-2003Dec7.html
International aid groups working with Chechen refugees report intensifying harassment from Russian authorities who have seized computers, attempted to freeze bank accounts and made it difficult for relief workers to reach the people they are trying to help.
The trouble has increased in recent months, according to aid workers in the North Caucasus, who feel isolated and vulnerable in a region where kidnappings and violence are common and judicial accountability is an afterthought at best.
The Bush administration has complained to the Russian government of President Vladimir Putin, urging the Moscow authorities to order an end to the harassment of the relief organizations and grant better access to tens of thousands of refugees living outside Chechnya, a rebellious Russian province.
"It's the type of thing Russian law enforcement does to harass Russian businesses and others they are not happy with," said a U.S. official who works on the issue. "The Russian government is aware of our concern. Our interest has had a moderating influence, although it clearly has not stopped the harassment."
The United Nations reported last week that Russian authorities closed down the Aki Yurt tent camp in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, and evicted about 1,500 displaced Chechens. U.N. staff members said they were denied entry to the camp during the evictions.
Authorities cut electricity supplies to five of six temporary Chechen settlements and nearby mud brick houses as the temperatures dropped below freezing, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported.
The United Nations estimates that 110,000 people who fled war, lawlessness and destruction in Chechnya are scattered in Ingushetia's inhospitable borderlands. Many feel forgotten and fearful, resigned to the belief that the rugged conditions are an improvement over what awaits them in their homeland.
Ingush authorities, who put the refugee total at half that number, are anxious for the Chechens to leave. The Putin government similarly wants to see the refugees repatriated as evidence to the world that the war in the province is over and normality is returning. An estimated 30,000 refugees returned this year.
"One of the reasons they want to close the camps is they're very visible," said an Ingushetia-based aid worker who requested anonymity for fear of Russian reprisals. Asserting that the pressure on international aid groups has been increasing, the worker said the rules for access change "from day to day and NGO to NGO." NGO stands for nongovernmental organization.
A U.S.-based worker who has visited the region said, "On a daily basis, someone knocks on our door and says, 'We need to inspect you.' "
Relief organizations in Ingushetia report two principal areas of trouble. The first is what they collectively describe as constant harassment by local and federal authorities. The second is the limited access to the Chechens in tent camps -- and to battered Chechnya itself.
Among the tactics they report are petty enforcement operations, such as fire inspections and demands to know whether computer software has been registered. Computers have been seized, and authorities tried to freeze bank accounts, an effort that international staff members said would paralyze relief programs.
Threats and intimidation are common, staff members contend, and relief workers typically hire armed bodyguards to protect them day and night.
Among the groups that have been harassed are CARE, the International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps and Action Against Hunger. All belong to InterAction, an umbrella group of U.S.-based international relief and development organizations.
InterAction President Mary E. McClymont credited the Bush administration for raising the issue with the Putin government and said she hopes the Russian federal authorities "will bring an end to such behavior."
The Ingushetia-based relief worker said it is hard to be optimistic. The Russian authorities, he lamented, "would like us to move all our operations to Chechnya."
-------- propaganda wars
Public awareness key to more underground waste storage: nuclear agencies
STOCKHOLM (AFP)
Dec 08, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/031208162503.9nlhhaag.html
Radioactive waste must increasingly be stored underground and that can only be done if efforts are made to convince the general public that the method is safe, the heads of international nuclear agencies said on Monday.
"What is needed in the coming years is to link the dialogue with public opinion, to talk to the people so they have a better understanding of the situation from a safety point of view," said Luis Echavarri, head of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency.
Once that education effort had been undertaken, countries can then choose sites for so-called geological repositories and make the necessary arrangements, he said.
Echavarri was speaking in Stockholm at a conference on political and technical progress achieved since a 1999 Denver conference on geological repositories.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA, said "a number of countries have made significant progress in the implementation of site selection programmes for deep repositories."
However, "as expected, no geological repository for high level waste is yet in operation," he said, noting that in Europe, the European Commission is proposing a directive that would urge European Union member states to decide on repository sites by 2008 and have a site operational by 2018.
"The greatest challenge to repository development is how to build confidence in geological disposal among a wider interested and concerned audience," ElBaradei stressed.
----
Turkeys on the Moon... from Michael Moore
December 8, 2003
Michael Moore - mmflint@aol.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com
Dear Mr. Bush,
Well, it's going on two weeks now since your surprise visit to one of the two countries you now run and, I have to say, I'm still warmed by the gesture. Man, take me along next time! I understand only 13 members of the media went with you -- and it turns out only ONE of them was an actual reporter for a newspaper. But you did take along FIVE photographers (hey, I get it, screw the words, it's all about the pictures!), a couple wire service guys, and a crew from the Fox News Channel (fair and balanced!).
Then, I read in the paper this weekend that that big turkey you were holding in Baghdad (you know, the picture that's supposed to replace the now-embarrassing footage of you on that aircraft carrier with the sign "Mission Accomplished") -- well, it turns out that big, beautiful turkey of yours was never eaten by the troops! It wasn't eaten by anyone! That's because it wasn't real! It was a STUNT turkey, brought in to look like a real edible turkey for all those great camera angles.
Now I know some people will say you are into props (like the one in the lower extremities of your flyboy suit), but hey, I get it, this is theater! So what if it was a bogus turkey? The whole trip was bogus, all staged to look like "news." The fake honey glaze on that bird wasn't much different from the fake honey glaze that covers this war. And the fake stuffing in the fake bird was just the right symbol for our country during these times. America loves fake honey glaze, it loves to be stuffed, and, dammit, YOU knew that -- that's what makes you so in touch with the people you lead!
It was also a good idea that you made the "press" on that trip to Baghdad pull the shades down on the plane. No one in the media entourage complained. They like the shades pulled and they like to be kept in the dark. It's more fun that way. And, when you made them take the batteries out of their cell phones so they wouldn't be able to call anyone, and they dutifully complied -- that was genius! I think if you had told them to put their hands on their heads and touch their noses with their tongues, they would have done that, too! That's how much they like you. You could have played "Simon Says" the whole way over there. It wouldn't have been that much different from "Karl Says," a game they LOVE to play every day with Mr. Rove.
Well, if you're planning any surprises for Christmas, don't forget to include me. When I heard last week that you wanted to send a man back to the moon, I thought, get the fake goose ready -- that's where ol' George is going for the holidays! I don't blame you, what with nearly 3 million jobs disappeared, and a $281 billion surplus disappeared, and the USA stuck in a war that will never end -- who wouldn't want to go to the moon! This time, take ALL the media with you! Embed them on the moon! They'll love it there! It looks just like Crawford! You can golf on the moon, too. You'll have so much fun up there, you might not want to come back. Better take Cheney with you, too. Pretend it's a medical experiment or something. "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for every American who's sick and tired of all this crap."
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
-------- war crimes
War Crimes Court Established for Iraq
Chalabi says it isn't yet clear yet how many people will be tried. (Audio)
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
Associated Press Writer
Dec 10, 2003
http://customwire.a