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NUCLEAR
THAILAND NAMED AS US ALLY
Dumping on History
Bombs Away, Vieques Unearths Toxic Navy Trash
My 2004 Wish List
Khatami denies Iran's killer quake caused by nuclear test
Israel plans diplomatic counter-offensive to Iranian "nuclear threat"
Japan May Become a Nuclear Power by 2020
Syria asks UN to help rid Mideast of nuclear arms
Nuclear - Related Shipment to Libya Said Blocked
Russia and the Rich Western Neighbors: A Cold Peace
Recycling a Bad Idea
MILITARY
Syrian company was chief weapons supplier to Saddam's Iraq: report
Vietnam Internet Dissident Jailed for Seven Years
Blair: from Libya to Iraq, World Seeks Safer Place
Military Ending Halliburton Iraq Oil Deal
U.S. Set to Open Bidding Soon for Iraq Contracts
A promotion for female soldiers
A cursed blessing in disguise
Palestinian State Remains Bush's Unfulfilled Goal
Problems with Pakistan
Retired general to lead tribunals
Guantanamo - Mohammad Sagheer vs. Government
Former Russia Bank Chief to Seek Presidency
Pentagon criticized over high-tech spying
The CIA Dept. of Quirky Tricks
Pentagon Takes Key Steps Toward Terrorism Trials
Nearly one U.S. soldier a day killed since Saddam capture
Return of U.S. war dead kept solemn, secret
Some words better left unuttered
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Special Counsel Is Named to Head Inquiry on C.I.A. Leak
New Year's Eve security highest ever
Military gunships to patrol Strip
Safety Grip Gets Tighter For Holiday
Ashcroft gives CIA leak case to U.S. attorney
Ashcroft Recuses Self From Leak Case
Philippines to Deport U.S. Brothers Held in Terror Inquiry
OTHER
NSA hit for secrecy by environmentalists
ACTIVISTS
Israel seeks to gag nuclear 'spy'
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
THAILAND NAMED AS US ALLY
31.12.2003
SBS TV, AFP, Australian Broadcasting
http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=75987®ion=2
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/64220/1/.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1018503.htm
US President George W Bush has officially designated Thailand as a major US non-NATO ally after the two countries worked closely together on the war on terror.
"I hereby designate the Kingdom of Thailand as a Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States," said Mr Bush in a memorandum to US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The move will boost security cooperation between the two countries, and allow Thailand to join an exclusive club of countries that enjoy a privileged security relationship with the United States.
Its members, which include Japan, Australia, Israel, Egypt, South Korea, Argentina, New Zealand and the Philippines, are granted significant benefits in the area of foreign aid and defence cooperation.
Major non-NATO allies are also eligible for priority delivery of defence material, such as the purchase of depleted uranium anti-tank rounds.
The countries are also able to stockpile US military hardware, participate in defence research and development programs, and benefit from a US government loan guarantee program, which backs up loans issued by private banks to finance arms exports.
However it does not afford them the same mutual defence guarantees enjoyed by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Thailand has strengthened its ties to Washington since the September 11 attacks on the United States. This year it committed to sending troops to Iraq, but only after intense debate.
The US president had announced his intention to make the designation during a state visit to Thailand in mid-October.
During a speech to members of the Thai military, Bush said he was "confident in the strength of our alliance and I have acted to designate Thailand a major non-NATO ally of the United States."
----
Dumping on History
A Radioactive Nightmare in Concord, Massachusetts
By Ed Ericson, Jr.,
12/31/03
E Magazine
http://www.emagazine.com/january-february_2004/0104curr_concord.html
The waitress at the ice cream shop in Concord, Massachusetts was surprised. "A Superfund site?" she asked, incredulous, "on Main Street?" Not just a Superfund site-a Superfund site that a cleanup contractor has dubbed "near the tip of the peak in terms of [cleanup] difficulty." A radioactive Superfund site.
Concord, the crucible of the American Revolution, where the "shot heard 'round the world" rang out on April 19, 1775, is a Boston suburb filled with professionals and stately homes. Tourists still come to see the war sites, and to visit the bucolic Walden Pond that Thoreau celebrated.
Few know about the nuclear waste dump at 2229 Main Street. But this shady burg of 15,000 residents quietly struggles with its legacy as the maker of depleted uranium slugs for the U.S. military's latest wars. The soil more than a mile from the nuclear dump is radioactive. A 1993 epidemiological study found the town's residents suffered higher rates of cancer than the state average.
Today, atop and buried beneath a low hill above a cranberry bog, more than 3,800 barrels of radioactive and toxic waste lie, subject to a government-paid cleanup estimated to take 10 years and cost at least $50 million.
The company responsible for most of the waste, Starmet, declared bankruptcy in 2002. Massachusetts has sued Starmet and several related companies to enforce state laws against radioactive dumping, but so far has had little success on the legal front. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hastily concluded that Starmet was broke and has made no move to charge it for the pending cleanup.
"All of the people who benefited and made millions from the process are not being tagged at all with the cleanup process," says Mark Roberts, an environmental lawyer and member of Citizens Research and Environmental Watch (CREW), a citizens group that has fought to get the site cleaned up for more than 20 years.
Since 1958, Starmet (formerly known as Nuclear Metals) processed depleted uranium into tank shells and armor for the U.S. Army, using caustic acids, beryllium and other dangerous substances. From the early 1970s until 1985, the company dumped depleted uranium into an unlined lagoon on the property, sending a toxic plume of radiation, heavy metals and solvents migrating into the groundwater, fouling at least two wells. The company resisted pressure to clean up the lagoon until 1997, when the pond was finally dug up and the soils shipped to a low-level nuclear waste dump in Utah. That project was costly, though, and the remediation company sued Starmet for unpaid bills. Just about this time, military orders for depleted uranium munitions stopped too. Starmet began to lose money.
In May 2001, Starmet officials illegally shipped 1,700 barrels of depleted uranium "greensalt" from a company facility in Barnwell, South Carolina to Concord. The cash-strapped company was cleaning the South Carolina facility in preparation for sale, EPA documents say.
When Massachusetts' health and environmental officials protested, Starmet's president, Robert Quinn, threatened to abandon the Concord site and stick the state with the cost of cleanup. In 2002, after the state forced bankrupt Starmet into receivership, according to EPA records, the company did abandon the site for several weeks.
Nowadays Quinn-who angrily blames the U.S. Army for Starmet's bankruptcy-sits at a lonely desk in a low building on the site while a few security guards watch over the mess. And what a fine mess it is. Conservatively speaking, there is at least 20 times more depleted uranium on and under Starmet's 46 acres on Main Street, Concord than the 340 tons that were fired in all of Iraq during the first Gulf War. There are tons of beryllium-a probable carcinogen-in the soil and leaking from buried drums. And in a recently discovered area known as the "old dump" there are unknown substances, possibly including high-level radioactive waste and exotic explosives.
Much of the work during the next four to five years will consist of determining what's in the barrels buried in the old dump, according to Bruce Thompson of De Maximis, Inc., the engineering group chosen by EPA to head the cleanup process. He says some preliminary research indicates that exotic radioactive and heavy metals may have been buried there by MIT scientists during the Manhattan Project. He is also concerned about the potential presence of an explosive, zirconium azide. "That's something I don't want to hit with a backhoe," Thompson told a town subcommittee meeting in September.
That Thompson and the EPA arrived in Concord at all is credit to the efforts of a small group of committed activists. CREW is led by Rick Oleson, a Princeton and Harvard-educated radiation biologist and toxicologist whose late father was a nuclear physicist. Oleson spent part of his childhood in a house near the factory. State records show the most contaminated area on the site is adjacent to "Camp Thoreau," a summer camp for children ages three and up.
"It's one industrial setting in a very residential area," says Oleson. "People later could put a house or well there, or grow vegetables." Oleson and CREW are focusing their efforts to make sure the EPA demands that the dump is cleaned up to a "residential level," rather than the looser standards allowable for an "industrial" site.
Jeffrey McNabola was a member of Concerned Citizens of Concord, CREW's predecessor, in the 1970s and early 1980s. He notes that the group was warning people about the dangers of depleted uranium and other activities at Nuclear Metals for decades before anyone in officialdom gave them any credence. "There was a cavalier attitude about depleted uranium," he says. "They said that it's safe as chocolate milk."
Even Oleson took years to conclude that Nuclear Metals' activities were unacceptable. "I used to cross-country ski and run back there," he says of the woods bordering the dumpsite. "It was a very pretty place...and there was this big pond. It was full of psychedelic colors."
Oleson and CREW are hunkering down for a long battle, keeping a wary eye on the EPA and its contractors. Loath to link deaths from cancer or rare diseases to the factory, Oleson (who works for Monsanto) and others in CREW strive to hue a strict scientific line-lest they appear as "radicals."
The strategy seems to be working. "The real story behind the story I tell people," Oleson says, "is that a few people volunteered their time to do something that needed doing. And for years they were dismissed and made fun of. And they totally turned the town around."
----
Bombs Away, Vieques Unearths Toxic Navy Trash
Carmelo Ruiz
IPS-Inter Press Service,
December 31, 2003
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=21751
Now that the U.S. Navy is gone, residents of the Puerto Rican island-town of Vieques must deal with the daunting question of what to do about the toxic mess caused by decades of military activity. Weapons tested in the firing range included highly polluting depleted uranium ammunition.
SAN JUAN, Dec 30 (IPS) - Now that the U.S. Navy is gone, residents of the Puerto Rican island-town of Vieques face pressing environmental problems.
In the last four years the island's 10,000 residents, together with Puerto Ricans from the main island and peace activists from around the world, carried out a relentless civil disobedience campaign against the Navy, which for decades used the island as a munitions depot and firing range.
The military left officially May 1. But now Vieques must deal with the daunting question of what to do about the toxic mess caused by decades of military activity. Weapons tested in the firing range included highly polluting depleted uranium ammunition.
Most of the former military lands -- which include about 80 percent of the island -- are now the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).
Measuring 7,527 ha (of the island's total 13,355 ha), it is the largest wilderness refuge in all of Puerto Rico, which is a commonwealth of the United States whose residents have U.S. citizenship.
Many who opposed the Navy presence find it particularly galling that the lands they struggled for have been transferred to another U.S. government agency, instead of being returned to the people of Vieques. Local fishermen complain that FWS will not allow them to fish in the refuge, because of the danger posed by unexploded ordnances.
"This is the same agency that stood by while the Navy bombed the flora, fauna and wilderness, without raising a finger in protest, and now they're fining people for fishing crabs. This is insulting and completely unacceptable," declared Robert Rabin, spokesperson of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques.
But Vieques FWS employees interviewed by IPS, most of whom are Puerto Ricans, stressed that they are committed to protecting the natural resources of the lands they administer.
Refuge Manager Oscar Díaz said he does not want to see the lands destroyed by the uncontrolled construction of beachside mansions and tourist resorts now occurring on the main island.
"This refuge has a dry forest. That's a treasure that must be preserved because 94 percent of all dry forest in Puerto Rico has been destroyed," added Díaz.
In what many observers consider a bizarre twist, this wilderness refuge is simultaneously a toxic disaster area. Earlier this month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended that the lands and marine areas polluted by the Navy be declared a Superfund site.
Superfund is a U.S. government programme for the identification and cleanup of areas contaminated with hazardous waste. Once an area is declared a Superfund site, the polluting party -- in this case the Navy -- is obligated to pay for its decontamination and restoration.
Puerto Rico has a dozen Superfund sites.
After the EPA recommends that an area be designated for the Superfund, the agency solicits comments and input from the public, the polluting party and other government bodies before making its final decision.
Although many who took part in the Vieques struggle consider the Superfund designation a great victory, University of Puerto Rico biology professor Arturo Massol warns that the process is a bureaucratic litany and that 20 years can pass before any cleanup even begins.
"Superfund status is no guarantee that the cleanup will be done thoroughly and efficiently," says Massol, who directed the only on-site studies of military pollution in Vieques to be published in peer-reviewed scientific literature.
"Most of the money will spend years stuck in litigation or slowed down by administrative matters," he added.
Massol said that if the history of Superfund in Puerto Rico is any guide, then not much can be expected from the Vieques recommendation.
According to the professor, a Superfund site was designated in the abandoned Sabana Seca Navy base in the town of Toa Baja. In response, a parking lot was built over the toxic wastes, and then the EPA declared the problem solved and removed the site from the Superfund list.
The idea that the former Navy lands should be returned to the people of Puerto Rico also has allies in the U.S. Congress. Congressman Joseph Crowley, who visited Vieques last month, told IPS that transferring the lands from the Department of Defence to the Department of the Interior is not adequate.
"I think the lands should be transferred to the government of Puerto Rico. Only that will assure the people that these lands will never again be used for military purposes," said Crowley, who added that if Congress could assign billions of dollars to the reconstruction of Iraq, then the decontamination of Vieques is no less than a moral obligation.
----
My 2004 Wish List
12/31/03
From: Satya Sagar,
MATHABA FREE NEWS INDEX
http://mathaba.net/x.htm?http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=30609
It is the New Year madness time once again. The bells have begun to jingle once more, neon-lit Christmas trees adorn the doorways of department stores and the middle-classes of the world are ready to shop, shop, shop till their creditors drop.
What does one do with an entire New Year on hand when the shambles of the last one are still all around us? Does the turning of a page in a paper calendar really change anything that the people of the world have endured since the last commerce-driven celebration?
Just think of what the year 2003 really represents to the future well-being of planet Earth? The US invasion and occupation of Iraq stands out as one of the most despicable acts of not just the passing year but also a lot of recent human history itself. The occupation together with the bogus US War on Terror have set the clocks of our world so far back in time that I am right now trying to catch up on medieval European history. And also looking up the profile of fellows like Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, only to discover things looked much brighter then than in our times.
There are at least over 50,000 people or more who should have been around to usher in 2004 but who are not around only because the greed and inhumanity of the US establishment did not allow them to. And the tragedy being played out in the killing fields of Iraq has only just begun! God only knows how many more will die due to the continued occupation and, when it is finally ends, the legacy it leaves behind of unexploded ordnance, depleted uranium, disabled citizens and above all the deep mistrust and hatred between countries of the world.
And in the meanwhile the escalation of violence against the Palestinian people, the continued subjugation of the people of Kashmir, the perpetual tensions between India and Pakistan and the decimation of the people of sub-Saharan Africa due to poverty, conflict and disease continued all of last year. Fundamentalists of all hues - Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Hindu too - carry on with their misuse of the Creator's name and kill innocent people using modern devices to further their medieval goals.
Amidst all this doom and gloom there were glimmers of hope too- mostly in the form of people's resistance against the injustices of our world. The glorious worldwide anti-war marches, the breakdown of the WTO talks in Cancun, the ousting of a neo-liberal President in Bolivia, among other struggles, all point to a future that is not just possible but very much within our reach.
When the enemies of humanity are trying their best to put all of us to permanent sleep it becomes the duty of all decent human beings to stay awake. And in the absence of a true and powerful awakening even our dreams have to become an act of resistance. So, here is my list of the ten top dreams and wishes I have for the coming New Year. I am already sharpening my pen to tick them off one by one as the year progresses!
The 2004 Wish List:
1) Iraqi national resistance will kick out US occupation forces with least injury to themselves and also the young clueless soldiers of the invading army. The victorious Iraqi forces will then create a new Iraq that will respect the aspirations of all members of their society while returning US soldiers do the same in their country.
2) The US occupation forces will not kill more innocent Afghan and Iraqi men, women and children in their desperation to implement the foolish policies of their political masters. May the soldiers become smarter and their bombs dumber.
3) A tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity will prosecute George Bush Jr. and Tony Blair for their war of aggression on Iraq and for making our world a much more dangerous place than it was at the beginning of 2002. The two of them will be sentenced to occupy, together, the spider hole vacated recently by Saddam Hussein.
4) In the absence of such a tribunal- the US plans for a new mission to the moon will materialize soon and we can send Bush, Blair and Ariel Sharon on that trip into space. The remote controls will be given to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to compensate for all the misery, suffering and general absence of fun of the past many months.
5) All countries supporting the invasion of Iraq are made to pay for its reconstruction and their companies barred from bidding for the contracts. In particular, the East European regimes, which supported the war, will have to pay for all contracts bagged by the Russians.
6) Having sent Sharon to the moon, the Israelis and Palestinians will agree on a peace settlement that will form a unified Israelistine. The expenses for setting up the new nation will be underwritten by all Western and Eastern countries responsible in the past for persecuting the Jewish people and colonizing the Palestinians.
7) The Indian government will change its foolish policies on Kashmir, establish lasting peace with Pakistan and initiate nuclear disarmament on the subcontinent. Funds from the disbanded nuclear arms industry will be used to improve nutrition levels among children in both India and Pakistan.
8) The arms manufacturers of the world are forced to close down, their assets seized and the resources reused for delivering free healthcare to sub-Saharan Africa. The unemployed arms industry executives can help clear landmines in Angola, Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan ...
9) The wealth of all oil companies and automobile manufacturers seized and used to build mass public transport systems. Unemployed executives of Haliburton in particular can be reassigned to plant trees in the Sahara for the next one year.
10) All intellectual property laws and patent right agreements are suspended till an international commission decides who was the first person in human history to invent the phrase 'Momma, I love ya !'. For that is where all creative inspiration springs from - the unpatentable love between a Mother and her Child.
And with those dreams, here is wishing all of you a very New Year that could surely be Happy, depending on what all of us do to make it so!
Satya Sagar is a journalist based in Thailand and a regular Mathaba.Net contributor
-------- iran
Khatami denies Iran's killer quake caused by nuclear test
TEHRAN (AFP)
Dec 31, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/031231100147.5ekhdbaz.html
President Mohammad Khatami has denied that the killer quake which struck southeast Iran on December 26 was caused by a secret nuclear test, newspapers reported Wednesday.
"These allegations have spread, but they are completely unfounded," said the president, who on Monday and Tuesday visited the Bam region at the epicentre of the quake that he estimated had cost 40,000 lives.
"Our religious principles, our security and defence doctrine leave no room for nuclear arms," he said, quoted by the Iranian media.
Iran is building its first nuclear reactor but has repeatedly denied accusations from the United States and Israel that it has embarked on a covert nuclear arms programme.
-------- israel
Israel plans diplomatic counter-offensive to Iranian "nuclear threat"
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Dec 31, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/031231091926.t7kbspxg.html
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his senior cabinet ministers decided Wednesday to launch a diplomatic counter-offensive against the "threat" posed by Iran, a source close to the premier said.
Sharon's mini-cabinet, which includes Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, met amid increasing tension between the two countries with Iran now identified as Israel's number one enemy after the downfall of Saddam Hussien's regime in Baghdad.
The ministers decided to counter the threat "by diplomatic means" with the backing of the United States, the source added.
Last month, Meir Dagan, head of Israel's Mossad overseas intelligence service, told lawmakers that Iran posed the biggest threat to the existence of the Jewish state since its creation in 1948.
Mofaz has said that concentrated efforts were needed "to delay, stop or prevent" Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programme.
During a visit to Washington last month, Mofaz also warned that Iran would reach a "point of no return" in its suspected nuclear programme within a year unless there were concerted efforts to stop it.
Iran, which earlier this month agreed to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency in monitoring a nuclear programme it says is entirely peaceful, has threatened to use all means at its disposal including medium-range Shahab-3 missiles if Israel strikes its nuclear facilities.
-------- japan
Japan May Become a Nuclear Power by 2020
DECEMBER 31, 2003
by Hun-Joo Cho (hanscho@donga.com)
Dong-A Ilbo
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=060000&biid=2004010148988
The National Intelligence Council (NIC), a center within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), predicted that Japan might possess nuclear weapons by 2020 after wrapping up its constitutional revision to strengthen the role of the self-defense forces.
It is highly unusual for a U.S. government agency to comment on Japan's constitutional revision and its possible nuclear armament.
According to the Sankei newspaper on Wednesday, the NIC reported that the Republic of Korea will build up its military power for the national interest of unification. China will strive to modernize its military to block U.S. interference over the Taiwan Strait. It also said that the military tension in Northeast Asia would rise higher than any other region in the world.
The report forecasted that in the event the two Koreas are unified, the U.S.-Japan alliance would become loose as the perception of the security threat changes. As a result, it would be difficult to justify a U.S. presence in Northeast Asia in the name of defending South Korea.
These security changes might lead to a reunified Korea and Japan becoming nuclear powers.
With regard to China-Japan relations, the report predicted that as China continues to grow, Japan will face a tough decision: stepping forward to take the initiative in the region or taking sides with the U.S.
-------- mideast
Syria asks UN to help rid Mideast of nuclear arms
Story by Irwin Arieff
REUTERS UN:
December 31, 2003
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23278/story.htm
UNITED NATIONS - Syria pushed for a ban on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in the Middle East this week, using its final days on the U.N. Security Council to shine a spotlight on Israel's suspected nuclear arms.
Syrian Ambassador Fayssal Mekdad, whose two-year term on the 15-nation council expires at midnight on Wednesday, asked the U.N. body to take up a resolution - drafted by Damascus in April - that is intended to rid the volatile Middle East region of all nuclear, biological and chemical arms.
But in a closed-door meeting, diplomats said, a number of the council's member nations - including the United States, Britain and Pakistan - expressed concerns with the Syrian text and Mekdad said he would not push for a quick vote.
The Syrian draft was "wrong in substance, wrong in timing," Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham said.
"We don't expect the resolution to make much progress," British Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry told reporters.
The draft calls for "freeing the Middle East region of all weapons of mass destruction" and asks Secretary-General Kofi Annan to verify whether the measure, once passed, is implemented.
Syria asked for Monday's meeting after the council last week issued a statement welcoming Libya's announcement that it was voluntarily abandoning its programs for developing weapons of mass destruction.
SYRIA, IRAN ALSO TARGETS?
But Arab envoys said the draft was aimed at embarrassing Israel, widely believed to be the only country in the Middle East to have nuclear weapons though it has never officially acknowledged possessing them.
The draft resolution "is applicable to everybody, but in fact Israel is the real address in this regard, whether we like it or not, because Israel has all these kinds of weapons" and has not ratified most non-proliferation treaties, Mekdad said.
But Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the move could backfire on Syria as well as Iran, two nations believed by U.S. intelligence to have chemical weapons stockpiles.
"The Syrians must realize that by offering a resolution on weapons of mass destruction, and not just nuclear weapons, they are potentially attracting attention to their own activities, which are suspected to include chemical weapons programs, as well as other states in the region including Iran," Kimball told Reuters in a telephone interview. A CIA report to Congress earlier this year concluded that Damascus likely already held a stockpile of the nerve agent Sarin and appeared to be trying to develop "more toxic and persistent nerve agents," while Tehran likely already had supplies of "blister, blood, choking, and probably nerve agents and the bombs and artillery shells to deliver them." Both countries have denied the weapons charges.
Israeli officials had no comment on Syria's move.
But Uzi Rubin, a Defense Ministry adviser and founding engineer and developer of Israel's Arrow anti-missile system, expected no change in policy from the fresh disarmament pleas.
Despite Libya's announcement, "we are still faced with massively asymmetrical hostility - 5 million Israeli Jews against some 500 million Muslim Arabs - and for that we must always be prepared," Rubin said.
----
Nuclear - Related Shipment to Libya Said Blocked
By REUTERS
December 31, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-libya-nuclear-usa.html?pagewanted=print&position=
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and its allies recently blocked Libya from receiving an illegal shipment of uranium enrichment equipment but it is unclear what effect this had on Tripoli's decision to abandon its nuclear arms program, the State Department said on Wednesday.
Separately, a U.S. official told Reuters the United States and Britain will hold senior level talks this week in London on measures to ensure the elimination of Libya's nuclear weapons program.
In a shock move following months of secret talks with U.S. and British officials, Libya said this month it was abandoning efforts to obtain nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials, first reported the interdiction in Wednesday's editions and said only after this event did Libya open its weapons sites to American and British inspectors.
But deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said it was unclear what role the diversion may have played in persuading Libya to give up on acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
At a regular news briefing, he confirmed the basic outlines of the Wall Street Journal story, which said the United States and its allies had in October seized thousands of centrifuge parts headed for Libya.
The shipment originated from a Gulf port and was carried on a German-owned freighter but U.S. officials declined to identify the company or country that sold the equipment to Tripoli, the newspaper said.
``A ship was diverted based on intelligence that it was carrying centrifuge parts (and) I think what this incident shows is that the PSI -- the proliferation security initiative -- is robust, producing results, fulfilling the mission for which it was intended, which is to detect and interdict shipments of components,'' Ereli said.
TALKS WELL UNDERWAY AT THE TIME
The United States and its allies launched the PSI this year as a way of putting new pressure on North Korea and other countries accused of trying to acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
While the October diversion was a ``significant and important development,'' Ereli said it would be hard to say for sure if this is what persuaded Libya to open up its nuclear and other weapons programs to international inspectors, as some U.S. officials have asserted.
He noted that U.S.-British secret negotiations with Libya had been going on ``for many months and that there was a process well underway when this (interdiction) took place.''
U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on Wednesday on condition of anonymity, said the interdiction was not believed to have been a key factor in Libya's decision to give up weapons of mass destruction.
A team of American and British intelligence officers flew to Libya clandestinely in October and December for stretches of about two weeks, visiting sites where they were shown parts of the country's chemical, nuclear and missile programs, according to U.S. officials.
U.N. nuclear weapons chief Mohamed ElBaradei met Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli on Monday and praised the government there for cooperating with teams conducting the first-ever IAEA inspections of its atomic weapons program.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton, the Bush administration's top arms control and non-proliferation official, is scheduled to leave Thursday for meetings with British counterparts in London and return on Saturday.
``We're working closely with the U.K. on what will be required to verify the elimination of Libya's nuclear weapons program and to maintain long-term assurances that it is not reconstituted,'' the U.S. official said.
Bolton ``is going to consult with the British,'' he added.
-------- russia
Russia and the Rich Western Neighbors: A Cold Peace
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
December 31, 2003
New York Times
LETTER FROM EUROPE
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/31/international/europe/31LETT.html?ei=1&en=a8c02ee46a005020&ex=1073906270&pagewanted=print&position=
MOSCOW, Dec. 30 - "By their mentality and culture, the people of Russia are Europeans," President Vladimir V. Putin said in an interview this fall, addressing the centuries-old choice here between East and West.
The real question, however, is whether Russia is - or even wants to be - part of today's Europe.
There is increasing evidence that the answer is no.
In the last few months, Russia and Europe have found themselves at odds, sometimes pointedly, over a raft of diplomatic, political and economic issues, belying the widely held notion that the collapse of the Soviet Union would herald Russia's ever-deepening integration into all parts of a new world order.
No diplomat likes to say it, but the European Union's expansion next year - along with NATO's - is etching a new frontier across the Continent, enveloping the former Soviet republics of the Baltics and the former satellites of Eastern Europe into the elite clubs of democratic states.
The curtain across Europe may be less iron-clad than in the past, but there is no dispute that Russia is on the other side of it, not just politically and economically, but perhaps psychologically as well.
"Russia remains beyond the expanding West," Dmitri V. Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote this month in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
In recent negotiations over joining the World Trade Organization and ratifying the Kyoto treaty on climate change, Russia has clashed fundamentally with Europe's vision on free markets and the environment.
In its internal affairs, Russia has angrily dismissed European criticism of its gruesome war in Chechnya - criticism more strident than any recently from the United States, which is more accepting of Mr. Putin's view that Russians in Chechnya are under attack from foreign Islamic militants.
Europe has also criticized the prosecution of the oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky and of its parliamentary elections earlier this month, which the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said raised doubts about "Russia's willingness to move towards European standards for democratic elections."
These are political - and in some cases purely economic - disputes, but something more profound is happening.
To many Russians, Europe is more than just a geographic place. It is an idea. In Soviet times, it represented democracy and freedom, if also capitalist decadence. It is still the standard by which Russia is measured, almost always unfavorably.
Increasingly, though, Europe is seen as little more than a source of money and goods, which have turned Moscow and other cities into oases of consumption and even luxury in a country still besieged by poverty and despair. After a tumultuous decade of painful economic reforms, more and more Russians seem willing to reject Europe as a democratic idea or model.
In his four years in office, Mr. Putin has governed with an authoritarian hand, increasing the role of the security services, consolidating state control over television and business and otherwise rolling back some of democracy's basic, if messy freedoms. And he is overwhelmingly popular, heading into a re-election campaign next year essentially unchallenged. In the elections this month, the party defined by its fealty to him cruised to victory, crushing not only the Communists, but also two parties with liberal, pro-Western images and ideas, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces.
The election's biggest surprise was the success of two nationalist blocs, the Liberal Democratic Party led by the outlandish xenophobe Vladimir V. Zhironovksy, and a milder, more respectable version of it, Motherland.
Dmitri O. Rogozin, a leader of Motherland, said in a post-election interview that Russians have grown disenchanted with a decade of democratic experiment and what he called the broken promises of Europe.
"When democratic reforms were taking place in our country, people were willing to take on losses, such as the destruction of the Soviet Union," he said.
"Everyone thought that this would lead to very close relations with the West, when everyone would live well, that there would be European standards of living, freedoms," he went on. "However, tomorrow has arrived, and it has turned out to be just as gloomy as yesterday."
What divides Russia and Europe is unlikely to become a chasm or start a new cold war. Russia, like the rest of the world, is susceptible to globalization. After its expansion, the European Union will account for more than half of Russia's foreign trade, making cooperation, if not integration, essential.
Sergei O. Sokolov, head of the Foreign Ministry's department for European relations, called the disputes with Europe - over everything from duties to visas - the inevitable growing pains of closer relations. But he added that Russia drew a distinction between integration "with" Europe and integration "into" it, one meaning cooperation, the other membership.
The Russia he described will be an independent power, a proud nation that expects to be treated as an equal of Europe, not a part of it.
Mr. Trenin, in his article, agreed, but warned that Russia was creating the foundations for "a new isolationism," though not necessarily within its own borders.
In recent months, Russia has aggressively wielded its diplomatic and economic influence in its traditional dominion along the arc of Europe's new frontier.
In Georgia, Russia has provided succor to two separatist enclaves. In Moldova, Mr. Putin tried to broker a settlement of another separatist conflict that would ensure the presence of Russian troops indefinitely. In Lithuania, President Rolandas Paksas faces an impeachment battle over accusations that he became susceptible to Russian influence.
Russia's actions abroad, like those at home, have raised concerns in Europe, deepening distrust of Mr. Putin's commitment to a democratic course. In the near future, Mr. Trenin wrote, Europe and the United States "will treat Russia as though the Soviet Union has been replaced by its czarist predecessor."
If Europe is keeping Russia at arm's length, so is Russia keeping Europe.
"More and more, Russian leaders are viewing the West as a source of resources for modernization and geopolitical challenges - not as a common home where Russia itself may find its proper place," Mr. Trenin said.
Mr. Putin, in the interview, completed his answer by emphasizing, twice, that Russia had no intention ever to join the European Union. Whatever its cultural ties to Europe, Russia's relations will be limited up to what he called the "historic horizon."
"It is up to a new generation of decision makers in Russia," he said, "to see to it how the relationship between Russia and the European Union develops."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Recycling a Bad Idea
Finally, something that both foes and friends of nuclear power can agree on
By Jean Kumagai
31 December 2003
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jan04/0104epow2.html
At the dawn of the nuclear era, it was generally envisioned that the first crop of commercial reactors would soon be replaced by more advanced fast breeder reactors, glorious machines that would create more new fuel than they burned. Integral to the breeder vision was the reprocessing of spent fuel to extract the unused uranium and plutonium, thereby conserving resources that researchers at the time believed (incorrectly) to be scarce. The United States and other countries poured billions of dollars and decades of R&D into developing a viable breeder-largely ignoring other reactor types-but precious little came of it. The technology proved just too costly and accident-prone. By the mid-1990s, many industry watchers assumed the idea was dead.
BREEDER OBSESSION: The DOE's nuclear energy R&D program is fixated on spent fuel reprocessing and breeder reactors (like the decommissioned Experimental Breeder Reactor-II shown here), despite concerns about cost, safety, security, and feasibility.
It's not. Over the last three years, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has quietly revived its support for breeder R&D. The stated aim of its Generation IV program is to develop advanced reactor designs to replace today's light-water reactors. But three of the six Gen IV designs are fast reactors; a fourth is a thermal reactor, which also would rely on reprocessing. The remaining two designs would be able to operate on reprocessed fuel, but wouldn't require it. Gen IV's companion program, the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI), is meanwhile looking at new ways to reprocess spent fuel. The work is overseen by the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, in Idaho Falls, home to the DOE's breeder fuel testing and reprocessing research during the 1970s and 1980s.
Much more than just lab curiosities, these programs are seeking bona fide commercial-scale designs, ready to be deployed by the year 2030. In fiscal year 2004, the programs are funded at a total of US $83 million, and could receive much more in coming years if Congress passes the comprehensive energy bill in its current form.
What's wrong with this picture? Plenty. The chief concern with recycling spent fuel is the proliferation risk posed by the separated plutonium. A terrorist or errant government that manages to steal a few kilograms would skirt the toughest hurdle in making a bomb-getting the material itself. For that reason, in fact, the U.S. government halted civilian spent-fuel reprocessing in 1977. All commercial U.S. nuclear plants currently operate on the so-called once-through cycle, directly disposing of spent fuel.
Ignoring that history, the new DOE effort not only encourages reprocessing; it aims to share the technology with nine other countries that now participate in the Gen IV International Forum. By cultivating the considerable expertise needed to do reprocessing, "these programs would certainly assist non-nuclear weapons states in developing a capability to rapidly produce large quantities of nuclear weapon-usable materials," says Thomas Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in Washington, D.C.
The economics of reprocessing don't add up, either. For one thing, as the physicists Richard L. Garwin and Georges Charpak point out in their book Megawatts and Megatons, the price of uranium would have to rise to $700 per kilogram, from its current $30/kg, to make reprocessing economical. But the supply of uranium, including that in seawater, is nearly inexhaustible. Garwin, though a die-hard supporter of nuclear energy, calls the current emphasis on reprocessing "premature and really dumb and counter-productive, in my considered view."
Meanwhile, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., in Daresbury, UK, has announced that it will shut down its commercial reprocessing plant in 2010, citing a lack of contracts for its services. Even France, which is often cited as having the most successful reprocessing program, would have saved 164 billion francs (US $30 billion) over an assumed 45-year life of its reactors had it opted for direct disposal of spent fuel, according to a high-level French government report issued in 2000.
DOE'S NUCLEAR ENERGY R&D PROGRAM
GOAL Develop and deploy by 2030 a new fleet of advanced nuclear power reactors
WHY IT'S A LOSER Rather than focus on alternative reactor designs, the U.S. Department of Energy has resuscitated the problem-plagued breeder program. These reactors rely on reprocessing spent fuel, which would be hugely uneconomical, pose a proliferation risk, and may not even work when scaled up to commercial levels
ORGANIZATIONS Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), Argonne National Laboratory, and other U.S. Department of Energy and academic labs, plus counterparts in nine other countries
CENTER OF ACTIVITY INEEL, in Idaho Falls, Idaho
NUMBER OF PEOPLE ON THE PROJECT At least 300
BUDGET US $83 million in FY2004
To be sure, the reprocessing techniques being touted by Gen IV and AFCI differ somewhat from the World War II-era technique used in France, the UK, and elsewhere in that pure plutonium is never separated from the spent fuel. Instead, the plutonium remains mixed with small but highly radioactive amounts of neptunium, americium, and curium, collectively known as minor actinides. This feature has led some to call the modified reprocessing techniques proliferation-resistant.
Marvin Miller, a retired nuclear engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., calls that characterization misleading. He looked at the risk posed by pyroprocessing, one of the AFCI techniques being considered, and found that though it's safer than current methods, it poses a greater proliferation risk than the once-through cycle. "If you have a pyroprocessing plant, how easy is it to jiggle with the knobs to get a cleaner plutonium product, and can that be detected?" Miller says. "Those are still open questions."
Miller also wonders whether the technology can really work at the commercial level. "It's been demonstrated that you can separate and recycle plutonium as nuclear fuel. But it's never been demonstrated that you can cleanly separate and recycle these minor actinides," he says.
Last spring, a study group convened by John M. Deutch and Ernest J. Moniz, professors of chemistry and of physics, respectively, at MIT, considered what it would take to make nuclear power a "significant option" for reducing greenhouse gases. They assumed worldwide nuclear generating capacity would have to grow almost threefold, to 1000 gigawatts, by the year 2050, and then looked at the best way to get there, factoring in cost, safety, waste, and proliferation.
Their conclusion? Stick with what you know. "For the next decades, government and industry in the U.S. and elsewhere should give priority to the deployment of the once-through fuel cycle, rather than the development of more expensive closed-fuel-cycle technology involving reprocessing and new advanced thermal or fast reactor technologies," their report, The Future of Nuclear Power, states. Lest there be any doubt, they add, "This recommendation implies a major re-ordering of priorities of the U.S. Department of Energy nuclear R&D programs."
Some of the Gen IV reactor designs "strain credulity," Moniz told IEEE Spectrum. Reprocessing spent fuel may reduce waste management problems in the very long run-say, a thousand years out, he said. "We nevertheless find that argument not compelling when traded off against [recycling's] near-term problems."
Whether electric utilities will ultimately agree to build and operate the new reactors is yet another matter. Absent enormous government subsidies, it's safe to say they won't: no nuclear plants have been ordered in the United States since 1978, no units are under construction, and plans for more than 100 reactors have been canceled.
"The utilities have a hard enough time running standard nuclear plants," Miller notes. "These new technologies are too sophisticated, they're uneconomical, and they don't have the proliferation-resistance of the once-through cycle....the U.S. is spending a lot of money on these technologies, but it all looks very dubious."
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Syrian company was chief weapons supplier to Saddam's Iraq: report
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Dec 31, 2003
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/031231104616.y80toh6g.html
A Syrian firm served as the main conduit for illegal weapons deliveries to Iraq between 2000 and 2003, before Saddam Hussein was overthrown, The Los Angeles Times said Wednesday.
The private company SES International Corp., headed by a cousin of Syrian President Bashar Assad, signed more than 50 contracts to supply tens of millions of dollars' worth of weapons and military equipment to Iraq, according to documents recovered in Iraq during a three-month investigation by the daily.
Saddam's Iraq was under an international arms embargo, as part of UN sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War that expelled the Iraqi military from Kuwait.
The Massachusetts-based US firm Cambridge Technology Inc. sold four optical scanners, which can be used to help divert laser-guided missiles, to a student in Canada who said he would donate them to a university in Jordan. Unbeknownst to the US firm, the real buyer was the Iraqi army, the daily said.
Other firms involved in the illegal arms smuggling operation included Armitel Co. Ltd. from South Korea, Evax from Poland, Millenium from Russia, STO Ravne from Slovenia, the 800 documents analyzed by the daily indicated.
The research also found that two North Korean officials met the head of SES in Damascus in February, a month before the US-led war against Iraq, to discuss a 10 million dollar payment for "major components" for ballistic missiles, the daily said.
The United States at the time was unaware of any weapons deals between Pyongyang and Damascus, said the daily.
Neither Syrian foreign ministry officials nor SES responded to repeated attempts to contact them by telephone for comments, The Los Angeles Times said.
-------- asia
Vietnam Internet Dissident Jailed for Seven Years
By REUTERS
December 31, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-rights-vietnam-trial.html
HANOI (Reuters) - A Vietnamese court jailed a former journalist at a Communist Party magazine for seven years Wednesday on espionage charges, the latest in a string of crackdowns on critics of the government.
Nguyen Vu Binh, 35, had called for political reform. He was arrested in September 2002 after criticizing a border treaty with China in an article published on the Internet, a U.S.-based rights group said.
``Binh has been sentenced to seven years in prison for the crime of spying,'' said an official at the Hanoi People's Court.
It was unclear whom Binh had been accused of spying for.
His trial took place under tight security, with media and diplomats denied access. Security men at the court Wednesday kept observers behind barricades.
A U.S. embassy spokesman said the punishment violated international human rights standards.
``No individual should be imprisoned solely for the peaceful expression of one's views,'' said spokesman Tom Carmichael.
``The sentencing of Nguyen Vu Binh clearly violates international standards for the protection of human rights including freedom of expression and freedom of information,'' he said.
The United States and other Western governments have frequently criticized Vietnam for what they regard as problems over human rights. Vietnam rejects the criticism.
Despite the concern about rights, international donors promised in early December to give Vietnam $2.84 million in aid next year.
Binh, who worked for nearly 10 years at the Communist Party's Communist Review, had signed a petition urging the government to carry out political reforms, and had sought to form an independent political party, rights groups say.
The court official declined to say whether Binh would be subject to a period of house arrest after serving his jail term, as if often the case with political detainees in Vietnam.
Last June a doctor, Pham Hong Son, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for espionage after he translated into Vietnamese a State Department essay on democracy and posted it on the Internet. His term was later cut to five years.
Two dissidents were jailed last year for cyberspace criticism of the government.
Binh's case parallels those of lawyer Le Chi Quang and literature professor Tran Khue, sentenced after criticizing the border pact with China which some say gave up too much land to Vietnam's giant northern neighbor.
The former journalist and 16 others had sent an open letter to the country's leaders calling for the release of Quang and Son.
-------- britain
Blair: from Libya to Iraq, World Seeks Safer Place
By REUTERS
December 31, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-britain-blair.html?pagewanted=print&position=
LONDON (Reuters) - From Iraq to Libya, the world could become a safer place in 2004 but the job has to be seen through to the end, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a New Year's message Wednesday.
The capture of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Libya's pledge to disarm brought Blair some welcome respite after a year when his popularity tumbled over the decision to take Britain to war alongside the United States in Iraq.
But he could face a dire start to 2004 with senior judge Lord Hutton due to deliver a potentially explosive report on the suicide of scientist David Kelly, who slashed his wrist after being caught up in a bitter row between the BBC and the government over its Iraq war tactics.
``The decision to go to war in Iraq was the most difficult of all,'' Blair said in his New Year message.
But he added: ``The recent capture of Saddam Hussein was a vital milestone on the road to a stable Iraq.''
With regular attacks on British troops in Iraq fueling criticism of his policies, Blair made perseverance the keynote of the statement.
``In 2004, we must stick to the task. There will be no better signal for the Middle East or the world than a democratic, prosperous Iraq replacing a tyrannical, brutal dictatorship.''
The British-engineered diplomatic coup over Libya's abandonment of banned weapons gave Blair a welcome end-of-year fillip and he argued that this proved dialogue could work.
``Libya's courageous decision to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction will also make the world a safer place,'' he said.
``And it shows that the problems of these weapons can, with determination and good faith, be tackled through discussion and engagement,'' he added.
Blair, who rejuvenated the unelectable Labor Party and swept to power with a landslide election victory in 1997, showed no sign of losing his appetite for power despite two health scares in 2003.
``This is no time to turn the clock back, no time to coast, no time to falter with the job only half done,'' he said. ``I relish the challenge ahead.''
But there is also no sign of opposition waning.
Monday, two British church leaders blasted Blair for going to war in Iraq, with Bishop of Durham Tom Wright saying he and President Bush had acted like ``a bunch of white vigilantes.''
Archbishop of York David Hope, the church's second most senior leader, said Blair had displayed ``a real lack of listening.''
-------- business
Military Ending Halliburton Iraq Oil Deal
By REUTERS
December 31, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-halliburton-fuel.html?pagewanted=print&position=-
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. military energy unit announced on Tuesday that it was taking over the task of providing fuel for Iraq, ending a Pentagon deal with Vice President Dick Cheney's former company Halliburtonamid allegations of price gouging by the Texas-based energy services giant.
The Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center said it had been directed to assume control of rebuilding Iraq's oil industry and that it would award new contracts through a competitive bidding process.
In its Wednesday editions, The Washington Post quoted Pentagon officials as saying that the change had been under discussion for months and that the timing was not related to allegations against Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), which was awarded a no-bid contract in March to rebuild Iraq's oil industry.
The Defense Energy Support Center said in a statement that the agency had been directed to ``support the Iraqi Ministry of Oil and Task Force-Restore Iraqi Oil (TF-RIO) by importing and distributing fuel to the Iraqi civilian population.''
``The center will strive to put competitively awarded contracts in place as quickly as possible for this mission,'' DESC director Richard Connelly said. ``Existing TF-RIO contracts will remain in place until adequate DESC contract solutions are implemented.''
A KBR spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon said that a draft audit found evidence that KBR may have overcharged U.S. taxpayers $61 million to supply fuel to Iraq from Kuwait.
Halliburton strongly denies wrongdoing. Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000.
In response to questions posed by Pentagon auditors, KBR's president and chief executive, Randy Harl, said the firm ``delivered fuel to Iraq at the best value, the best price and the best terms.''
Harl also said that the U.S. military had approved the delivery of fuel from Kuwait, even though it was at a higher cost than that available via Turkey.
KBR was the first to suggest ways of cutting costs and had suggested Turkey was a better source than Kuwait for getting fuel into Iraq, adding that the recommendation resulted in a $164 million savings for American taxpayers.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in October that it would replace by the end of December KBR's no-bid deal. But at the beginning of the month, the Corps extended the deadline for awarding two new contracts until Jan. 17, 2004.
The work given to KBR in Iraq has been criticized by Democrats, who alleged cronyism and favoritism in handing out the contracts.
----
U.S. Set to Open Bidding Soon for Iraq Contracts
By Sue Pleming
Reuters
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45753-2003Dec31?language=printer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Following a month of delays and bickering over who can bid for $18.6 billion in rebuilding work in Iraq, the Pentagon is expected to open up bidding on a slew of contracts next week, officials said on Wednesday.
The first wave of formal solicitations is set to be rolled out possibly as early as Monday -- a month after first promised -- and is likely to cover about $5 billion in construction projects, said a U.S. government official close to the bidding process who asked not to be named.
Another $6 billion in non-construction contracts will likely be rolled out in a second wave of solicitations. All of the work will be advertised via the main U.S. government procurement web site www.fedbizopps.gov.
Funding for the work comes from $18.6 billion appropriated by Congress for Iraq and tenders have been consistently delayed while lawyers and politicians worked out the fine print of the proposals and responded to thousands of queries over drafts.
Aside from the money from Congress, tens of billions of dollars more will be available from U.S. government funds and international donors to rebuild Iraq, and the bulk of this is expected to go to private contractors.
Officials said prime contracts from the $18.6 billion would likely still be limited to firms from countries that helped in the war effort, in line with a Pentagon decision that was met with anger by opponents of the war such as France and Germany.
A spokesman for the Pentagon-run Iraq Program Management Office declined to comment on exactly when bidding could open but the PMO said via its web site, www.rebuilding-iraq.net, that a pre-proposal conference for bidders would be held early in January.
That conference may be attended both by prime contractors and sub-contractors, who may be drawn from companies from nations that did not join in the U.S.-led war effort to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
AGGRESSIVE TIMETABLE
Originally, the Program Management Office set an aggressive timetable for the award of contracts, but a February award date is now expected to be pushed back to give bidders more time.
The first round of contracts to rebuild Iraq came under a barrage of criticism, with allegations by Democrats of cronyism and favoritism over the award of work to well-connected firms such as Halliburton, once run by Vice President Dick Cheney.
All of the Iraq contracts, which Congress has stipulated must now be competitively bid, are being closely watched by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Their first report is expected to be issued next month.
The U.S. Agency for International Development is expected to announce a winner early next month to a new infrastructure contract worth more than $1.6 billion to follow one awarded to San Francisco company Bechtel. This funding comes from the $18.6 billion appropriated from Congress.
Two contracts to rebuild Iraq's oil industry, amounting to $2 billion, are expected to be announced by the Army Corps of Engineers by Jan. 17, an Army Corps spokesman said.
These oil reconstruction contracts replace the no-bid contract given last March to Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.
Just under $4 billion will be kept in reserve from the $18.6 billion to cover additional unexpected expenses, said one official, who disputed a newspaper report that this money was being held back for political reasons.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the Bush administration would delay about $4 billion in Iraq reconstruction work until the U.S. ceded political control to an interim Iraqi government this summer.
The paper said the decision, reached at a White House meeting on Tuesday after almost a month of infighting, significantly cut the amount of work to be handled by the PMO.
-------- israel / palestine
A promotion for female soldiers
December 31, 2003
By Joshua Mitnick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031230-112834-9968r.htm
HATZEVA, Israel - Israeli army units with the first female infantry soldiers in 50 years are being upgraded to battalion status, a milestone in the fight of female soldiers to be accepted into combat roles in the Jewish state.
For the past three years, female ground troops from Israel's Carcal company have patrolled the quiet desert borders with Jordan and Egypt, freeing up their male counterparts for duty in more dangerous areas. Now the military is appointing its first female company commander.
The integration effort follows years of public pressure to allow women into combat jobs - prohibited since the 1948 War of Independence - and could help boost the status of women in a society that glorifies the military.
Hoping to relieve units stretched thin by the Palestinian uprising, the army created predominantly female companies three years ago to patrol the border for drug smugglers and the rare terrorist infiltrator. Only men served on the more dangerous Lebanese border and in the Palestinian territories.
"Every combat soldier aspires to reach the most dangerous areas. That is why we enlisted," said 20-year-old Sgt. Shiran, whose full name cannot be published under Israeli military censorship rules.
"I've always known that I wanted to do things in the army that I wouldn't do as a civilian. I didn't think I could get the maximum out of it as a clerk."
Toting an M-16 rifle with a sniper scope, Sgt. Shiran still is an exception for women in the Israeli army. Most work far from the battlefield and serve as little as half the time required of men.
Israeli army doctors recommended in October that women be barred from service in combat units on the basis of medical studies showing that they are less able than men to lift heavy objects and carry out sustained, strenuous activities.
The doctors, however, said there was no objection to women serving in light infantry units along peacetime borders, as the Carcal company does, or as radar operators in intelligence units, where they have proved themselves on numerous occasions.
The United States bans women from ground combat units, which include artillery, infantry and armor. They may, however, serve on combat ships and aircraft. And they serve as military police, a job that in Iraq puts them close to counterinsurgency operations.
Carcal company, whose name is Hebrew for wildcat, has a 2-1 ratio for women to men and requires women to sign on for an extra year of service. The four-month boot camp includes training in urban warfare and 20-mile stretcher marches, a regimen based on other infantry brigades.
Male and female Carcal soldiers train together and share patrols in Humvees. The only place where the army insists on separation is in sleeping quarters on the base.
In recent years, the army also has opened artillery, antiaircraft and the air force pilots' course to women. Still, the idea of a mixed combat unit remains a foreign concept in Israel.
Sgt. Pini, one of the male members of Carcal, said he initially joined the company because he was promised a tour of duty on a tranquil border in a unit with "a lot of girls."
"I thought, 'Great, I'll have a girlfriend,' " he said. "It didn't work out that way. When you spend so much time together, it doesn't make a difference. Everyone becomes one of the guys."
The army has told the coed company that it probably will get transferred next year to a more sensitive site, which could mean the tense border with Lebanon or Israel's hotly contested security barrier in the West Bank.
Still, said army spokesman Capt. Jacob Dallal, the integration of women into the combat forces "is an ongoing process. We're past the beginning, but it's a developing thing. ... Until women reach higher ranks on the field, it's going to take time."
Sgt. Shiran said she sees the talk of a transfer as a vote of confidence. Even so, she acknowledged that it will be difficult to convince skeptics of the unit's abilities.
"There will always be doubts. It's human nature. People will always say a boy is strong and a girl is weak," she said.
Maj. Itai, a Carcal company commander and a former undercover commando, said he considers the unit a success but is waiting for a "moment of truth" that will prove that Carcal is up to the job.
"The army still has difficulty with the idea of women in combat. I hear this all the time from people above me," Maj. Itai said. "They don't think it's serious, that if there is an attack the girls will be afraid, or if one is taken prisoner the entire country will be in shock."
In the 1948 war, none of that mattered because Israel needed every available fighter. In the north, women were in units that detonated bridges to block the advance of the Lebanese army. In Jerusalem, they held out during a prolonged siege.
When the war ended, a separate women's corps was established, ending the utilization of nearly all female combat soldiers. Decades passed before Israelis began reconsidering the status of women in the military.
----
A cursed blessing in disguise
By Gideon Samet
Wed., December 31, 2003
Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/377840.html
That old, little remembered question - what would Yeshayahu Leibowitz have said had he seen this - came up this week when Golani infantry soldiers appeared to have crossed into the twilight zone of war crimes. Leibowitz, the first commentator to speak aloud about the unavoidable corrupting tendency of the occupation was in his day considered an overwrought prophet of doom. In his unsparing prose, he cited quotes by a German author who spoke about the transition from humanism to nationalism, and then to barbarism. Many loathed him and refused to forgive him for daring to warn about the degeneration of IDF conduct, and about its becoming one of the lowliest of armies. Today, would it really be so easy to point to the error of his words?
Of course, the incident near Masha village was not the first in which trigger-happy soldiers shot innocent victims. But, in contrast to the normal targets of IDF fire in the territories, the shooting of Jews tied together virtually all of the elements of Israel's corruption under the shadow of conquest. Golani soldiers, poisoned like quite a few of our finest sons in the territories, fired shots in what appears to be a state of wanton blindness and rage - a state of insensitivity that is deepening among the benumbed fighters of the intifada.
Then, in a dizzying spin of facile explanations, spokesmen moved from one disingenuous account to the next. The IDF, which has the wherewithal to see hundreds of meters into the distance at night, was unable in this case to identify the demonstrators. The soldiers believed the protesters were terrorists because their faces were masked. The soldiers feared for their lives. They followed the customary rules of engagement.
Wafting over the gunfire was the one sentence Israeli ears despise more than any other: the soldiers were just following orders. "I did what I was told," said the soldier who opened fire. This soldier's mother also explained that he followed orders; and she warned the IDF General Staff not to touch her boy. In hundreds of responses to an interview with the mother published on Ynet, the vast majority praised the trigger-happy soldier and his mother.
The IDF Chief of Staff grasped immediately that he would have to order an inquiry. But not a trace of stunned consternation could be heard in his voice; in any case, before this investigation began, the Chief of Staff did not order soldiers to act with humanity. And, as things stand today, formal investigations of possible offenses are pursued in just 6 percent of cases in which there is suspicion of illegal gunfire; and just 1 percent of such suspects are convicted.
Right-wing politicians attempted to justify events at the fence. These included Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Boim, the heedless Minister Uzi Landau, and all of the settler functionaries.
The shooting incident illustrated the problematic nature of the fence itself. The fence attracts the rage and frustration of thousands of Palestinian families. It will always be punctured with holes. Beyond whatever cost it exacts in its role as a separation barrier, the fence's additional purpose is manifest for all to see: it is a wall which bypasses a negotiated settlement, whose purpose (among other things) is to add to the Sharon government's treasure chest of rejections and refusals.
The IDF is not the only player which has become corrupted. The occupation erodes the state itself. Owing to its painful internal contradictions, it forces many Israelis to use their patriotism as a refuge in which they defend every single despicable act. The occupation drags the country's leadership, which has grown accustomed to lying, toward still deeper levels of deceit. The instinctive response to what appears to have been an illegal order was to unleash a barrage of fake and lame excuses. These responses are identical to the bluffing about the removal of outposts.
In the case of settlers, the occupation has brought distortion to the level of high art - they are compelled to defend their life's work. It is perfectly clear that their calculated historical goal is to throw up so many tin-plated outposts that the dismantling of genuine settlements becomes truly impossible.
In this respect, the incident at the fence might have been a blessing of sorts, a cursed blessing in disguise. The documented shooting does not leave much room for doubt, for grasping at straws. Because the gunfire was aimed at innocent Jews, and not "mere" Palestinians, the IDF has sketched in unusually vivid color Israel's march of folly and horror in the territories.
"My son studied in high school," moaned the Golani soldier's mother. "He spent some time at a yeshiva. He is a traditional, disciplined boy who would never hurt somebody for no reason." Indeed, this is a good boy in the territories, an ordinary Israeli lad who lost his head due to (what even Sharon has learned to call) the occupation - just like the state itself.
----
Palestinian State Remains Bush's Unfulfilled Goal
Administration's 'Road Map' Stalls
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 31, 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43082-2003Dec30.html
If all had gone as President Bush planned, the Middle East would today witness the birth of the provisional state of Palestine. But in a stark symbol of moribund U.S. diplomacy, today's deadline for the new state will pass largely unnoticed -- with little progress in the ambitious "road map" for peace heralded dramatically at two presidential summits in the Middle East this year.
Prospects for success of the U.S.-brokered plan remain dim if Palestinians do not take major action soon, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned in an interview this week. With resignation, U.S. officials acknowledge the deadlock, even while insisting that the United States is fully committed to making the road map work at some future juncture.
"We have been waiting for the Abu Ala government [of the Palestinian Authority] to take definitive steps with respect to condemnation of terror," Powell said. "If they do, then they'll see us fully engaged. If they don't, then I think the situation will just continue to drift and not improve."
Not cracking even the first phase of the three-year road map, which has been plagued with delays, reflects the Bush administration's inability to get results for a top priority, Middle East experts say.
"When you look back on the year, the administration said it would be able to move rapidly to make peace between Israel and the Arabs after the Iraq war, but it hasn't happened. It also took a strong position against the Israeli barrier [on the West Bank] but in essence didn't follow through. It set a timetable for implementing the road map and now hasn't met it," said Shibley Telhami, who holds the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.
"The administration generally hasn't made the kind of progress that would make anyone optimistic that peace is possible," he added.
With the inability to move the Israeli-Palestinian track forward, attention in the Middle East has shifted to reviving a Syrian peace track, after a surprise overture by President Bashar Assad this month. Syria invited a confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Majalli Whbee, to Damascus to pursue discussions, Israeli officials said yesterday. Whbee is a Druze member of Sharon's Likud Party and a member of the Israeli parliament.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom signaled Israel's interest in a Dec. 17 speech. "In the event of failure on the Palestinian track, along with completing the fence, we must try and do our utmost to pursue progress on the Syrian track," he said.
Syrian motives are suspect, Israeli officials say, given growing U.S. pressure on Damascus. "Nevertheless, every positive declaration in favor of peace is to be welcomed. We must not reject the hand that is extended in peace, even if it is not extended for the right reasons," Shalom said.
Powell continues to press the Palestinians, calling Sharon last week and Palestinian leaders this week to urge them to meet. "Until there is a beginning conversation between the two sides, I think it's difficult to do much more right now," he said.
The administration will soon reassess whether to dispatch its special envoy after a three-month absence.
"We will be reviewing the bidding in the early part of the year as to whether or not it would be appropriate for Ambassador [John] Wolf to go back in. But he has to have two people ready to talk to one another," Powell said.
The odds are against progress, however. "The Palestinian Authority does not have the capability to act against terrorist groups," said Martin S. Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and now director of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, he said, "is more in control than ever, and neither the U.S. nor Israel will deal with him. And Sharon has a right-wing coalition which is constraining even the smallest steps."
The focus of discussion in the region is shifting from the road map to two starkly different initiatives, say experts. Israel is increasingly acting unilaterally, beginning with construction of the West Bank fence. The other is the unofficial Geneva Accord unveiled earlier this month by former Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Meanwhile, tensions run high on the ground. For the first time in two months, Israel yesterday launched a missile strike on a leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, triggering renewed threats by the militant group.
For the road map to produce a Palestinian state by 2005, Washington faces cramming a three-year process into two years -- or less. It is still possible, Powell said, while conceding "time is passing."
"A year and a half has gone by since those goals were set out, and so that's a year and a half where we didn't achieve the interim state," he added. "But it's not unachievable -- if both sides will now come to the table [and] get serious."
-------- pakistan / india
Problems with Pakistan
December 31, 2003
Washington Times
Letters to the Editor
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20031230-084306-7231r.htm
With reference to the story "Nuclear scientists quizzed on leaks" (World, Dec. 23): Is there any nefarious act Pakistan could do that would make the Bush administration lift its head out of the sand and accept facts relating to that troubled nation?
First it was Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's dual game of cracking down on Arab terrorists while letting the Pakistani groups slide. Later, there were reports of the Taliban regrouping openly in Pakistan. Now, we find that Pakistan is suspected of proliferating nuclear technology to "axis of evil" charter members North Korea and Iran.
In December 2001, when American officials wanted to interrogate two Pakistani scientists for possible al Qaeda links, Pakistan whisked them off to Burma. Later, the Wall Street Journal revealed that those same scientists were helping Burma with its nascent nuclear program. A few weeks back, Arnaud de Borchgrave broke a story on a Pakistani nuclear deal with a fellow Islamist hot spot and "stalwart" U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia.
If rogue individuals in Pakistan can use state resources such as transport aircraft to transfer nuclear material to other states, is it not likely that they could transfer, say, a small nuclear warhead to terrorist groups? Besides, what happened to the "tight grip" the Pakistani army supposedly has on the nukes when they somehow found their way to the axis of evil charter members? Whether Gen. Musharraf sanctioned the proliferation or not, the fact that groups in Pakistan were crazy enough to transfer nukes to other rogue nations after the "with us or against us" position of the United States was made clear after September 11 only highlights the severe threat posed by Pakistan's "in your face" nuclear profligacy.
Whether the administration spin doctors like to admit it or not, the current Pakistani policy is in shambles. Persuading Libya to give up its weapons programs, though a welcome move, pales in front of every shocking revelation of Pakistan's perfidy. Stripping Libya's nukes while letting Pakistan proliferate is akin to arresting the person who buys the drugs but letting the dealer walk free.
With Pakistan as an ally, the United States has been spending more time covering up Pakistan's misdeeds than fighting the war on terror. I'm sure the State Department and White House spokesmen will come up with innovative tap-dance moves to gloss over this latest Pakistani violation, but rest assured that when the history of the American war on terror and weapons of mass destruction is written, there will be a full chapter on the failed U.S. policy on Pakistan.
KAUSHIK KAPISTHALAM
Atlanta
-------- prisoners of war
Retired general to lead tribunals
December 31, 2003
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20031230-102732-6213r.htm
A retired Army general will oversee military tribunals for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including approving charges, the Pentagon said yesterday.
John D. Altenburg Jr., who retired as a two-star general last year, was chosen for the job. His last military assignment was assistant judge advocate general for the Department of the Army.
None of the 660 suspects held at Guantanamo Bay has been charged, and although the Pentagon has not said when it expects to begin military trials, the first is expected soon. It would be the United States' first use of military tribunals since World War II.
Earlier this month, the Pentagon assigned military defense lawyers to Guantanamo detainees Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen and David Hicks of Australia. They are among six persons held at Guantanamo whom President Bush has determined are subject to trial by a military tribunal.
The decision to approve specific charges against any of the six, and to refer a case to trial, rests with Gen. Altenburg.
Human rights organizations have called on the United States to put on trial or release all the prisoners, or at least say what is planned for them. The groups complain that the open-ended, indefinite detentions have led to a deterioration in mental health and dozens of suicide attempts at the prison set up shortly after the start of the war in Afghanistan in October 2001.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that the military trials will be fair, impartial and as open to public scrutiny as possible without compromising classified information or protected witnesses.
The Pentagon yesterday also named four members of a review panel who would hear appeals of cases decided by the military tribunals, and said they will be commissioned as Army major generals for their two-year terms on the panel. The following are the four:
•Griffin B. Bell, U.S. attorney general in the Carter administration and former judge for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
•Edward G. Biester, a Court of Common Pleas judge in Bucks County, Pa. He also is a former Pennsylvania attorney general and an ex-member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
•William T. Coleman Jr., a former secretary of transportation.
•Frank Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.
One or more additional review panel members may be named later, officials said. Review panel members will select from among themselves the three members who will hear a specific appeals case.
In a related move, the Defense Department's top lawyer, William J. Haynes II, issued Military Commission Instruction No. 9, spelling out the procedures for appeals of tribunal decisions.
--------
Guantanamo - Mohammad Sagheer vs. Government of USA
Suit for Recovery of Damages and Compensation of US $10.4 Million
LEUREN MORET < leurenmoret@yahoo.com >
Mindfully.org
31dec03
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Guantanamo-Sagheer-USA-Moret31dec03.htm
Mohammad Sagheer is the only Pakistani prisoner to return home from Camp Delta (formerly Camp X-ray), the U.S. concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, and one of the few direct witnesses to talk about this dark time in U.S. history. He was invited to testify in December 2003 about his detention and mistreatment at an International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan1 (ICTA) convened in Tokyo, Japan. Because his request for a passport was delayed in Pakistan, he was prevented from getting the required visa in time to attend the Tribunal. His attorney, Mr. Mohammad Ikram Chaudhry2, attended and presented testimony about his case3 at the Tribunal held December 13-14, 2003, attended by 1700 people. Based on 8 investigative trips to Afghanistan and testimony by many witnesses and experts, the ICTA has held 16 public hearings in Japan and the Philippines and three Tribunals in Tokyo in 20031. The purpose of the Tribunal has been, not only to try President Bush for war crimes in Afghanistan, but to be a public voice for, and to publish a truthful history of this period, documenting the experiences and suffering of the Afghan people. It has also been a process to inform citizens, not only in Japan, but other countries about the U.S. military aggression against Afghanistan in 2001 which the U.S. justified as retaliation for 9/11.
Magic Carpet Ride: Afghanistan to Guantanamo to Pakistan
In November 2001, during the Holy Month of Ramadan, a contingent of ten missionary members from Pakistan made a Tableegy Dora, routine preaching visit to the Northern Afghanistan Province of Kunduz. Among them was Mr. Sagheer, 54, a religious man from Phattan, a town in Pakistan near the border of Afghanistan, who had traveled as a preacher on other Tableegh (preaching missions). During this visit he was swept up and arrested with thousands of others by Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, the area Northern Alliance commander, "on the instructions and orders of the U.S. Government/Army... in a hunt against Al-Qaeda, Osama Bin-Laden, the Taliban and [Taliban leader] Mullah Umer" 3.
Mr. Sagheer was transported from Kunduz by truck with other prisoners in containers where many died, some who were injured were buried alive, others held in jails in Afghanistan, and finally he was transported by the U.S. military to Guantanamo Bay4. There he was held like other prisoners in small cages, subjected to torture, humiliation, violation of religious prohibitions, denied legal rights, beaten, and interrogated at Camp Delta. After ten months, he was told by a senior U.S. military officer at Camp Delta that he was found to be innocent and would be released. He was transported from Guantanamo back to Pakistan on a U.S. military plane and released with compensation of $100 from the U.S. Government for his ordeal of nearly one year.
Northern Alliance Sweep for Al-Qaeda/Taliban
Mr. Chaudhry testified that at the time his client, Mr. Sagheer, was arrested by the Northern Alliance, more than 30,000 detainees were also swept up in an indiscriminate arrest of civilians, but many died in Kunduz due to ground fire or bombardment by the U.S. Air Force. Mr. Sagheer witnessed wounded and injured men buried alive with the dead. He was in a group of 250 who were blindfolded, handcuffed, chained and put into trucks and taken to Mazar-e-Sharif by the Dostum Forces. At Mazar-e-Sharif they were held as prisoners and guarded for nearly six weeks by fifteen to twenty armed U.S. military assisted by local Northern Alliance commanders.
Later at Mazar-e-Sharif, they were crowded into airtight containers by U.S. Forces and local soldiers for transport to the Shabargan Jail 75 miles west of Mazar-e-Sharif. He was one of about 250 crowded into one airtight container which had a capacity of 50-60 people. Mr. Sagheer said that more than 50 died in the container he was in from suffocation, lack of food, water and medical aid. In other containers people died or were wounded when soldiers were ordered by U.S. commanders to shoot holes for air into containers full of prisoners5. Thousands more died in containers and were dumped in the desert by Afghan drivers under U.S. military forces5. Massacre in Mazar, a disturbing documentary film by Irish director Jamie Doran, documents the torture and mass killings of POWs6 and civilians in Mazar-I-Sharif by U.S. forces5.
During detainment at Mazar-e-Sharif and the Shabargan Jail, the Red Cross visited with food, medicine and other items for the prisoners. The prisoners received almost nothing because Dostum and the Northern Alliance kept the Red Cross donations for themselves. While in jail, more than 70 people shared as little as six loaves of bread and a few glasses of water per day. One prisoner died of starvation and many were sick and had no medical care. They were herded like cattle, mistreated, and forced to drink urine.
At Shabargan Jail in Kandahar where they were detained two weeks, there were more than 3000 prisoners including Mr. Sagheer, accused of being Taliban. The FBI, with the U.S. military, participated in the torture of prisoners there7. Prisoners were thrashed, deprived of water, made to lie down on the dirt at midnight and not allowed to sleep for long periods of time, considered to be a form of torture. Hair, mustaches and beards were shaved off of all prisoners in violation of religious practices. Prisoners were not allowed to pray despite the religious need for Moslems to pray five times a day. Prisoners were forced to stand outside in the cold where they were interrogated for long periods of time about Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Osama Bin-Laden. Mr. Sagheer was interrogated about his purpose for visiting Afghanistan. He reported his feelings of being horribly frightened during his time in jail, and the constant fear that he would die at any time. He described it as a terrifying experience, a feeling that other prisoners shared.
Inside Guantanamo: Concentration Camp
Mr. Sagheer and other prisoners were airlifted by helicoptor from Shabargan Jail to U.S.-occupied Bagram airbase in Kandahar, where a secret CIA interrogation center is located which uses "stress and duress" techniques for interrogation7. There they were shackled and put on a U.S. military plane for transport to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During the flight their lips were sealed, eyes covered, hands and feet and backs were chained. They were each given nothing but an apple and a piece of bread during the 24 hour flight.
Leaked photos of "detainees" being transported to Guantanamo Bay. First shown November 8, 2002. image source
At Guantanamo he was identified with an ID bracelet labelled "Delta" for Guantanamo which he still retains. The prisoners were put like animals in chain-link cages with roofs on cement pads out in the open - 6ft. X 6 ft. X 7 ft. - where they were fully chained and locked inside the cages. They were subjected to physical and mental torture, starved, forced to drink urine, and not allowed to speak. Mr. Sagheer said they were forced by guards to take pills which drugged him and made him senseless8. At times alcohol was added to drinks given to the prisoners2, a violation of Islamic religious law. He also complained that meat forbidden by religious law was sometimes added to their food2. They were denied the ability to pray. Blood was drawn from the prisoners every two or three days2. Mr. Sagheer complained to his lawyer that sometimes as much as 1000 ccs of his blood was taken with no explanation or purpose
In reality, prisoners were kept in solitary confinement and prohibited from speaking to each other. Guards patrolled the prisoners constantly, coordinated so that their eyes were on each prisoner every 30 seconds8. If prisoners did speak they were beaten. After a hunger strike for a month for denial of religious rights, some relief occurred and prisoners were allowed to pray.
There were also constant investigations by a team of four commandos who supervised interrogations8. U.S. military sources at Guantanamo admitted that 32 prisoners attempted suicide in 18 months8, but that number is likely to be higher..
Prisoners were detained on "suspicion of terrorism" without charges and provided with no legal mechanism for appeal, condemning them to long-term imprisonment9. Even their names were withheld from release. The Bush administration has claimed they are "enemy combatants" 4,8 rather than prisoners of war, and therefore have no rights to the American legal system4,7. This claim is now being challenged and will be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court 8 in the Spring of 2004.
Twice Mr. Sagheer was detained in solitary confinement, first for eight and then sixteen days, in a special darkened cell where cold air was blown through the cell, chilling the prisoner as punishment for not facilitating the investigation of Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin-Laden. He was interrogated more than 19 times but continued to deny any knowledge of either group, the World Trade Center disaster, or terrorist activities. After nearly a year, a U.S. General informed him and a few other prisoners that they had been found to be innocent and would soon be released.
Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - a tone of intimidation and fear at U.S. concentration camp. image source
He and other prisoners were then taken into separate rooms, fingerprinted, photographed and informed that they would be compensated for their detention. After 12 days in shackles and chains, Mr. Sagheer and three other prisoners were taken to an airport and loaded on a U.S. military plane for transport to Pakistan. Again, during the 24 hour flight he was given just a sandwich and an apple. The day before Ramadan 2002, he arrived at Bagram airport in Afghanistan and was then flown to Islamabad arriving in Pakistan on October 27, 2002. He was turned over to the CIA and intelligence agencies who held him for five days and promised $2000 compensation. He was taken by the CIA and Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) to Peshawar where he was held two days longer and given $100 as compensation for illegally being detained by the U.S. Government for nearly one year. On November 4, 2002, he was released in Peshawar to local authorities who returned him to his family in the town of Phattan in the mountains of Kohistan.
Lawsuit Against U.S. and Pakistan Governments for $10.4 million
Photo: M. Chaudhry Attorney M. I. Chaudhry (L) believes Mr. Sagheer (R) is an innocent victim entitled to compensation and damages for illegal detention, torture and suffering caused by the U.S.
Legal jurisdiction was established in the Supreme Court of Pakistan by his attorney, Mr. Chaudhry, based on the fact that Mr. Sagheer was illegally detained by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, illegally transported to Guantanamo in a U.S. military plane, and after being illegally detained at Camp Delta by U.S. forces, he was returned to Pakistan by a U.S. military plane which landed on Pakistan soil. This established a partial cause of action and jurisdiction in Pakistan. On November 3, 2003, the lawsuit was filed 3, 8 in Islamabad civil court under the law of damages and compensation against the U.S. Government for illegal arrest and unlawful detention of Mr. Sagheer charging mental shock, financial loss, physical victimization, estrangement and religious victimization for nearly one year.
His wife, six sons, three daughters, and 20 dependents were traumatized and also suffered mentally, financially and economically. He was denied legal rights under both U.S. and Pakistan laws, international laws related to human rights and POWs, and was found innocent ultimately by his accusers. The lawsuit has received extensive international media coverage. It is noticeably absent from the U.S. media and unknown to most Americans.
The Pakistan Government was also named as a defendant in the lawsuit for failing to protect a citizen from the illegal actions of the U.S. Government. When Mr. Chaudhry was questioned by the Tribunal Judges, he revealed that the FBI and CIA freely operate in Pakistan11 sanctioned by President General Musharrif12. He said the citizens of Pakistan do not support the close relationship successive Pakistan governments have had with the U.S. Government. He described how the U.S. Government utilized the Pakistan Government and its agents against Afghanistan exchanging intelligence, data, airbases, and allowing the FBI to arrest people in Pakistan. Pakistan's military intelligence agency (ISI) supported and financed the 9/11 terrorists, Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. 11 General Mahmoud Ahmad, head of ISI, spent the week before 9/11 and several days after in high level talks in Washington D.C., and had ties and provided funds to 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta just months before 9/1111. The ISI-Osama-Taliban axis and the ISI links to US Government agencies such as the CIA are all matters of public record11. Michel Chossudovsky, one of the strongest voices exposing the truth and lies of 9/11, writes "this is not a 'campaign against international terrorism'. It is a war of conquest with devastating consequences for the future of humanity." 11
Mr. Chaudhry said the Northern Alliance has received millions of dollars from the U.S. Government, and motivated the arrest of thousands of innocent civilians in Afghanistan on the pretext they were terrorists, to help the U.S. Government justify the "war on terror". Some Guantanamo prisoners "were grabbed by Pakistani soldiers patrolling the Afghan border who collected bounties for prisoners" 13. Other prisoners were caught by Afghan warlords and sold for bounty offered by the U.S. for Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters8. Many of the prisoners are described in classified intelligence reports as "farmers, taxi drivers, cobblers, and laborers. Some were low-level fighters conscripted by the Taliban...who couldn't afford payments to the Taliban to avoid service.... often amounting to six months' wages." 14 Some of the prisoners were mentally disabled. One had a "combat lobotomy" from a battle injury and could barely say his name14. Every intelligence report from Afghanistan recommended not sending him to Guantanamo. Another questionable prisoner, "Wild Bill", was so mentally unstable that he ate his own feces, dumped fresh water out of his canteen and urinated in it, then drank it14. "CIA, FBI and psychiatric experts 'concluded he was insane'." 14 More than 10% of the prisoners at Guantanamo now were determined not to be of intelligence value BEFORE they left Afghanistan and were recommended for repatriation14. "Major General Michael E. Dunlavey, the operational commander at Guantanamo Bay until October, traveled to Afghanistan in the spring to complain that too many 'Mickey Mouse' detainees were being sent to the already crowded facility..."14.
The 45 square mile base at Guantanamo Bay is under U.S. control but is not on U.S. soil. It has been leased since 1903 from Cuba for 2000 gold coins a year, or $4085 in perpetuity8. "Castro insists the area is illegally occupied by the U.S. which leases it under a pre-revolution agreement. The Cuban president refuses to cash US checks for use of the base, which he keeps in a desk drawer to show visitors and reporters." 15
Initially Cuba supported the detention of terrorists there but that has changed. A broadcast by the state-run media on December 26, 2003, reported that the Cuban Parliament passed a statement calling Guantanamo a "concentration camp" where "hundreds of foreign prisoners are subjected to indescribable humiliations" 4.
Photo: Aljazeera Castro insists the Guantanamo base is illegally occupied
Mr. Chaudhry, Judge Advocate, Vice President of the Supreme Court Bar Association in Pakistan and a leading advocate for democratic government reform, said "Citizens of Pakistan do not support U.S. military aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, which they believe is intended to gain wealth, profits, hidden reserves of oil and minerals in the Afghanistan region. We believe citizens in countries around the world should work together to stop the U.S. violation of the sovereignty of States in order to carry out the plan for U.S. global hegemony."
He added "Their apprehensions after 9/11 have come true".
Leuren Moret is an independent scientist and international expert on radiation and public health. She testified on the health and environmental impact of depleted uranium weapons at two ICTA public hearings and the 3rd Tribunal held in Tokyo December 13, 2003. She is an Environmental Commissioner in the City of Berkeley, California.
[Her December 13 testimony on DU can be read at http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Leuren-Moret-ICT13dec03.htm]. Email < leurenmoret@yahoo.com >.
1 International Criminal Tribunal for Afghanistan website:
http://afghan-tribunal.3005.net/english/
2 Interview December 12-14, 2003, with Mohammad Ikram CH., Advocate Supreme Court of Pakistan, Vice President Supreme Court Bar Assoc., 20-B North Star Plaza, Murree Road, Rehmanabad Chowk, Satellite Town, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (cellphone +92-300-8569475)
3 MOHAMMAD SAGHEER vs. GOVERNMENT OF USA, complaint filed November 3, 2003, District Courts Islamabad, by Muhammad Ikram Chaudhry, Ikram Law Associates.
4 "Cuba calls Guantanamo 'concentration camp' ", USA TODAY 12/27/2003 http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2003-12-27-guantanamo_x.htm
5 "Massacre in Mazar-I-Sharif" by S. Steinberg, Global Outlook Issue 3, Winter 2003. http://www.globalresearch.ca
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/dec2001/cia-d11.shtml
6 Articles 3 and 4, 1949 Geneva Convention: http://www.unhcr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm
7 "U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations" by D. Priest and B. Gellman, Washington Post 12/26/02; p. A01.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37943-2002Dec25?language=printer
8 "Inside 'The Wire' " by N. Gibbs and V. Novak, Time 11/30/03. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,552060,00.html
9 "Bush goes ahead with 'Enemy Combatant Detentions' " J. Andrews, Global Outlook Issue 3, Winter 2003.
10 "Guantanamo Bay Returnee Seeks to Sue U.S." by A. Farouqi, IslamOnline 12/28/03. http://www.islamonline.net/english/news/2002-12/28/article15.shtml
11 "Was America's Ally (Pakistan) Involved in 9/11?" by M. Chossudovsky, Global Outlook Issue 1, Spring 2002. http://www.globalresearch.ca
12 "Was America's Ally (Pakistan) Involved in 9-11?" by M. Chossudovsky, Global Outlook Issue 1, Spring 2002. http://www.globalresearch.ca
13 "Many Held at Guantanamo Not Terrorists: L.A. Times" IslamOnline 12/22/03. http://www.islamonline.net/english/news/2002-12/22/article10.shtml
14 "Many Held at Guantanamo Not Likely Terrorists" by G. Miller, Los Angeles Times 12/22/03. http://www.latimes.com/la-na-gitmo22dec22,0,2294365.story
15 "Cuban anger at US over Guantanamo" AlJazeera.net 12/26/03. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/048F248B-4F37-4A3B-B6C9-DB677C84921C.htm
-------- russia / chechnya
Former Russia Bank Chief to Seek Presidency
By REUTERS
December 31, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-election.html?pagewanted=print&position=
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's former central bank chief, who guided the country through a 1998 crash, Tuesday became the latest candidate to oppose highly popular President Vladimir Putin in elections next March.
Viktor Gerashchenko, 66, will be the official candidate of the new socialist-nationalist Motherland (Rodina) party in the March 14 poll, expected to be a runaway victory for Putin who is seeking a second four-year term.
A Motherland spokeswoman said economist Sergei Glazyev, one of two party co-leaders, would likely run as an independent.
Putin's personal ratings have blown most traditional rivals out of the water and the main parties are fielding only token candidates for appearances' sake.
Motherland gained prominence after taking nine percent of the vote in parliamentary elections this month. It was promoted heavily by authorities in the campaign.
This lent strength to reports that it was an invention of the Kremlin designed to siphon off votes from the powerful communists -- much as the ultra-nationalist party of political showman Vladimir Zhirinovsky did in the early 1990s.
Zhirinovsky's LDPR party has chosen Oleg Malyshkin, a 50-year-old former boxer and a political unknown, rather than expose its leader -- who has stood twice before -- to political humiliation.
Equally, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, another two-time loser, has also bowed out. His party is putting up little-known agrarian Nikolai Kharitonov instead.
The liberal opposition will field Irina Khakamada of the Union of Right-wing Forces (SPS) after Grigory Yavlinsky, whose Yabloko party made a disastrous showing in December, said he would not stand.
Khakamada, who is standing as an independent, will be only the second woman to stand for president after Ella Pamfilova of the For Civil Dignity party who ran against Putin in May 2000.
``The Supreme Council of Motherland made a firm decision to take part in elections and will nominate two candidates,'' Glazyev's spokeswoman Nelly Orlova told Reuters.
``The official candidate is Gerashchenko, but Glazyev has been recommended to run separately.''
Gerashchenko, a Soviet-era central bank chief who led Russia through the 1998 financial crisis that shattered its banking system, was criticized for being slow to introduce reforms and for maintaining an artificially strong ruble.
An opinion poll last week by respected agency VTsIOM-A gave Putin a likely 75 percent share of the vote in the March poll.
Candidates must declare their intention to run by January 6. Each must either collect two million signatures, raise a fixed sum of money or be nominated by one of the four parties that won five percent in the parliamentary poll.
-------- spies
Pentagon criticized over high-tech spying
Associated Press,
Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2003
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031231.gtspydec31/BNStory/Technology/
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Defense Department should have been more sensitive to concerns about potential government abuses of privacy from its highly criticized research project to predict terrorist attacks, the agency's inspector general has concluded.
In an oversight report, the inspector general's office said the Pentagon's research showed some promise. But the lack of a formal assessment on the privacy implications for U.S. citizens means the Pentagon "risks spending funds to develop systems that may be neither deployable nor used to their fullest potential without costly revisions and retrofits," the report said.
The inspector general's report, released earlier this month, acknowledged that a privacy assessment was not required by federal law. It did not dispute the Defense Department's response that its research did not violate U.S. privacy laws.
The report said the potential for U.S. police agencies to use the technology investigating citizens "has raised the effort to an unnecessarily heightened level of awareness and concern for both Congress and the public."
Congress previously killed the Pentagon's vast computerized terrorism surveillance project, known as the Total Information Awareness project, but renamed the Terrorism Information Awareness after criticism.
But the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which conducted the research, has quietly transferred some of its research and tools to other agencies since Congress barred the organization from proceeding with all but four small, non-controversial parts of the research program.
The most controversial research would have involved U.S. analysts studying past terror attacks and imagining future ones by producing a list of telltale actions terrorists might take in preparing attacks. These actions could include recently arriving from the Mideast, taking flying lessons and buying boxcutters.
Supporters speculated that such telltale actions could be detected by scanning a huge number of computer databases - credit card records, travel data, housing and medical information - held privately or by governments here and abroad.
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The CIA Dept. of Quirky Tricks
Agency Reveals Gadgets, but You Can't See Them
By Ted Bridis
Associated Press
Wednesday, December 31, 2003; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43083-2003Dec30.html
When the CIA's secret gadget-makers invented a listening device for the Asian jungles, they disguised it so the enemy would not be tempted to pick it up and examine it: The device looked like tiger droppings.
The guise worked. Who would touch such a thing? The fist-size brown transmitter detected troop movements along the trails during fighting in Vietnam, a quiet success for a little-known group of researchers inside the intelligence agency.
The CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology is celebrating its 40th anniversary by revealing a few dozen secrets for a new museum inside its headquarters in Langley.
H. Keith Melton, a leading historian of intelligence, calls it "the finest spy museum you'll never see." It is accessible only to CIA employees and guests admitted to the closed quarters.
Besides the jungle transmitter, the exhibits include a robotic catfish, a remote-controlled dragonfly and a camera strapped to the chests of pigeons released over enemy targets in the 1970s. Whatever secret gadgets the CIA currently uses are left to the imagination of visitors.
The pigeons' missions remain classified. They were made possible only after the CIA secretly developed a camera weighing only as much as a few coins. An earlier test with a heavier camera in the skies over Washington failed after two days when the overburdened pigeon was forced to walk home.
"People don't think of a pigeon as being anything more than a rodent on top of a building," said Pat Avery of Newalla, Okla., who runs the National Pigeon Association and loves to recount decades-old exploits by famous military pigeons such as "Spike" and "Big Tom."
But as surveillance technology improved, the need for CIA pigeons diminished. "They're pretty passé now," she said.
Agency lore holds that a "High Standard" pistol on display was so quiet that William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan, founder of one of the agencies that became the CIA, pulled the trigger inside the White House to demonstrate it for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who never heard a shot. For years, the .22-caliber pistol was standard issue among CIA employees.
"The president was on the phone at the time, so Donovan proceeded to fire the entire magazine, 10 rounds, into the bag of sand in the Oval Office, then placed the smoking-hot weapon on the desk and told him what he had done," said Toni Hiley, curator for the CIA museum.
In 2000, the CIA built a catfish it calls "Charlie," a remarkably realistic swimming robot. The agency will not disclose much about its mission, but experts speculated it collects water samples near suspected chemical or nuclear plants.
One outside scientist said the catfish robot was so realistic, except for pectoral fins made slightly too large, that it might be eaten by predators while on its cloak-and-dagger missions. The Associated Press obtained a videotape from the CIA of the catfish swimming during one test.
"A lot of things in the wild like to eat those," said Jimmy Avery, an aquaculture professor at Mississippi State University who watched the video. He said Charlie apparently was made to resemble a channel catfish commonly found in rivers worldwide. "When you look at it from above, it would be difficult to pick that out from any kind of real catfish."
The CIA is not showing off just its successes. It invented a remote-controlled dragonfly for delivering tiny listening devices outside windows: a bug carrying a bug. But the "insectothopter," with a miniature engine built by a watchmaker, could not fly straight in winds and did not prove useful.
The agency's D-21 "Tagboard" unmanned jet was kept secret until the late 1970s. Designed to fly off the back of a CIA version of the superfast SR-71 "Blackbird" surveillance jet, Tagboard cruised more than 17 miles high, taking photographs over Cold War lands at nearly 2,200 mph.
But over four missions, the CIA once failed to recover the drone's film canister before it dropped into the ocean. Another drone crashed in Siberia. CIA crewman Ray Torrick died in one launch attempt. "It wasn't a hugely successful program," Hiley said.
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Pentagon Takes Key Steps Toward Terrorism Trials
By REUTERS
December 31, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-usa-trials.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has named a retired Army major general to supervise U.S. military trials of foreign terrorism suspects, and picked two former presidential Cabinet members and two sitting judges to hear appeals of convictions or sentences.
Defense officials, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday these are the last major steps envisioned before the Pentagon brings criminal charges against suspects to be tried at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but refused to reveal a timetable for the trials.
Defendants are expected to be among the 660 non-U.S. citizens, most captured in Afghanistan, imprisoned at Guantanamo without being charged. President Bush, who authorized these proceedings in 2001, already has designated six men for possible trial.
The trials, due to be held before panels of U.S. officers formally called military commissions, will be the first of their kind staged by the United States since World War II.
Rumsfeld chose John Altenburg, who served for 28 years as an Army lawyer before retiring in 2002, to oversee the process, including appointing members of the commissions that will hear cases, approving charges against defendants and approving plea agreements, officials said.
The job previously had been assigned to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. A senior defense official said it was never intended for Wolfowitz to serve on a permanent basis, and that ``now the military commission process needs to be managed on a day-to-day basis by someone like John Altenburg who can devote his full attention to the matter.''
Rumsfeld also named former U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell and former Transportation Secretary William Coleman to serve on special military review panels to hear appeals to any convictions or sentences including the death penalty. Bell served in President Jimmy Carter's Cabinet from 1977-79. Coleman served under President Gerald Ford from 1975-77 at the same time Rumsfeld previously served as defense secretary.
REVIEW PANEL MEMBERS
Also named as review panel members were Frank Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, and former U.S. Rep. Edward Biester, a Bucks County, Pennsylvania judge.
All four are civilians and will be commissioned as major generals in the Army for two years. ``We wanted to preserve the military nature of the decision-making process,'' one official said.
One or two more review panel members may be named, officials said. The Pentagon said three-member review panels may consider appeals by defendants, prosecutors and nations whose citizens are being tried. Convictions are automatically appealed to the review panels.
The rules for the trials, including allowing the Pentagon to monitor communications between defendants and their lawyers and the absence of independent judicial review, have come under criticism from human rights groups and legal activists who say procedures are designed to produce convictions.
``I believe the backgrounds of the four review panel members that we announced today, including the fact that they are civilians, does add to the independence of the review panel process,'' the senior defense official said.
Beyond the special review panels named by Rumsfeld, appeals can go only to the secretary of defense or president.
A senior military official rejected the need for civilian U.S. federal courts to hear appeals.
``I think what we have right now is a complete, fair, stand-alone procedure,'' the official said, adding that ``a fair reading of our rules also shows that we are in compliance with international norms.''
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Nearly one U.S. soldier a day killed since Saddam capture
By LISA HOFFMAN and THOMAS HARGROVE
Scripps Howard News Service
December 31, 2003
http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=IRAQ-DEATHS-12-31-03&cat=AN
- In the nearly three weeks after the capture of Saddam Hussein, almost one U.S. soldier a day has been killed in action in Iraq.
Since the Dec. 13 arrest of the ousted Iraqi strongman, at least 23 American soldiers in all have died there, according to Pentagon and U.S. Central Command reports. Of those, 17 perished in combat circumstances while the rest succumbed to illness, accidents, suicide or other causes.
Military officials place little stock in the significance of the death toll so soon after Saddam was nabbed. They say too little time has passed for the number of U.S. fatalities to be indicative of the effect of his seizure or of stepped-up U.S. raids and arrests conducted thereafter using information gleaned from the arrest.
"Let's remember, it's only been two weeks-plus since the capture," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitte told reporters in Baghdad on Monday. He added that the number of "engagements" with the enemy has stayed "relatively the same."
Three New Year's Eve attacks demonstrated that the insurgents are still intent on inflicting casualties. A bomb killed at least five patrons at a popular Baghdad restaurant Wednesday night, and two other attacks in Baghdad involved bombs that were detonated as U.S. convoys passed by. A total of eight American troops were reported wounded in the second and third attacks.
Still, the overall December toll shows it was a far less bloody month for American soldiers than November, which ranked as the deadliest for GIs since the start of the war in March. In December, a total of 39 troops perished from hostile and nonhostile causes - fewer than half of November's sad mark of 82 deaths, according to a Scripps Howard News Service computer analysis of official U.S. military data.
The pace of November's bloodshed was attributed by U.S. Central Command officials to an apparent effort on the part of insurgents to inflict more casualties during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began in late October and ended in late November.
In all, since the March 19 opening of the war, 478 American GIs have died in Iraq and environs, according to Pentagon figures. Of those, about 60 percent fell in combat.
The Scripps analysis of the recent deaths found:
- For the first time in the war, a majority of all U.S. deaths from hostile causes in December came from the makeshift bombs designated "improvised explosive devices" by the military. In all, 70 percent of December's hostile deaths were attributed to the bombs, compared with 34 percent in November.
- Americans died in a wide area throughout central and northern Iraq in December. This continued a trend begun in November in which enemy action spread beyond the so-called "Sunni triangle" abutting Baghdad, where anti-U.S. sentiments are strongest.
Only a third of deaths from all causes and a quarter of fatalities from hostile action occurred in Baghdad itself. U.S. deaths occurred an average of 71 miles from Baghdad in December and 102 miles from the capital in November.
- In December, about a tenth of all who died were officers, slightly more than a third were noncommissioned officers and the rest were from the enlisted ranks. That breakdown mirrors the split during the 10 months of war and U.S. occupation in Iraq.
The average age of the December dead was 28, which matches that for the entire 10 months, as well.
- During December, noncombat deaths included a soldier electrocuted while working with a communication wire, one suffering a heart attack during physical training, another succumbing to "an undetermined illness," at least two perishing in vehicle accidents and two suspected of committing suicide.
(E-mail Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl(at)shns.com. E-mail Thomas Hargrove at hargrovet(at)shns.com.)
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Return of U.S. war dead kept solemn, secret
The most touching moment of a slain soldier's homecoming, say those who witness it, is when the chaplain steps forward to pray.
Wed Dec 31,
By Gregg Zoroya,
USA TODAY
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&ncid=676&e=4&u=/usatoday/20031231/ts_usatoday/returnofuswardeadkeptsolemnsecret
Standing over a flag-draped coffin that arrived from Iraq this month, Air Force Chaplain Robert Cannon chose this invocation: "We pray and long for the day when war will be no more."
An honor guard removed the aluminum "transfer case" containing the body from the aircraft, as other military officers present to receive the slain servicemember snapped salutes. The honor guard process here at Dover - repeated hundreds of times since the Iraq war began - is dignified and reverent. And it's carried out in secret, off-limits to the media.
This wasn't always the case. Photographs and film footage of caskets coming home from battlefields have been a stark reminder for Americans of the toll of war. During the Vietnam War, the image of caskets arriving at Dover became a staple of the nightly news. The phrase "Dover Test" later came to signify public tolerance, or lack of it, for mounting war casualties.
Since 1991, the media have been banned from covering the arrival of remains at Dover. The air base houses the military's largest mortuary, where bodies are prepared for burial before they are sent to the families' hometowns.
In March, before the Iraq war began, the Pentagon clamped down on similar coverage from military installations around the world, such as Ramstein Air Base in Germany or in Afghanistan. "The prohibition includes ... the movement of remains at any point," the Pentagon guidelines say.
The result is that images of caskets being returned to U.S. soil are not shown to the American public. This policy contrasts with Italy's national display of grief last month when 19 of that country's troops died in an Iraq suicide bombing and received a state funeral through the streets of Rome.
There have been exceptions to the media ban at Dover. In February, NASA released photos of the caskets carrying remains of the seven astronauts killed in the Columbia shuttle explosion. When fighting began in Afghanistan in 2001, reporters were allowed to cover the honor guard ritual at Ramstein in Germany.
Guarding families' feelings
Government spokesmen say the change in March to extend the media ban to all military installations was to be sensitive to the families of those killed in Iraq. "We respect and protect their privacy diligently," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman says. "We're going to do everything in our power to ensure reverence for their fallen loved one."
Still, presidential historians say wanting to control the public image o