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NUCLEAR
If the Bomb Is So Easy to Make, Why Don't More Nations Have It?
Radiation concern raised
Puerto Rico deals with US Navy's toxic waste
Canadian Forces to probe Kabul air quality
Dirty bombs
Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan break the ice
Indian Leader's Trip to Pakistan Raises Hope for Warmer Ties
Iran's Latest Nuclear Efforts
Scott Ritter: The search for Iraqi WMD
Israel Wants Jailed Nuke Whistleblower to Keep Mum
Nuclear bomb closer than IAEA believed
From Rogue Nuclear Programs, Web of Trails Leads to Pakistan
GLOBAL JIHAD : 9-11-type al-Qaida plot prompted groundings
Plugging Nuclear Leaks
Nuclear Power Plant Sirens to Be Tested
Support Grows for Measure Blocking More Hanford Waste
Bush's Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs
Bush Faces Election Year Policy Challenges
Kucinich Is Long - Shot for Presidency
Cheney Is a Quiet Force Behind Bush Presidency
America: The real danger lies within
MILITARY
Afghans Agree on a Constitution, Ending Weeks of Division
Timeline Toward Afghan Constitution
BA will refuse to fly with armed guards
Conflicting numbers and a surreal press conference
G.I. Is Killed By Mortar Fire at Iraq Base, 2 Others Wounded
Power Transfer in Iraq Starts This Week
Insurgents Kill U.S. Soldier in Iraq; 2 Troops Die in Bombing
Israelis Kill 3 Palestinians as Nablus Siege Continues
4 Die in Clashes With Israelis Soldiers
World held hostage by nuclear powers: Castro
British Troops Accused Of Killing Iraqi Detainee
Missteps Seen in Muslim Chaplain's Spy Case
Accidents Outside Combat Take Toll on U.S. Military
The price of waging preventative wars
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. Arrivals Fingerprinted in Brazil
British Air Resumes Washington Flight After Two Days
Delayed Flight Takes Off, Still Shrouded in Fog of War
Bush to Seek Immigrant Benefit Protection
Too Much Power
Our right to be left alone
ACTIVISTS
5 IDF conscripts sentenced to year in jail for refusing to serve
-------- NUCLEAR
THE ATOMIC CLUB
If the Bomb Is So Easy to Make, Why Don't More Nations Have It?
January 4, 2004
New York Times
By GREGG EASTERBROOK
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/weekinreview/04east.html?pagewanted=all&position=
LIBYA has pledged to dismantle its atomic weapons program. That is obviously good news, in addition to being a victory for George W. Bush's aggressive foreign policy. But what, exactly, is Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi giving up? Not much.
"Libya was in no position to obtain access to nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future," says a statement by the Federation of American Scientists, an independent group that tracks arms control issues. After visiting Libya last week, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, declared the country's program at "very much at an early stage." Libya may be closing down its nuclear program because it wasn't working anyway.
This points to an important reality about nuclear weapons: they are extremely difficult to make. Claims that bomb plans can be downloaded from the Internet, or that fissile material is easily obtained on the black market and slapped together into an ultimate weapon, seem little more than talk-radio jabber. Nations like Libya that have made determined attempts to obtain atomic munitions have not even come close.
Saddam Hussein, while leader of Iraq, spent billions of dollars and many years pursuing atomic weapons, without success. It now appears his nuclear program was put into limbo sometime during the 1990's, perhaps for the pragmatic reason that it wasn't working. Pakistan, which may have played a role in various other bomb efforts in the developing world, had hundreds of engineers working for decades to devise its atomic device. North Korea devoted a high percentage of national resources to decades' worth of research before, probably, it acquired an atomic bomb. Iran's nuclear program, which dates to the last shah, has been working on a weapon for a quarter century so far.
In Libya's case, beginning in the 1970's the government sought assistance of various kinds from Pakistan, China and the former Soviet Union. Soviet technicians helped Libya build a small research reactor at a place called Tajura. The Qaddafi regime later tried, unsuccessfully, to buy a large power-generation reactor from a Belgian company, possibly hoping it could be refitted for production of weapons material.
Last week The Wall Street Journal reported that American forces recently seized a shipload of centrifuge equipment bound for Libya. The seizure might have been a factor in Colonel Qaddafi's decision to abandon his pursuit of nuclear weapons - though Washington officials said that before the ship was seized, American intelligence agents had already quietly visited Libya, at Colonel Qaddafi's invitation, to inspect the sites that the country proposed to shutter.
Atomic bombs have proved difficult for countries like Libya to make for several reasons. The "enrichment" of uranium or plutonium to weapons-grade concentrations is a fantastically complex undertaking, involving reactors that cost billions of dollars or centrifuge facilities that are also costly and complicated. Atomic bomb engineering and fabrication involve extremely precise calculations, exotic materials and unusual specialized components that even enormous cost-is-no-object government programs in the United States and the old Soviet Union found hard to manufacture.
Attempts by developing nations to make an ultimate weapon have gone slowly even though they have concentrated on atomic bombs - the kind dropped on Japan in 1945 - rather than the far more powerful thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb, which have never been used, except in tests. (Making a hydrogen bomb involves even more complex calculations, precision manufacturing and rare substances, like the hydrogen isotope tritium. )
In 1979, a national controversy erupted when The Progressive magazine printed an article describing the hydrogen bomb's basic engineering principles. Commentators proclaimed that many nations and even individual terrorist cells would respond by building hydrogen bombs.
Yet since 1979, no nation has joined the hydrogen bomb club. After decades of work, India and Pakistan exploded only 1945-style atomic bombs. (Six years ago, India announced that it had conducted underground tests of a thermonuclear bomb, but analysts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory concluded that only the 1945-style atomic part of the device actually detonated.)
Both the Israeli and the now decommissioned South African ultimate-weapon programs sought atomic, not hydrogent, bombs. The engineering, construction and manufacturing challenges of the hydrogen bomb are so great that even the United States, Britain, France, China and the former Soviet Union had great difficulties fabricating it.
North Korea now appears to have succeeded in making several atomic devices of the 1945 variety. It agreed last week to allow an unofficial United States delegation to visits nuclear weapons complex, at Yongbyon, so perhaps North Korea's progress will be known soon.
Atomic weapons of the 1945 type are horrible enough, so the international threat posed by North Korean weapons may turn out to exceed any threat posed by Mr. Hussein's Iraq. But it took North Korea decades to acquire an atomic threat, even under circumstances of total national fixation on weapons development, and total government contempt for the needs of its citizens.
Iran's nuclear program continues to grow more disturbing. The nation possesses a large Russian-designed reactor called Bushehr that is expected to become operational in about two years.
"Twelve to 15 months after the reactor goes into operation, it will contain roughly 60 bombs' worth of near-weapons-grade plutonium," the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a nonpartisan group in Washington, recently warned.
After news reports in 2003 asserted that Iran had secret nuclear installations in a place called Kolahdouz, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors visited the location and found nothing worrisome. But last year, inspectors did find traces of highly enriched uranium at two Iranian nuclear sites, including a "pilot" enriching facility at Natanz.
Iran is known to be working on both centrifuges and lasers to enrich uranium, and has been cagey with the international agency about its importation and manufacture of some uranium byproducts related to weapons manufacturing. There seems to be a strong prospect that Iran will eventually have a bomb - but attained only after vast investments of money, time and technological skills.
Other nuclear proliferation dangers continue to mount around the world. Syria has tried to buy reactors from China and Argentina; currently, Russia is helping Syria build a small reactor that is officially for "research" purposes.
Algeria has a small reactor at a place called El Salam, and claims its purpose is to make isotopes for medical research. But the "medical" reactor is ringed by antiaircraft missiles, and the Federation of American Scientists said in a study that the El Salam site "has a theoretical capacity to produce from three to five kilograms of plutonium a year, approximately equivalent to one nuclear weapon."
It remains possible that some government or terrorist organization could assemble a crude atomic device that would explode with far less power than the Hiroshima bomb, but with more force than any conventional munitions. And "dirty bombs" - radioactive material scattered by conventional explosives - might be effective weapons of terror. Merely the word "radiation" could set off panic in a big city, regardless of whether a dirty bomb actually dispersed enough radiation to pose general danger.
For the moment, Libya's decision to abandon its fruitless atomic program serves as a reminder that the ultimate weapon is, thankfully, not easy to come by. Numerous governments have invested billions of dollars and years of effort in trying to build atomic warheads, and have not been successful.
Gregg Easterbrook, a senior editor at The New Republic, is the author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better and People Feel Worse," published by Random House.
-------- accidents and safety
Radiation concern raised
By DOUG BEAZLEY, EDMONTON SUN
Sunday, January 4, 2004
http://www.canoe.ca/EdmontonNews/es.es-01-04-0027.html
A Swedish study linking possible brain damage with the use of X-ray CT scans on children has the Stollery Children's Hospital searching for new guidelines to control the use of the technology.
Researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institute recently went over data from more than 2,000 children treated with radiation for a harmless birthmark condition between 1930 and 1959.
The researchers found that the children later showed reduced learning ability when compared to kids who hadn't been exposed to radiation. They reported that the average radiation dose for the children examined in the study was roughly equal to a single modern CT scan.
The Stollery is already leading a national, federally funded study to set "benchmarks" for determining whether a patient under age 16 should get a CT scan, a two-dimensional X-ray rendered by a computer to provide cross-section images of a living brain.
"What we want is a set of key factors that determine the need for a scan," said Dr. Terry Klassen, chair of pediatrics at the Stollery.
Klassen was lead author of a 2000 study that compared the number of CT scans conducted on children at nine Canadian children's hospitals. The study found a wide range in the frequency of pediatric CT scans for minor head injuries treated at those hospitals.
"It ranged from a low of 6% of patients to a high of 26%," said Klassen. "We concluded there was a need for more careful study to determine which kids need the scans the most."
Along with concerns about cost - CT scans can cost hundreds of dollars per patient - Klassen said medical officials want to reduce the exposure of "developing brains" to radiation.
"The issue of brain damage had not been identified before (the Swedish study)," he said.
"The question we also have to ask is whether there were other factors at work, such as injuries, that might have explained their results."
Klassen said Stollery doctors use "minimum" radiation levels in CT scans and tend to refer children with chronic conditions for MRI scans.
But there's a long waiting list for an MRI date in the Capital Health Region, he said, and kids with acute head injuries can't afford delays.
"The last thing we want to do is let some hidden injury go undetected."
-------- depleted uranium
Puerto Rico deals with US Navy's toxic waste
Sunday, January 04, 2004
InterPress Service / Manila Times
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2004/jan/04/yehey/opinion/20040104opi8.html
SAN JUAN-Now that the US 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 US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS).
Measuring 7,527 hectares (of the island's total 13,355 hectares), it is the largest wilderness refuge in all of Puerto Rico, which is a commonwealth of the United States whose residents have US citizenship.
Many who opposed the Navy presence find it particularly galling that the lands they struggled for have been transferred to another US 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 unaccep-table," declared Robert Rabin, spokesman 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 Diaz 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 Diaz.
In what many observers consider a bizarre twist, this wilderness refuge is simultaneously a toxic disaster area. Earlier this month the US Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended that the lands and marine areas polluted by the Navy be declared a Superfund site.
Superfund is a US government program 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 US Congress. Congressman Joseph Crowley, who visited Vieques last month, told IPS that transferring the lands from the Department of Defense 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.
----
Canadian Forces to probe Kabul air quality
Sunday January 04, 2004
Pakistan Tribune
http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=50545
OTTAWA, January 05 (Online): The Canadian Forces plan to send a team of environmental and medical experts to Kabul to reassure soldiers about fecal-contaminated air they may be breathing in the Afghan capital, CanWest News Service has learned.
A senior Defence Department official said the gesture is an attempt to dispel fears raised by reports of the air quality concerns of the 2,000 Canadian soldiers serving on the NATO protection force for Afghanistan.
Military Ombudsman Andre Marin first publicized concerns of the soldiers in an interview last month with CanWest News Service. At the time, Mr. Marin said the overwhelming concern of soldiers in Afghanistan was that they were breathing bad air that had a fecal content as high as 30% and that the military medical brass were ignoring their concerns.
In response, the Forces director of health policy, Colonel Ken Scott, wrote a scathing e-mail, widely circulated within the Defence Department, that criticized Mr. Marin for making the comments.
Col. Scott said there was no scientific evidence behind the soldiers' concerns and it was irresponsible to raise the issue.
Now, in the latest twist, the Forces have decided to send a team of experts to Kabul to investigate the matter and address the troops' concerns head-on. "It's to reassure the troops," said a senior Defence Department official speaking on background.
"They want to do a big town hall [meeting] in Kabul," he added. The official said there has been "a complete about-face" in the thinking of Defence Department brass over how to handle health complaints of soldiers.
"It shows the power of the press," the military official said.
The Forces plan to have information sessions with soldiers explaining what has been done to test the air quality around Kabul and how they plan to address the issue.
Kabul has no modern sanitation or water purification system. Feces flow in open sewers. In the winter, Kabulis burn garbage -- much of it fecal-contaminated -- that helps distribute noxious substances in the atmosphere.
German military health experts have estimated the fecal content of the air in and around the Kabul area could be as high as 30%.
The Canadian Forces, as well as the armed forces of many other Western countries, came under fire in the past decade after soldiers began complaining of mysterious battlefield ailments, such as Gulf War Syndrome, or of exposure to depleted uranium in the Balkans.
Last week, a report out of the former Yugoslavia linked bombs containing depleted uranium used in the past by NATO fighter jets with an increase in the risk of cancer among civilians.
In Afghanistan, Canadian troops in overwhelming numbers told Mr. Marin that the quality of the air in Kabul was their main concern about their tour of duty.
Mr. Marin visited the Canadian contingent in Camp Julien late last year. Many soldiers expressed concerns that they would become vulnerable to respiratory illnesses in later years and that their service records would not document the origin of their illnesses -- something that could have serious consequences on any future health benefits.
Yesterday, Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson wrapped up a four-day visit to Afghanistan. Before her departure, Mme. Clarkson urged Canadians to remember the dangerous jobs being done by their soldiers in Afghanistan.
"I think that's so important that people understand we've got 2,000 men and women here who are working in order to help bring some kind of order and peace and democracy eventually to a place like Afghanistan," she said.
"It's very much appreciated by the people here [in Kabul]. President [Hamid] Karzai said how deeply they appreciate this.".
Mme. Clarkson spent the New Year's holiday visiting Camp Julien, where the majority of Canadians are housed, and Camp Warehouse, where approximately 400 Canadian soldiers share a base with others from more than 30 countries.
The troops are looking ahead to the end of this month, when the vast majority of them will begin returning home as they are replaced by soldiers from the Royal 22nd Regiment, also known as the Vandoos.
----
Dirty bombs
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Helena Independent Record
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2004/01/04/opinions/a04010404_02.txt
Why don't we hear more about it? We have used D.U. shells in the Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and now Iraq. D.U. is depleted uranium. The problem is that D.U.s are not depleted of anything. They are dirty and utilize the U-238 low-level radioactive byproduct of the uranium enrichment process.
Doug Rokke, a career soldier, recently spoke at the University of Illinois Conference on War and Health. Rokke was General Schwarzkopf's man in charge of cleanup efforts. During Gulf War one, 375 tons of depleted uranium were left in the desert. A solid estimate of what we have spread across Iraq in the current war is 2,000 tons. In Rokke's words: "You can't clean it up."
This is a long-term public health disaster. Many of those that have served in these areas are combat disabled, battling cancer and neurological and respiratory illnesses.
Roger Scott
4071 Fox Hollow Dr.
-------- india / pakistan
Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan break the ice
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Jan 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040104155653.g1phrsld.html
Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will meet on Monday for the first time since their nuclear-armed militaries came to the brink of war in 2002.
"The meeting will take place sometime tomorrow," foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a press briefing late on Sunday, after Vajpayee issued a request to meet the Pakistani President.
Vajpayee had earlier held historic ice-breaking talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali after the opening of the 12th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC).
Vajpayee and Jamali met privately for 15 minutes before being joined by their foreign ministers, foreign secretaries and senior envoys.
"It's a good beginning and we hope this will culminate in a dialogue. This should culminate in a dialogue," Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan told a media briefing.
"The two leaders agreed that the momentum in bilateral relations should be maintained."
Vajpayee and Musharraf have not spoken formally since July 2001, when they attended a bilateral summit in the Indian city of Agra.
They shook hands two years ago at the last SAARC summit in Kathmandu.
The talks were the first between the bitter nuclear rivals since they came to the brink of war in 2002.
"If we can move forward to a composite dialogue from here it will crown the SAARC achievements," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid told AFP.
Monday's talks are the culmination of peace overtures by both leaders, starting with Vajpayee's "hand of friendship" offer last April, when the 79-year-old premier pronounced the final bid for peace of his lifetime.
Musharraf in recent weeks took the dramatic step of offering to drop Pakistan's decades-old demand for a referendum in Kashmir, the disputed territory at the heart of the neighbours' 56-year-old tensions.
His government also initiated an unprecedented ceasefire along more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) of boundaries in Kashmir, which has held since November 26.
State-run Pakistan Television (PTV) showed footage of Jamali, Vajpayee and senior officials sitting together during their talks.
PTV said they discussed "close co-operation and other matters of mutual interest".
----
Indian Leader's Trip to Pakistan Raises Hope for Warmer Ties
By AMY WALDMAN
January 4, 2004
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/asia/04STAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 3 - India's prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, stepped onto Pakistani soil for the first time in four years on Saturday, his mere presence here feeding the hopes for peace between India and Pakistan.
While Mr. Vajpayee has come for a regional meeting, the first gathering of seven South Asian leaders in two years, it is Mr. Vajpayee's interaction with Pakistan's president and army chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, that will be most closely watched. After four years of strain, relations have been improving since April.
"The situation is about as hopeful as at any time" since the two countries fought a mini-war in 1999, said a Western diplomat based here.
K. Shankar Bajpai, a former Indian ambassador to Pakistan, agreed. "There is hope and it is widespread," he said. "People really do think something may happen."
In truth, he said, that may reflect the deep longing for a solution to the half-century standoff between the countries more than concrete evidence that one is at hand.
But in a press briefing on Saturday, Pakistan's foreign minister, Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, suggested those hopes might help create change. "There is a very strong feeling among various segments of the population in both countries regarding the desire for normalization," he said. That, he said, "generates a certain momentum."
In the seven months since Mr. Vajpayee extended a "hand of friendship" to Pakistan, people of both countries, from parliamentarians to businessmen, have demonstrated what Najmuddin Sheikh, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, called a "pent-up demand for people-to-people contact."
That demand is putting public pressure on leaders in both countries, he said, although he was quick to note that "in Indo-Pak relations, it is never safe to make any assumptions about how it will pan out."
India, with a Hindu majority, and Pakistan, with a Muslim one, were born from the partition of the British Empire in 1947. They have been rancorous neighbors, with Kashmir, the border region now divided between them, at the heart of their animosity.
They have fought two-and-a-half wars over it, and since 1989 Pakistan has backed - the two countries dispute whether in spirit or substance - an Islamic insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, which is India's only Muslim-majority state.
The meeting - of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation - will not address Kashmir. It is intended to focus on multilateral issues, including a free-trade agreement that the countries' foreign ministers made on Friday. But it could provide a further lubricant to improving relations - provided it does not make them worse, given the poor personal chemistry between General Musharraf and Mr. Vajpayee.
Mr. Vajpayee has not yet, at least publicly, requested a separate meeting with General Musharraf, as have the leaders of the other nations taking part - Bangladesh, Nepal, Maldives, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Mr. Vajpayee's national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra, arrived early, a suggestion that arrangements for a meeting might be under way.
Mr. Vajpayee was last in Pakistan in 1999, when he took a bus to Lahore to meet Nawaz Sharif, then the prime minister. Few knew it would come to seem a halcyon moment.
Five months later came Pakistan's incursion into the peaks of Kargil, and the mini-war. Then came General Musharraf's coup.
In July 2001 a meeting between Mr. Vajpayee and General Musharraf in India ended in acrimony. Six months later, India's Parliament was attacked by a suicide squad made up of what India called Pakistan-backed militants.
India severed air and land links, and mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops along the border. Pakistan followed suit, and the nuclear-armed neighbors poised for war.
But late last year, India began withdrawing its troops, and the freeze gradually began to thaw. In April, Mr. Vajpayee vowed to make what he called one last attempt at peace. The two countries have since restored transit links and taken other confidence-building measures.
The steps were met with a rush of popular goodwill. Delegations of journalists, politicians, artists and businesspeople began crossing the border, and divided families joyously reunited.
In November, Pakistan announced a unilateral cease-fire along the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir, the Indo-Pakistan border and the Siachen glacier, where the two countries have been in an expensive standoff for years.
India responded in kind, and Mr. Vajpayee confirmed he would attend the regional meeting. Last year's was canceled because of the tensions between the countries.
In an interview with Reuters several weeks ago, General Musharraf appeared to go even further, suggesting that Pakistan's half-century insistence that the Kashmiri people vote in a plebiscite to decide which nation they wanted to belong to could be set aside - if India showed flexibility.
Meanwhile, the sculptures of nuclear missiles that adorned Islamabad have been removed, as have many of the signs that refer to Kashmir as "the jugular of the nation."
Many Pakistanis say it is India's turn to offer something of substance - perhaps the dialogue that Pakistan has long sought. General Musharraf, they note, is moving at considerable risk, defying both militants and sectors of the army devoted to what they see as freeing Kashmir from India. He survived two assassination attempts last month.
There is no evidence that the military, Pakistan's most powerful institution would support a shift on Kashmir; it has long viewed support for holy war there as part of its defense strategy against India.
"Musharraf has gone the extra mile," said Shireen Mazari, director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad. "On the macro level, we're saying, `Let's be flexible on Kashmir, and find a solution through negotiation.' The Indians are talking at the micro level: `Let's talk about another bus service.' "
Michael Krepon, founding president of the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington and a South Asia expert, agreed. "Musharraf has taken more initiatives, and riskier initiatives than Vajpayee," he said. "This is not sustainable."
Some of New Delhi's demands seem to have been met. Officials in both New Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir said infiltration into Indian-held Kashmir had declined significantly - although it often drops in winter - and militant attacks had fallen off sharply..
"In fact now at the Line of Control people from both sides are shaking hands," said Muzaffar Beig, the state's minister of finance. "Leaders should see to that and continue the process"
New Delhi is quietly laying the groundwork for talks with separatist political leaders in Kashmir.
But this week, the magazine India Today published an interview with Mr. Vajpayee in which he said that until Pakistan "changes its perception about Jammu and Kashmir - that because it is a Muslim-majority state, it should be a part of Pakistan - no meaningful discussions can take place on this matter."
Each side faces domestic pressures - General Musharraf from extremists and the military, Mr. Vajpayee from more hawkish cabinet members and Hindu nationalists. But both seemed prepared "to move farther and faster than many in their governments," as the Western diplomat put it.
With India heading toward elections as early as this spring, Mr. Vajpayee at least appears to believe he can take both his party and people with him. In an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, he laid out why it was in both countries' interests to move forward.
He cited "overwhelmingly positive" popular sentiment, the need to remove barriers to economic development and the changing priorities of a post-cold war world.
"And finally," he said, "for how long do we want the world to look at India-Pakistan relations either as a threat to global peace or as a promising laboratory for new experiments in conflict resolution?"
Pakistan Arrests 6 Suspects
LAHORE, Pakistan, Jan. 3 (Reuters) - Pakistani security forces arrested six Islamic militants on Saturday in connection with two suicide bombing attacks last month aimed at President Pervez Musharraf, intelligence officials said.
The men belonged to Jaish-e-Muhammad, an Islamic militant group that renamed itself Khudam-e-Islam after being outlawed by General Musharraf in 2002, they said.
Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi for this article.
-------- iran
Iran's Latest Nuclear Efforts Weighing Heavy On Minds Of Proliferation Experts
By Golnaz Esfandiari
1/5/04
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty,
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W.
Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
http://www.payvand.com/news/04/jan/1018.html
The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization says Tehran has almost completed construction of a plant to produce heavy water. Iran also says it plans to build a 40-megawatt heavy water nuclear reactor next to it. Arms experts are expressing concern over the project, since heavy water reactors can produce plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
Prague, 2 January 2004 (RFE/RL) -- It was with great pride that the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization announced recently that a heavy water plant near Arak in Central Iran is almost complete.
Gholamreza Aghazadeh said: "This project is considered to be a remarkable feat for our country, through which Iran will acquire heavy water technology, thus placing our country's name alongside world manufactures of this industry."
Tehran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that the reactor will be used for research and development purposes. But arm experts note that heavy water can also be used in the production of nuclear weapons.
Jack Boureston is director of First Watch International, a private research group that deals with international security issues:
"In a way, it's a dual use, it's a dual-purpose type of a machine. Basically, the civilian purpose would be for producing isotopes which could then be used for medical and agricultural purposes. In addition, the military purpose of this type of a reactor would be to produce plutonium," Boureston said.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, heavy water provides a route for producing the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons. It bypasses uranium enrichment and all of the related technological structures. Heavy water reactors can use natural nonenriched uranium as fuel. The spent fuel can then be reprocessed to extract weapons-grade plutonium.
"The heavy water reactor is a good, fertile ground for producing spent fuel, which can then be separated for producing plutonium. This plutonium will be most probably at a grade that would be easily usable for developing nuclear weapons," Boureston said.
John Eldridge, editor of "Jane's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defence," says heavy water can also be used in the development of thermonuclear weapons.
"It's the thermonuclear weapons that use that science where the two nuclei are fused together. So the development of heavy water -- deuterium and tritium are the two elements that you need that are suitable for this kind of activity -- that is of concern," Eldridge said.
Boureston says Iran's plan to build a heavy water nuclear reactor, called the IR-40, is raising eyebrows given the fact that similar reactors have been used by other countries to produce plutonium.
"Well, this is what makes this such a concern. Many of the reactors that are similar to this particular heavy water reactor have been used in the past for military purposes. India has a reactor that it used for producing the plutonium that is suspected of being for their [nuclear] weapon, and there are other countries that have done similar [things] -- in particular China and perhaps -- we don't know, but perhaps -- Israel and others," Boureston said.
According to Aghazadeh, the basic design of the reactor has been completed. Construction is set to begin early this year.
Last month, Iran signed the additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which allows snap inspections of its nuclear facilities. Tehran says that signing the additional protocol proves that it is not pursuing a weapons program.
"Jane's" Eldridge says it is now up to the IAEA to determine the legitimacy of Iran's heavy water project:
"Well, I can't see that [Iran] would need a heavy water plant for civilian use. At least they're being honest, the Iranians, saying they're declaring it. So now it's up to the International Atomic Energy authority inspectors to decide how legitimate and whether there is actually any legitimate use for this particular plant. It may be that there is a use for it which, you know, hasn't been revealed yet or something. So it is possible, but it is very suspicious. I think that that kind of plant has classically in the past been leaning towards the development of nuclear weapons," Eldridge said.
Given the dual use of heavy-water reactors, determining the real purpose behind Iran's efforts will not be easy at this early stage.
"At this point, there wouldn't be a way for inspectors to know whether the 40-megawatt reactor would be used for developing civilian isotopes or for producing plutonium -- and the reason why is because the process is identical," Boureston said.
But he says Tehran's signing of the additional protocol to the NPT treaty will make it easier for UN inspectors to investigate Iran's activities.
"Once this reactor becomes operational, it will go under IAEA safeguards. In addition, most recently Iran has signed the additional protocol. That means that all design information is being made available to the IAEA for their investigations and for their understanding, and that will continue for the life of the reactor. And once the reactor is actually decommissioned, then it will still have to report at certain times," Boureston said.
The IAEA last month condemned Iran for concealing parts of its nuclear activities over the past two decades and warned the country over future violations. However, the agency said it had found no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful. An IAEA spokesman told RFE/RL recently that it will take many months to verify that claim.
-------- iraq / inspections
Scott Ritter: The search for Iraqi WMD has become a public joke. But I, for one, am not laughing
Hutton stopped far short of a real investigation into the Blair government's abysmal abuse of power
04 January 2004
UK Independent
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=477860
President George Bush, in his State of the Union address in January last year, told the world that Saddam Hussein had promised he would disarm his weapons of mass destruction, and that this promise had not been fulfilled. Bush spoke of the Iraqi president retaining massive stocks of chemical and biological agent, as well as an ongoing nuclear weapons programme.
On 20 March 2003, Bush ordered American military forces, accompanied by the armed forces of Great Britain, to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power. In hiding since the fall of Baghdad, Saddam was finally run to ground in December. On his capture, he is reported to have said that WMD was an issue created by George Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq. This is a claim that has increasing validity.
Tony Blair had already been embarrassed by a growing recognition that his own intelligence-based estimates regarding Iraqi WMD were every bit as cooked up as the American president's. He faced further ignominy when Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, publicly mocked his assertions that David Kay, the former UN weapons inspector turned CIA agent who headed the so-far futile search for WMD in occupied Iraq, had found "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories". Dismissed by Bremer as a "red herring", Blair's discredited comments only underscore the sad fact that the issue of Iraqi WMD, and the entire concept of disarmament, has become a public joke.
The misrepresentation and distortion of fact carried out by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair is no joke, but rather represent an assault on the very fabric of the concept of a free and democratic society which they espouse to serve. The people of the United States are still waiting for a heavily divided Congress to break free of partisan politics and launch a genuine investigation. This should certainly look at the massive intelligence failure surrounding the gross distortion of the Iraqi WMD threat put forward by the US intelligence community. But perhaps more importantly, the investigation should focus on the actions of the White House in shaping the intelligence estimates so that they dovetailed nicely with the political goals and objectives of the Bush administration's Iraq policy-makers.
Many in Great Britain might take some pride in knowing that their democracy, at least, has had an airing of the pre-war Iraq intelligence which has been denied their American cousins.
The Hutton inquiry has been viewed by many as an investigation into the politicisation, or "sexing up", of intelligence information by the British government to help strengthen its case for war. It stopped far short of any real investigation into the abysmal abuse of power that occurred when Blair's government lied to Parliament, and the electorate, about the threat posed by Iraq's WMD. There was no effort to dig deep into the systematic politicisation of the British intelligence system, to untangle
the web of deceit and misinformation concerning Iraq peddled over the years by the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and British intelligence.
The damage done goes well beyond the borders of the US and Britain. One must also calculate the irreparable harm done to the precepts of international law, the viability of multilateral organisations such as the United Nations, and the concepts of diplomacy and arms control which kept the world from destroying itself during the last century.
Iran, faced with 130,000 American soldiers on its border, has opened its nuclear facilities to inspection. North Korea has done the same. Libya, in a surprise move, has traded in its own overblown WMD aspirations in exchange for diplomatic recognition and economic interaction with the West. But none of these moves, as welcome as they are, have the depth and reach to compare with the decision by South Africa or the former republics of the Soviet Union to get rid of their respective nuclear weapons. The latter represented actions taken freely, wrapped in the principles of international law. The former are merely coerced concessions, given more as a means of buying time than through any spirit of true co-operation. Sold by George Bush and Tony Blair as diplomatic triumphs derived from the Iraq experience, the sad reality is that these steps towards disarmament are every bit as illusory as Saddam's WMD arsenal. They are all the more dangerous, too, because the safety net of international law that the world could once have turned to when these compelled concessions inevitably collapse no longer exists.
Scott Ritter was a UN weapons inspector from 1991-98. He is the author of 'Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America'
-------- israel
Israel Wants Jailed Nuke Whistleblower to Keep Mum
January 4, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-whistleblower.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel is worried a nuclear whistleblower winding up an 18-year prison sentence has more secrets to tell, and may make his freedom conditional on his silence, security sources said Sunday.
They said Mordechai Vanunu, who in 1986 went public with details of his work at Israel's main atomic reactor, could be barred from leaving the country when he is released on April 21, under emergency laws reserved for cases of national security.
``Vanunu dealt an enormous blow to the country, and we believe he has more in store,'' a Israeli security source said. ``There is no double-jeopardy proviso when it comes to treason.''
The Jewish state is still sore from a tell-all interview Vanunu, now 49, gave Britain's Sunday Times in October 1986 on the Dimona reactor where he had worked as a mid-level technician for eight years. He was to receive an undisclosed fee but was abducted by Mossad before payment could be made, the paper said.
Vanunu's revelations, and some 60 accompanying photographs, led independent experts to conclude Israel has between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads -- an embarrassment given Israel's policy of ambiguity regarding its non-conventional capabilities.
Absent from the expose were the names of Vanunu's former colleagues at Dimona. Security sources say these are among sensitive data he could still publish abroad after his release.
In Israel, any public statement Vanunu makes would be subject to military censors who have kept a tight lid on the case since he was spirited back and tried behind closed doors.
Vanunu's lawyer was not available for comment. But Vanunu, who dabbled in pro-Palestinian politics and became a Christian after quitting Dimona in 1985, apparently feels no remorse.
``The secrets collapsed without any bombs, without killing anyone. That was the great power of a non-violent act,'' the U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu web site quotes him as saying.
Newsweek, in a report to be published Monday, said Vanunu last year refused to sign a non-disclosure pledge offered by an Israeli official in exchange for the promise of early release.
``He believes in freedom of speech,'' Mary Eoloff, an American peace activist who legally adopted Vanunu with her husband in a failed attempt to get him U.S. citizenship, told the magazine.
-------- mideast
Nuclear bomb closer than IAEA believed
January 04, 2004
By Paul Wood
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040103-111007-1377r.htm
TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya was much closer to developing a nuclear bomb than was detected by United Nations inspection teams allowed into the country last week, said British officials who have visited the country's secret weapons laboratories.
They also believe that Libya has stockpiles of the ingredients for chemical weapons and the shells and bombs to deliver them.
Though Col. Moammar Gadhafi, the Libyan leader, does not have biological weapons, Libya does have dual-use technologies to make them, British and American officials have concluded. Libya has declared it will halt these weapons programs.
"We saw uranium enrichment going ahead. We were satisfied that they were well on the way to developing a weapon," said one unidentified senior British official. "Libya was third on our list of concern after North Korea and Iran."
That comment contradicted the assessment by Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on his first visit to Libya last week. At one Libyan nuclear facility, for instance, Mr. ElBaradei said that his U.N. team had found all the equipment "still in boxes."
"They were still a few years away from developing a nuclear weapon," he said. "This is a program at an early stage of development. They have not enriched any uranium, to our knowledge. They have not built any industrial-scale facility. It was all at the pilot laboratory scale."
The IAEA inspectors were taken to only four sites near Tripoli during a daylong tour. The British and American experts saw many more, spending three weeks in Libya in October and December as part of secret negotiations with Col. Gadhafi's regime.
The search is now under way to find the supplier of components for the nuclear program. British and American concern is focused on an unidentified third country, which has supplied both Libya and Iran - possibly North Korea.
An unidentified senior British official with knowledge of the secret Anglo-American inspections was confident that Libya in time would reveal to the IAEA inspectors the full extent of its clandestine nuclear program.
"At first, there were quite a lot of moments when we felt they were not being fully frank, but trust has grown," the official said. "This was a decision some time in the making. Some years ago, Col. Gadhafi realized that he was taking Libya the wrong way."
The reassessment is said to have gained momentum since the September 11, 2001, terrorism attacks - and particularly after the invasion of Iraq. The secret diplomacy began in March with an approach from Libya, just as American and British tanks were about to roll into Iraq.
Libya's concerns became clear during a visit by the British Foreign Office minister, Mike O'Brien, earlier this year. A senior Libyan official anxiously took him aside to ask if countries that gave up their weapons of mass destruction would still be "punished like Saddam Hussein."
"Mike O'Brien was able to reassure them that they would not be punished," the British official said.
-------- pakistan
From Rogue Nuclear Programs, Web of Trails Leads to Pakistan
January 4, 2004
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/04NUKE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
The Pakistani leaders who denied for years that scientists at the country's secret A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories were peddling advanced nuclear technology must have been averting their eyes from a most conspicuous piece of evidence: the laboratory's own sales brochure, quietly circulated to aspiring nuclear weapons states and a network of nuclear middlemen around the world.
The cover bears an official-looking seal that says "Government of Pakistan" and a photograph of the father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. It promotes components that were spinoffs from Pakistan's three-decade-long project to build a nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium, set in a drawing that bears a striking resemblance to a mushroom cloud.
In other nations, such sales would be strictly controlled. But Pakistan has always played by its own rules.
As investigators unravel the mysteries of the North Korean, Iranian and now the Libyan nuclear projects, Pakistan - and those it empowered with knowledge and technology they are now selling on their own - has emerged as the intellectual and trading hub of a loose network of hidden nuclear proliferators.
That network is global, stretching from Germany to Dubai and from China to South Asia, and involves many middlemen and suppliers. But what is striking about a string of recent disclosures, experts say, is how many roads appear ultimately to lead back to the Khan Research Laboratories in Kahuta, where Pakistan's own bomb was developed.
In 2002 the United States was surprised to discover how North Korea had turned to the Khan laboratory for an alternative way to manufacture nuclear fuel, after the reactors and reprocessing facilities it had relied on for years were "frozen" under a now shattered agreement with the Clinton administration. Last year, international inspectors and Western intelligence agencies were surprised again, this time by the central role Pakistan played in the initial technology that enabled Iran to pursue a secret uranium enrichment program for 18 years.
The sources of Libya's enrichment program are still under investigation, but those who have had an early glance say they see "interconnections" with both Pakistan and Iran's programs - and Libyan financial support for the Pakistani program that stretches back three decades.
Until two weeks ago, Pakistani officials had long denied that any nuclear technology was transferred from their laboratories. But now that story has begun to change, after the Pakistani authorities, under pressure, began interrogating scientists from the laboratory about their assistance to other nuclear aspirants. Two weeks ago, Dr. Khan himself was called in for what appears to have been a respectful, and still inconclusive, questioning.
Responding to requests relayed through associates, Dr. Khan has recently denied that he aided atomic hopefuls. But American and European officials note that in the 1980's he repeatedly denied that Pakistan was at work on an atomic bomb, which it finally tested in 1998.
While American intelligence officials have gathered details on the activities of the creator of the Pakistani bomb and his compatriots for decades, four successive American presidents have dealt with the issue extremely delicately, turning modest sanctions against Pakistan on and off, for fear of destabilizing the country when it was needed to counter the Soviets in the 1980's, much as it is needed to battle terrorism today.
President Bush, who regularly talks about nuclear dangers, has never mentioned Pakistan's laboratories or their proliferation in public - probably out of concern of destabilizing President Pervez Musharraf, who has survived two assassination attempts in December.
"He's been a stand-up guy when it comes to dealing with the terrorists," Mr. Bush said of General Musharraf on Thursday. "We are making progress against Al Qaeda because of his cooperation." He dismissed a question about the vulnerability of Pakistan's own nuclear weapons, saying, "Yes, they are secure," then changed the subject.
Yet when President Bush talks about the horrors that could unfold if a nuclear weapon fell into the hands of terrorists, it is Pakistan's combustible mix of expertise, components, fuel and fully assembled weapons that springs to the minds of American and European intelligence experts. In public, the White House says it has received "assurances" from Pakistan that if there ever were nuclear exports they are finished.
"There is this almost empty-headed recitation of assurances that whatever Pakistan did in the past it's over, it's no longer a problem," said one senior European diplomat with access to much of the intelligence about proliferation. "But there's is no evidence that it has ever stopped."
Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations organization charged with monitoring nuclear energy worldwide, contends that the recent nuclear disclosures show that the system put in place at the height of the cold war to contain nuclear weapons technology has ruptured and can no longer control the new nuclear trade.
"The information is now all over the place, and that's what makes it more dangerous than in the 1960's," Dr. ElBaradei said.
The Crucial Ingredient
The biggest hurdle in making a nuclear weapon is not designing the warhead, but getting the right fuel to create an atomic explosion. One route is to extract plutonium from nuclear reactors and reprocess it to produce more fuel, known as creating a fuel cycle. The other is to extract uranium from the ground and enrich it.
The 1970 treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons was devised to control which countries could possess and pursue nuclear arms. It allowed the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China to keep all their weapons but required all other signatories to forswear nuclear arms. North Korea, Iran and Libya all signed, allowing I.A.E.A. inspectors limited visits to verify that countries producing nuclear fuel were truly using "atoms for peace." Pakistan and India never signed, nor did Israel.
Aside from inspections, spy satellites and airborne "sniffers" can usually pick out the huge complexes needed to extract spent fuel from nuclear reactors and turn it into bomb fuel. But after North Korea was caught cheating by the United States in the early 1990's and was forced into an agreement to "freeze" its reactor-and-reprocessing complex at Yongbyon, the lesson was clear: to produce bomb fuel, countries needed to take a more surreptitious route.
Uranium enrichment was the most promising, because it could take place in hidden facilities, emitting few traces. And that was the technology that Dr. Khan perfected as his laboratory raced to produce a nuclear bomb to keep up with its rival, India.
The key to the technology is the development of centrifuges. These hollow tubes spin fast to separate a gaseous form of natural uranium into U-238, a heavy isotope, and U-235, a light one. The rare U-235 isotope is the holy grail: it can easily split in two, releasing bursts of nuclear energy.
But making centrifuges is no easy trick. The rotors of centrifuges, spinning at the speed of sound or faster, must be very strong and perfectly balanced or they fly apart catastrophically.
To produce bomb-grade fuel, uranium must pass through hundreds or thousands of centrifuges linked in a cascade, until impurities are spun away and what remains is mainly U-235 . The result is known as highly enriched uranium.
Dr. Khan returned to Pakistan in 1976 after working in the Netherlands, carrying extremely secret centrifuge designs - a Dutch one that featured an aluminum rotor, and a German one made of maraging steel, a superhard alloy. He was charged with stealing the designs from a European consortium where he worked.
"The designs for the machines," said a secret State Department memo at the time, "were stolen by a Pakistani national."
The steel rotor in the German design turned out to be particularly difficult to make, but it could spin twice as fast, meaning it produced more fuel.
Dr. Khan's accomplishments turned him into a national hero. In 1981, as a tribute, the president of Pakistan, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, renamed the enrichment plant the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories.
Dr. Khan, a fervent nationalist, has condemned the system that limits legal nuclear knowledge to the five major nuclear powers, or that has ignored Israel's nuclear weapon while focusing on the fear of an Islamic bomb. "All Western countries," he was once quoted as saying, "are not only the enemies of Pakistan but in fact of Islam."
In the years before Pakistan's first test in 1998, Dr. Khan and his team began publishing papers in the global scientific literature on how to make and test its uranium centrifuges. In the West, these publications would have been classified secret or top secret.
But Dr. Khan made no secret of his motive: he boasted in print of circumventing the restrictions of the Western nuclear powers, declaring in a 1987 paper that he sought to pierce "the clouds of the so-called secrecy." Papers in 1987 and 1988 detailed how to take the next, difficult steps in the construction of centrifuges - reaching beyond first-generation aluminum rotors to produce more efficient centrifuges out of maraging steel.
David Albright, a former weapons inspector for the I.A.E.A, said the American intelligence community viewed Dr. Khan's papers as a boast. They proved that Pakistan "knew how to build the G-2," a particularly complex design of German origin.
A 1991 paper by his colleagues at the laboratory gave more details away, revealing how to etch special grooves on a centrifuge's bottom bearing, a crucial part for aiding the flow of lubricants in machines spinning at blindingly fast speeds.
A Pentagon program that tracks foreign scientific publications has uncovered dozens of reports, scientific papers and conference proceedings on uranium enrichment that Dr. Khan and his colleagues published. While federal and private experts agree that the blitz left much confidential - including some crucial dimensions, ingredients, manufacturing tricks and design secrets - Pakistan was clearly proclaiming that it had mastered the black art.
"It was a signal to India and the West saying, `Look, we're not the backward people you think we are,' " said Mark Gorwitz, a nonproliferation expert who tracks the Pakistani literature.
The scientific papers were soon followed by sales brochures. Much of the gear marketed by the Khan laboratory was critical for anyone eager to make Dr. Khan's kind of centrifuges. It included vacuum devices that attached to a centrifuge casing and sucked out virtually all the air, reducing friction around the spinning rotors.
In 2000, the Pakistani government ran its own advertisement announcing procedures for commercial exports of many types of nuclear gear, including gas centrifuges and their parts, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in May. Many of the items, it noted, "would be useful in a nuclear weapons program."
Former American intelligence and nonproliferation experts said the C.I.A. was aware of some, but not all, of these activities, and began tracking scientists at the Khan laboratory.
But at every turn, overt pressure was weighed against strategic interests. In the 1980's, Washington viewed Pakistan as a critical ally in the covert war it was waging against the Soviets in Afghanistan. By 1986, American intelligence agencies concluded that Pakistan had succeeded in making weapon-grade uranium, the sure sign that the centrifuges worked. But that same year, Mr. Reagan announced an aid package to Pakistan of more than $4 billion.
The First Nuclear Deals
What American intelligence agencies apparently did not understand at the time was the pace at which Dr. Khan's team was beginning to help other nations.
It started as a quid pro quo with an old patron: China. A declassified State Department memo, obtained by the National Security Archive in Washington, concluded that China, sometime after its first bomb tests in the mid-1960's, had provided Pakistan technology for "fissile material production and possibly also nuclear device design."
Years later, the flow reversed. Mr. Albright, who is the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington, has concluded that China was an early recipient of Pakistan's designs for centrifuges. China had used an antiquated, expensive process for enriching uranium, and the technology Dr. Khan held promised a faster, cheaper, more efficient path to bomb-making.
But that was just the start. Evidence uncovered in recent months shows that around 1987 Pakistan struck a deal with Iran, which had tried unsuccessfully to master enrichment technology on its own during its war with Iraq. The outlines of the deal - pieced together from limited inspections and documents turned over to the I.A.E.A. in October - show that a centrifuge of Pakistani design finally solved Iran's technological problems. That deal was "a tremendous boost," Mr. Albright and his colleague, Corey Hinderstein, said in a draft report on the Iranian program. "The possession of detailed designs could allow Iran to skip many difficult research steps," they added.
The Iranian documents turned over to the I.A.E.A. make no reference to Pakistan itself; they only point to its signature technologies.
"We have middlemen and suspicions," said a Western diplomat with access to the documents. "There is a Pakistani tie for sure, but we don't know the details."
Iran's program fooled the I.A.E.A., which caught no whiff of it during 18 years of inspections. But Pakistan's role was also well hidden from American intelligence agencies.
"We had some intelligence successes with Iran, we knew about some of their enrichment efforts," said Gary Samore, who headed up nonproliferation efforts in the Clinton administration's National Security Council. "What we didn't know was the Pakistan connection - that was a surprise. And the extent of Pakistan's ties was, in retrospect, the surprise of the 1990's."
The Iranians were hardly satisfied customers. They had gotten Pakistan's older models and were forced to slog ahead slowly for two decades, foraging around the world for parts, building experimental facilities involving a few hundred centrifuges, but apparently failing to produce enough fissile material for a bomb.
If the Iranians were the turtle, the North Koreans proved the hare. Around 1997, a decade after the Pakistani deal with Iran, Dr. Khan made inroads with the government of Kim Jong Il, as it sought a way to make nuclear fuel away from the Yongbyon plant and the prying eyes of American satellites. Dr. Khan began traveling to North Korea, visiting 13 times, American intelligence officials said.
During those visits, North Korea offered to exchange centrifuge technology for North Korean missile technology, enabling Pakistan to extend the reach of its nuclear weapons across India.
Again, American intelligence agencies missed many of the signals. They knew of an experimental program, but it took evidence from South Korea to demonstrate that North Korea was moving toward industrial-level production. Then in the summer of 2001, American spy satellites spotted missile parts being loaded into a Pakistani cargo plane near Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. The parts were assumed to be the quid pro quo for the nuclear technology.
Last spring, a few months after the deal was revealed in The New York Times, the State Department announced some sanctions against the Khan laboratory but cited the illegal missile transactions. The State Department said it had insufficient evidence to issue sanctions for a nuclear transfer, a move some dissenting officials suspected was a concession to avoid embarrassing General Musharraf, who had denied that any nuclear transfers ever occurred.
A Congressional report on the Pakistan-North Korea trade notes that over the years "Pakistan has been sanctioned in what some observers deem, an `on again, off again' fashion," mostly for importing technology for unconventional weapons, and later for its 1998 nuclear tests. Those sanctions, which were also issued against India, were waived shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when the United States suddenly needed Pakistan's cooperation.
It is unclear whether the Pakistan-North Korea connection has been cut off. But new evidence suggests that North Korea is still racing ahead. In April, a ship carrying a large cargo of superstrong aluminum tubing was stopped in the Suez Canal after the German authorities determined that it was destined for North Korea. The precise size of the tubes, according to Western diplomats and industry reports, suggested that they were intended for making the outer casings of G-2 centrifuges, the kind whose rotors are made of steel, and that Dr. Khan wrote about.
The C.I.A. estimates that by 2005, if unchecked, North Korea will begin large-scale production of enriched uranium.
But so far, American intelligence agencies say they are uncertain where North Korea's centrifuge operations are. On Friday, North Korea said it would allow a delegation of American experts into the country this week.
Halting Nuclear Trades
Early in 2003, Mr. Bush established a coordinating group inside the White House to oversee the interception of shipments of unconventional weapons around the world. So far, Washington has drawn more than a dozen nations into a loose posse to track and stop shipments, and Germany, Italy, Taiwan and Japan have executed seizures.
But the first interceptions - and the trail of parts and agreements they reveal - have only pointed to the mushrooming size of the secondary market in parts.
Even more worrisome are the kinds of exchanges that do not move on ships and planes, what Ashton B. Carter, who worked in the Clinton administration on North Korean issues, calls "substantial technical cooperation among all members of the brotherhood of rogues."
North Korean engineers have been sighted living in Iran, ostensibly to help the country build medium- and long-range missiles. But the growing suspicion is that the relationship has now expanded beyond missiles, and that the two nations are warily dealing in the nuclear arena as well.
"We're debating the evidence," said one administration official.
The latest nuclear disclosures came after the United States spotted a German-registered ship headed for Libya through the Suez Canal, with thousands of parts for uranium centrifuges. The interception in October of that shipment, American officials say, tipped the balance for the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, forcing him to agree in December to disclose and dismantle his own nuclear program.
Inspectors are still investigating where Libya's components came from, focusing on manufacturers in Europe and what Dr. ElBaradei calls "interconnections" between the Libyan program and Iran's.
The intercepted shipment came from Dubai, a place of great importance in Dr. Khan's secretive world. It was a Dubai middleman claiming to represent Dr. Khan who in 1990, on the eve of the Persian Gulf war, offered Dr. Khan's aid to Iraq in building an atom bomb. And it was a Dubai middleman whom Dr. Khan blamed for supplying centrifuge parts to Iran, said a European confidante of Dr. Khan's who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Ties between Libya and Pakistan go back years. In 1973, when Pakistan was just starting its nuclear program, Libya signed a deal to help finance its atomic efforts in exchange for knowledge about how to make nuclear fuel, said Leonard S. Spector of the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies. From 1978 to 1980, he added, Libya appears to have supplied Pakistan with uranium ore. But Libya appears to have made much less progress than the Iranians had.
Dr. ElBaradei estimates that 35 to 40 nations now have the knowledge to build an atomic weapon. In place of the nonproliferation treaty, which he calls obsolete, he proposes revising the world's system to place any facilities that can manufacture fissile material under multinational control.
"Unless you are able to control the actual acquisition of weapon-usable material, you are not able to control proliferation," he said in recent interview. But Mr. Bush and the leaders of the other established nuclear states are reluctant to renegotiate a stronger treaty because it will reopen the question of why some states are permitted to hold nuclear weapons and others are not.
For now the world is left watching a terrifying race - one that pits scientists, middlemen and extremists against Western powers trying to intercept, shipload by shipload, the technology as it spreads through the clandestine network. Mr. Bush remains wary of cracking down on a fragile Pakistan, for fear pressure could tip the situation toward the radicals.
Some in the administration say they think other nations may follow Libya's calculations and abandon their programs voluntarily. But there are doubters.
"Its a fine theory," a top nonproliferation strategist in the administration said recently. "The question for 2004 is whether the mullahs or Kim Jong Il buy into it."
David Rohde contributed reporting from Pakistan for this article.
-------- terrorism
GLOBAL JIHAD : 9-11-type al-Qaida plot prompted groundings
White House, nuclear power plants topped target list of hijacked planes
January 4, 2004
By Joseph Farah
WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36442
WASHINGTON - The discovery of a Sept. 11-style al-Qaida plot to hijack several planes simultaneously and crash them into U.S. targets is behind the recent rash of airline groundings and increased security during the holidays, WorldNetDaily has learned from U.S. intelligence sources.
Other potential targets included the Valdez oil terminal in Alaska, closed last week as a precautionary measure, and New York and Los Angeles tourist sites. British Airways, Air France and Mexico's national carrier, AeroMexico, were the airlines to be used by the terrorists, according to the plan discovered a week before Christmas.
Some of the terrorists were planning to use shoe bombs, according to WND sources. Briton Richard Reid in December 2001 tried to ignite an explosive device hidden in his shoe during a flight from Paris to Miami. He was overpowered and later jailed for life.
The hijackers were planning to use legitimate UK, U.S. or other European passports in an attempt to evade stringent security checks. There was also a sub-plot in which a terrorist infiltrated the ranks of airline pilots. Nearly a dozen international flights to the U.S. were canceled during the New Year holiday weekend. The Bush administration has ordered sky marshals be placed on all airlines.
The plot involved specifically British Airways Flight 223 from Heathrow to Washington. Several of those flights over a three-day period were grounded or shadowed by U.S. F-16 fighter jets. British Airways also grounded two flights to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, due to fly on New Year's Eve and Saturday afternoon. Yesterday's British Airways Flight 223 to Washington was allowed to leave following a three-hour delay for security checks. It landed without incident at Dulles International Airport near Washington.
British officials today warned that travelers face years of severe security alerts like one that forced several international flights to be grounded last week. Transport Secretary Alistair Darling said exceptional circumstances and specific information about a possible terror threat led British Airways to cancel its flights last week.
"For many years to come, we are going to be living in an age where there is going to be a heightened state of alert," he told the BBC. "Sometimes it will be quite severe."
Britain's Sunday Times newspaper, citing a senior British intelligence source, said security services were looking for two al-Qaida members at large in Britain who planned to detonate shoe bombs or similar devices in an aircraft lavatory.
Joseph Farah is editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily.com.
-------- treaties
Plugging Nuclear Leaks
TODAY'S EDITORIALS
January 4, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/opinion/04SUN1.html
Now that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has opened Libya's previously secret nuclear facilities, the world is learning just how much of the machinery for making bomb fuel he had been able to assemble without international detection. Over a period of many years, Libya tapped into an international underground market for specialized steel tubes and uranium enrichment centrifuges that has been scandalously easy to gain entry to and shockingly difficult to close down. Even the newly strengthened provisions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty cannot guarantee that other countries will not attempt similar end runs. And they may not follow Libya's lead and abruptly come clean before they begin producing nuclear bombs.
A far more stringent and enforceable set of controls on nuclear equipment exports is urgently needed. The treaty loophole that several countries have exploited to begin a nuclear weapons program under the guise of civilian power generation must be closed. That route must be blocked by prohibiting uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing outside countries with well-established and carefully monitored nuclear technology industries.
Libya began its nuclear activities with a civilian power program in the 1970's, then secretly added a weapons element in the 1980's. Over the next two decades, it seems to have clandestinely acquired the equipment needed for enriching uranium into bomb fuel component by component, whenever willing sellers could be located.
Iraq also started its pre-Persian Gulf war nuclear weapons program under the guise of nuclear power development. Iran now claims, unconvincingly, that its newly uncovered uranium enrichment facilities are meant to provide power reactor fuel. North Korea has not bothered pretending. When its uranium enrichment and plutonium separation plants were found, it simply quit the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and declared it was building nuclear weapons.
That still leaves most of the world adhering to the treaty, except India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. But the essentially voluntary inspections required under its original provisions are clearly inadequate. A tougher, more intrusive inspection system was added in the 1990's, but so far, less than half of the treaty's participants have signed up for it and less than a fifth have ratified it. Iran and Libya have now agreed to submit to intrusive inspections. But these work only when regulators are tipped off to problems. In Iran, the tip came from an opposition group; in Libya, it came from Colonel Qaddafi.
To supplement this imperfect system, strong new measures are needed to crack down on exporters of the kind of equipment Libya secretly purchased. That will require imposing stiff penalties on governments found to allow such exports, even if the exporters are private companies operating outside the law. Governments are more likely to police rogue exporters if they know they themselves will be penalized.
The nuclear power loophole must also be closed. If a country is legally allowed to develop the means to produce bomb-grade uranium through a variant of the enrichment process used to make reactor fuel and can extract bomb-grade plutonium from reactor byproducts, it can build nuclear weapons whenever it likes. There is no legitimate reason for countries to develop such capacities if they can be sure of reliable outside fuel supplies. Reactor fuel production should be limited to the few advanced countries that already have fully transparent nuclear technology industries. Other countries should have a guaranteed right to purchase all the reactor fuel they need, provided they accept intrusive inspections and return nuclear byproducts.
These steps will greatly decrease the risk of nasty nuclear surprises like those delivered by Iran and Libya. They should be taken without delay.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- maryland
Nuclear Power Plant Sirens to Be Tested
Sunday, January 4, 2004
Susan Barton
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50960-2004Jan2.html
Tomorrow at noon, all 72 emergency response sirens connected with the Constellation Energy Group's Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant will be tested. The test sound is expected to last 30 seconds but no longer than one minute.
Under the new testing schedule, the sirens will be tested this year at noon on the first Monday of each month.
If there were an actual warning, citizens would hear the sirens sound for a full three minutes. In such an incident, people should tune their radios to a local Emergency Alert System station for emergency instructions. In Southern Maryland, those stations are: 1560 AM, 102.9 FM, 97.7 FM, 1690 AM, 98.3 FM, 104.1 FM, 1460 AM, 96.7 FM, 1240 AM and 106.3 FM.
Additional information on siren testing is available in Calvert County at 410-535-1623 and in St. Mary's County at 301-475-4197 or 301-475-8016.
-------- us nuc waste
Support Grows for Measure Blocking More Hanford Waste
January 4, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/national/04NUKE.html
OLYMPIA, Wash., Jan. 3 - More than 280,000 signatures were submitted on Friday supporting an initiative to block the federal government from sending more radioactive waste to the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington until all the existing waste is cleaned up.
"Protect our state from being used as the nation's radioactive waste dump," urged Gerald Pollet, the initiative's sponsor.
That message helped the campaign gather more than the required 197,734 signatures. But some political leaders say the initiative oversimplifies a complicated issue.
Hanford contains the burial grounds for the equivalent of about 75,000 55-gallon barrels of radioactive waste. The material can take at least thousands of years to decay to safe levels. The state and federal governments recently agreed on a long-term schedule for cleaning up the waste.
Meanwhile, the federal government started shipping radioactive and hazardous waste from other sites to Hanford for packaging before sending the material to a New Mexico plant for disposal. Hanford accepts and disposes of lower-level waste from other nuclear plants around the country.
"Urgent action is needed to protect our families from the risks of more than 70,000 truckloads of radioactive waste on our roads, 70,000 potentially deadly accidents, and 70,000 rolling `dirty bombs' which are terrorist targets," said Mr. Pollet, executive director of a Hanford watchdog group called Heart of America Northwest.
The measure, tentatively called I-297, would also end the dumping of radioactive waste in unlined dirt trenches. Sponsors said they used paid and volunteer signature-gatherers to get the 280,000 names.
As the initiative sponsors stacked up boxes of signatures, the 4-year-old twin sons of one supporter held hand-lettered signs saying "Clean up your mess" and "It's not polite to pollute."
Critics of the initiative say those simple messages clash with the complicated reality of solving the nation's radioactive waste problem.
"You can say, `Yeah, well that makes sense,' but there are so many more implications," said State Senator Patricia S. Hale, a Republican whose district includes the Hanford nuclear reservation. "You've got to look at the issue of the greater good.".
Radioactive waste has to go somewhere, Ms. Hale said: "It certainly has to be put in a safe place, and Hanford is safer than any of those other sites."
A federal Department of Energy spokeswoman declined to comment on the initiative on Friday, saying the agency would wait to see whether the measure gets on the ballot.
The Hanford measure was filed as an initiative to the Legislature. If lawmakers reject or ignore the initiative, the public will vote on it in November. Or lawmakers could pass the initiative into law during the forthcoming legislative session, which starts Jan. 12. Supporters and critics of the measure agree that is an unlikely option.
"We've got a lot of issues we need to deal with that are a lot more pressing," Ms. Hale said.
-------- us politics
Bush's Budget for 2005 Seeks to Rein In Domestic Costs
January 4, 2004
By ROBERT PEAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/politics/04BUDG.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - Facing a record budget deficit, Bush administration officials say they have drafted an election-year budget that will rein in the growth of domestic spending without alienating politically influential constituencies.
They said the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, would control the rising cost of housing vouchers for the poor, require some veterans to pay more for health care, slow the growth in spending on biomedical research and merge or eliminate some job training and employment programs. The moves are intended to trim the programs without damaging any essential services, the administration said.
Even with the improving economic outlook, administration officials said, the federal budget deficit in the current fiscal year is likely to exceed last year's deficit of $374 billion, the largest on record.
The Congressional Budget Office and the White House budget office have projected a deficit of more than $450 billion this year.
But Joshua B. Bolten, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, has said the president's policies will cut the deficit in half within five years, through a combination of economic growth and fiscal restraint.
Mr. Bush's budget request, to be sent to Congress by Feb. 2, includes several tax cut proposals, including new incentives for individual saving and tax credits to help uninsured people buy health insurance. The Democratic candidates for president have accused Mr. Bush of doing little to halt the recent rapid increase in the number of uninsured.
Administration officials said the president's budget would call for an overall increase of about 3 percent in appropriations for so-called domestic discretionary spending, which excludes the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department and insurance benefits like Medicare and Medicaid.
As he completes work on his budget, Mr. Bush faces criticism from conservatives, who say he has presided over a big increase in federal spending, and liberals, who say his tax cuts have converted a large budget surplus to a deficit.
Total federal revenues have declined for three consecutive years, apparently the first time that has happened since the early 1920's. But in those years, from 2000 to 2003, total federal spending has increased slightly more than 20 percent, to $2.16 trillion last year.
Brian M. Riedl, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said: "President Bush is not focusing on his fiscal conservative base right now. He's trying to position himself in between conservatives in Congress and the Democratic Party. It may be good politics, but it's bad policy, a lost opportunity to get runaway government spending under control."
White House officials deny that they have acquiesced in a domestic spending spree. They insist, as do some liberal advocacy groups, that appropriations for domestic programs are not exploding.
Such spending, they say, will increase 3 percent in 2004, after increases of 5 percent in 2003, 6 percent in 2002 and 15 percent in 2001. Moreover, they say, increased corporate profits should lead to an increase in corporate tax payments, lifting revenues in the coming years.
Richard Kogan, a budget analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning research and advocacy group, said the increase in military and domestic security spending in the last two years dwarfed the increase in domestic discretionary programs, which did not quite keep pace with inflation.
"The increases for defense, international affairs and homeland security have been much greater - and thus have played a much larger role in the return to deficits - than the increases for domestic appropriations," Mr. Kogan said.
Housing officials said the administration was alarmed at increases in the cost of vouchers, which provide rental assistance to low-income families, and would take steps to prevent local housing agencies from issuing more vouchers than Congress had authorized. Congress has tentatively decided to provide $14.2 billion for renewal of vouchers this year, an increase of about 15 percent.
Federal officials said they would also require families seeking housing aid to help the government obtain more accurate information on their earnings. As a condition of receiving aid, families would have to consent to the disclosure of income data reported to a national directory of newly hired employees. The directory was created under a 1996 law to help enforce child-support obligations.
Administration officials said the president's budget would also slow the growth of spending at the National Institutes of Health, which doubled in the last five years, reaching $27.1 billion in 2003. Congress has tentatively agreed to provide $28 billion this year, slightly more than Mr. Bush requested, and administration officials said they would seek an increase of 3 percent or less for 2005.
Budget officials defended the proposal, saying they wanted to be sure the agency was properly managing a huge infusion of federal money.
Mr. Bush proposed last year to double co-payments on prescription drugs for many veterans, primarily those with higher incomes and no service-connected disabilities. The White House reaffirmed its support for that proposal in November.
In the last week, the Pentagon has been considering a new proposal to increase pharmacy co-payments for retirees with at least 20 years of military service. Under the proposal, the charge for a generic drug would rise to $10, from $3, while the charge for a brand-name medicine would rise to $20, from $9.
The Military Officers Association of America criticized this as "a grossly insensitive and wrong-headed proposal." In e-mail messages to the White House, members of the association asked Mr. Bush, "Why do your budget officials persist in trying to cut military benefits?"
Col. Steven P. Strobridge, director of government relations at the association, said he understood that the Pentagon was now inclined to study the issue for a year and renew the proposal, as part of a systematic effort to "reduce military health care costs."
Administration officials said they expected Mr. Bush to seek increases of $1 billion, or 10 percent, for the education of children with disabilities and $1 billion, or 8 percent, in Title I grants for schools with high concentrations of students from low-income families.
Budget officials said they were concerned that they did not have enough money for Pell grants to keep pace with a recent surge in low-income students seeking help with college costs. They said Mr. Bush would address that problem in some way, without seeking an increase in the maximum grant, now $4,050.
The budget also seeks money to train more nurses, to encourage sexual abstinence among teenagers and to recruit "volunteers in homeland security," who can respond to emergencies, including terrorist attacks.
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Bush Faces Election Year Policy Challenges
January 4, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Challenges-Ahead.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Still energized by the capture of Saddam Hussein and signs of an economic rebound, President Bush begins the 10-month countdown to Election Day with the nation under a high terror alert and his job performance under criticism from Democrats who want to sit in the Oval Office. The U.S. economy is gaining traction, but job growth still lags. U.S. troops pulled Saddam out of a dirt hole in Iraq last month, but Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, remains in hiding.
Congress passed Medicare reform legislation, just as Bush promised, yet the debate over details of the prescription drug benefit for seniors has yet to play out. And Democratic analysts say there's a political fight on the horizon about whether Bush's ``No Child Left Behind'' education initiative has improved schools.
Faced with the first case of mad cow disease in the United States two days before Christmas, the administration acted quickly in an effort to dissipate public fears. It banned further use of infirm cattle in meat products for human consumption and required new slaughtering practices at packinghouses. Still, more than 30 countries have banned U.S. beef products and the possible economic fallout from the case remains uncertain.
Although the nation has lost 2.8 million jobs since Bush took office, Bush is getting good marks on the economy as consumer confidence has risen to its highest levels since early 2002. Economic growth increased from an annual rate of 2 percent in the first quarter of 2003 to 8.2 percent in the third quarter and the Federal Reserve has indicated it's not inclined to raise key interest rates anytime in the near future.
Bush's overall job approval rating hovers around 60 percent. Analysts agree his biggest political challenges are sustaining job growth, turning Iraq over to the Iraqis and gaining ground on terrorists around the globe, a tough sell when America is under a code orange alert.
``He's got to continually show progress in Iraq because that removes the biggest possibility for hurting him on national security issues,'' said presidential scholar Charles Jones, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ``On the domestic side, it's all the economy.''
Iraq is the biggest of Bush's foreign policy challenges. While the administration seeks to halt the U.S. death toll, which exceeds 400, Bush must help decide the forum for former President Saddam's war crimes trial and persuade other nations to erase massive Iraqi debt incurred by the ousted regime. There's also transferring sovereignty to a new Iraqi government, now scheduled for June.
In postwar Afghanistan, leaders have approved a new constitution, but recalcitrant remnants of the deposed Taliban militia and private armies of dissident warlords still roam the country and threaten to spoil elections scheduled this year.
Bush is keeping an eye on Syria, trying to convince it to close its border with Iraq to keep out weapons and anti-American fighters. He's trying to nudge Iran toward democracy, and he's weighing whether to lift economic sanctions from Libya.
The president continues to look for ways to help end the chronic conflicts between the Israelis and Palestinians, although those prospects presently look bleak. Also high on the administration's to-do list is restarting six-nation talks with North Korea.
But the biggest potential land mine Bush faces as he seeks re-election is another terrorist attack, says James Steinberg, deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration. Bush would suffer politically if an attack occurred and it was blamed on the invasion of Iraq, a breach in homeland security or a lack of progress in the war on terrorism, he said.
``The second biggest land mine is a big nuclear crisis with North Korea,'' said Steinberg. ``If they do a nuclear test or something, our hand is forced to decide whether we're just going to accept North Korea as a nuclear state or whether we're going to have to do something about it.''
James Phillips, a foreign policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said issues in Iraq will continue to dominate, but the overarching problem is proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
``It's known that al-Qaida and bin Laden himself has been trying to get ahold of weapons of mass destruction -- so there is a possibility of an al-Qaida attack using some kind of biological or chemical weapon or maybe a (radioactive) dirty bomb.''
At home, one of Bush's first jobs this year is to deliver his third State of the Union address after Congress reconvenes Jan. 20.
Space program insiders speculate that Bush could announce a grand, new space plan during the speech. An interagency task force led by Vice President Dick Cheney has been eyeing options since summer but the White House has sidestepped questions about any new ventures to the Moon or Mars.
The 2004 session of Congress could prove raucous. Bush says he plans to push for an energy bill and several of his judicial nominees now stalled in the Senate. An attempt may be made to make the 2001 tax cuts permanent, and the idea of changing Social Security to allow young workers to invest some of their contributions may get some lip service.
``I don't think Congress will bite on this,'' said former Rep. Bill Frenzel, a Minnesota Republican now at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution think tank. ``They've done Medicare. The (Republican) majority thinks they look good on taking care of the old folks, and they just as soon not disturb that reputation prior to November.''
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Kucinich Is Long - Shot for Presidency
January 4, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-campaign-kucinich.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A political prodigy when he was the youngest person elected mayor of a major American city, Dennis Kucinich became a political has-been at 33 after he plunged Cleveland into default.
But the unapologetic liberal resurfaced in Cleveland politics years later, landed in Congress and now is running a long-shot campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Kucinich, 57, a strong proponent of government aid to the poor, has said his leftist politics are rooted in his own childhood poverty, and his agenda includes pulling out of existing trade agreements, government-provided health care for all and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
He was born on Oct. 8, 1946, the son of a truck driver and the oldest of seven children and the family moved 21 times to various parts of Cleveland, unable to keep up with rent payments. Kucinich graduated from Case Western Reserve University and was elected to the Cleveland City Council in 1969, at the age of 23.
Positioning himself as a populist champion of the working class, Kucinich clashed with the city's business establishment and was elected mayor in 1977 at the age of 31.
Kucinich inherited a fiscal crisis, but he failed to trim spending, balance the budget or meet the city's debt obligations.
In 1978, Cleveland banks demanded Kucinich sell off the city's municipally owned electric system to pay off the debt. Kucinich refused and the banks called in their loans, sending the city into default. Kucinich argued that by preserving the city-owned light system, he saved residents millions of dollars on their electric bills.
But the public verdict went against him and Kucinich was defeated for re-election in 1979. In political exile for the next 15 years, Kucinich taught at Cleveland State and Case Western Reserve, hosted a radio talk show and was a television news commentator.
He made a comeback in 1994 and was elected to the Ohio state senate, and in 1996 defeated Republican Rep. Martin Hoke to get his seat in Congress.
As leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group of liberal House Democrats, Kucinich has advocated universal, single-payer health care, nuclear disarmament and increased social spending, and has crusaded against free trade agreements and genetically engineered food. Kucinich also supports the creation of a federal Department of Peace to promote nonviolence.
But on abortion, Kucinich, until recently, differed markedly from his liberal colleagues. A longtime abortion opponent with a voting record that earned him a 95 percent rating with the National Right to Life Committee, Kucinich switched positions earlier this year and said that as president, he would only appoint abortion rights supporters to the Supreme Court.
Kucinich is twice divorced and has an adult daughter from his second marriage.
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Cheney Is a Quiet Force Behind Bush Presidency
January 4, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-campaign-cheney.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dick Cheney has worked behind a veil of secrecy to become one of the most powerful U.S. vice presidents, regarded as a driving force behind the Iraq war and the Bush administration's industry-friendly energy policy.
Cheney, a longtime Bush family confidant who was Defense Secretary in the first Gulf War, headed the search committee for George W. Bush's vice presidential candidate in the 2000 presidential campaign before Bush tapped him for the job.
A history of four heart attacks, including one shortly after the contested presidential election in November 2000, did little to diminish Cheney's drive or authority. ``It's good enough,'' Cheney, 62, told the Dallas Morning News in 2003, referring to his heart.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Cheney worked out of sight for long stretches in what the White House called an ``undisclosed location.''
He remained largely in the background as he helped prepare the Bush administration for the Iraq war. He gave a few high-impact public speeches that helped nudge the process along and has been a lightning rod for criticism of the administration's conduct of the war and its aftermath.
The company he headed before becoming vice president, the Halliburton energy and construction firm, won big reconstruction contracts after the war. Cheney defended himself against Democratic charges of cronyism by saying he had severed his ties to the company and had nothing to do with the contracts.
Cheney appealed to the Supreme Court in his fight against a court order to disclose his contacts with energy-industry officials when he headed Bush's energy-policy task force. Environmental activists seeking the disclosure said they were cut out of the process and the resulting policy was tailored for the oil, coal and nuclear power industries.
PINSTRIPES AND COWBOY BOOTS
Cheney is a courtly figure who embodies former President Theodore Roosevelt's maxim to speak softly but carry a big stick. He blends pinstripe elegance with cowboy boots and a voice so quiet a listener might have to lean forward to catch his words, only to find they express a sobering hard line.
``There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us,'' Cheney said in an August 2002 speech that sounded the call for an Iraq war at a time other members of the Bush administration appeared to be waffling.
Bush took a U.S.-led coalition to war against Iraq despite U.N. opposition in March 2003 and Baghdad fell in early April. Nine months later, U.S. occupying forces had yet to find any of the weapons Cheney had accused Iraq of amassing.
For Cheney, who helped plan and execute the 1991 Gulf war, the march to the 2003 Iraq war was set in motion by the Sept. 11 attacks. Long after others had ruled out the notion that Saddam may have helped the al Qaeda network plan the attacks, Cheney held open the possibility, leaving it to Bush to finally acknowledge after the war there was no evidence of a link.
News reports said Cheney worked aggressively to marshal intelligence supporting his case against Iraq, and critics accused him of hyping dubious information.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Cheney was working in the White House while Bush was in Florida as four commandeered passenger jets crashed into the World Trade Center's twin towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
'WE'VE BEEN TARGETED'
Whisked to a White House bunker by Secret Service agents, Cheney recommended that Bush approve the downing of a passenger airliner if necessary to prevent an attack on a target such as the U.S. Capitol. He advised the president to delay his return to Washington for fear that ``we've been targeted.''
For weeks afterward, Cheney worked in a secret location and minimized his joint appearances with Bush to guard against the possible loss of both elected executives in a single attack.
Early the next year, he borrowed Bush's Air Force One to tour Middle Eastern countries, in search of support for a potential Iraq invasion. But he did not get far with leaders who said resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a higher priority.
Cheney seemed like the quintessential safe choice when Bush, then Texas governor, picked him as his running mate.
But Democrats swiftly focused on a number of votes Cheney cast when he represented Wyoming in the House of Representatives, including a vote against the release of black South African leader Nelson Mandela, and votes against popular gun control and environmental and education funding measures.
No sooner was that controversy behind him than Cheney found himself assailed for accepting a $35 million retirement package from Halliburton, the world's largest oil-field service company which he joined as chief executive in 1993.
Cheney said he would give up any stock options remaining after taking office as vice president. That would cost him around $3.5 million, a small proportion of the options he cashed.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, on Jan. 30, 1941, Richard Bruce Cheney got his undergraduate and master's degrees in political science from the University of Wyoming.
He is married to the former Lynne Ann Vincent, herself a well-known conservative voice on cultural issues and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. They have two daughters, Elizabeth and Mary.
Mary Cheney worked for her father's campaign in 2000 after serving as a liaison to the gay and lesbian community for the Coors Brewing Co. Although Cheney has refused to discuss his daughter's sexuality, he has put himself on the moderate side of his party on the issue of government recognition of same-sex relationships.
He said during the 2000 vice presidential debate the issue should be a state, rather than federal, matter, and ``we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.''
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America: The real danger lies within
By ERIC MARGOLIS -- Contributing Foreign Editor,
CANOE
January 4, 2004
http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jan4.html
PALM BEACH -- The year 2003 dramatically and dolefully illustrated Lord Acton's famous dictum that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
An almighty United States, unrestrained by any rival, international body, or world opinion, bestrode the globe, a belligerent colossus determined to monopolize global oil reserves and use its vast military power to crush lesser nations or malefactors that disturbed the Pax Americana.
For America's hard right - a curious farrago of Armageddon-seeking southern Protestants; neo-conservative supporters of Israel's right-wing Likud party; and the military-industrial-petroleum complex - the Bush administration's aggressive foreign policy of world domination, and utter contempt for international laws and old allies, marks a new era of national greatness. President George Bush, who vowed his foreign policy would be "humble" and "compassionate," has turned out to be the most radical president in modern U.S. history.
But for those Americans whose primary loyalty was to their country, rather than to religious cultism, foreign nations, or financial profit, the rapid emergence of the U. S. as an imperial power waging two hugely expensive colonial wars in Asia was a disaster, both for America's democratic system and for the rest of the world.
Bush's vow to bring "democracy" to the Mideast rang as hollow as pious assurances by 19th century European colonialists they were gobbling up Africa and Asia to bring the blessings of Christianity and civilization to benighted savages. Pillaging resources, not enlightenment, were - and remain - the true colonial motivation.
Bush's claims to hold the mandate of heaven to wage global warfare against the nebulous forces of "terrorism" sounded as dangerous and nonsensical as old Chairman Leonid Brezhnev's drunken claims it was the Soviet Union's "sacred internationalist duty" to launch military adventures anywhere on Earth where socialism was threatened.
Columnist Georgie Anne Gayer put it perfectly when she recently wrote that whereas America used to lead the world as champion of democracy, personal freedom and human rights, today, under Bush, it instead seeks to dominate the world through raw military and monetary power.
Carte blanche
In 2003, we saw an abject, cowardly Congress violate its duty as the republic's premier political organ by disgracefully handing the barely elected president carte blanche to wage an unprovoked war against Iraq that was justified by a torrent of ludicrous lies worthy of Dr. Goebbels. Lies and propaganda that were packaged in the best tradition of Soviet agitprop as news, then force-fed by a servile media to an ill-informed public shockingly deficient in any sense of history, geography, or foreign affairs.
The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and sundry military adventures around the globe, were made possible by a steady drumbeat of warnings from the White House and its neo-con trumpets that the U.S. was in dire national peril from "terrorists" and "rogue states." Paranoia again swept America during the holiday season as planes were grounded and orange alerts flashed at a populace that responded to these synthetic alarms with well-trained Pavlovian reflexes.
Though the mighty United States, with only 5% of world population, accounts for nearly 50% of total global military spending, the continuing Orwellian message from Washington was of fear and vulnerability. Vague threats of terrorist attack and menacing Muslims were used to curtail American civil liberties, and expand the government's powers of repression and intrusion. The public barely noticed this sinister, proto-totalitarian campaign.
The so-called "war on terrorism" was a hoax used to mask and justify the long-planned expansion of U.S. military power around the globe. What were in reality a series of police actions waged against tiny anti-American groups was no more a war than the farcical "war on drugs." But invoking war trumped criticism and dissent - and justified a real war of aggression against oil-rich Iraq.
The very term "terrorism" is a nonsense designed for propaganda effect; a damning label applied by the administration to groups or states strongly opposing U.S. policy.
A "war on terrorism" makes no more sense than waging war on evil.
Those who opposed Washington's surging imperial and totalitarian impulses were branded "leftists" and "anti-Americans." The French thinker Regis Debray, writing about past colonial powers, answers thus: "The free man is not anti-American, but anti-imperial. America (now) revisits the time of colonizers drunk on their superiority, convinced of their liberating mission, and counting on reimbursing themselves directly."
Criticizing U.S. foreign policy run-amok and George Bush does not equal anti-Americanism. It is the citizen's birthright, and the friend's duty.
This writer has witnessed nine colonial wars and saw how they corrupted the armies, and then the nations, that waged them, brutalizing conquered and conqueror alike. Iraq is the latest.
Mankind's three worst scourges are religious fanaticism, nationalism and imperialism. Each of these three evils has been whipped up by the Bush administration to justify domination abroad, repression of dissidence at home and, of course, re-election.
Those who truly love and respect the United States, like this writer, a conservative and U.S. Army veteran, see the very qualities that made America a beacon to the world - its very soul - now under heavy assault by a cabal of religious fanatics, foreign-leaning ideological extremists, and self-enriching Enron-Republicans. That is a danger considerably greater than al-Qaida.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghans Agree on a Constitution, Ending Weeks of Division
January 4, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Constitution.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan delegates agreed on a new constitution Sunday, overcoming weeks of division and mistrust to hammer out a historic compromise meant to bind together the war-ravaged nation's mosaic of ethnic groups.
Just a day after warning that the meeting, or loya jirga, was heading toward a humiliating failure, chairman Sibghatullah Mujaddedi announced that last-ditch diplomacy had secured a deal.
After the new draft was circulated, the 502 delegates gathered under a giant tent in the Afghan capital rose from their chairs, standing in silence for about 30 seconds to signal their support for the new charter.
President Hamid Karzai used a speech to try to sooth tempers after negotiations that saw him and his ministers accused of trying to crush dissent with heavy-handed lobbying.
The president thanked every ethnic group, pledged to learn the Uzbek language, and called for an end to tribe-based politics.
``Today we proved that we have national unity,'' he said. ``It is a very great success ... We should respect it, we should implement it.''
The charter was amended to grant official status to northern minority languages where they are most commonly spoken, an issue which had brought the meeting close to collapse.
U.N. Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad hailed the accord.
``It's a huge success for the people of Afghanistan,'' Brahimi said, although he added that there was work to do to repair the ``bruises'' from the ethnic debate.
``It's a good framework,'' Khalilzad said.
President Hamid Karzai was to make a speech to the gathering later Sunday.
Sidiq Chakari, a Tajik delegate and spokesman for faction leader and former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had taken part in a boycott Thursday, said the deal was a milestone on the way to peace.
``It's a very big achievement. I do hope it will bring friendship between our ethnic groups,'' he said. ``Everybody wants to switch to disarmament and reconstruction.''
Some Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, had pressed until the last for the charter to reverse what they say is the domination of Dari names for public institutions such as universities and courts.
But they went along in the end.
``It will help demilitarize the capital and inject new freedom into education, the media, normal life,'' said Khalid Pashtun, a fervent advocate of his kinsmen's rights.
The accord gives the U.S.-backed Karzai the presidential system he had insisted on, though only after some notable compromises.
Karzai has argued strongly for a dominant chief executive to hold the country together as it rebuilds and reconciles after more than two decades of war, and said he wouldn't run again if he didn't get his way.
It was also a triumph for the United States and United Nations, whose officials worked tirelessly to broker a back-room agreement, bolstering a peace process begun after the ouster of the Taliban two years ago.
In three weeks of often rancorous debate, religious conservatives forced through amendments to make the constitution more Islamic -- possibly with a ban on alcohol.
On the other hand, wording was changed to spell out that men and women should be treated equally -- a key demand of human rights groups.
In the most bruising tussle, minorities such as the Uzbeks and Turkmen from the north won official status for their languages in the areas where they are strongest, with only grudging acceptance from Pashtuns.
Rivals of Karzai, mainly from the Northern Alliance faction which helped U.S. forces drive out the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden, strengthened parliament with amendments giving it veto power over some key appointments and policies.
A new commission is to be set up to monitor implementation of the constitution -- another potential power base for a rival.
But with no provision for a prime minister or strong regional councils, the wide-ranging powers sought by Karzai in a draft released in November appeared to have survived mainly intact.
The charter makes the president commander in chief of the armed forces, charges him with determining the nation's fundamental policies and gives him considerable power to press legislation.
``The strong presidency was quickly settled,'' Khalilzad said, although he acknowledged parliament had been bolstered. ``It's more balanced in that way.''
Observers said it was vital for the constitution to command broad support, and analysts have voiced concern that Karzai's reliance on the support of his fellow Pashtuns could make him a partisan figure in the eyes of the country's myriad minorities.
The United Nations has warned that taming regional factions, and persuading some of the estimated 100,000 militia fighters still roaming the country, is essential to prevent intimidation from spoiling the presidential elections scheduled for June.
--------
Timeline Toward Afghan Constitution
January 4, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Timeline.html
Afghans agreed to a new constitution at a historic convention Sunday. Other steps that Afghanistan has taken toward democracy since the United States and other countries joined in toppling the Taliban, a hard-line Islamic militia:
--
Oct. 7, 2001: U.S. and British forces begin airstrikes against the Taliban government, which gave shelter to Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terror network accused of the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States.
Nov. 13, 2001: The northern alliance enters the Afghan capital, Kabul, after the Taliban flee.
Dec. 5, 2001: A conference of Afghan representatives in Bonn, Germany, creates a framework for a transitional government in Afghanistan led by U.S.-approved candidate Hamid Karzai.
Dec. 20, 2001: The first international peacekeepers begin work in Kabul.
Dec. 22, 2001: Interim government headed by Karzai is sworn in.
June 19, 2002: Afghanistan's loya jirga, or grand council, completes work on a new government, reaffirming Karzai as leader. The council then disbands.
Sept. 5, 2002: Assassination attempt on Karzai fails.
Nov. 3, 2003: New draft constitution for Afghanistan is unveiled and formally presented to former King Mohammad Zaher Shah. The draft had been drawn up over 11 months by a 35-member constitutional commission, with local meetings for public input.
Dec. 14, 2003: A 502-member loya jirga convenes in Kabul to debate and ratify the draft constitution.
Jan. 4, 2004: After three weeks of wrangling, the loya jirga agrees on an Islamic state under the presidential system sought by Karzai. The debate opens the way for national elections this summer, but also exposes enduring ethnic divisions.
-------- britain
BA will refuse to fly with armed guards
Juliette Jowit, transport editor
Sunday January 4, 2004
UK Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/airlines/story/0,1371,1115899,00.html
Controversial plans to put armed guards on British passenger planes were in disarray last night after British Airways effectively refused to fly with them aboard because it would mean there was a 'significant threat' to passengers.
An internal BA memo obtained by The Observer makes clear that executives are deep-seatedly opposed to the scheme unveiled by the Government last week as a vital new step to protect aircraft against hijackers.
The memo - sent on Friday from Mike Street, BA's operations director - said the airline 'would not operate a single flight unless we were satisfied totally that it was safe to do so'. The sky marshals will be deployed only on flights where there has been a specific warning, prompting some pilots to voice concerns about security that a guard may be unable to prevent.
He added: 'If there is security information about a particular flight that gives us cause for concern, then we will not operate that flight. That remains our policy regardless of the Government's capability to deploy armed police officers.'
A spokesman for the British Air Line Pilots Association (Balpa), which also opposes the policy, said BA's statement was expected to be followed by other airlines and would rule out the use of sky marshals, as proposed.
'We now believe sky marshals will never fly,' said the spokesman. 'If you're told there's a perceived risk, you're not going to run it. No one in their right mind would say "Don't worry, we'll put sky marshals aboard it".'
Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, has refused to give details of the sky marshals, but Balpa said it was told armed guards would be used only when a specific threat had been made.
Because the marshals would not be used at random as a general deterrent - as in the US and Israel - it is also thought that only 24 are planned. They are likely to be former police officers and would use low-velocity bullets so as not to pierce the fuselage.
Critics condemned the plans as unworkable, with too few sky marshals. Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat spokesman for London, said Ministers were 'trying to sound tough'. 'I think it was not token at the beginning, they were trying to cover all bases and thought this would do that,' he added. 'Then they have been pressured into doing something which is the minimum they could do to keep the States happy. To that extent, it's token.'
Balpa said passengers had been misled. In France, for example, every flight to the US now carries between two and six sky marshals, depending on how full they are.
'The [British] public seem to have the impression there will be one on every plane: it's nothing like that,' said the Balpa spokesman.
A Department for Transport official said he could not comment on when sky marshals would be used, how many would be recruited, how they would be trained, how they would operate, or any other details. 'We don't discuss that,' he said.
Balpa has already signed a deal over sky marshals with Virgin and could do a deal with BA this week. The union will meet government officials tomorrow in a bid to strike a national agreement instead. Under a deal with Virgin, the airline has promised its pilots will be introdcued to marshals used on their planes, and told where the guard is sitting. The pilots will be in control at all times, including emergencies.
Airlines or the Government will have to take responsibility for any accident on board and for pilots' insurance if they are refused personal cover, as some US pilots have been, said Balpa.
The union wants better land-based security instead. 'The Twin Towers [terrorist attacks in New York in 2001] happened not because there were no sky marshals but because there was lax security on the ground,' added the spokesman.
-------- iraq
Conflicting numbers and a surreal press conference
Dahr Jamail,
Electronic Iraq,
4 January 2004
http://electroniciraq.net/news/1306.shtml
Yesterday, in Controlling what we hear from Iraq, I reported on an attack upon a US Humvee patrol in Al-Dora, Baghdad, which is in the Al-Rashid district.
However, statements taken from three boys and five men who witnessed the US military clean-up and medical evacuations all reported the same story: The US military flew in medical choppers to air lift 2 wounded soldiers from the scene. They all witnessed at least five bodies loaded into US vehicles and driven from the scene.
These statements were taken from some scene of the incident the day after it occurred, as well as taken from several men from other areas of Al-Dora.
A phone call from the scene of the incident to the Coalition Public Information Center (CPIC) provided information that the US military reported two dead and three wounded soldiers.
This is confirmed by accessing the following information:
According to press release 04-01-03C on 2 January, US Cent Com reports 2 dead, 3 injured Task Force 1st Armored Division Soldiers Killed in Ambush in Al Rashid district at about noon when their convoy was struck by an IED, then the soldiers taking small arms fire after the explosion. (Source)
The same press release can be found on the Combined Joint Task Force Seven website, release #040103g, with the same dead and injured count. (Source)
Thus, the usual conflict in the number of US soldiers killed and injured rests between the many Iraqis who witnessed the scene during the US cleanup and medical evacuations, and the figures given by CENTCOM and Combined Joint Task Force 7.
The US military in Iraq has been under constant scrutiny for under-reporting US casualty figures from attacks throughout Iraq. The effect of this is to give the impression to both the media and people of Iraq, as well as people in the US that the degree of loss of life by US military personnel in Iraq is lower than it may actually be.
Thus, the sense of urgency the US military is faced with in Iraq isn't being conveyed to the public. For example, I just moments ago returned from a CIPIC press conference by General Kimmitt where he stated there are 25 attacks per day on coalition forces.
Nor are people being allowed the opportunity to grasp the seriousness of the mounting US casualties in Iraq as a result of the occupation.
This being an election year in the US only brings more doubt about the actual figures being reported by the military here as compared to the numbers provided by Iraqis witnessing the attacks and/or the medical operations which ensue.
Virtually every investigation I've conducted on events of this nature has provided a disparity in the numbers of US dead and wounded between those reported by CPIC and Iraqi witnesses; be they civilians, hospital staff, or figures from the morgue.
This point is further underlined by the incident in Samarra at the end of November when the US military claimed a convoy came under attack by a highly organized group of Fedayeen fighters and responded by killing 54 of them. Upon further investigation by myself and several other journalists at the hospital, morgue, and several interviews in Samarra, the highest Iraqi body count recorded was 8. The US military never adjusted their figures to reflect this, despite the fact that no more than 8 bodies have ever been found as a result of this battle.
Not only has the US casualty rate in Iraq continued unabated since the capture of Saddam Hussein, it has increased.
On a daily basis US soldiers are dying here, as well as being severely wounded. When one looks at a general headline on a news website and reads: 1 US soldier killed, 2 wounded, it is not shown the degree to which these soldiers are wounded. Many have suffered permanent brain damage, loss of feet, legs, hands, arms. There lives are changed forever by permanent disabilities; rather than the impression the mainstream media leaves of injured by cuts and bruises.
The system of information control runs deep in Iraq today. The CPA has recently released a law stating that no public demonstrations are allowed without their approval and consent. If a demonstration occurs without said, the people will be detained promptly.
During the aforementioned press conference this evening, attended not only by media but the additional 15 US soldiers in the room, I paid close attention to the words used by General Kimmitt and the very uptight man in the suit standing next to him assisting him in answering questions posed by the media.
After laughing and looking at one another while smiling on two different occasions while giving a press conference while reporting attacks on US troops resulting in them dying and being wounded, the two men at the podium used interesting terms in order to avoid the term "resistance."
Resistance fighters are thus referred to as "anti-coalition fighters", "anti-coalition suspects" (detainees), and of course the mainstay, "terrorists."
We are shown a slick video taken by military personnel of a raid conducted on the Ibn Taimiyah Mosque last Thursday. This raid brought great scrutiny on the CPA for disrespecting the traditions and culture here, due to the fact that US soldiers raided it wearing their combat boots and wielding weapons. They rolled up the pray rugs while looking for tunnels hiding weapons caches, and coming up empty on the tunnels.
While the raid did yield many weapons, TNT, and grenades, the method in which it was conducted may be more detrimental to the occupiers efforts than the fruits it yielded.
They arrested its prayer leader, Shaikh Mahdi Salah al-Sumaidi, a member of the Supreme Council for Religious Guidance, along with 20 of his assistants. General Kimmitt went out of his way to point out in the video, how the Sheikh was bound and handled as fairly as all the other detainees.
My Iraqi friend sitting next to me holds her hand to her forehead, holding her head and shaking it slowly while watching the bound Sheikh, as well as the soldiers wearing boots in the mosque, carrying weapons, and rolling up the rugs. She is in disbelief.
While US soldiers may need to conduct raids on mosques, wouldn"t a better policy be to let IPs (Iraqi Police) or Iraqi Civil Defense personnel handle this culturally sensitive operation?
In addition, General Kimmitt went out of his way to stress that IPs and ICDCs were "fully integrated" in the force that raided the mosque. If so, why didn"t these men conduct the raid? Why were only US soldiers seen in the mosque on the video?
During the rattling off of statistics of numbers of raids, detainees, and weapons caches found, there is never any mention of Iraqi civilian casualties.
Instead, they discuss a "whole new group" of Iraqis stepping forward to help the coalition since the capture of Saddam Hussein. They divide these two groups into the "Hopefuls" (those who want to help now that he is gone) and the "Fearfuls" (those who were too afraid to help while his shadow was still at large).
After the carefully conducted press conference comes to a close, I walk out of the surreal atmosphere of the CPIC in the fancy conference hall, back into the insecure streets of Baghdad to return home. The usual sporadic gunfire from various parts of the city echoes off the buildings as night falls over the land of the "Hopefuls" and "Fearfuls."
Dahr Jamail is a freelance journalist and political activist from Anchorage, Alaska. He has come to Iraq to bear witness and write about how the US occupation is affecting the people of Iraq, since the media in the US has in large part, he believes, failed to do so.
----
G.I. Is Killed By Mortar Fire at Iraq Base, 2 Others Wounded
January 4, 2004
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/middleeast/04IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 3 - Insurgents firing mortar shells into an American base about 60 miles north of Baghdad killed one soldier on Saturday and wounded two others, a United States military spokesman said. At the same time, an American offensive against the insurgents continued at high intensity across the country's Sunni Muslim heartland.
The mortar fire struck a base of the Fourth Infantry Division near Balad, a town close to the main northern artery road linking Baghdad to Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. An old Iraqi air base outside Balad has been converted into the main American air base here, but it was not clear from the initial reports whether the mortar attack hit the airfield or an ancillary base.
The American spokesman, Sgt. Robert Cargie, said one mortar shell exploded near one of the trailers that are commonly used by troops in Iraq as sleeping quarters, and a soldier standing in the doorway was killed. The dead soldier, who was not identified pending notification of next of kin, raised the number of Americans killed in combat in Iraq since American military operations began in March to 329, of whom 214 have died since major combat operations ended on May 1.
A list compiled by the Reuters news agency, based on an updated death toll provided by the Pentagon on Jan. 1, gave the number of Americans who have died of noncombat causes as 153, of whom 130 have died since May 1. Noncombat deaths have included about 15 suicides among the 120,000 American troops, as well as frequent motor vehicle accidents on crowded highways.
Britain, America's main ally in the war, was listed as having lost 52 soldiers, 32 of them from noncombat causes. Other countries in the 32-nation coalition allied to the United States have lost 35 soldiers or military policemen, according to the Reuters list.
Estimates of the number of Iraqi military and civilian casualties in the war have been difficult to compile, and vary widely. But the Reuters list, based on estimates by human rights groups and other independent groups monitoring the war, ranged from nearly 13,000 to more than 16,000 Iraqis killed. Of these, civilians accounted for an estimated 8,000 to 10,000.
The main base at Balad, scene of Saturday's fatal mortar attack, has rapidly expanded to become the largest American military camp in Iraq. An old Iraqi air base that was heavily used in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's, it has taken over from Baghdad's main airport, formerly Saddam International Airport, as the main transit point for American troops and cargo reaching Iraq.
American commanders judged the Balad base better located for the American troops who are based across a wide region north of Baghdad, as well as units garrisoned in the center of the country around Baghdad, and also for those in the west out to the borders with Syria and Jordan, and south of Baghdad to a point about a third of the way between Baghdad and the main southern city of Basra, which serves as Britain's main base.
Security conditions also weighed in Balad's favor, as Baghdad's airport proved to be vulnerable to ground-to-air missile attacks by insurgents, as well as other forms of attack, like mortar fire.
The region in and around Baghdad continued to be the scene of one of the most intensive American offensives of the war on Saturday, in an effort to build on the success of Mr. Hussein's capture by demoralizing the insurgents and persuading them that their cause is lost.
On Friday night and until nearly dawn on Saturday, Baghdad resounded to a cacophony of warfare that made it hard for anybody watching and listening from a balcony on the Palestine Hotel near the city center to reconcile the bedlam with the phrase some American officers still prefer for the hostilities here, "a low-intensity conflict."
--------
Power Transfer in Iraq Starts This Week
Deadline for Completion Is Set as Talks Continue
By Robin Wright and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52841-2004Jan3?language=printer
After eight months of debate and delay, the United States this week will formally launch the handover of power to Iraq with the final game plan still not fully in place.
The United States begins the complicated political, economic and security transfer with a general framework and a June 30 deadline for completion. But critical details are still being negotiated between the Iraqis and U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, some of which could determine whether the new Iraqi government is ultimately embraced by the majority of Iraq's 22 million people.
"We're open to refinement, and we're waiting to hear what people have suggested or will suggest," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said in an interview. "What Ambassador Bremer and all of us have been doing in our conversations is listening and hearing and [saying], 'Are there better ideas that would make the plan more refined, better and more acceptable to a broader group of individuals and leaders within Iraq?' " Besides figuring out who will rule in Saddam Hussein's wake, Iraqis over the next two months will have to answer a host of deferred and potentially divisive questions: What kind of government will Iraq have? What will be the role of Islam? How much local rule will ethnic, tribal or religious groups have?
The deadline is Feb. 28 for agreement on these and other basic questions, due to be codified in the recently renamed Transitional Administration Law, the precursor to a constitution.
A month later, Iraqis have to determine their relationship with U.S. troops -- and therefore the United States -- after the handover. One of the thorniest issues will be giving U.S. troops immunity from prosecution for any action they may take, a standard U.S. demand when it deploys troops abroad. But Iraq presents a different set of issues than what American forces face in peaceful environments such as Germany, Italy and South Korea inasmuch as U.S. soldiers could still be fighting in a country not under U.S. control.
Iraqis, who like to note that they have less time than the U.S. founding fathers did to come up with a constitution and new government, are already worried -- and predicting problems. "This is the decisive period -- and we will probably go to the brink a few times before we make those decisions," a prominent Iraqi politician said.
U.S. officials say Washington plans to resolve many of these remaining questions in negotiation with the Iraqi Governing Council, whose initial incompetence precipitated the delays that forced the United States to design the Nov. 15 agreement. The accord outlines the multiphase process, centered on provincial caucuses, to select a provisional government.
Seven weeks after the accord, however, the council has been unable to close the wide differences of opinion among rival Iraqi leaders, ranging from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to the Sunni community once protected by Hussein.
Sistani, a Shiite Muslim cleric who has a larger public following than any other Iraqi, has demanded elections to pick Baghdad's post-occupation government. But no compromise has been reached, despite a stream of communications among Sistani, Bremer and the Governing Council -- leaving the legitimacy of the process in doubt, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
As the effort to turn over power begins in earnest, symbolic actions are planned: town halls to launch a nationwide political dialogue, graduation this week of an Iraqi army battalion, completion of the new currency exchange, the first cell phone system.
"This next month, we have a thousand things going on. We're drinking out of a fire hose," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad said.
Washington wants to begin transferring specific duties to Baghdad so that inexperienced Iraqis do not suddenly find themselves assuming total responsibility in six months.
In a step pivotal to the transition, Iraq will also once again be the focus of debate at the U.N. Security Council on Jan. 19, when the Iraqi council will appeal for the world body to return. But senior members of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority may not attend the meeting, despite a personal summons by Secretary General Kofi Annan. Repeatedly burned at the United Nations on Iraq, Washington wants the Iraqis to make their own case to the United Nations this time, U.S. officials say.
"It's time that Iraqis begin representing themselves -- and that the world recognizes that fact," a State Department official said.
The toughest task facing the United States now, many U.S. officials say, is figuring out a way to broaden political participation, the core issue in the debate over elections. The Bush administration refuses to budge from the Nov. 15 agreement, in part for fear that further demands could delay the transition.
To bring more Iraqis into the process, the United States is tinkering with the formation of new Iraqi political bodies -- often creatively but also in piecemeal fashion, based largely on local factors and preferences rather than a uniform standard nationwide.
As a first step, the United States has begun to reconfigure dozens of local city councils originally appointed by U.S. military commanders or provisional authority officials in the field. Some councils have been virtually dissolved, whereas others have only had new members added. The approach usually depends on local politicians and input from the Iraqi Governing Council members from the area.
The United States faces another crucial step in the process of selecting a government this week with the creation of coordinating committees. That selection process could last two months.
In each of Iraq's 18 provinces, 15-member committees are to select members for caucuses, which will in turn pick legislators for a new national assembly. The exact number in parliament, and whether it has one chamber or two, is another issue to be determined. The legislature will then pick the government.
U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad are exploring ideas that will combine this formula with some form of elections, again perhaps differing in key areas, to accommodate Sistani's demand. The administration believes it can find common ground.
"The ayatollah has raised issues with respect to how you do the caucus elections, and I think it's safe to say that we are in a dialogue with him and with others who have an interest in how one actually goes about selecting a transitional assembly and a transitional government," Powell said.
One idea being discussed is having quick local elections for some delegates to the coordinating committees. Under the current formula, in each province five of the 15 members are appointed by the Governing Council, five by the provincial council and one from each of the five largest cities. One problem, however, is whether elections for only five of the delegates from major cities would satisfy Sistani's call for public input rather than appointment.
The future of the 25-member Governing Council, handpicked by Bremer, must also be decided. Some members argue that it should be preserved as the second chamber of an Iraqi legislature, an idea U.S. officials and many Iraqis oppose. The United States continues to be frustrated by council members, their personal ambitions and their divisive politics, although U.S. officials give them credit for making a more earnest effort recently.
"Ambassador Bremer has a strong working relationship with the Governing Council, and we are eager to move forward on the November 15 political agreement as signed and published," said Dan Senor, the U.S. spokesman in Baghdad. Washington hopes that the various town halls -- one has been held in Basra, another will take place in Mosul soon -- will help generate ideas and feedback for "refinements" in the plan.
"We're engaged in a robust effort to get all parties engaged in this process. We're going to be doing a lot of things over the next few weeks. There's a lot that needs to happen, given the timeline to get all the critical parties to buy into the political process," a senior U.S. official said.
But as the countdown begins to the formal handover, time is also running short.
"We have a six-month marathon ahead of us, so we're lacing up our shoes and getting ready to roll. It's not one thing or another dominating the agenda," the senior administration official said. "It's keeping all the balls in the air and jogging forward at the same time."
--------
Insurgents Kill U.S. Soldier in Iraq; 2 Troops Die in Bombing
Associated Press
Sunday, January 4, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51594-2004Jan3.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 3 -- Insurgents hit a U.S. base in central Iraq with mortar shells, killing one American soldier and wounding two others, a U.S. military spokesman said Saturday. Two other soldiers were killed in a separate bomb attack.
The mortar shells struck a base of the Army's 4th Infantry Division near Balad, about 50 miles northwest of Baghdad, on Friday night, Sgt. Robert Cargie said.
One of the shells exploded near a trailer used as a bedroom by troops, and a soldier standing in its doorway was killed. Two other soldiers were struck by shrapnel and taken to a combat support hospital, where they were in stable condition, Cargie said.
In a separate incident Friday, two U.S. soldiers on patrol south of Baghdad were killed by a homemade bomb, a military spokesman said. Three others were injured in the explosion and evacuated to a hospital.
Overnight, the U.S. military bombed the sparsely populated southern edge of Baghdad to root out insurgents believed to be launching mortar shells and rockets, hours after a U.S. military helicopter was shot down west of the capital, killing one soldier.
Soon after the helicopter crashed on Friday, the military said attackers posing as journalists fired assault weapons and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. paratroops guarding the burning aircraft.
But there was confusion over the incident. The Reuters news agency reported that U.S. troops fired at members of its team at the scene and that the military later detained three of them.
"Our guys are still in detention and we still haven't been informed of any specific accusations against them," said Andrew Marshall, Reuters bureau chief in Baghdad.
Elsewhere, insurgents attacked a U.S. tanker-truck convoy, setting one of the vehicles ablaze.
U.S. forces raiding a Sunni Muslim mosque arrested 32 suspected non-Iraqi Arab insurgents and seized an arms cache. Hundreds of Iraqis protested outside the mosque after the raid.
In Baghdad, a military spokesman said the shelling of the Doura neighborhood was part of an offensive dubbed Operation Iron Grip. Residents said it appeared U.S. fire was targeting fields in the neighborhood.
Bordered by date-palm farms, the area was once home to a number of former officials in Saddam Hussein's government and is now the site of a U.S. military base.
Operations such as Iron Grip send "a very clear message to anybody who thinks that they can run around Baghdad without worrying about the consequences of firing [rocket-propelled grenades], firing mortars," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters Friday. "There is a capability in the air that can quickly respond against anybody who would want to harm Iraqi citizens or coalition forces."
A 5,000-gallon oil tanker also erupted in flames near a U.S. military base on the road to the western town of Ramadi. The military said it was in a convoy attacked with a roadside bomb, a grenade and small-arms fire. Three U.S. soldiers suffered burns and shrapnel wounds.
In ongoing raids to hunt down former Iraqi officials, U.S. soldiers captured Abu Mohammed, believed to be moving foreign fighters and cash through a tense area west of Baghdad, and three other suspects, the military said Friday.
Soldiers in Samarra blew up the house of Talab Saleh, who is accused of orchestrating attacks against U.S. troops, witnesses said. They said the troops arrested Saleh's wife and brother and said they would not be released until Saleh surrenders. The military had no immediate comment.
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis Kill 3 Palestinians as Nablus Siege Continues
January 4, 2004
By CRAIG S. SMITH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/middleeast/04MIDE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
NABLUS, West Bank, Jan. 3 - Four young Palestinians were killed by the Israeli Army here on Saturday and one other was seriously wounded by army fire during the subsequent funeral as an Israeli incursion into this ancient city entered its second week.
"How can you talk to the people of Nablus to calm them down and work for peace when their children are being shot and homes destroyed?" asked Mahmoud Aloul, the city's Palestinian Authority governor. He spoke at his temporary offices; Nablus's main government office building was reduced to rubble by the Israeli Army nearly two years ago.
Nablus has been a center of militant activity since the current cycle of violence started in September 2000.
An army spokesman said the operation, the largest currently under way, was intended to dismantle a terrorist network in Nablus, after 18 attempted terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians originated in the city over the past month. Thirteen of the thwarted attacks, including planned suicide bombings and shootings, were against Israelis in Israeli territory, the spokesman said. He said that Saturday's shootings in Nablus, including those at the funeral procession, were in response to rock throwing and sightings of firebombs or handguns among the Palestinian youths.
Last month, Palestinian gunmen attacked Orthodox Jews making a clandestine visit to a tomb here that many Israelis believe is the burial site of Joseph, the Jewish patriarch. Seven Jews were injured in that attack. Also last month, a suicide bomber from a village near Nablus killed four people when he detonated his explosives at a bus stop on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Nearly a quarter of the suicide bombers that have attacked Israel in the past three years have come from Nablus.
The continuing violence bodes ill for efforts to get Palestinian factions to agree to stop attacking Israeli soldiers and civilians - a precondition for progress for the so-called road map to peace, backed by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia. The Egyptian government has been trying to mediate a Palestinian cease-fire, but the mood in Nablus on Saturday suggested that those efforts faced stiff resistance.
"We don't need help from the Egyptians or anybody else," said Qais al-Masri, the father of one of the Palestinians injured during the funeral procession. Mr. Masri spoke at the hospital, where his son lay in a coma before being pronounced dead.
Many people on Nablus's streets and at its hospital said the continued killing of Palestinians had increased support for the militant group Hamas, which has so far refused to stop its attacks against the Israeli military. Hamas is one of the main factions blocking a deal among Palestinian groups to stop the violence and give the road map a chance.
"If it stopped its attacks, Hamas would lose its popularity," said Dr. Moawiah al-Masri at the hospital, where the halls are plastered with posters of the dozens of young Nablus men who have died since the second intifada began.
The governor, Mr. Aloul, said more than 400 residents had been killed and 6,000 wounded by the army during that time. He said it was the highest number of casualties of any town in the West Bank or Gaza.
The Israeli Army soldiers patrol in armored jeeps with wire mesh over small bulletproof windows. The army said the soldiers responded with live ammunition on Saturday because they felt threatened by young Palestinians throwing rocks, wielding firebombs and displaying handguns, but witnesses disputed that rationale.
Osama Bustami, 40, said he saw Amjad al-Masri, 15, shortly before 8:30 a.m. Saturday, watching rock-throwing youths from the tin roof of a shed before he was fatally shot.
"He wasn't throwing anything, just watching," Mr. Bustami said.
According to the army's account, however, Amjad al-Masri was seen "throwing large rocks" at the soldiers, "endangering their lives."
"The force identified him on the rooftop and opened fire and identified a hit," the army spokesman said. The spokesman said two other Palestinians were shot in the city center around the same time.
The Israeli Army has often shot unarmed Palestinians, though its rules of engagement require restraint until soldiers believe their lives are in danger. Shooting incidents are rarely investigated; disciplinary action for an unwarranted shooting is even more rare. But the military has come under pressure recently to reevaluate its policy after the shootings of a British peace activist last year and of an Israeli protester last month. It denies that it has separate policies for Palestinians and non-Palestinians.
Amjad al-Masri was taken to the hospital by neighbors but died shortly after arriving there. Of the other two youths shot about the same time, the army said one was seen brandishing a lighted firebomb and the other a pistol.
Doctors at the hospital identified those two as Amer Arafat, 19, who died of four gunshot wounds shortly after arriving, and Rawhi Shouman, 21, who died of a single shot to the chest at the scene.
Shortly after the deaths, hundreds of shouting men accompanied the bodies, wrapped in the green-and-white flags that honor Islam, through the streets from the hospital to a local cemetery for burial. About midway, witnesses say, shots rang out again.
The army said two men were shot when they broke away from the procession toward army vehicles, one carrying a handgun, the other a homemade bomb.
But Muhammad al-Masri, 50, said Muhammad Qais al-Masri, 18, was beside him in the crowd helping to carry the body of their 15-year-old relative when a bullet struck Muhammad Qais al-Masri head.
"His brain was coming out and I tried to keep it in," said a shaken Muhammad al-Masri, who helped carry the stricken man to one of several ambulances following the procession.
At the hospital, Muhammad Qais al-Masri lay beneath a beige wool blanket, his head and eyes wrapped in gauze. Much of his brain lay in a nearby plastic garbage can. One of the doctors pointed to a CAT scan of the young man's head, which showed bullet fragments scattered through what brain remained.
"These are dum-dum bullets," one of the doctors said, meaning high-velocity ammunition that often breaks apart upon impact. "The soldiers don't shoot to wound, they hit them in the head or chest to kill."
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4 Die in Clashes With Israelis Soldiers
Say They Were Threatened In Nablus Incidents
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 4, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52610-2004Jan3.html
JERUSALEM, Jan. 3 -- A 15-year-old Palestinian boy standing on the roof of his uncle's shop on the edge of the West Bank city of Nablus was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers Saturday morning, according to members of his family.
Israeli soldiers said the boy, Amjad Musri, was throwing rocks at troops below. Palestinian witnesses said he was not.
At about the same time, soldiers opened fire on two men -- a Palestinian they said had a pistol and was running toward armored vehicles, and a man who was lighting a molotov cocktail -- an Israeli military spokesman said.
Palestinian hospital officials said both men were killed. They identified them as Amer Arafat, 18, and Rohi Hazen Shoman, 20.
Three hours after the incidents, relatives and angry residents gathered in a funeral procession to bury Musri and the two men, Palestinian witnesses said. As the crowd moved briskly along a major thoroughfare in Nablus, Israeli soldiers who had taken positions in a nearby building began shooting into the crowd, according to Ghadeer Musri, 35, a cousin of Amjad Musri.
"People tried to hide themselves on the ground," said Ghadeer Musri, who was near the last of the three bodies being carried in the procession. She said she saw another cousin, Mohammed Qays Musri, 16, collapse, his hands clutching his head.
"He was bleeding heavily," she said. "I took him and pulled him 'til we reached an ambulance." Nine hours later, Mohammed Qays Musri died, Ghadeer Musri said.
The military spokesman said troops fired into the crowd because two men in the procession left the group and "started approaching" nearby soldiers. The spokesman said that, like the men who were killed, one of these men had a pistol and the other had a molotov cocktail.
"It was a terrible, bloody day," said Ghadeer Musri, interviewed by telephone at her home Saturday night. Heavy weapons fire could be heard outside.
For most of the past 19 days, Israeli tanks, armored jeeps and foot patrols have conducted some of the heaviest operations in Nablus in a year. An Israeli military spokesman said Saturday night that the operations were aimed at "the terrorist infrastructure inside Nablus and the refugee camps."
The spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said soldiers fired only after they came under attack. He said troops were attacked numerous times by Palestinians throwing stones and attempting to set off explosive devices.
In the first skirmish, the spokesman said, troops in armored vehicles were assaulted by "a large group of attackers in numerous spots in the center of the city" early Saturday morning. "In one spot in particular, forces identified a Palestinian on a rooftop who dropped heavy rocks on the forces." Soldiers then opened fire, he said.
Meanwhile in the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops found the body of a Palestinian who was shot by soldiers Friday evening, the spokesman said. The Palestinian was in a group crawling toward a military post near the Jewish settlement of Ganei Tal in the southern Gaza Strip, he said, adding that a homemade bomb was found near the body.
Palestinian officials said the person killed was 17 years old, according to Reuters news service.
-------- latin america
World held hostage by nuclear powers: Castro
HAVANA (AFP)
Jan 04, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040104191638.b41ab3w0.html
Cuban leader Fidel Castro slammed the nuclear powers Sunday, which he said were holding humanity "hostage," in a speech marking the 45th anniversary of the revolution that brought him to power.
"The lives of millions of human beings who inhabit the planet depend on what a few people think, believe and decide," he said in a 50-minute speech at the solemn event in the Karl Marx theater.
"A smaller group of countries that monopolizes these weapons boast the exclusive right to produce and develop them."
"We have the right to denounce, to pressure and to demand changes and an end to this ridiculous and absurd situation that has turned us into hostages," he said.
Castro also criticized the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a scheme championed by the United States to tear down trade barriers throughout the western hemisphere.
The plan does not include Cuba, which is isolated as the only Communist nation in the Americas.
Castro led rebels into the eastern city of Santiago on January 1, 1959. Former president Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic on the same day, and Castro has ruled ever since.
-------- prisoners of war
British Troops Accused Of Killing Iraqi Detainee
WORLD IN BRIEF
Sunday, January 4, 2004
Washington Post
From News Services
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52840-2004Jan3.html
LONDON -- Eight Iraqis arrested in the southern city of Basra last year were assaulted by British soldiers, and one of them died of his injuries, the Independent newspaper reported in its Sunday edition.
The body of Baha Mousa was returned to his family covered with bruises and with a broken nose after he and seven other men were detained in September and held for three days, the paper reported. Military and medical records showed the father of two suffered his injuries in a severe beating.
British military authorities offered Mousa's family $8,000 in compensation, providing they were not held responsible for his death, but his relatives planned to take Britain's Defense Ministry to court, the newspaper said. A Defense Ministry spokeswoman declined to give details about the case. "There is an ongoing military police investigation into a death that we had in custody," she said.
-------- spies
Missteps Seen in Muslim Chaplain's Spy Case
January 4, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS and THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/national/04YEE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - As the Muslim chaplain at the military base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, Capt. James J. Yee often invited some of the Islamic members of the garrison to his quarters for dinner on Friday after he conducted weekly services.
On at least two occasions, his guest was Senior Airman Ahmad I. al- Halabi, an Air Force translator at the camp, where hundreds of captives from the Afghan war have been held and interrogated for the last two years.
Airman al-Halabi was later arrested on several charges, including suspicion of trying to pass secrets to Syria or some other foreign government, a charge that has since been dropped.
Military officials now say the dinners with Airman al-Halabi, as well as Captain Yee's own connections to Syria, set in motion the arrest, lengthy detention and possible court-martial of Captain Yee, a tangled legal episode that has proved awkward for the military.
First held on suspicion of being part of an espionage ring, Captain Yee, 35, was in the end charged with the far less serious crime of mishandling classified information. He was also eventually charged with adultery and keeping pornography on his government computer, both violations of military law.
As arguments over the merits of those charges play out at a preliminary hearing in Fort Benning, Ga., some military officials continue to defend the prosecution, saying that even technical violations of regulations that fall short of espionage should not be ignored. Senior commanders in charge of the case have declined to discuss it, saying that doing so might jeopardize the prosecution.
But others have come to shake their heads over the case.
"This whole thing makes the military prosecutors look ridiculous," said John L. Fugh, a retired major general and onetime judge advocate general, the highest uniformed legal officer in the Army.
General Fugh said the case ought to be brought to a speedy end when a preliminary hearing resumes on Jan. 19. At the hearing's conclusion, Col. Dan Trimble, the presiding officer, is supposed to make a recommendation to Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the commander of the Joint Task Force that runs the Guantánamo camp, on whether to convene a court-martial, dismiss the case or impose some administrative penalty like a reprimand or discharge.
"It certainly seems like they couldn't get him on what they first thought they had," General Fugh said, "so they said, `Let's get the son of a gun on something.' "
General Fugh, who has played no role in the prosecution or the defense of Captain Yee, said, "Adding these Mickey Mouse charges just makes them look dumb, in my mind."
According to a senior Justice Department official, even the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was involved in reviewing the documents that were seized from Captain Yee, never thought much of the evidence against him.
A series of interviews over the last few weeks suggests a number of factors that led the military ever deeper into its prosecution:
¶Reservists serving as counterintelligence officers at the camp were apprehensive that they might miss some sign of infiltration of the base but were relatively inexperienced in how to handle such matters.
¶There was confusion over which documents might be classified and which were not. For example, defense lawyers have questioned whether documents in the chaplain's baggage were truly classified, and that is now being formally reviewed.
¶Some senior officers at Guantánamo were skeptical about the wisdom of having Muslims and Arab-Americans involved in the interrogations of prisoners and other camp operations, and there was smoldering suspicion over what they were doing when they met with one another, according to military officials.
¶An investigation intended to strengthen the initial charges led instead into unrelated areas, and to the new charges of adultery and of keeping pornography on government computers.
The arrest of Captain Yee at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida on Sept. 10 drew immediate attention, presenting a strange new twist in the already contentious accounts of the military's detention camp at Guantánamo.
Captain Yee, a New Jersey native of Chinese-American heritage and a West Point graduate, converted to Islam after leaving the Army, traveling to Syria for religious training. Rejoining the Army as a chaplain, he was featured in news articles, with the authorities at Guantánamo eagerly showcasing him as evidence of their tolerance toward the religion of the captives there.
It became evident that his arrest was part of a broader crackdown at Guantánamo when the military announced that it had previously arrested Airman al-Halabi, also on suspicion of espionage. Airman al- Halabi had not only dined with Captain Yee, once alone, but was a volunteer aide in the chapel, a spare wooden building outside the prison facility. The airman is from Syria.
On Sept. 29, the military arrested another translator, Ahmed F. Mehalba, on similar charges of possessing classified information about Guantánamo. Mr. Mehalba, a civilian who had also dined at Captain Yee's quarters at least once, was indicted in November on charges of improperly gathering military information and lying to the F.B.I.
Unnamed officials were quoted in news accounts suggesting that they might have broken up an espionage ring trying to infiltrate the base on behalf of hostile foreign powers.
But that theory has not borne out so far, most notably in the Yee case. The military also recently dropped the most serious charges against Airman al-Halabi, including aiding the enemy, which carried a possible death sentence. Of the original 30 charges, he still faces 17, including some of attempted espionage. But his lawyer, Donald G. Rehkopf, said the "guts of the case" were gone - the charges of aiding the enemy and of using computers to transmit information abroad.
The military also dropped a charge that Airman al-Halabi had, without authorization, given pieces of baklava to some detainees.
For his part, Captain Yee was placed in solitary confinement in a naval brig for 76 days, much of the time in leg irons and manacles. One of his lawyers, Eugene R. Fidell, said that Captain Yee's jailers would not tell him the time of day or the direction of the compass points to help him pray to Mecca for most of that time. Mr. Fidell said that Captain Yee was treated in a worse fashion than the detainees at Guantánamo to whom he used to minister.
He was released before prosecutors opened their case against him on Dec. 8 in a preliminary hearing at Fort Benning. There was little discussion of national security and more on the newly added sex charges before the hearing was recessed for a formal determination of whether the documents Captain Yee had were classified.
With Captain Yee's parents, wife and 4-year-old daughter in the courtroom, Lt. Karyn Wallace testified at length under a grant of immunity about how their friendship as neighbors at Guantánamo grew into an intimate relationship. The small, spare courtroom that once served as the stage of the court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr. for the My Lai atrocities in Vietnam became the scene of a domestic melodrama as Mrs. Yee angrily confronted Lieutenant Wallace outside the door.
An officer who served at Guantánamo at the same time as Captain Yee said in an interview that one likely cause of his troubles was the relative inexperience of the officers in charge of security at the base.
"They were all reservists and were completely afraid of missing something and were quite jumpy," said this officer, who is still in the service.
Indeed, one of these reservists ended up himself being charged with the same offenses that were initially lodged against Captain Yee, specifically "wrongfully transporting classified material without the proper security container." But the officer, Col. Jack Farr, a reservist in Army intelligence, was not arrested or detained like Captain Yee.
Colonel Farr was also charged with making a false statement about his handling of classified documents when the matter was being investigated.
A military spokesman would say only that each case is different.
Yet in Captain Yee's case, a senior Justice Department official said in a recent interview, civilian law enforcement officials never believed that Captain Yee presented any serious espionage problem.
A spokesman for the United States Southern Command based in Miami said that General Miller had made the major decisions about how to handle the case, including deciding to bring the initial charges against Captain Yee, to have him detained in the brig and to include the additional charges.
"This was all decided at the J.T.F. level only," Lt. Col. Bill Costello, the spokesman, said in an interview. A spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that the Yee case never reached his office.
General Miller initially agreed to an interview to discuss how the case grew out of legitimate security concerns. But he later said through a spokesman that military lawyers advised him that it would be inappropriate to speak about the case because it could be viewed as improper command influence over the proceedings.
Although Captain Yee was said to have aroused suspicion by falsely claiming he had no luggage when he arrived in Jacksonville, Sean Rafferty, a customs inspector, acknowledged in his testimony that the principal reason the chaplain was searched was that law enforcement officials had tipped off inspectors; the officials told the inspectors that Captain Yee might be carrying classified documents. It was not, the customs official said, a random search, nor was it occasioned by any comments about the baggage.
The chaplain was chaperoning a child from Guantánamo to Jacksonville, and as he was taking the child to a building at the airport to be met by another adult, he was asked whether he had any luggage. When he answered that he did not, he may have meant that he left it elsewhere, his lawyers have suggested.
When his bags were searched, Mr. Rafferty said, they were found to contain two green-covered notebooks, small enough to fit in a shirt pocket and filled with Captain Yee's writing. There was also a typewritten sheet, he said, which appeared to have names of detainees, their identifying numbers and possibly the names of their interrogators.
A dispute over whether these documents contained classified information caused a 41-day postponement of the initial hearing into the case, after defense lawyers complained there had never been a formal determination of their classification. Colonel Trimble said General Miller agreed to a review of that question.
Colonel Costello and other military officials disputed the idea put forward by Captain Yee's lawyers that the classification review was to determine whether the documents themselves were properly classified. While the typewritten list, for example, did not carry any classification stamp, Pentagon officials said that if the information was secret, it might still be classified even if copied in Captain Yee's own hand or printed in some other form.
"At the time of his apprehension there is no doubt that the information was classified," Colonel Costello said. "At the time, nobody knew what was going on. Here's the Gitmo chaplain with classified data and he's leaving the island and that raised some suspicions."
The charge of adultery against Captain Yee has caused particular consternation throughout the military legal system.
Army officials said there had been about 60 cases of adultery prosecuted in the last two years, always as part of some larger set of criminal charges, like rape. The military, in guidelines to commanders, suggests that offenses like adultery become a particular problem when they affect discipline and order, as in cases that involve superior officers and their subordinates. This was not the situation with Captain Yee and Lieutenant Wallace.
But some military officials said there was little choice but to include those issues in the preliminary hearing at Fort Benning, since they were uncovered as part of a criminal investigation and commanders did not have the discretion to ignore them.
If ordered to undergo a court-martial and convicted on all six charges, Captain Yee could face up to 13 years in prison.
-------- us
Accidents Outside Combat Take Toll on U.S. Military
By Alan C. Miller and Kevin Sack
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
January 4, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/latimes57.html
WASHINGTON - Writing to his mother from Iraq in early May, Lance Cpl. Matthew R. Smith said he planned to be home in Anderson, Ind., to celebrate his 21st birthday later that month.
He never made it.
It wasn't an enemy sniper or rocket-propelled grenade that ended the young Marine reservist's life. After crisscrossing the desert for months at the wheel of a Humvee, Smith was speeding south along a northbound shoulder one night when he slammed his vehicle into an Army tractor-trailer abandoned on the side of the highway. He died of a massive head injury.
Smith had been driving for 15 hours with little break, and the Humvee's radio, speedometer and seat belts were not functioning, said his lone passenger, Lance Cpl. Antonio J. Delk. One of its low-beam lights also was out, and Smith was using his high beams sparingly so as not to blind oncoming traffic. When the trailer suddenly materialized, there was no time to react.
Months later, Smith's mother said her son's loss would somehow be easier to accept if he had been killed by hostile fire.
"It was a stupid accident; it shouldn't have happened," Patricia T. Smith said. "He'd be ticked off because he would think he didn't die the way a Marine should die."
It is not only Iraqi resistance that is cutting down U.S. forces at an alarming rate. Since the war started on March 20, more than 80 have died in noncombat accidents. That's nearly one-fifth of the total fatalities among soldiers. Many, like Smith, were killed in military vehicles. Others perished when helicopters crashed or weapons misfired.
This toll of preventable loss, which is by no means limited to the Middle East battlefront, has alarmed the Pentagon. A total of 575 servicemen and women died in accidents worldwide during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the second straight year noncombat fatalities have risen and a 64% increase since 1998. The death rate for active-duty personnel in accidents rose last year to the highest level in eight years - 35.63 per 100,000 individuals.
The recent increases occurred as the U.S. fought wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and troops found themselves in treacherous conditions and unfamiliar terrain. Nonetheless, most fatal accidents in the last three years occurred in the United States. In fact, half the fatalities happened in private motor vehicles - exacting a high price in lost soldiers and increased health-care costs.
For a generation, accidents have proved far more deadly than combat or terrorism. Since 1980, more than 20,000 military personnel have died in accidents while fewer than 1,000 have perished in battle, Defense Department figures show.
By its nature, military service is dangerous. Those who enlist do so with the expectation that they may be put in harm's way.
Nevertheless, the military had been steadily reducing its losses due to accidents, cutting its annual fatality figure by 56% between 1991 and 1998. But the reductions stopped the following year, even as private sector companies with high-risk activities, such as commercial airlines, continued to make impressive strides in reducing accidents. With the military rates climbing again, the magnitude of the losses has drawn concern at the highest levels. In May, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld challenged the heads of the services to cut the number and rate of accidents by half within two years.
"World-class organizations do not tolerate preventable accidents," he said. "These goals are achievable.... We owe no less to the men and women who defend our nation."
Rumsfeld spoke on a day when four Marines died in Iraq in the accidental crash of their CH-46 helicopter into a canal and a fifth drowned trying to rescue them. But officials say the impetus for the secretary's initiative predated the war.
In response, the Pentagon created the Defense Safety Oversight Council - a group including senior Army, Navy and Air Force officials - to track accidents, determine why they are increasing and make recommendations. It can propose any steps it deems necessary, right up to grounding an aircraft as too dangerous, Defense officials said.
"Every accident that happens is another flag for us to address root causes," said Joseph J. Angello Jr., a Pentagon official who helps direct military readiness and serves as the council's executive secretary.
Rumsfeld's target would be ambitious in peacetime, but it is particularly challenging amid continuing warfare. Former Defense Department safety experts welcome Rumsfeld's attention to an issue that has long taken a back seat, but they express skepticism about the Pentagon's willingness to change a mind-set that accepts accidents as a cost of business.
"They've reached out a couple of times in the last two years to have industry work with them, to learn industry's best practices," said Richard F. Healing, a National Transportation Safety Board member and former Navy director of safety and survivability. "To date, that effort has suffered from a chronic lack of sufficient funding - not walking the talk."
Even now, major safety measures will have to compete with such expensive priorities as buying weapons, waging war and rebuilding Iraq.
Angello said the council hopes "implementation costs will be very small compared to the savings."
In recent years, cost savings have come at the expense of safety. To trim the budget, the number of safety positions in the Defense secretary's office dwindled from five to one in the 1990s. A single official now oversees aviation, weapons and transportation safety issues. Though the shift occurred during the Clinton administration, these safety jobs have not been restored under Rumsfeld.
"The song remains the same," said George W. Siebert, who directed safety and occupational health policy in the Defense secretary's office from 1984 to 1998 and recalls a 1986 challenge by then-Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger to reduce accidents.
"The services really want to run their own show. That's where the money is. That's where the clout is. Unless they get that partnership, you're not going to see any reductions."
As a first step, the council compiled statistics on accident costs and causes. Angello described the number of military injuries as "stunning."
Between Jan. 1, 2001, and the end of September 2003, , the Army recorded 534 accidental deaths, the Navy, 291, the Air Force, 280, and the Marines, 250, Defense Department figures show. Half died in private car and motorcycle accidents, 15% in aviation accidents and 5% each in military vehicle accidents and by drowning.
During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as in the recent conflict in Afghanistan, far more soldiers died from nonhostile causes, including sickness, suicide and accidents, than from enemy fire.
"You're talking about a very highly skilled, scarce commodity: the modern American service person," said Daniel Goure, a defense analyst and former Pentagon official. "You don't want to lose them at all, but you clearly don't want to lose them to accidents."
Many of the accidents occur at the intersection of bad judgment and faulty equipment. Take the crash that killed Matthew Smith.
Delk said the Humvee in which he and Smith were traveling was the communications vehicle for a long convoy ferrying troops and supplies between Kuwait and Iraq. The accident occurred at 10:30 p.m., and Smith had been at the wheel since 7 that morning, Delk said. He said that Smith declined when he offered to take over, but that it was not uncommon for Smith and others to drive 16 or more hours a day.
Because their radio didn't work, Delk said, he and Smith drove up and down the convoy to communicate with their commander on short-range walkie-talkies. He said they were racing along at about 60 mph in the emergency lane on the wrong side of an unlit road. "Over there," he said, "we drove on whatever side of the road we wanted."
The trailer "just came out of nowhere," Delk said. "The next thing I knew I heard us hit it and felt the back of the vehicle lift up and my head hit the back of the seat."
Smith, his face bleeding badly, was alive, but not for long, his companion said. Delk, who broke his leg and injured an arm, remains on active duty while recuperating in the U.S.
The Army accident investigation report, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, largely held Smith responsible. It noted he was traveling against the flow of traffic, with limited visibility, at speeds far exceeding the 45 mph he had been ordered to drive.
The report did not mention the radio, speedometer or seat belts being broken, as Delk told The Times. It said Smith had "been given the opportunity to sleep for eight hours" before driving, consistent with Marine regulations. And it noted that Smith was not wearing his seat belt and that neither he nor Delk had their helmets on as ordered, though it acknowledged that wearing one would not have prevented Smith's death.
Col. David G. Reist, commander of the Marines' Transportation Support Group in Iraq, said no problems were noted with the Humvee's equipment in a routine check before the trip.
"Our unit drove 1.3 million miles in the war," Reist said. "We had one death. This happened two miles from the end of them coming home. This just tore my heart out."
Aircraft Crashes Rise
The trend for aviation accidents has also been troubling, with fatalities increasing by nearly a third over the last two years. In the 2002 fiscal year, 57 aircraft were destroyed in accidents, more than doubling the total from the previous year.
Also in 2002, accidental military aviation crashes cost more than $1 billion in lost aircraft, some upward of $50 million each. Sixty-one pilots and passengers died.
In contrast, no U.S. commercial passenger or cargo plane suffered a fatal crash in 2002.
Beyond the purely human toll, each fatality means an enormous lost investment for the military. Still, it often takes a series of deadly crashes before the military will make crucial safety improvements. Even when there is a pattern in multiple accidents, it can take years to secure the funds and install the equipment needed to fix the problem.
"Human error is a leading cause of mishaps," a 2002 Congressional Research Service report on military aviation safety found. But it also cited "aircraft age, pilot training, weather and other environmental conditions [and] mechanical failure and new aircraft designs" as factors.
Most military aircraft lack the safety features on commercial airplanes, which can sometimes prevent crashes caused by human error. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reported last year that "the military services have lagged as much as two decades behind [the civilian Federal Aviation Administration] in requiring the installation of cockpit technology in passenger-carrying aircraft to alert pilots to impending collisions."
There have been deadly consequences.
After a plane in his air wing narrowly avoided a head-on collision with two other military aircraft in Saudi Arabia in 1995, Lt. Col. Jay Lacklen, a safety chief at Dover Air Force Base, decided to search military files for other near misses. He discovered nearly a dozen.
Lacklen wrote letters up the chain of command urging the installation of a collision-avoidance system that was standard on commercial airliners. The system uses a computer to alert pilots when other planes are too close and guide them away from impending collisions.
The following year, an Air Force transport plane carrying Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown slammed into a mountain in Croatia. The Air Force then committed to equipping passenger-carrying aircraft with such a system, but did not make funding it a high priority.
Lacklen sent another warning letter Sept. 12, 1997: "When - not if - we smack two airplanes together, there will be no excuses and there will be no explanation why we delayed."
The following day, an Air Force C-141 transport plane collided with a German military plane at 35,000 feet off the African coast, killing all nine crew members on the U.S. plane and 24 on the German aircraft.
An investigation disclosed that the German plane was on the wrong flight path and that African air traffic controllers failed to notice it was on a collision course with the U.S. jet.
The lead Air Force investigator found that a collision avoidance system "could have prevented the accident."
In the aftermath, the Pentagon instructed the services to reallocate money to speed up installation of the warning device in passenger and cargo-carrying aircraft, including the C-141s.
Even then, the final C-141 didn't get the warning device until five years after the 1997 collision.
Relatives of those killed in the 1997 accident say it should not have taken such a tragedy to make the planes safer.
"If they're going to send these young men into hazardous areas, then they should have made the technology available to keep them safe," said Jean Bryant, whose son, Staff Sgt. Stacy D. Bryant, was among those killed. "They were there on behalf of their country. They had to give their lives because the system was not available."
The military has also lagged behind commercial aviation in the use of sophisticated flight data recorders, which can detect potential problems before they cause a crash.
"It has dramatically altered our accident-prevention program," said John Marshall, Delta Air Lines' vice president for corporate safety and compliance and a former Air Force fighter pilot.
Last year, Defense Undersecretary David S.C. Chu, who chairs the Pentagon safety council, successfully sought $15 million for the Navy, Marines and Air Force to continue testing the technology in various aircraft.
Deaths in Private Autos
The greatest number of accidental military deaths occurs in private motor vehicles. Indeed, military drivers are far more likely than civilians to die in crashes.
In the Marine Corps, 25.17 individuals out of 100,000 perished in motor vehicle accidents in the last fiscal year. The figure for the Air Force was 17.54, and for the Army, 16.5. The rate for the general population is about 15 per 100,000, according to the Transportation Department.
Half of the accidental deaths among military personnel in the last fiscal year - 284 - occurred in off-duty private vehicles.
Those killed are predominantly men 18 to 25, Defense officials said. In the Navy and Marine Corps, 36% of the accidents in 2002 involved excessive speed, 34% involved misuse or nonuse of seat belts, and 29% were alcohol-related, Naval Safety Center records show.
Army Rangers David M. Lye and Aaron Page were speeding in Lye's dark green Mustang on Feb. 17, 2002, in Olympia, Wash., when the car turned a corner, struck a curb, barreled into a utility pole and flipped over.
Page, 27, died of head injuries. Lye suffered a broken neck. His blood-alcohol level tested at more than twice the legal limit; Page's was also high.
Lye, 31 at the time and the father of four young daughters, was the chief warrant officer in an elite unit. He said he had no recall of the accident or the events preceding it. His attorney contended Page was driving, but the jury determined Lye was at the wheel. He was convicted of vehicular homicide, was sentenced to three years and is being discharged from the Army.
Speaking by phone from the minimum-security Cedar Creek Corrections Center in Littlerock, Wash., Lye said he had spent many hours pondering the instantaneous destruction of his exemplary 12-year career. "I was doing all these great things and moving up in the Army so fast that I felt indestructible." He said he thought, "Maybe I can cheat on the rules a bit here."
The Army is so concerned about deaths in private vehicles that it has developed a computerized program to assess the risks involved in each trip off base. A soldier provides his or her intended route, expected level of fatigue, weather forecasts and other factors. The computer then recommends which roads to take and provides guidance on conditions. The Army may impose a policy to only grant passes or leaves to those who score above a certain risk level.
But service personnel are also killed in military vehicle accidents. From 1988 to 1996, crashes in military vehicles were second only to aviation crashes as a cause of death while on duty, a 1998 GAO study found.
In Iraq, soldiers were killed when a Bradley fighting vehicle drove off a cliff, an armored personnel carrier rolled over and a Humvee crashed into another vehicle during a blinding sandstorm.
These accidents happened even though the Defense Department has an extensive traffic safety program.
It requires motorcycle safety training as well as driving instruction for those younger than 26 and those convicted of a serious moving violation. The courses are provided at no cost. Bases make rides or taxis available to anyone who has been drinking. And each military service has training programs for specialized military vehicles.
Nevertheless, the safety council's Angello said additional driver education might be needed, especially for young enlistees who have not received training in high school or who come from urban areas where mass transit is the primary means of transportation.
----
The price of waging preventative wars
By Charles Knight and Marcus Corbin
KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE
Sun, Jan. 04, 2004
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/7609112.htm
Just over a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration published its new National Security Strategy Policy, giving prominent place to unilateral, preventive wars - followed by the dismantling of the leadership and governing structures in targeted countries.
What this radical new doctrine failed to acknowledge, describe or discuss was our preparation for the consequences.
Left unsaid is that we would bear the heavy new burdens of protracted occupation and state building on a massive scale after these preventive wars. Instead, the new doctrine reads more like a vision statement than a strategic plan. It fails to address how to achieve the administration's stated objectives in light of real world constraints: acceptable costs and consequences.
Euphoria over the capture of Saddam Hussein notwithstanding, a year after the publishing of the NSSP, our military faces long-term occupation duty in not one, but two, countries. In Afghanistan, about 9,000 U.S. troops are attempting to guarantee the survival of a new government, train the new Afghan army and fight resurgent Taliban and al-Qaida units increasingly emboldened since their defeat in 2001.
More than 150,000 coalition soldiers (87 percent American) now occupy Iraq - about six soldiers for every 1,000 Iraqis. That is a very low ratio by historic standards. Occupations forces facing concerted resistance often require about 20 troops per thousand, so if insurgency in Iraq continues to intensify, suppressing it may eventually require 300,000 troops or more.
Yet the Bush administration neither planned for such a large-scale, long-serving occupation force, nor did it instruct our military to train troops for occupation duty, a task very different from battlefield combat.
Maintaining public order, guarding civilian reconstruction activities and rooting out insurgents - all while respecting the rights of civilians - require specific training that has been given to only a small portion of our troops in Iraq. To this administration, such training is uncomfortably close to that needed for peacekeeping operations - a role Bush officials disdain.
Our total deployable ground forces (Army and Marines) number about 400,000 active duty men and women and another 500,000 reservists. Together these numbers are more than enough to fight America's wars of short duration such as the 1991 war with Iraq.
But when policy choices result in long occupations, such totals quickly become insufficient - a result of the dismal math of force rotations. It takes four troop units on active duty to sustain deployment of one active unit in the field for multiple years, and it takes nine reserve units to sustain deployment of one reserve unit.
A four- or five-year occupation of Iraq by 65,000 regular and 35,000 reserve troops - a realistic possibility - will require a rotation base of 260,000 active troops (65 percent of our deployable active ground forces) and 315,000 reserve troops (63 percent of our deployable reserve ground forces.) This illustration does not properly capture the full effect of our broader "war on terror" on our reservists.
Currently, more than 130,000 reserve ground troops are serving in homeland security roles, "back filling" for active-duty soldiers elsewhere abroad and deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. For the reservists, this level of mobilization is already more than twice the long-term sustainable rate.
If another war begins, President Bush will still be able to mobilize plenty of military power. It is occupations that are the problem. If occupation of Iraq stretches into years and the "war on terrorism" widens even further, Army Reserve and National Guard units will be called to active service again and again - an activation rate far higher than the norm expected by our citizen soldiers, their families and their communities.
The Bush administration plans to start drawing down U.S. troops in Iraq next spring, but history suggests a different course is as likely. After WWII, U.S. forces occupied Germany for 10 years and Japan for seven.
So far, Congress and the American people are only dimly aware of a critical decision just ahead due to the new Iraq war: either we invest in larger armies trained and ready for long occupation duty, or we jettison the Bush administration's radical doctrine of preventive wars and regime change.
Charles Knight is co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives in Cambridge, Mass. Marcus Corbin is director of the Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. Contact the authors at Global Beat Syndicate, 418 Lafayette Street, Suite 554, New York, N.Y.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
U.S. Arrivals Fingerprinted in Brazil
On Judge's Order, Americans Get Same Scrutiny Bush Sought for Brazilians
By Jon Jeter
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 4, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52613-2004Jan3.html
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Jan. 3 -- Gerald Lewis emerged from the international airport on Saturday curiously looking at his hands. "My first time being fingerprinted," said Lewis, 40, an electronics salesman from Houston. "You don't expect that kind of thing to happen when you step off a plane in Brazil. Maybe Eastern Europe during the Cold War."
A judge in Latin America's largest country last week ordered federal police to begin photographing and fingerprinting all American travelers when they arrive at Brazil's airports.
Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva's ruling followed an announcement by the Bush administration last month that it would introduce similar measures Monday for people arriving in the United States from a number of countries, including Brazil. The measure is intended to identify people who have violated immigration controls, have a criminal record or are known members of what U.S. intelligence agencies consider to be terrorist organizations.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security said at least two of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States might have been identified and detained if such a system had been in place at the time.
In his ruling last week, da Silva delivered a withering attack on the new U.S. measure and said Brazil must implement the same policy to protect the integrity and dignity of Brazilians traveling to the United States.
"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," da Silva said.
Brazil's new security measures are scheduled to begin nationwide on Monday. But federal police officers in Sao Paulo -- Brazil's most populous city and a major gateway into and out of the country -- have already begun fingerprinting and photographing American travelers. By Saturday morning, police had registered about 130 Americans and were expected to register 1,300 to 1,800 per day as they arrive in the country, according to tourism officials.
A U.S. Consulate official in Sao Paulo said there had been few complaints. "It's been real quiet," the official said on the condition of anonymity.
None of the Americans interviewed on Saturday seemed to consider the process more than mildly irritating.
"You have to expect delays anytime you travel anywhere in the world these days," said Eric Wesson, 24, of Michigan, who arrived Saturday and said he planned to spend the next six months hiking around the continent.
"They were polite about it, and I can understand their point," he said. "If we're going to treat them like criminals when they visit our country, they are going to make sure we feel the same way. It's kind of like a humiliation war rather than a trade war."
The mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the country's favorite tourist destination, criticized da Silva's decision. Increasing numbers of tourists from the United States and elsewhere begin arriving in Brazil at this time of year, preparing for the country's pre-Lenten carnival celebration.
"This is a disastrous move," said the mayor, Cesar Maia. "We're right in the middle of summer. I consider this a stupid retaliation that will not bring any benefit to the country."
Da Silva, however, said he did not consider his court order retaliatory but rather "a question of international rights."
Vivian Keller, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate, said that the office was monitoring the situation but that U.S. diplomatic officials recognized that "countries have the sovereign right to determine the entry requirements of foreign nationals."
--------
British Air Resumes Washington Flight After Two Days
January 4, 2004
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/international/worldspecial2/04FLIG.html?pagewanted=all
LONDON, Jan. 3 - British Airways resumed its afternoon flight from London to Washington on Saturday, after canceling it for security reasons two days in a row, but a British minister warned that air travelers should expect similar disruptions for the foreseeable future.
The cleared flight took off several hours after its scheduled departure; the airline said the delay was caused by additional security checks. The flight landed safely about eight hours later at Dulles International Airport, The Associated Press reported.
The transport secretary, Alistair Darling, told the BBC's Radio 4 program on Saturday that British Airways had canceled the prior flights because British authorities had received "specific information" and concluded the information was credible. Passengers were questioned but no one has been arrested.
"We look at the intelligence ourselves," Mr. Darling said. "We evaluate it, and we then decide what the appropriate action is."
"The reason that different flights are either grounded or there is increased security varies from time to time," he said. "Of course Britain and the United States have access to similar intelligence, and we share information. We do so with other countries as well. You would expect us to do that."
Meanwhile, Saturday's 1:35 p.m. British Airways flight from London to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was canceled, as was its Sunday return, after the airline received "security advice" from the British government.
Jo Devereux, a spokeswoman for British Airways, said the cancellations of the 3:05 p.m. flights to Dulles International Airport outside Washington were based on these specific threats and had nothing to do with the question of whether to allow armed air marshals on the planes. "It was not because the pilots refused to fly or that we did not want air marshals on board," she said.
The United States said last week that it would not allow certain suspicious flights into its airspace without armed air marshals on board. While Britain has recently stepped up security at its airports and on its airplanes, the question of armed guards is a contentious one and is opposed by the powerful pilots union.
Citing a British Airways statement, Ms. Devereux said the company was in talks with British authorities over how best to deploy air marshals. Those talks are expected to conclude shortly, she said.
As it stands now, British Airways will accept armed police officers "if we are satisfied that safety would be enhanced to an acceptable level for the flight to take place," Ms. Devereux said. If there are specific credible threats that put passengers at risk, British Airways "will not operate that flight."
While it opposes the use of armed guards on planes, the British Airline Pilots Association said it was negotiating with individual airlines over the training and deployment of the marshals. The union has already reached an agreement with Virgin Atlantic and is in discussions with all other airline companies.
"We think air marshals will do more harm than good, but we won't block the idea," said Keith Bill, a spokesman for the union.
The Bush administration increased efforts to protect American airspace after the United States was placed on high terror alert on Dec. 21. Since then seven international flights have been canceled, among them flights run by Air France and Aeromexico. In some cases, planes were escorted to United States airports by American fighter jets.
Mr. Darling said he expected the security disruptions to continue for some time because of the state of heightened alert, an accommodation that foreign airlines are willing to make to protect the public from a Sept. 11-style attack. American intelligence officials have said they had picked up electronic chatter relating to the canceled flights.
"The threat that we now face is likely to endure for many years," Mr. Darling said. "We are dealing with a different order of magnitude of threat."
--------
Delayed Flight Takes Off, Still Shrouded in Fog of War
Security Both Troubles and Relieves Passengers
By Glenn Frankel and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 4, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52842-2004Jan3?language=printer
LONDON, Jan. 3 -- Natasha and Grace Brennan, ages 5 and 3, were demolishing a small bag of potato chips and gulping orange juice and Coke while their parents stole an occasional nervous glance at the check-in screen near their table at Heathrow Airport's Terminal Four.
It was noon Saturday, and Emma and Myles Brennan of Bethesda were keeping a vigil at the coffee bar to find out whether British Airways Flight 223 would fly them and their daughters home to Dulles International. For the last three days, British and U.S. security officials had singled out the flight as a possible target of terror.
By the time the Boeing 747 took off at about 6:20 p.m. London time, four hours behind schedule, Flight 223 and its passengers had become reluctant participants in the war on terrorism -- and Terminal Four, one of the world's busiest air transfer points, was on the front lines. Security agents had interviewed and re-interviewed the 225 passengers while checking their names against both the passenger manifest and a terrorist watch list.
"Never has a plane been checked and rechecked" like this, the veteran pilot, Ian Herve, told passengers over the intercom.
"We live in Washington and we want to go home," said Emma Brennan. "I'm afraid we're rather fatalistic about it. As individuals there's really nothing we can do. We have our own little lives and we can't change any of this."
Flight 223 is one of British Airways' three daily nonstop flights to Washington and is often full this time of year as people return home from the holidays. On Wednesday, New Year's Eve, the flight was delayed for three hours after it landed at Dulles while passengers were individually questioned by police. On Thursday and Friday, the flight was canceled altogether upon orders of senior British security authorities, who said they had acted on intelligence provided by their U.S. counterparts.
U.S. authorities have also canceled two Aeromexico flights from Mexico City to Dulles and six Air France flights to Los Angeles. Separately, the British government has shut down two British Airways flights to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Officials of the British airline told passengers they hoped Saturday's flight to Dulles would take off on time, but gave no guarantees.
The Brennans, who are British, grew up here during the 1970s and 1980s, when the Irish Republican Army conducted a bombing campaign against military and civilian targets in Britain. Myles Brennan, who works at the World Bank, said he has learned to live with a low level of anxiety, though he doesn't like it. "There's so much uncertainty in the world, and it makes me uneasy," he said.
Like the Brennans, most people interviewed at Terminal Four on Saturday said they had no choice but to fly. Many had bought their discounted, fixed-date tickets months ago in anticipation of the holidays, and many had to get back to Washington to return to work on Monday. Some admitted to anxiety, while others insisted there could not be a more closely scrutinized flight than Flight 223.
"I think it's got to be the safest flight in the world, so no worries," said Mark Thaiya, 30, a business consultant who lives in Atlanta and was returning home via Heathrow and Dulles after visiting his family in Nairobi. Thaiya said he flies a lot on business and has learned to stay calm. "It's a new world after September 11, but if it's not the airlines, it will be something else."
Above all, everyone felt trapped in the fog of the war on terrorism. While media reports have speculated about the nature of the threat, no one here knew why the authorities had focused on this flight each day, while allowing passengers to fly undisturbed on virtually all others. They did not know whether to feel anxious or assured, and so they often felt both. If the flight were canceled, they did not know whether they would feel more relieved or annoyed.
"We don't know if this is a real threat or not," said Shirley Newman, 56, an Internet company manager who lives in Springfield. "But we can't allow terrorists to change our lives. We mustn't give in to them because then they win."
"I'm not that worried at this point because there's still plenty of time," she said, as she wheeled her baggage cart toward the check-in line at around 1 p.m. "Not yet, anyway."
Rosemarie Hudson, 55, who was flying to Boston, said she reasoned terrorists would have had to purchase their tickets months ago, and that the flights were carefully vetted. "I'm going through all these things to rationalize flying," she said. Still, she confessed: "I don't think I'd be flying to Washington today. It's just a bit too much."
Beyond the check-in counter and immigration control, Flight 223's roughly 100 transit passengers also underwent extraordinary scrutiny. Before they entered the transit terminal, all were segregated, their names and passport numbers taken down by an airline security officer.
Then about 90 minutes before they were supposed to leave, passengers were told to go to Gate 11, which was guarded by four transit policemen with Uzi submachine guns. Two more officers arrived with springer spaniels to check for explosives.
For the next hour, the dogs and the armed police walked among the passengers. The crowd, for the most part, appeared relaxed, even jovial. People posed for pictures, while a London Sunday Telegraph reporter who had bought a ticket for the flight moved from group to group conducting interviews. A Washington Post reporter returning from a family vacation also happened to be aboard the flight.
At around 3 p.m., the scheduled departure time, officials announced that all transit passengers had to be re-interviewed. Each family was checked by another airline security officer, holding a list of names. A group of young Middle Eastern-looking people who appeared to be students seemed to come in for extra questioning.
About 30 minutes later passengers began to board. At this late moment, police took from the line one man, a Kenyan, who had no ticket. He told them he had been transferred to the flight. He was later allowed to reboard the flight.
After about three dozen passengers were on board, three security guards appeared and checked all the restrooms and the mid-cabin door, opposite the entry area. Then other passengers started trickling in again.
At about 4:45, when the plane was about two-thirds full, Herve, the captain, announced that everybody had been cleared and the door was shut. Another 30 minutes passed, during which time Herve said he was waiting for clearance from U.S. officials. "We just can't push this along," he said. "We are just waiting as you are."
An hour and 15 minutes later, he reported that clearance had finally come through. The plane pushed back and took off about 20 minutes later. It touched ground at Dulles without incident about three hours late, at 9:15 p.m.
A British Airways spokesman said 225 of the 268 passengers originally booked for the flight had showed up, which was not an unusual proportion of no-shows. The flight was delayed, she said, "for extra security checks." Otherwise, Heathrow operated as usual Saturday.
Pincus reported from aboard Flight 223.
-------- immigration / refugees
Bush to Seek Immigrant Benefit Protection
Plan to Include System Enabling Undocumented Workers to Gain Legal Status
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 4, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52647-2004Jan3.html
CRAWFORD, Tex., Jan. 3 -- President Bush will propose protections for the Social Security taxes paid by the workers who would come into the country under massive changes to immigration laws he plans to announce on Wednesday, Republican officials said Saturday.
Bush's plan would make it possible for such workers from Mexico and perhaps other countries to collect retirement benefits without being penalized by their home countries for the years they spent working in the United States, the officials said.
Officials began releasing details of Bush's plan shortly before Christmas and provided new details over the weekend. The officials said Bush's plan will contain a new system to help workers who want to enter from Mexico or other countries if they have jobs waiting for them. It also includes a mechanism for some undocumented residents to continue working in the United States and get on a path to legal status.
Undocumented workers now pay billions of dollars annually into Social Security but do not collect benefits because they give their employers fraudulent Social Security numbers.
Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group, said he fears the Social Security plan could be used as an incentive for workers to go home instead of settling in the United States, which could create what he called "a permanent class of temporary workers with no political power."
"The knock that will be put on Republicans is that they want immigrants as workers but not as voters," Sharry said.
Bush is scheduled to announce the package five days before he meets in Mexico with President Vicente Fox, who has been prodding the White House since Bush was inaugurated to change an immigration system that has resulted in at least 8 million undocumented immigrants -- about half of whom are Mexican -- living in the United States.
In Mexico, analysts and officials reacted with cautious optimism to early descriptions of the plan, saying that they viewed the proposal as a sign of markedly improving relations between Bush and Fox.
Bush worked to develop warm relations with Mexico when he was Texas governor, and his first international trip as president was to Mexico. But the administration began trying to harden the borders after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Bush distanced himself from Fox after Mexico failed to use its seat on the United Nations Security Council to support the U.S.-led attack on Iraq.
Fox has said that he and Bush will restart immigration talks privately at the Summit of the Americas, a meeting of the hemisphere's leaders to be held in Monterrey, in the Mexican border state of Baja California. Bush will make his fourth presidential trip to Mexico for the summit on Jan. 12 and 13.
Fox said last month that the two countries are working on agreements to allow Mexicans "to go and come each year as many times as they want, without problems, and so that they can work with documents in the United States."
Bush's plans, many of which are similar to ideas endorsed by the Democratic presidential candidates in their platforms and debates, would be the most broad changes to immigration law since a bill signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986.
The immigration plan is Bush's first policy announcement of his reelection year, and aides said it was calibrated by Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove. An official on Bush's political team said the proposal will help bolster support for the president with Hispanic voters, who are regarded by both parties as a constituency that is largely up for grabs, and in the states of Florida and New Mexico, both of which Bush barely won in 2000. Bush travels to Florida on Thursday.
The proposals will be a test for Bush because some House Republicans are skeptical and even hostile to the idea of liberalizing immigration controls. The Bush official said that in trying to persuade conservative lawmakers to back the package, the administration will contend that it reflects Republican values by rewarding work. The administration will also argue that the plan would enhance national security by making it more likely that immigrants with tips about terrorism would cooperate with authorities, because they would not fear deportation.
Officials said Bush's proposals draw heavily on a bill introduced by Sen. John McCain, his rival in the 2000 primaries, and Reps. Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake, all Arizona Republicans. That bill would create a Web-based Labor Department database of jobs that would be open first to U.S. workers and then to foreigners, who could be admitted with a "temporary worker" visa available for a maximum of six years.
The Arizonans' bill proposes a new type of visa for workers who are now in the United States illegally. They could come forward and receive this visa for three years. After that, the formerly undocumented worker could apply for a temporary visa like those held by workers under the electronic job registry.
Immigration reform is a top priority of Bush's backers in the business community. Daniel T. Griswold, an immigration expert at the free-enterprise-oriented Cato Institute, called Bush's proposal "compassionate conservatism at its best -- a market-driven approach allowing supply and demand to get together in the labor market."
-------- justice
Too Much Power
Sunday, January 4, 2004
Washington Post; Page B06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50806-2004Jan2?language=printer
THIS YEAR'S intelligence authorization bill provided a little-noticed and dangerous expansion of a peculiar and unaccountable FBI investigative power. Last-minute efforts to modify the provision in conference committee failed, unfortunately, so the bureau now has more power to compel the production of certain business records in national security investigations, with no court oversight and in nearly total secrecy. The use of "national security letters" is not new, but in light of new authorities provided the FBI in the USA Patriot Act, Congress should be finding ways to curtail their use, not expand it.
National security letters are a form of administrative subpoena that permit the FBI to request from businesses records of, among other things, telephone and Internet activity or financial data from banks and other financial institutions bearing on investigative targets in counterintelligence or terrorism cases. These subpoenas are secret; the recipient cannot disclose having received one. And the letters can be issued by relatively low-level bureau officials without going to any court. In the Patriot Act, Congress made this process easier, removing the requirement that the FBI have specific facts linking the subject to a foreign power to justify each letter. Now, to issue a national security letter, the FBI merely has to certify that the information is "relevant" to a national security investigation. The only reason national security letters have not posed a significant threat to civil liberties is that they have applied only to relatively narrow categories of records.
That will now begin to change. The definition of "financial institution" in the new law is expanded to include insurance companies, pawnbrokers, dealers in precious metals, the Postal Service, casinos, travel agencies and more. The FBI, on the authority of individual supervisory agents, can now get any of these businesses to disclose its dealings with anyone if the bureau deems those records relevant to counterterrorism. This is more unchecked power than the agency ought to have.
The Patriot Act already gave the FBI wide-ranging power to seek a much broader category of "business records" -- but with the approval of a special court that authorizes surveillance in national security cases. The standard is not high, but by giving a federal judge the chance to look at the application, the law creates some accountability. Ironically, it is this unobjectionable provision in the Patriot Act that has attracted the ire of civil libertarian and library groups. In our view, the objections are wrongheaded; the provision merely parallels the government's authority in criminal cases to seek business records using grand jury subpoenas. But now Congress has taken action that really is worth worrying about, giving the government another authority for whose use it need seek leave only from itself.
----
Our right to be left alone
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER,
St. Petersburg Times Perspective Columnist
January 4, 2004
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/01/04/Columns/Our_right_to_be_left_.shtml
Unless you are willing to live like Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, it is nearly impossible these days to go about your business anonymously. Every time you pull out your credit card, peruse the Internet or roll through a toll booth with an E-Z pass you leave a trail that can be traced. Take money out of an ATM, buy a newspaper at a Seven-11 or walk down a certain city street and a security camera will be watching and recording. And if you want to get on an airplane, well, just don't carry anything you would be embarrassed to have dumped out on a counter.
So what does it matter if a law says police can demand identification when stopping someone during the investigation of a crime?
A case out of Nevada, asking this very question, will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this term.
In Hiibel vs. Dist. Ct., the court will decide for the first time whether we have a right to anonymity as we go about our lives, or whether the government can demand to know who we are whenever we are out in public.
Not to overstate this, but nothing less than the very fabric of American liberty is at stake.
Here are the facts: Larry Hiibel was approached in 2000 by a deputy sheriff of Humboldt County after a bystander reported seeing a man strike a female passenger inside a parked truck. According to the deputy, Hiibel appeared intoxicated and refused to identify himself when asked. Hiibel was arrested, and after the battery charge against him was dropped, he was found guilty of delaying a public officer by refusing to cooperate and fined $250.
Hiibel challenged his conviction on the grounds that he had a right to remain silent in the face of police questions. His public defender wrote in a filing, "It is inimical to a free society that mere silence can lead to imprisonment."
In December 2002, the Nevada Supreme Court sided with police in a 4-3 decision. The majority opinion made it seem a relative trifle to be forced to disclose one's name when police demand it. "Reasonable people do not expect their identities - their names - to be withheld from officers," wrote Chief Justice Cliff Young. "Rather, we reveal our names in a variety of situations every day without much consideration."
Young balanced this "minor imposition" against the public interest served by the disclosure. He described the 9/11 attacks, the anthrax mailings and high school students who "randomly gun down their fellow classmates and teachers," then breathlessly wrote: "We are at war against enemies who operate with concealed identities and the dangers we face as a nation are unparalleled." For these reasons, he said, it is reasonable to require that we disclose our identities to police when they are suspicious of us.
Come on. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were well known at Columbine High School but that didn't stop a thing. Does Young think they would have put down the guns in order to comply with a police order for ID?
The ruling used sophistry to justify a handoff of extraordinary new power to police over the lives of innocent Americans. If the high court agrees, it will wipe away one of the last vestiges of what Justice Louis Brandeis called our "right to be let alone." We may give up our names and identification easily when using a credit card at the mall or meeting new business associates, but these voluntary actions are a far sight from being forced to through the coercive power of the state.
Police already have broad authority to ask anyone questions in the course of investigating a crime or mollifying a suspicion. They can also pat down a suspect to determine whether he or she is carrying a weapon. But what separates our free nation from those that are not, is that no one can be compelled to affirmatively answer police questions. While most of us would probably cooperate with police, we cannot be forced to do so. This difference is not the trifle Young suggested, it is the whole megillah of liberty.
Just ask Edward Lawson, an African-American man who was arrested repeatedly while walking in a San Diego suburb in the mid-1970s because he refused to identify himself. The police stops were obviously racially motivated. And in 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the statute Lawson was arrested under unconstitutionally vague. But the court should have gone further and declared that each of us has the right to be anonymous in our wanderings. That omission should be rectified in the Hiibel case.
"What's in a name?" Shakespeare asked.
Only the entirety of American freedom.
-------- ACTIVISTS
5 IDF conscripts sentenced to year in jail for refusing to serve
By Lily Galili,
Haaretz Correspondent
04/01/2004
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/379299.html
Five teenaged conscientious objectors who refused to join the Israel Defense Forces were sentenced to one year imprisonment each on Sunday. The time they have already served will not be deducted from their sentences.
The five, Haggai Matar, Amir Kaminer, Shomri Zameret, Adam Maor and Noam Bahat, were convicted last month by the Jaffa Military Court for refusing an order. Draft-dodging bears a maximum sentence of three years in jail.
The three judges differed in their opinions, with one wishing to sentence them to 22 months in prison and another just six months.
The judges wrote in their ruling that the sentence was to serve as a warning to others, especially in light of the recent spate of elite reservists refusing to serve in the territories.
After leaving the court Sunday, the five said that their sentence will not deter the refusenik movement and expressed their wonder at how soldiers who carry out "war crimes" are given lenient sentences while they are sent to prison for matters on conscience.
Hadash MK Mohammed Barakeh called the sentence a "draconian punishment," adding that the refuseniks are a "conscientious beacon for a violent society."
The five had claimed conscientious objector status on the grounds that they oppose serving in "an army of occupation." But the court ruled that their freedom to follow their conscience had to be balanced against equally important values, such as national security, which it said could be gravely impaired if the conscripts were exempted from service.
Furthermore, the court said, the five high school graduates did not refuse to serve as individuals, but rather as a group, with the explicit goal of bringing about a change in Israeli policy in the territories. As such, the court ruled, their action strayed from the norms of classic conscientious objection into the realm of civil disobedience.
In support of this finding, the court cited a letter the conscripts had signed in high school, in which they declared they would not serve in the IDF "as long as it acts as an army of occupation."
The five rejected the court's criticism, and noted that had they wanted only to dodge the military draft they would have operated differently.
According to the five, the publicity of their campaign to avoid military service demonstrated the pain associated with their decision, and ultimately led to their conviction.
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