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NUCLEAR
Dutch troops find depleted uranium ammunition in Iraq
NPT Secession
Enola Gay Reconsidered
MILITARY
Saudi Arrests 4,000, Seizes Arms Near Yemen Border
No Such Armament
World Unites in Offering Help to Quake - Hit Iran
Possible Opening to West Stirs Hope in Libya
US towns gather in their wounded
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good
OTHER
Cow Parts Used in Candles, Soaps Recalled
ACTIVISTS
Gaza Strip Walls Become Militants' Murals
Enola Gay Reconsidered
Enola Gay, 58 Years Later
Cops defend use of 'spy' tactics
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Dutch troops find depleted uranium ammunition in Iraq
Finding points to more DU material in the area
RISQ News, The Netherlands,
27 December 2003
http://www.risq.org/article232.html
Dutch troops stationed in the province of Al Muthanna in Southern Iraq have found a 30 mm round of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition. This has been announced by the Ministry of Defence today. According to RISQ Associate Maarten H.J. van den Berg, the finding points to the presence of more DU material in the area.
The shell was found on the 10th of December in a so-called 'demolition pit' in the town of As Samawah. According to a spokesperson of the Dutch Ministry of Defence, the health of those involved in the finding was not put at risk as the round was not destroyed and no DU dust released.
Given the reported calibre, the shell is probably of US origin. According to Mr. van den Berg, 30 mm DU ammunition has only been used in Iraq by American Apache helicopters and A-10 'Warthog' jets of the US Air Force.
As a RISQ Report on the issue published earlier this year confirmed, 30 mm DU ordnance has been fired in airstrikes over As Samawah -- in 1998 and, more recently, during operation 'Iraqi Freedom'. Consequently, "it is more than likely that there are more sources of DU to be found in the area", Mr. Van den Berg concludes. Dutch army personnel unions have raised concern about the incident. "Last week we talked to officials of the Ministry of Defence but they did not mention the incident", says Mr. J. Kleian, chairman of the Christian Association of Military Personnel (ACOM). His colleague of the Union for Defence Personnel (VBM), pointing at prior agreements with the Ministry on information-sharing, stated that "this is not something that should have been kept from the public".
In July, the Minister of Defence assured MPs that "no DU-ammunition was used recently in Al-Muthanna". However, as said RISQ Report led MPs to raise questions, the Minister admitted that the assurance derived from unverified information. Citing the US government as saying that "it is still in the process of preparing an assessment of DU-firing locations in Iraq", the Dutch government's current standpoint is that "it will await the results of [this] investigation".
About RISQ: http://www.risq.org/contentid-1.html
-------- treaties
NPT Secession
December 27, 2003
WorldNetDaily.com
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36339
A year ago, President Bush was searching for a rationale for applying his newly promulgated Bush Doctrine in the War Against Terror.
Now, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il had already provided such a rationale. He had just torn up the Clinton-Carter Agreed Framework, had announced he was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and had told International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors - who had been verifying compliance with both the Agreed Framework and the NPT - to get out of North Korea and never return.
A year ago, Iraq, Iran and North Korea were all NPT signatories and were, therefore, subject to the IAEA-NPT Safeguards and Physical Security regime.
In return for a promise to not develop nukes, NPT signatories have a right to import all sorts of "nuclear" materials and technologies. Materials that can be used to produce nukes - such as highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium - and the facilities capable of producing such materials, have to be "declared" by NPT signatories and made subject to the IAEA-NPT regime.
In the aftermath of the Gulf War, the IAEA discovered that Iraq had "gamed the system." In Iraq's 1996 classified report to the IAEA, Iraq had admitted it bought items from Germany, Britain, the United States, Switzerland, France, Japan, Italy, Sweden and Brazil that ought to have been "declared," but weren't. Hence, the IAEA had no way of determining that these undeclared items were employed during the 1980s in a program intended to produce nuke-useable highly enriched uranium.
There already existed a 40-member Nuclear Suppliers Group - which included no-nuke states such as Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Italy, Sweden and Brazil - which was originally formed to control the export by NSG members of items that clearly could be used in a clandestine nuke-development program.
In 1996, the NSG decided to henceforth control items that were not-so-clearly of use in a nuke-development program. Furthermore, NSG members began to require the recipient nation - NPT signatory or not - to subject all such NSG imports to the IAEA-NPT regime.
In effect, since 1996, the NSG has become the export "enforcer" and the IAEA the import "enforcer" for preventing nuke proliferation, transcending the NPT, itself.
The United Nations Security Council can impose sanctions for NPT violations and may - if it can be shown that the violations result in an immediate threat to other nations - even authorize the use of force to remove the threat.
The U.N. Security Council had merely imposed economic sanctions on Iraq in 1991 for NPT violations and ordered Iraq to destroy what was left of its clandestine - but unsuccessful - uranium-enrichment program. However, if Iraq had been discovered in 2003 to have resumed its nuke-development program, the Security Council might well have authorized application of the Bush Doctrine to Iraq.
As we now know, Saddam had not even attempted to resume nuke development.
Of course, if the U.N. Security Council determines that any nation's activities constitute an immediate threat to other nations, it can authorize the use of force to remove that threat, irrespective of whether that nation is an NPT signatory or not.
A decade ago, North Korea already had a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor - ostensibly to produce 5 megawatts of electricity - and was building larger plants, all capable of producing weapons-useable plutonium. Ominously, North Korea had also built and was operating a plant to recover that plutonium.
All of these facilities and plutonium produced had been subjected to the IAEA-NPT regime back in 1992. However, there had been a dispute about how much plutonium ought to have been "declared." Enter Clinton-Carter and their 1994 Agreed Framework: In return for two free nuclear power plants, North Korea agreed to "freeze" all its other nuclear activities - the freeze to be verified by on-site IAEA inspectors.
Then, last year, we accused North Korea of violating the Agreed Framework. So, North Korea announced it was withdrawing from the NPT and unfreezing its nuke-development program.
Most Americans agree that preventing nuke terrorism justifies the preemptive use of force. But as the IAEA reported a year ago, it was Kim Jong-Il who had nukes or the makings, thereof - not Saddam Hussein. North Korea seceded from the NPT, not Iraq.
Seceding from the NPT was, of course, North Korea's right. But seceding from the Union was South Carolina's right, too.
So, even though Kim fired the first shot, Bush retaliated by invading and occupying Iraq. That's a bit like Lincoln retaliating for Fort Sumter by invading and occupying Canada.
Who knows? Maybe he should have.
Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. Dr. Prather also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. -- ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and member of the Senate Energy Committee and Appropriations Committee. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Enola Gay Reconsidered
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33315-2003Dec26.html
THE FIRST AND MOST important thing to say about the new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum is what a pleasure it is to visit and what a tremendous addition it is to Washington's already numerous and outstanding museum spaces. The building is large enough to contain a Concorde, a space shuttle and an impressive collection of hang gliders, along with dozens of other planes. Yet it seems neither cramped nor overwhelming. About 50,000 people are estimated to have passed through the front doors since the exhibition hall opened on Dec. 15; on the Saturday before Christmas, about 20,000 showed up. Nevertheless, the interior hardly seemed crowded, although the parking lot was packed.
Now that opening-day jitters have subsided, however, and now that museum staff have weathered the scattered protests, it is time for curators to reconsider the label that describes the Enola Gay, the World War II B-29 bomber that is by far the museum's most controversial exhibit. This isn't to say that a major change is needed. In keeping with the simple descriptions of the other exhibits, the current label briefly identifies the plane as the aircraft that "dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan." This is correct, but not sufficient, since it gives visitors no real sense of the historic nature of that event, let alone the number of people who died.
True, any new label must reflect the context. The Air and Space Museum is not the place to mourn victims, to debate the causes and consequences of World War II or to argue about how many lives were or were not saved by President Truman's decision to use atomic weapons to end the war. Given that the exhibition hall includes Nazi, Soviet and Imperial Japanese planes, as well as a Soviet anti-aircraft missile, it would also be wrong for a label to imply that the U.S. use of nuclear weapons was somehow uniquely evil, particularly given that the number of civilians killed by conventional airborne bombs in World War II was far higher than the number killed using nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless, a subtle statement similar to the one that appears near the nuclear missiles on display at the Air and Space Museum's downtown exhibition hall -- which reflects on the dual uses of many aviation and space technologies -- would not be out of place. Nor would it require much agonizing to add a few extra sentences in order to help younger visitors who might not know the history to put the Enola Gay in perspective. We would suggest something like this: "The Enola Gay dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb killed 80,000 people, brought a rapid end to World War II -- a conflict which had by then taken millions of civilian and military lives -- and ushered in the nuclear age."
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Saudi Arrests 4,000, Seizes Arms Near Yemen Border
By REUTERS
December 27, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-saudi-yemen.html?pagewanted=print&position=
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has arrested more than 4,000 people and seized large quantities of weapons and drugs in the south of the country, along the border with Yemen, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said on Saturday.
The agency did not say over what time the arrests and the seizures were made in the Najran province. Both Yemen and Saudi Arabia are combating Islamic militants believed to be linked to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
The agency said border police had netted dynamite and ammunition as well as hashish and wine with the 4,047 infiltrators. Saudi authorities have in the past reported on arrests and arms hauls in Najran.
Saudi Arabia has recently stepped up security along its border with Yemen, a traditional route for drug and arms smuggling. Yemeni and Saudi militants have also crossed the border.
At least 50 people have been killed in suicide car bombings in Saudi Arabia since May. Yemen is bin Laden's ancestral homeland and has also suffered attacks by al Qaeda sympathizers against national and foreign targets.
----
No Such Armament
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Washington Post; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33307-2003Dec26?language=printer
On the Dec. 20 Free for All page, John Schmitt of Washington wrote: "1981-1988: United States exports military equipment to Iraq." This is an outright falsity.
The armed forces of Iraq under Baathist rule fielded absolutely no U.S. "military equipment." I challenge Schmitt or any other writer to identify a single piece of American military equipment in the Iraqi arms inventory, not including what they may have captured from Iranian forces.
No U.S. military equipment was exported to Iraq from the United States.
No American tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, infantry weapons, artillery, jet aircraft, missile systems or naval systems were fielded by Saddam Hussein's army.
In fact, because Hussein's Iraq was a sworn military and political treaty ally of the Soviet Union, according to their 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984 and 1988 agreements, nearly 97 percent of the Iraqi military inventory was of Soviet bloc manufacture. Interestingly, Iraq did field approximately 100 French jet fighters and strike aircraft (Mirages, Super Etendards, exocet missiles), a handful of South African self-propelled artillery systems and some helicopters manufactured by a European consortium. But this made up only a small fraction of Saddam Hussein's armament. His military was organized according to and operated within classic Soviet positional warfare doctrines.
Schmitt's assertion has become a popular canard during the past 15 years.
What evidence does he offer to back it up? It certainly cannot be proven by an examination of the arms of the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein.
-- Todd C. Stromberg
Alexandria
-------- iran
World Unites in Offering Help to Quake - Hit Iran
By REUTERS
December 27, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-quake-iran-aid.html?pagewanted=print&position=
GENEVA (Reuters) - President Bush, who once branded Iran part of an ``axis of evil,'' and other world leaders stepped up aid on Saturday to Tehran, struggling to cope with an earthquake disaster that killed 20,000 people.
Washington has no official ties with Tehran, but Bush said in a statement: ``We stand ready to help the people of Iran.'' A U.S. official said an aid package would be announced soon.
Washington broke diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic after militant students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Bush has accused Iran of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction in secret, but Tehran said assistance was welcome from every corner of the globe other than Israel, its other great political enemy along with the United States.
Iranian officials said some 50,000 people were also injured when Friday's quake struck the ancient Silk Road city of Bam in southeast Iran, devastating 70 percent of its buildings.
The United Nations, European Union countries, Russia, China, Poland, Japan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Australia and others pledged doctors, medical supplies, financial aid and rescuers with sniffer dogs and equipment to help find survivors.
ITALY OVERSEES EU AID
Italy, as current president of the European Union, will coordinate EU aid to avoid duplication.
The United Nations said it was releasing an immediate emergency grant of $90,000 and had sent experts to help assess the damage. Its Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the U.N. team would also work to mobilize and oversee international assistance.
The immediate need was for medicines, tents, mobile hospitals, electricity generators, water purification equipment and blankets, OCHA official Madeleine Moulin-Azevedo said.
The U.N. children's fund UNICEF said it was sending medical supplies and called for $350,000 in donations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's office said he had ordered the Emergencies Ministry, which deals with frequent natural and man-made disasters, to send doctors, paramedics and sniffer dog handlers to help find people buried under rubble.
Planes were due leave for Iran on Saturday with 100 experts for searching collapsed buildings, 10 doctors and search dogs.
Russia has close ties with Iran, and is building a nuclear power station near the southern city of Bushehr on the Gulf.
EU COORDINATION
Agostino Miozzo, the official coordinating EU aid, said France was sending a field hospital and the Czech Republic, one of 10 countries entering the bloc next year, also offered help.
``This is the first time EU coordination is taking place for a disaster,'' Miozzo said. The EU Commission said it would mobilize 800,000 euros ($995,100) of initial humanitarian emergency aid.
Part of a 60-strong British rescue team with sniffer dogs, special cameras and listening devices arrived in Bam on Saturday and officials said the rest were expected to join them soon.
A Belgian C-130 military transport plane was due to bring vehicles, water, blankets and food on Saturday and Belgium also offered a field hospital and medical crew.
Italy sent a sniffer dog unit, fire brigade and search teams and Germany offered help in rescuing people who may be trapped in collapsed buildings and to repair damage. A plane carrying 42 German rescuers arrived in the Iranian capital on Saturday.
ISRAEL CONDEMNS SNUB
Israel offered condolences and government spokesman Avi Pazner said private Israeli societies had offered help. ``But Iran prefers to play politics instead of accepting a generous offer by private Israelis. It is their decision,'' he said.
Turkey, which has plenty of experience in quake relief work, said five military cargo planes carrying search and rescue teams and humanitarian aid and body bags had arrived near Bam on Saturday. Extra aid was due to arrive by road early next week.
Japan, another country with quake expertise, said it was sending a specialist medical team and about $230,000 of equipment including tents, generators, blankets and water tanks.
China said the first batch of $600,000 worth of aid would be dispatched Saturday along with a 43-member rescue team.
Australia pledged $1.5 million in emergency help and South Korea offered at least $200,000-worth.
Greece, which pledged more than $300,000 in emergency aid, said a 20-strong emergency and rescue team and supplies would fly on Saturday with more doctors and equipment following later.
Austria was due to send 120 rescue workers on Saturday with sniffer dogs and two water purification machines and Saudi Arabia also planned to send a medical team on Saturday armed with medicine, blood, food and clothing.
Jordan was planning to dispatch a military field hospital with up to 80 staff and other in-kind assistance by Monday while the Red Crescent in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates also announced they would send supplies and medicine.
-------- mideast
Possible Opening to West Stirs Hope in Libya
Gaddafi Seeks to End Hostilities with U.S. and Revive Economy Hobbled by Years of Sanctions and Isolation
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 27, 2003; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33259-2003Dec26?language=printer
TRIPOLI, Libya, Dec. 26 -- In the walled old quarter of Libya's capital, the collapsed remains of a house served as a refuse dump and rag pickers' paradise. Street urchins scampered among the ruins on Friday, picking through plastic bags and pulling out shirts and tattered blankets. One boy was lucky and found a pair of repairable jeans. An old man intently inspected a limp cabbage.
It was a distressing dawn scene that residents in the neighborhood hope will soon change. Three decades of jerky economic experiments at home and tensions abroad are about to give way to a new era in Libya, according to government officials.
Moammar Gaddafi, Libya's leader since 1969, who has portrayed himself alternately as a pan-Arab revolutionary and a pan-African liberator, has announced an opening to the West. He has sought to end years of confrontation with the United States by giving up programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. In return, Libya expects the United States to stop isolating it so it can enjoy the benefits of trade and economic development, especially within its oil industry.
In the old city, Libyans are both hopeful and skeptical. Their doubts stem from the twists and turns under Gaddafi's rule and from concerns about U.S. intentions. "We need something different. We have possibilities. No one should be living out of garbage here. We have oil. There is no reason to be poor forever," said Kareem Fakeeh, a deliveryman pushing produce through town on a wheelbarrow. "Of course, we have had many promises," he continued, his voice softening. "We have been told many things."
The next step in Libya's diplomatic offensive takes place Saturday when Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U. N. International Atomic Energy Agency, visits Tripoli. He will test Libya's intentions to permit thorough inspections of its nuclear programs, IAEA officials say. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have praised Gaddafi's stated plans.
In Washington, administration officials attributed the offer to political heat radiating through the Middle East from the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the toppling of president Saddam Hussein. In Tripoli, government officials say that Gaddafi's proposal is part of an evolution that began before the war. "It's a sign of our maturity," said Giuma Abulkher, the foreign liaison director for the government information office. "We don't need these programs. We have no bad intentions. We have looked around and calculated a new reality."
He said the Libyan and U.S. governments have mutual interests: The United States desires greater and varied sources of oil, and Libya wants to cement relations with the West. Libya is no longer interested in getting involved in regional conflicts or supporting "liberation movements," including terrorist groups. The country wants to embark on large-scale reform and attract investment. "We are committed to Libyan national interests," Abulkher said.
The Libyan government is not apologizing for its past, Abulkher insisted, although he acknowledged "mistakes" were made.
But Libya has practical reasons for restoring its standing with the United States. U.S. and international economic sanctions over the last 20 years have taken a toll on its economy. The country pumps about 1.4 million barrels of oil a day, less than half as much as it did in 1970. This is a major problem for Libya, because oil accounts for almost all of its export earnings.
The United States and Libya have been in conflict off and on since 1981, when U.S. fighter jets shot down a pair of Libyan planes over disputed waters. Libya was reportedly behind two 1985 bombings at the Rome and Vienna airports that killed 19 people. In retaliation for the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco that killed two American soldiers, U.S. jets struck a government compound in Libya. The attack killed 37 people, including a daughter of Gaddafi. Two years later, Pan Am Flight 103 bound for New York blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, taking the lives of 270 people.
A change in Libya's stance came in 1999, when Gaddafi turned over two suspected Libyan masterminds of the Lockerbie bombing for trial. One was convicted. Gaddafi told a magazine interviewer, "All of these things are in the past." U.N. sanctions were lifted, but not American sanctions.
Then, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Gaddafi announced he wanted to "eliminate the common dangers of international extremism and terrorism."
Finally, this year, Libya agreed to pay Lockerbie families $10 million for each victim. However, U.S. bans on trade persist. In October, Gaddafi signaled a new approach to foreign policy. "Libya has for too long endured the Arabs, for whom we have paid blood and money," he said during a speech to a group of women. As a result, he said, Libya had been "boycotted by the U.S. and demonized by the world." Rhetorically, Gaddafi has traveled a long way from the 1980s, when he said of the Palestinian terrorist operative Abu Nidal: "If Abu Nidal is a terrorist, so is George Washington."
The Libyans appear wary of Washington's intentions, especially after President Bush's recent speech in which he formalized the administration's goals of democratizing the Middle East. Abulkher viewed the invasion of Iraq through the lens of Libya's past as an Italian colony. "No one likes the Iraq war, and the Americans ought to be careful," he said. "They are paying with money and blood. We are not afraid of bombs. We have been bombed before."
Tripoli's shabby downtown exhibits the wear of isolation and economic stagnation. Paint peels away in the winter wind and stores are ill-stocked. But unlike Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the Libyan government does not dispatch minders to accompany reporters around town.
Satellite dishes festoon rooftops and al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite television news station, blared out news from corners of teahouses where youths idle and talk of their dreams for better days. "Our fathers believed in all this Arab unity business. It was like magic for them," said Hassan Drera, who said he wanted to be a computer programmer. "We want Libya to take care of Libya. The old ideas are finished for us."
A plaza nearby was adorned with a billboard of Gaddafi celebrating his 34 years in power. Gaddafi was shown in flowing robes, one of several guises he wears in portraits that dot the city: Gaddafi as a desert sheik, Gaddafi as army officer, Gaddafi as a dandy in sun glasses, his chin jutting upward. Rotating panels showed Libya beneath a rising sun casting light on Africa, then switched to a scene from Gaddafi's revolutionary days as he drove a blue Volkswagen Beetle and tossed leaflets on Tripoli streets. Buildings were trimmed in green, in honor of Gaddafi's Green Book, which lays out his ideology, including the notion that wages are a form of slavery.
The eyes of Drera and his friends shifted nervously when asked about his leadership.
"First, we were with the Arabs, then with Africa, and now everyone says we are Mediterranean. Libyans have been everything except very prosperous," he said with a quiet laugh.
A friend said that he liked to use the Internet, but that in Libya it was mysteriously unreliable. On Friday, for instance, no Internet cafe functioned because there was a government meeting going on somewhere. "They shut it down every time some political event is taking place," the youth said. "This is Libya. They say things are changing, but I don't see it enough yet."
In the old city, a crowd gathered at a grocery store to gape at an American reporter. Although Americans occasionally travel to Libya, they are enough of a rarity to draw a crowd.
Abu Shuk, like many elderly people in Tripoli, spoke fluent Italian and invited the reporter for a stroll. "America buona," he said. "America, good. But the American government . . . I don't expect much from it. They talk in America about democracy in Iraq, but what about here? I haven't heard anything about that. Oil seems to be the important thing. We give up the atomic weapons, the Americans get oil, and what will change?"
He guided the reporter to the old British consulate, now a scientific institute. An inscription said the building was once used to launch expeditions "to occupy and colonize vital and strategic parts of Africa."
"You see, foreigners have been interested in Libya before, but not because they want to help the Libyans. I don't know if we will also be helped now."
-------- us
US towns gather in their wounded
Returnees shunned by national media win warm local welcome
Gary Younge in Greenfield, Missouri
Saturday December 27, 2003
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1112913,00.html
As the honorary grand marshall of Greenfield's Christmas parade, Derick Hurt waved with his right hand as he led the other vehicles in a lap of the main square on Saturday.
His left hand is still not functional since he bailed out of his Humvee in Mosul, Iraq, and landed on it, breaking his wrist. Every now and then he would stop saluting locals holding "Welcome Home Derick" posters and tap the spot where his lower leg used to be, to ease the throbbing.
Behind him, local dignitaries, church groups, and the kings and queens of the high school threw sweets to children from the boats and floats on which they were towed. Ahead of him was a lifetime of disability as an amputee, with a body flecked with shrapnel.
"It's a big thing for me," said Mr Hurt, 26, of the reception he has received in the week since he arrived home. In a town of around 1,500 nestled in the rural midwest, an area of big skies and small creeks, his injury and homecoming have been a big event. Local people raised thousands of dollars to help his family travel to see him at the Walter Reed military hospital in Virginia. Cameras from the local networks met him when he arrived at the airport in Springfield. When he got to Greenfield, the town was waiting in the square.
Around 2,657 soldiers have been injured in Iraq, according to the Pentagon. But while the death toll influences political debate and prompts public discomfort, the swelling legions of the wounded - around 10 a day - have failed to make any impact on a national level.
With the exception of Jessica Lynch, whose capture, rescue and return has already produced two books, one film and a national myth, little has been heard until recently about those who came back to start a new life in wheelchairs and on crutches.
And little that has been heard has been good. There were the wounded who had to wait for weeks for medical treatment in Fort Stewart Georgia, where they complained of filthy conditions. There was Shoshana Johnson, a black woman who was shot in both legs and held prisoner for 22 days, who says racism is the only explanation for why she receives $700 (£500) less each month than Ms Lynch. Then came was the scandal of wounded soldiers being forced to pay $8.10 a day for their hospital meals, until the rule was repealed by Congress.
When Mr Hurt was at Walter Reed hospital, a cast of stars visited to boost morale, including Bruce Willis, Shania Twain and Cher.
After Cher's visit, in late October, she called a television phone-in program to ask: "Why aren't Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the president - why aren't they taking pictures with these guys? I don't understand why these guys are so hidden, why there are no pictures of them."
To some, this is more evidence that George Bush - who has yet to attend the funeral of any soldier killed in the war and refers to the casualties only in general terms - is trying to distance himself.
But last week, Mr Bush was to be seen on television visiting the Walter Reed hospital.
"We put a lot of fine troops in harm's way to make this country more secure and the world more free and the world more peaceful," he said.
"We ask them to face great dangers to meet a national need."
When Mr Hurt joined the army in 2000, he had little sense of great danger. "It was peaceful at the time," he said. "I never imagined I would fight."
Then came September 11. Mr Hurt was sent to Jordan. It was his first time abroad.
The second was when he went to Kuwait in February, in preparation for the invasion of Iraq. On September 13, he drove a Humvee through the city's empty streets. The night before, he had written to his father saying all was quiet in town.
Suddenly there was a flash, and then another one. "I was in shock," he said. "The engine had died and I knew I had to get out of the car. I used my bodyweight to lever myself out of the window, which is probably when I broke my wrist."
He lay face-down on the kerb amid the smoke and the gunfire. "I thought, this is it. I'm going to die right here, just like a vegetable on the ground."
Then he heard one of his fellow soldiers shout his name as his comrades came to his aid. He screamed in pain as one tied a tourniquet around one of his injured legs.
"One of them was just hanging on by a thread and the other one was all battered up," he said.
His father received a phone call at 1.30 the next morning. "I knew it was the military, and I knew that since they called me he must still be alive, because they come around in person if they're dead," he said. "So I thought, 'So long as he's still alive I can deal with the rest.'"
Mr Hurt was in hospital in Germany for five days before he was flown to Walter Reed, where he stayed for three months. "I was thinking, 'This is it. It's not going to get any better. What kind of job can I get now?'"
Still, he does not regret joining the army - "These things happen for a reason," he says.
Mr Hurt cannot fault the veterans' administration, which is advising him on benefits. He misses sport, but is driving already, and living with his father until he returns to Walter Reed for treatment next month. After that, he is thinking of going back to his former job as a machinist, where the workshops are wheelchair friendly.
"I've been very impressed," said his father. "It took me six months to get a job when I got back from Vietnam, and they gave me nothing."
-------- propaganda wars
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good
Where Are They Now?
By SCOTT BURCHILL
CounterPunch
December 27/28, 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/burchill12272003.html
Central Intelligence Agency, Langley Virginia Office of Villains Department of Wayward Clients and Unsavoury Friends Status Report: December 2003 To: George J. Tenet, Director of Central Intelligence
Below is the updated report you asked us to prepare with comments, in light of Saddam's apprehension. With the exception of Warren Anderson, we have omitted US nationals (e.g. Kissinger) from the list.
Deceased
Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), Nicolae Ceausescu (Romania), Mobutu Sese Seko (Congo/Zaire), Pol Pot (Cambodia), Heydar Aliyev (Azerbaijan)
Comment: Good friends before most became liabilities. Marcos--greatly admired by Paul Wolfowitz--died soon after we got him to Hawaii, while Ceausescu passed on more suddenly than we expected after many years of loyal service. Pol Pot hung on far too long but had the decency to keep out of sight until the end. Aliyev was much appreciated for bringing dynastic succession and a pro-Western oil policy to Central Asia.
In custody on trial or awaiting trial
Manuel Noriega (Panama), Slobodan Milosevic (fmr Yugoslavia--The Hague), Saddam Hussein (Iraq)
Comment: We managed to gloss over the revelation that Noriega was on the CIA payroll under GWB's father before jailing him. Hopefully we can do the same to Saddam, though US and UK support for his WMD programs during the 1980s and 1990s could prove very embarrassing in court. Ditto for Chirac and the Russians. Big mistake taking him alive. Footage of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in 1983 and not mentioning WMD looks bad, though networks can be trusted to show restraint despite the approaching 20th anniversary (esp Fox).
Faking illness to avoid trial
Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Soeharto (Indonesia)
Comment: Pinochet is senile and, thanks to the Brits, at little further legal risk. Soeharto has the worst human rights record of all and would be easy to nab from Jakarta, though opposition from admirers like Wolfowitz and friends in Canberra should be expected. Too much detail about our support for his 1965 massacres has already leaked out. Has enough knowledge and residual military support to buy immunity and a quiet suburban death on his own terms.
On the run
Osama bin Laden (Saudi Arabia)
Comment: Still unclear how much money and arms we actually gave him to fight the Sovs in Afghanistan. Now protected by Islamists in the Pakistan military and assorted Taliban. Will be difficult to apprehend without losing Musharraf in the process. Priority here is control of the Islamic bomb.
Free
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvallier (Haiti--in France), Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Central African Republic), Hector Gramajo (fmr defence minister, Guatemala--in Guatemala)
Comment: Hopefully forgotten (we are trying).
New Friends (undemocratic)
Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan), Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan), Teodoro Obiang (Equatorial Guinea), Abdelaziz Bouteflika (Algeria)
Comment: A measure of our new commitment to spreading democratic politics. Some have oil, one is Stalinist, all have corruption. None have democracy. Like old friends in the Gulf, they have been advised not to take GWB's freedom and democracy speeches seriously.
Given sanctuary by US
Jose Guillermo Garcia (fmr head of El Salvador armed forces, 1980s--Florida), Cuban and Haitian exiles (Florida), South Vietnamese army officers (California)
Comment: We now believe there are more terrorists per square kilometre in Florida than any other place on earth--all with safe haven. Most are from the abattoir states of Central America under Reagan.
It's a battle to keep them away from snooping journalists when they slip their agency minders. Just as well GWB's dictum about countries that provide sanctuary to terrorists doesn't apply to Miami.
Refusing to extradite
Emmanuel Constant (leader of paramilitary group FRAPH in Haiti who murdered thousands in the 1990s--in NYC)
Comment: Avoid comparison with the Taliban's refusal to extradite Osama after 9/11. Haiti is unlikely to bomb the East Coast. Warren Anderson (chairman of Union Carbide, now Dow Chemical), responsible for the 1984 Bhopal gas leak in India that killed 16,000 people--Long Island, New York)
Comment: They are only Indians, after all. Even Delhi is reluctant to compensate the victims and 120,000 survivors. Unlikely to ever face charges of culpable homicide.
Unindicted
Ariel Sharon (Israel)
Comment: Long record of brutality, most notably in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Rebadged "man of peace" by GWB in the Orwellian sense. European travel may become difficult.
Turkish leaders
Comment: No longer so well disposed after they failed to help us out in Iraq. Army even refused Wolfowitz's order to defy the government and back the invasion.
Remember not to call Turkey's attacks on its Kurdish population "terrorism" because we supplied them with the means to do it. As with Colombia, our money officially goes to the guys in the white hats--or in this case--the white fezzes.
Scott Burchill lectures in international relations at Deakin University. This article originally appeared in The Age.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- health
Cow Parts Used in Candles, Soaps Recalled
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 27, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Mad-Cow-Bones.html?pagewanted=print&position=
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- Cow parts -- including hooves, bones, fat and innards -- are used in everything from hand cream and antifreeze, to poultry feed and gardening soils.
In the next tangled phase of the mad cow investigation, federal inspectors are concentrating on byproducts from the tainted Holstein, which might have gone to a half-dozen distributors in the Northwest, said Dalton Hobbs, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
Now, it's the secondary parts, the raw material for soil, soaps, candles, that are being recalled.
Los Angeles-based Baker Commodities, Inc., announced Friday it has voluntarily withheld 800 tons of cow byproduct processed in its Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., plants, said company spokesman Ray Kelly. The company, like other ``renderers,'' takes what is left of the cow after it is slaughtered and boils it down into tallow, used for candles, lubricants and soaps, and bone meal used in fertilizer and animal feed.
If the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determines that the material is tainted, the company's loss could total $200,000, Kelly said.
``It's obviously a tragic thing for the whole beef industry, but it's definitely a sizable hit for us,'' he said.
Darling International, Inc., the nation's largest independent rendering operation in the U.S., has also been contacted by the FDA. But officials at their Tacoma and Portland plants, as well as at their international headquarters in Irving, Texas, declined to comment on how their operation has been affected.
``Our first priority was to make sure it didn't go into the food supply,'' said Hobbs, reiterating that meat sent to two Oregon distributors was recalled earlier in the week.
But tracing all of the sick cow's parts to their final destination, including numerous possible incarnations in household products, has proved challenging.
``It's like the old Upton Sinclair line -- 'We use everything but the squeal,''' Hobbs said. ``We have nearly 100 percent utilization of the animal. But when you have so many niche markets, it makes it incredibly challenging to trace where this one cow may have gone.''
Companies that use bone meal from cows to create fertilizers, a kind of soil popular with rose growers, may find themselves under the spotlight. At the height of Britain's mad cow epidemic in the 1990s, three victims of the human form of mad cow were found to be gardeners.
In 1996, the Royal Horticultural Society of London released an advisory, cautioning gardeners to wear face masks after it was reported that the dust from the bone-meal soil could carry the mutated protein.
But Scientific American editor Philip Yam said there was no conclusive evidence the gardeners died from inhaling soil containing the infected cow tissue.
A far greater risk is the cow material -- including roughage and offal -- used in animal feed, said Yam, whose book, ``The Pathological Protein,'' is a scientific account of the disease.
In 1997, the FDA banned cow feed that included cow byproducts, after scientists concluded that the feed was the main transmitter of mad cow disease. The disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is found in a cow's nervous system.
Yam points out that while giving cow feed to cows was outlawed, feeding it to poultry is still legal. Some farmers, he said, are still in the habit of feeding their cows ``chicken litter'' -- the remains of the poultry feed, scooped off the ground, feathers and all.
``It's one of those loopholes,'' Yam said. ``It sounds good in theory -- don't feed cow to cow, feed the remains to chickens. But in practice things happen.''
-------- ACTIVISTS
Gaza Strip Walls Become Militants' Murals
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
December 27, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Militants-Medium.html
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- A bleeding hand clutching a knife rises out of the Quran on the walls of Gaza. Across town Israeli tanks explode in a colorful mural. ``The land is calling to us and we are obeying that call,'' is scrawled nearby.
With limited access to newspapers, radio or television, Palestinian militant groups have turned the chipped, cracking walls of Gaza into the medium for their message -- rallying their supporters, extolling their fighters and memorializing their dead.
``It's the wallpaper that everyone can understand and everyone can read. It's the easiest and fastest way to have your opinion reach the people,'' said Raouf Barbukh, a Fatah leader in Rafah.
It's difficult to assess the impact of the graffiti, and after so many years of it, some Palestinians seem to view it as a sort of background noise. But there's no denying that for many it as an expression of an almost constant anger at the world, and especially at Israel.
``It helps us express our feelings. It makes us more enthusiastic,'' said Fadi al-Najjar, 18, an English student at Al Azhar University.
Across the white walls of crowded refugee camps and cities, Hamas threatens to flush out the Israelis and ``crush their heads.'' Islamic Jihad paints portraits in solemn black of its leaders slain by Israel, while Fatah praises its leader, Yasser Arafat, and demands Israel allow him to travel outside the West Bank compound he has not left in 11/2 years.
In colorful script, the groups thank their militants for a job well done. They praise their members for killing collaborators. They call on Gazans to visit the families of suicide bombers and militants killed in fighting.
Some images appear over and over on Gaza's streetside canvases: dripping blood, the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, masked fighters and plenty of knives and rifles. Often there is a map of Israel, symbolizing some groups' stated goal of destroying the Jewish state in its entirety and turning it into an Islamic theocracy.
Hamas sometimes adds the green flag of Islam or a Quran illuminated by a burning candle.
Militants began using graffiti as a rallying cry during the first intefadeh, or uprising, which lasted from 1987 until 1993. But after the beginning of the peace process with Israel, many of the paintings disappeared.
When violence flared up three years ago, graffiti again washed over Gaza in what Barbukh calls ``an old-style media campaign.''
The Palestinian Authority has seldom interfered, except for a few occasions when walls are whitewashed as part of efforts to calm down the violence.
These days the graffiti is so ubiquitous many people ignore it.
``It's nonsense,'' says Abeer Zuter, 19. ``It's become a daily thing, the same graffiti. We're just used to it.''
Across Gaza, the militant often shares wall space with the mundane.
Islamic Jihad declares: ``We are coming'' on one wall, while Abu Musa's family welcomes wedding guests on another.
An advertisement for an internet chat room shares space with a muscular fist gripping the bleeding Al Aqsa mosque.
Much of the work is done by masked militants, who create space for their creations by whitewashing the walls, often covering messages from rival groups.
Occasionally, the process turns bloody as artists from competing factions fight it out in front of the walls. Two years ago, three bystanders were killed during a fight between Hamas and Fatah activists over wall space.
Militants sometimes hire professional artists to cover the walls with slogans and pictorial messages.
Hassan Boozo, 32, charges $10 to $20 to paint slogans and $40 for portraits of dead militants and murals, though he gives a discount to his own faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
``Writing on the walls has become a tradition,'' Boozo said. ``Every faction needs to express its ideas, declare its martyrs.''
----
Enola Gay Reconsidered
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Washington Post
Editorial
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33315-2003Dec26?language=printer
THE FIRST AND MOST important thing to say about the new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum is what a pleasure it is to visit and what a tremendous addition it is to Washington's already numerous and outstanding museum spaces. The building is large enough to contain a Concorde, a space shuttle and an impressive collection of hang gliders, along with dozens of other planes. Yet it seems neither cramped nor overwhelming. About 50,000 people are estimated to have passed through the front doors since the exhibition hall opened on Dec. 15; on the Saturday before Christmas, about 20,000 showed up. Nevertheless, the interior hardly seemed crowded, although the parking lot was packed.
Now that opening-day jitters have subsided, however, and now that museum staff have weathered the scattered protests, it is time for curators to reconsider the label that describes the Enola Gay, the World War II B-29 bomber that is by far the museum's most controversial exhibit. This isn't to say that a major change is needed. In keeping with the simple descriptions of the other exhibits, the current label briefly identifies the plane as the aircraft that "dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan." This is correct, but not sufficient, since it gives visitors no real sense of the historic nature of that event, let alone the number of people who died.
True, any new label must reflect the context. The Air and Space Museum is not the place to mourn victims, to debate the causes and consequences of World War II or to argue about how many lives were or were not saved by President Truman's decision to use atomic weapons to end the war. Given that the exhibition hall includes Nazi, Soviet and Imperial Japanese planes, as well as a Soviet anti-aircraft missile, it would also be wrong for a label to imply that the U.S. use of nuclear weapons was somehow uniquely evil, particularly given that the number of civilians killed by conventional airborne bombs in World War II was far higher than the number killed using nuclear weapons.
Nevertheless, a subtle statement similar to the one that appears near the nuclear missiles on display at the Air and Space Museum's downtown exhibition hall -- which reflects on the dual uses of many aviation and space technologies -- would not be out of place. Nor would it require much agonizing to add a few extra sentences in order to help younger visitors who might not know the history to put the Enola Gay in perspective. We would suggest something like this: "The Enola Gay dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb killed 80,000 people, brought a rapid end to World War II -- a conflict which had by then taken millions of civilian and military lives -- and ushered in the nuclear age."
----
Enola Gay, 58 Years Later
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Washington Post Letters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33321-2003Dec26.html
When I visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I was struck by how forthright both cities' museums were in recognizing Japanese responsibility for provoking World War II and admitting the horrendous war crimes Japan committed against many subject nations.
This puts to shame the National Air and Space Museum, which doesn't even mention the basic facts of the Enola Gay bombing: Many thousands of innocent civilians were killed by the explosion and by long-term radiation poisoning.
TAD DOYLE
Olney
----
Cops defend use of 'spy' tactics
Protesters cry foul, claim their actions were nonviolent
By Berny Morson,
Rocky Mountain News
December 27, 2003
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_2533983,00.html
Six people were arrested during an anti-war sit-in at U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard's office on April 14, but only five were charged.
The sixth protester, the one who wasn't arrested, was a man who called himself "Chris Taylor." He was in fact an undercover officer planted by the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office.
Taylor, whose real name is Darren Christensen, attended a training session in nonviolence with the other protesters the day before the sit-in, as well as the protest itself at Allard's Arapahoe County office.
The protesters who were taken in by Christensen say they are angry at the deceit and at being monitored covertly.
"That's a really scary thing," said Bonnie McCormick, a retired art teacher from Boulder who was arrested when she refused to leave Allard's office.
"That's outrageous to me," said Sara Jane Geraldi of Boulder, 32, a mother and part-time social worker, who also was arrested.
The protest at Allard's office was one of two incidents in which local police are known to have placed undercover agents in protest groups during the heavy- combat phase in Iraq last spring.
In the other incident, two Aurora officers infiltrated a group that staged a sit-in outside Buckley Air National Guard Base on March 15. Nineteen people were arrested in that protest, but only 18 were charged.
Testimony in the legal proceedings following the two protests provides a rare glimpse at how law enforcement agencies spy on protest groups.
In the Allard case, the sometimes contradictory testimony by sheriff's deputies points to police informants within the peace movement. That case is still entangled in a dispute over what information the sheriff's office must disclose to defense attorneys.
The American Civil Liberties Union charged last month that information gathered by local law enforcement agencies is ending up in FBI files. The FBI, however, denies it collects data on peaceful political groups.
Local protest leaders say surveillance was particularly unnecessary at the demonstrations last spring because police were told everything in advance - where protesters would march, how many people would commit civil disobedience, even where they would park their cars.
"It's not like some secret, clandestine organization that's out to overthrow the government," said Carolyn Bninski of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder, who helped organize the Buckley protest. Furthermore, the protesters pledged to remain nonviolent, Bninski said.
But Sgt. Tim O'Brien of the Aurora Police Department's intelligence unit, said he had no way of knowing if the demonstrators were telling the truth.
"We wanted to make sure that their real plans weren't to suddenly stage a riot and start throwing bricks and bottles and stuff like that," O'Brien said, and points to demonstrations in other parts of the country that did get out of control.
"Who's to say that a member of a very violent faction joins this organization and starts to preach violent protest and-or turns it into a violent protest while it's going on - that we don't know," O'Brien said.
Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said the department had tips that a group of protesters was planning to block traffic. Officers were trying to find out if it was the same group that planned to protest at Allard's office.
"We were trying to develop information to ensure that if, in fact, that was a plan, that we were prepared to assist the motoring community with their travels," Robinson said.
He said the tip about blocking traffic did not come from undercover agents.
Both police agencies say the instances of covert surveillance that have come to light are the only ones in which they secretly observed a political group since the Sept. 11 attacks. Neither agency keeps files on protesters, the officials said.
The Denver Police Department in May agreed under pressure from the ACLU to stop maintaining files on political groups that are not engaged in criminal activities. Denver police political files went back at least 25 years.
But the ACLU and the Denver police are still at odds over whether officers may perform political surveillance while on special assignment with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force. The ACLU sued in October to obtain the contract between Denver and the FBI.
Aurora and Arapahoe County are also members of the task force.
O'Brien. of the Aurora police, would not detail his agency's involvement with the task force.
Sheriff Robinson said one deputy is assigned to the task force, but added that the task force doesn't infiltrate protest groups.
Most of the area's law enforcement agencies trade information as part of the Multi-Agency Group Intelligence Conference, or MAGIC.
The possibility that people will end up in a police dossier - or a national FBI data base - could have a chilling effect, Colorado ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein said.
"It's not the certainty that there's an agent that causes people to silence themselves," Silverstein said. "It's the fear."
Special Agent Ann Atanasio of the FBI's Denver office said the agency does not keep files on people in ordinary political groups.
"The FBI is not going to keep a file on them. If they're not doing something illegal, we have no authorization to monitor behavior that is not a threat in some way," Atanasio said.
The agency's activities are focused on people who might commit acts of terrorism, Atanasio said.
Testimony in the case arising from the protest at Allard's office indicates that protest groups are on the radar screens of some law enforcement agencies on a continuing basis.
Christensen, the Arapahoe County officer who posed as "Chris Taylor," testified that he didn't recall whether he heard about the demonstration at Allard's office from his supervisor or from an informant.
"Did you regularly have individuals that informed you about upcoming protests?" asked Martin Stuart, Geraldi's lawyer.
"Yes," Christensen responded.
Maintaining contact with informants was part of his job, said Christensen, who has since gone to work for the Elbert County sheriff.
Christensen and a female officer, Liesl McArthur, infiltrated a group of about 30 demonstrators. They showed up at a Denver church where protesters received training in nonviolence and were advised by an attorney the day before the sit-in.
Christensen testified that he went because of the possibility that the protesters might be a threat to Allard's staff. That view didn't change even after he learned that two of the people who planned to commit civil disobedience were over 70 years old.
"Any protest, anything such as this, there is always a security risk," he said.
"Did you have any concern about weapons with these individuals?" Stuart asked.
"Always . . . I always have concerns with weapons," Christensen said.
"So it didn't matter who they were, anybody who decided to go to Senator Allard's office to protest, you'd have a weapon concern?" Stuart asked.
"Yes," Christensen said.
Christensen cited those concerns as the reason he continued to pose as one of the protesters right through the time they were arrested.
But Christensen's supervisor, Sgt. Al Holstein, had an additional goal. Holstein testified that he wanted Christensen to build up rapport that could be useful in monitoring the group in the future.
"Yeah, in case, down the road we would do that again, and he could go to other protests, organizational meetings, or whatever, just to gather intelligence in the future," Holstein said.
Less is known about the Aurora cases, which were resolved more quickly. One juvenile received deferred prosecution, 13 people were convicted on misdemeanor charges, and four were acquitted.
Jury disapproval of the undercover tactic may have been a factor in the acquittals, speculates Kevin McGreevy, the pro bono attorney for one of the defendants who was convicted.
Two officers, Chris Hurley and Brad Wanchisen, attended the planning meeting, posing as a couple.
Neither testified at the trials. But O'Brien testified the agents were planted because the demonstrators had announced they were going to commit a crime, namely the acts of civil disobedience.
Protesters in both demonstrations were drawn from a half-dozen small groups that disagree with American policy on a wide array of subjects. In addition to opposing the war, some protesters were critical of U.S. support for Israel, while the group at Allard's office presented a resolution calling for creation of a Cabinet-level "department of peace."
They feel betrayed by the undercover agents, who pretended to be sympathetic to them.
"We felt very violated," said Nancy Peters, who was arrested at the Buckley demonstration. Her $250 fine was waived, but she was assessed $107 in court costs and ordered to perform 16 hours of community service.
Geraldi, the parent who was arrested at the Allard demonstration, said the man who presented himself as "Chris Taylor" ingratiated himself by talking about his children.
"He used my motherhood and my family experience against me. He used that as a hook," Geraldi said.
Geraldi was hurt to learn - through the court testimony - that Christensen's real thoughts about the protesters was that they were "weird."
"(His) thinking that (we're weird) is enough reason for a department to send people undercover?" she asked in a tone of incredulity.
Geraldi said Christensen might have thought she's weird because she has several tatoos on her arms. They picture flowers and fairies.
"It's not like I've got swastikas and barbed wire," she said.
Perhaps most unsettling to Geraldi was Christensen's testimony that much of his undercover work for the Arapahoe County sheriff involved being solicited on line for deviant sex.
"We're lumped in with pedophiles . . . it was like, whoa," she said.
Geraldi said she participated in the protest because calling and writing letters to her senator seemed ineffective. But she'll hesitate to participate again because being part of a police file might hurt her children.
McCormick, the retired teacher, said, "This is as bad as the war - it's intimidating."
"What happens is, people will be afraid to do what I've done, this old lady," McCormick said.
She, however, "won't be deterred."
"If you're afraid to say how you feel, you've lost your free speech," said McCormick, who has been arrested several times at demonstrations in recent decades.
She also said the police didn't need monitors at a group committed to nonviolence.
morsonb@RockyMountain News.com or 303-892-5072
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