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NUCLEAR
Irish MEP calls for Sellafield probe
America's Empire of Bases
Bush designates Kuwait as major non-NATO ally
DOE public hearing tonight
Source of Rotterdam Yellowcake Probed
Iran denies foreign scientists helped N-plan
U.S. Weapons Hunter Won't Return to Iraq - Source
S.Korean Minister Sees February Nuclear Talks
N.Korea Seen Building Nuclear Arms, Open to Deal
Arrest Ties Pakistan to Nuke Black Market
Libya Ratifies the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Libya Ratifies Nuclear Treaty
Court Hears Arguments on Waste Site in Nevada
Court Hears Arguments Over Nuclear Waste Dump
Hearing On Duke's MOX Fuel Plans Continues
Panel: Energy Dept. Must Test Nuke Waste
Kennedy Says War in Iraq Was Choice, Not Necessity
Kennedy Hits Bush On War
MILITARY
Understanding Fourth Generation War
India, Sri Lanka hold defence cooperation talks
Thailand and Singapore agree to increase joint military exercises
Pentagon auditors seek inspector general probe into Halliburton
Pentagon auditors ask for further investigation of Halliburton
10 Contracts Maintain U.S. Work in Iraq
US cautions of "very large" Chinese missile build-up opposite Taiwan
Iranian Cleric Rules in Favor of Some Reformist Candidates
Iran Council Is Ordered To Reconsider Candidate Ban
The Appearance of Change in Iran
US Army stretches its resources to make life better for Iraqis
Bremer Leaving Iraq for U.S. Before Talks at U.N. on Monday
Iraqi Team Disables Bombs With a Snip and a Prayer
Gaza Mother, 22, Kills Four Israelis in Suicide Bombing
New NATO chief rings changes with Russia hotline
Bush details 'vision' for space travel
Bush Outlines Space Agenda President Calls for Moon Trip by 2020
Bush urges other nations to join his new push for space exploration
Iraq Military Suicides at 21
Military Cites Elevated Rate of Suicides in Iraq
Chalmers Johnson on garrisoning the planet
NATO Troops, Acting on a Tip, Press Hunt for Serbian Fugitive
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
2 on 9/11 Panel Are Questioned on Earlier Security Roles
Brazil Jails American Airlines Pilot Over Fingerprinting Snub
F.B.I. Director Calls Attack Quite Likely
FBI Chief Says Tribunals May Try 9/11 Suspects
ENERGY
Scientists Find New Way To Store Hydrogen Fuel
Small Biz Owners Get Advice on Energy
ACTIVISTS
Israeli soldier awaits revised charge
Shiites back cleric's call for elections in Iraq
Anti-war play scorches Bush and the case for war
Activist rabbi faces trial in Israel
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
Irish MEP calls for Sellafield probe
15/01/2004
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=105628075&p=yx56z889x
Irish MEP Nuala Ahern has called for a team of international experts to investigate possible contamination at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Britain.
Ms Ahern said yesterday that a study conducted by the British Ministry of Health found higher levels of plutonium in people living close to Sellafield than in those living farther away.
The Green Party MEP said experts should be called in to investigate the possible dangers and the potential health threat to Irish and British people.
-------- depleted uranium
America's Empire of Bases
by Chalmers Johnson
Thursday, January 15, 2004
by TomDispatch.com
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-08.htm
As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.
Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.
Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services to build and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example, while the Defense Department was ordering up an extra ration of cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing tank shells, it also acquired 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida.
At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases
It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.
These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.
For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.
For their occupants, these are not unpleasant places to live and work. Military service today, which is voluntary, bears almost no relation to the duties of a soldier during World War II or the Korean or Vietnamese wars. Most chores like laundry, KP ("kitchen police"), mail call, and cleaning latrines have been subcontracted to private military companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root, DynCorp, and the Vinnell Corporation. Fully one-third of the funds recently appropriated for the war in Iraq (about $30 billion), for instance, are going into private American hands for exactly such services. Where possible everything is done to make daily existence seem like a Hollywood version of life at home. According to the Washington Post, in Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, waiters in white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties serve dinner to the officers of the 82nd Airborne Division in their heavily guarded compound, and the first Burger King has already gone up inside the enormous military base we've established at Baghdad International Airport.
Some of these bases are so gigantic they require as many as nine internal bus routes for soldiers and civilian contractors to get around inside the earthen berms and concertina wire. That's the case at Camp Anaconda, headquarters of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, whose job is to police some 1,500 square miles of Iraq north of Baghdad, from Samarra to Taji. Anaconda occupies 25 square kilometers and will ultimately house as many as 20,000 troops. Despite extensive security precautions, the base has frequently come under mortar attack, notably on the Fourth of July, 2003, just as Arnold Schwarzenegger was chatting up our wounded at the local field hospital.
The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist towns in the Bible Belt rather than the big population centers of the United States. For example, even though more than 100,000 women live on our overseas bases -- including women in the services, spouses, and relatives of military personnel -- obtaining an abortion at a local military hospital is prohibited. Since there are some 14,000 sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults each year in the military, women who become pregnant overseas and want an abortion have no choice but to try the local economy, which cannot be either easy or pleasant in Baghdad or other parts of our empire these days.
Our armed missionaries live in a closed-off, self-contained world serviced by its own airline -- the Air Mobility Command, with its fleet of long-range C-17 Globemasters, C-5 Galaxies, C-141 Starlifters, KC-135 Stratotankers, KC-10 Extenders, and C-9 Nightingales that link our far-flung outposts from Greenland to Australia. For generals and admirals, the military provides seventy-one Learjets, thirteen Gulfstream IIIs, and seventeen Cessna Citation luxury jets to fly them to such spots as the armed forces' ski and vacation center at Garmisch in the Bavarian Alps or to any of the 234 military golf courses the Pentagon operates worldwide. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld flies around in his own personal Boeing 757, called a C-32A in the Air Force.
Our "Footprint" on the World
Of all the insensitive, if graphic, metaphors we've allowed into our vocabulary, none quite equals "footprint" to describe the military impact of our empire. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and senior members of the Senate's Military Construction Subcommittee such as Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) are apparently incapable of completing a sentence without using it. Establishing a more impressive footprint has now become part of the new justification for a major enlargement of our empire -- and an announced repositioning of our bases and forces abroad -- in the wake of our conquest of Iraq. The man in charge of this project is Andy Hoehn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. He and his colleagues are supposed to draw up plans to implement President Bush's preventive war strategy against "rogue states," "bad guys," and "evil-doers." They have identified something they call the "arc of instability," which is said to run from the Andean region of South America (read: Colombia) through North Africa and then sweeps across the Middle East to the Philippines and Indonesia. This is, of course, more or less identical with what used to be called the Third World -- and perhaps no less crucially it covers the world's key oil reserves. Hoehn contends, "When you overlay our footprint onto that, we don't look particularly well-positioned to deal with the problems we're now going to confront."
Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base. By following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever larger imperial stance and the militarism that grows with it. Militarism and imperialism are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Each thrives off the other. Already highly advanced in our country, they are both on the verge of a quantum leap that will almost surely stretch our military beyond its capabilities, bringing about fiscal insolvency and very possibly doing mortal damage to our republican institutions. The only way this is discussed in our press is via reportage on highly arcane plans for changes in basing policy and the positioning of troops abroad -- and these plans, as reported in the media, cannot be taken at face value.
Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, commanding our 1,800 troops occupying the old French Foreign Legion base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti at the entrance to the Red Sea, claims that in order to put "preventive war" into action, we require a "global presence," by which he means gaining hegemony over any place that is not already under our thumb. According to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, the idea is to create "a global cavalry" that can ride in from "frontier stockades" and shoot up the "bad guys" as soon as we get some intelligence on them.
"Lily Pads" in Australia, Romania, Mali, Algeria . . .
In order to put our forces close to every hot spot or danger area in this newly discovered arc of instability, the Pentagon has been proposing -- this is usually called "repositioning" -- many new bases, including at least four and perhaps as many as six permanent ones in Iraq. A number of these are already under construction -- at Baghdad International Airport, Tallil air base near Nasariyah, in the western desert near the Syrian border, and at Bashur air field in the Kurdish region of the north. (This does not count the previously mentioned Anaconda, which is currently being called an "operating base," though it may very well become permanent over time.) In addition, we plan to keep under our control the whole northern quarter of Kuwait -- 1,600 square miles out of Kuwait's 6,900 square miles -- that we now use to resupply our Iraq legions and as a place for Green Zone bureaucrats to relax.
Other countries mentioned as sites for what Colin Powell calls our new "family of bases" include: In the impoverished areas of the "new" Europe -- Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria; in Asia -- Pakistan (where we already have four bases), India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and even, unbelievably, Vietnam; in North Africa -- Morocco, Tunisia, and especially Algeria (scene of the slaughter of some 100,00 civilians since 1992, when, to quash an election, the military took over, backed by our country and France); and in West Africa -- Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and Sierra Leone (even though it has been torn by civil war since 1991). The models for all these new installations, according to Pentagon sources, are the string of bases we have built around the Persian Gulf in the last two decades in such anti-democratic autocracies as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
Most of these new bases will be what the military, in a switch of metaphors, calls "lily pads" to which our troops could jump like so many well-armed frogs from the homeland, our remaining NATO bases, or bases in the docile satellites of Japan and Britain. To offset the expense involved in such expansion, the Pentagon leaks plans to close many of the huge Cold War military reservations in Germany, South Korea, and perhaps Okinawa as part of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's "rationalization" of our armed forces. In the wake of the Iraq victory, the U.S. has already withdrawn virtually all of its forces from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, partially as a way of punishing them for not supporting the war strongly enough. It wants to do the same thing to South Korea, perhaps the most anti-American democracy on Earth today, which would free up the 2nd Infantry Division on the demilitarized zone with North Korea for probable deployment to Iraq, where our forces are significantly overstretched.
In Europe, these plans include giving up several bases in Germany, also in part because of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's domestically popular defiance of Bush over Iraq. But the degree to which we are capable of doing so may prove limited indeed. At the simplest level, the Pentagon's planners do not really seem to grasp just how many buildings the 71,702 soldiers and airmen in Germany alone occupy and how expensive it would be to reposition most of them and build even slightly comparable bases, together with the necessary infrastructure, in former Communist countries like Romania, one of Europe's poorest countries. Lt. Col. Amy Ehmann in Hanau, Germany, has said to the press "There's no place to put these people" in Romania, Bulgaria, or Djibouti, and she predicts that 80% of them will in the end stay in Germany. It's also certain that generals of the high command have no intention of living in backwaters like Constanta, Romania, and will keep the U.S. military headquarters in Stuttgart while holding on to Ramstein Air Force Base, Spangdahlem Air Force Base, and the Grafenwöhr Training Area.
One reason why the Pentagon is considering moving out of rich democracies like Germany and South Korea and looks covetously at military dictatorships and poverty-stricken dependencies is to take advantage of what the Pentagon calls their "more permissive environmental regulations." The Pentagon always imposes on countries in which it deploys our forces so-called Status of Forces Agreements, which usually exempt the United States from cleaning up or paying for the environmental damage it causes. This is a standing grievance in Okinawa, where the American environmental record has been nothing short of abominable. Part of this attitude is simply the desire of the Pentagon to put itself beyond any of the restraints that govern civilian life, an attitude increasingly at play in the "homeland" as well. For example, the 2004 defense authorization bill of $401.3 billion that President Bush signed into law in November 2003 exempts the military from abiding by the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
While there is every reason to believe that the impulse to create ever more lily pads in the Third World remains unchecked, there are several reasons to doubt that some of the more grandiose plans, for either expansion or downsizing, will ever be put into effect or, if they are, that they will do anything other than make the problem of terrorism worse than it is. For one thing, Russia is opposed to the expansion of U.S. military power on its borders and is already moving to checkmate American basing sorties into places like Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The first post-Soviet-era Russian airbase in Kyrgyzstan has just been completed forty miles from the U.S. base at Bishkek, and in December 2003, the dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, declared that he would not permit a permanent deployment of U.S. forces in his country even though we already have a base there.
When it comes to downsizing, on the other hand, domestic politics may come into play. By law the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closing Commission must submit its fifth and final list of domestic bases to be shut down to the White House by September 8, 2005. As an efficiency measure, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has said he'd like to be rid of at least one-third of domestic Army bases and one-quarter of domestic Air Force bases, which is sure to produce a political firestorm on Capitol Hill. In order to protect their respective states' bases, the two mother hens of the Senate's Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Dianne Feinstein, are demanding that the Pentagon close overseas bases first and bring the troops now stationed there home to domestic bases, which could then remain open. Hutchison and Feinstein included in the Military Appropriations Act of 2004 money for an independent commission to investigate and report on overseas bases that are no longer needed. The Bush administration opposed this provision of the Act but it passed anyway and the president signed it into law on November 22, 2003. The Pentagon is probably adept enough to hamstring the commission, but a domestic base-closing furor clearly looms on the horizon.
By far the greatest defect in the "global cavalry" strategy, however, is that it accentuates Washington's impulse to apply irrelevant military remedies to terrorism. As the prominent British military historian, Correlli Barnett, has observed, the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq only increased the threat of al-Qaeda. From 1993 through the 9/11 assaults of 2001, there were five major al-Qaeda attacks worldwide; in the two years since then there have been seventeen such bombings, including the Istanbul suicide assaults on the British consulate and an HSBC Bank. Military operations against terrorists are not the solution. As Barnett puts it, "Rather than kicking down front doors and barging into ancient and complex societies with simple nostrums of 'freedom and democracy,' we need tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a profound understanding of the people and cultures we are dealing with -- an understanding up till now entirely lacking in the top-level policy-makers in Washington, especially in the Pentagon."
In his notorious "long, hard slog" memo on Iraq of October 16, 2003, Defense secretary Rumsfeld wrote, "Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror." Correlli-Barnett's "metrics" indicate otherwise. But the "war on terrorism" is at best only a small part of the reason for all our military strategizing. The real reason for constructing this new ring of American bases along the equator is to expand our empire and reinforce our military domination of the world.
Chalmers Johnson's latest book is ' The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic' (Metropolitan). His previous book, 'Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire,' has just been updated with a new introduction.
----
Bush designates Kuwait as major non-NATO ally
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP)
Jan 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040115161454.4yr79rj6.html
US President George W. Bush on Thursday designated war-on-terrorism partner Kuwait a major US non-NATO ally, a move that will boost security cooperation between the two countries.
"I hereby designate the State of Kuwait as a Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States," Bush said in a memorandum for US Secretary of State Colin Powell released as the president made a brief visit here.
Kuwait is joining an exclusive club of countries that enjoy a privileged security relationship with the United States.
Its members, which include Japan, Australia, Israel, Egypt, South Korea, Argentina, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Thailand are granted significant benefits in the area of foreign aid and defense cooperation.
Major non-NATO allies are eligible for priority delivery of defense material and the purchase, for instance, of depleted uranium anti-tank rounds.
They can stockpile US military hardware, participate in defense research and development programs, and benefit from a US government loan guarantee program, which backs up loans issued by private banks to finance arms exports.
However, the designation does not afford them the same mutual defense guarantees enjoyed by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
----
DOE public hearing tonight
By: Paul Parson paul.parson@oakridger.com
Oak Ridger Staff
January 15, 2004
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/011504/new_20020115002.shtml
The Department of Energy will hold a public hearing at 6 tonight to hear comments on two documents pertaining to the construction and operation of depleted uranium hexafluoride conversion facilities outside of Tennessee.
DOE informed the news media of the hearing at 1:52 p.m. Wednesday - too late for a notice to be included in that day's issue of The Oak Ridger. The media advisory indicated that the proposed action is to transport cylinders of the depleted uranium hexafluoride from the Oak Ridge K-25 site to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio.
Depleted uranium hexafluoride was created during processing to make natural uranium suitable for use as fuel, such as that used in nuclear power plants.
The public hearing will take place in the DOE Information Center, 475 Oak Ridge Turnpike. For more information, call 576-0885.
-------- europe
Source of Rotterdam Yellowcake Probed
January 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Netherlands-Uranium.html
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- A recycling company found uranium oxide -- a radioactive material also known as yellowcake -- in a shipment of scrap steel it believes originally came from Iraq, the company said Thursday.
Paul de Bruin, spokesman for Rotterdam-based Jewometaal, said that the shipment was passed on last month from a Jordan metal dealer who was unaware it contained any forbidden materials.
``I've dealt with this man for 15 years and he says he's sure it came from Iraq,'' De Bruin said. He said Jewometaal had been asked not to reveal the name of the Jordanian exporter while the find was being investigated.
Nuclear experts say that although not highly radioactive, uranium oxide can be processed into enriched uranium usable in a nuclear weapon -- but highly advanced technology is needed.
The Dutch Environment Ministry confirmed Thursday that Jewometaal reported the unusual find on Dec. 16. After a preliminary investigation by a company that specializes in removing radioactive waste, the Dutch government decided to call in the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate further.
A spokesman for the IAEA confirmed the agency had visited Rotterdam on Wednesday but had no further comment.
Environment ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said scrap metal companies in the Rotterdam port, which is Europe's largest, report around 200 findings of radioactive material per year, often from old hospital equipment or normal industrial uses.
But the finding of an estimated two pounds of uranium oxide is odd, Van der Weegen said.
Experts said that around 2 pounds of yellowcake, the amount found, would not be useful for either a bomb or fuel.
Dr. Alan Ketering, a researcher at the nuclear research plant at the University of Missouri-Columbia, said yellowcake contains less than 1 percent of U-235 used in nuclear weapons. He said it would need to be refined many times with sophisticated technology before it was dangerous -- and the amount found in Rotterdam would not be nearly enough.
``Anybody can dig it up and purify it to make the yellow stuff,'' he said. ``It's the separation of U-235 that people are concerned about.''
However, he said there was no obvious non-nuclear industrial use for yellowcake and it would be strange to find it in random scrap metal.
The material was found in a small steel industrial container apparently used to connect pipes or electrical wires, Environment Ministry spokesman Van der Weegen said.
He said it wasn't yet known where the yellowcake originated.
``It could be from anywhere in the world,'' Van der Weegen said. After testing, the material was shipped to a nuclear waste plant in the Netherlands.
Jordan does not have any known nuclear power plants or weapons and is a signatory to the nuclear test ban treaty.
President Bush came under heavy criticism last year when he asserted in his State of the Union address that Iraq was shopping in Africa for uranium yellowcake -- intelligence that turned out to be based on forged documents.
The original suspicions apparently came from a British dossier and Britain's Foreign Office continued to maintain Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger, although no evidence was offered.
Last year, the United States agreed to pay $3.4 million to install radioactivity detectors in Rotterdam to scan a fraction of the 6 million containers that pass through it annually for hidden radioactive material.
However, scrap metal companies are already outfitted with detectors, and Jewometaal found the radioactive material with its own equipment.
-------- iran
Iran denies foreign scientists helped N-plan
Aminzadeh says Tehran bought prohibited equipment through open market dealers
By our correspondent
Thursday January 15, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2004-daily/15-01-2004/main/main1.htm
ISLAMABAD: Iran on Wednesday categorically rejected any technical assistance from foreign nuclear scientists but acknowledged having bought prohibited technological equipment through international open market dealers.
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsin Aminzadeh said this at a press conference here Wednesday. "Let it be very clear that Iran never sought any foreign expertise with regard to nuclear technology," he said, referring to western media allegations on certain top Pakistani nuclear scientists.
Responding to a question about the sources for purchase of nuclear technology, the Iranian official said, we only bought certain important nuclear-related devices from international open market through some middlemen.
Aminzadeh proudly stated that Tehran's nuclear know-how has resulted from the research and hard work of its own scientists. "We never got any help from any outside country," clarified the visiting dignitary.
About the documents Iran passed on to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohsin Aminzadeh remarked that Tehran had only shared the names of five individuals to the nuclear watchdog body. He explained that three names shared with the IAEA were from European origin while the remaining two belonged to Asia, and probably carried multiple nationalities.
Defending purchase of nuclear equipments from the open market Mohsin Aminzadeh said it is a normal practice to seek such help from foreign brokers (not scientist) for the purchase. He emphasised that Tehran had never violated the NPT conventions.
The minister categorically termed the western media reports of alleged Pak-Iran nuclear cooperation totally baseless and fabricated. The Iranian deputy foreign minister said the Pak-Iran gas pipeline project is being discussed at the technical level between the two countries and is very much on track. He hoped that extension of pipeline to India would multiply economic gains for Pakistan besides the people of the two countries meeting their energy needs.
At the same time, he observed that the project would not be shelved if India refused to agree on passage of the pipeline through Pakistan. The visiting dignitary also hailed the recent thaw seen between Pakistan-India on the sidelines of the Saarc summit.
APP adds: Aminzadeh welcomed the move between Pakistan and India to resume dialogue to settle all outstanding disputes. He said, "We are hopeful this new climate will be conducive for the two countries and the Kashmir issue will also be solved through peaceful means."
About the Pakistan-Iran cooperation he said the Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali and the First Vice President of Iran would supervise the talks and the agreements of the Joint Ministerial Commission (JMC).
The Iranian minister also expressed his deep appreciation to the gesture of the government and the people of Pakistan for providing relief and assistance to their Iranian brothers in their hour of need.
"This is indicative of the deep bonds of friendship between the peoples of the two countries," he added. The Iranian deputy foreign minister called on Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri here on Wednesday and discussed with him the regional issues as well as the matters relating to mutual interest. The two sides exchanged views on regional issues including the situation in Afghanistan, latest developments in Iraq, war against terrorism, Pak-India relations and prospects of cooperation of regional countries in the context of Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO).
Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri conveyed his sympathies once again for the earthquake victims of Bam, while Aminzadeh thanked the Government of Pakistan for its timely assistance after the recent terrible natural disaster.
The Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister expressed his satisfaction at the level of bilateral cooperation between Pakistan and Iran and hoped that friendly relations will be further strengthened by high level contacts planned between the two countries. Aminzadeh also delivered the invitation of Iranian President Seyed Mohammad Khatami to President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf to take part at the upcoming Development-8 summit in Tehran.
-------- iraq / inspections
U.S. Weapons Hunter Won't Return to Iraq - Source
January 15, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-weapons-kay.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Kay, the chief U.S. weapons hunter in Iraq, has told the CIA he will not return to his post, a U.S. government source said on Thursday, a move that critics could seize upon as a sign that he has given up hope of finding banned arms.
``He has told the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet) that he doesn't want to go back, they have been trying to get him to stay,'' the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
It was unclear whether the CIA had had any success in persuading Kay, who came back to the United States for the Christmas holidays, to stay on the job, the source said.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment. Kay, reached earlier this week, also declined to comment and referred questions about his status to the CIA.
Tenet last June appointed Kay, a former U.N. weapons inspector, as a special adviser to lead the search for biological and chemical weapons and any signs of a resurrected nuclear weapons program in Iraq.
But the hunt, which is being conducted by the Defense Department's Iraq Survey Group, has come up empty, finding no stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons or any evidence that Iraq had restarted a program to develop nuclear weapons.
The Bush administration cited weapons of mass destruction as its main justification for the war against Iraq that ousted Saddam Hussein from power last April.
A U.S. official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, called Kay's status ``up in the air.''
Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who heads the Iraq Survey Group under Kay's guidance, was returning to Iraq this week to continue the weapons search.
U.S. officials last month said Kay had told administration officials he was considering leaving the job as early as January, citing family obligations.
At that time, officials described Kay as frustrated that no banned weapons were found and that some of his staff had been diverted to other tasks. The White House also said the weapons hunt was a priority for the administration whether or not Kay stayed on the job.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last week issued a report that accused the Bush administration in the lead-up to the war of making the threat from Iraq sound more dire than the underlying information warranted.
The report's authors said they did not expect any large stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons to be found.
-------- korea
S.Korean Minister Sees February Nuclear Talks
January 15, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-minister.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - A second round of multilateral talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions is likely in February and progress could be made on the crisis this year, South Korea's unification minister told Reuters Thursday.
In an extensive interview, Jeong Se-hyun also said the communist North's economy was clearly changing, but there was no discernible change in the political and military systems.
Jeong, a veteran North Korea expert, said there were bound to be ups and downs while trying to solve the crisis over North Korea's declared nuclear arsenal and weapons development plans. But he said he was ``somewhat optimistic'' about the prospects.
``I expect there will be progress this year,'' he said. ``North Korea's negotiation strategy is becoming more realistic.''
He said it was hard to say precisely when the next round of talks would be. China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States held the first round in Beijing in August 2003.
``I think it will be in February,'' he said. ``It's difficult to give a date. But it must take place in February.''
He said he would urge North Korea at separate North-South ministerial talks starting on February 3 in Seoul to help resolve the nuclear problem so inter-Korean ties could develop further.
Jeong spoke to Reuters at his office in the main government compound in Seoul. Behind him hung a huge photograph of the divided peninsula's highest mountain, Mount Paektu, which is in the North on the Chinese border -- a boundary many thousands of North Koreans have crossed in search of work and food.
ECONOMY AND RIGHTS
North Korea began to introduce market reforms to its centrally planned economy in mid-2002 an effort to revive an economy shattered after a succession of natural disasters compounded by mismanagement over the last decade.
Jeong has said North Korea's economic reforms were significant but not yet fundamental.
``We can say North Korea is undergoing fundamental changes when those changes are in the military and political areas,'' he said Thursday.
``Significant changes in the military and political areas are not taking place. It is difficult to find even symbolic changes.''
He said North Korea needed to accept U.S. demands conscientiously so Pyongyang could be removed from a list of countries Washington says sponsor state terrorism. Removal from that list would lead to international loans and economic progress. That, in turn, could help change the military, he said.
The two Koreas have been technically at war since the 1950-53 war ended in a truce rather than a treaty.
Jeong said the North and South Korean military cooperated on projects relinking railways and roads through the fortified Demilitarized Zone that bisects the peninsula. But ministerial defense talks were unlikely until the nuclear problem was solved.
He said a project to build an industrial park in Kaesong, just north of the DMZ, would take a step forward in February or March when building work would start in earnest. The aim is to help North Korea develop by allowing South Korean firms to operate factories there using cheaper North Korean labor.
He blamed the opposition-dominated parliament for blocking budget funds that would have helped subsidize a loss-making tour run by Hyundai Asan Corp. to scenic Mount Kumgang in the North.
Many projects have often been delayed since they were agreed at the historic June 15, 2000 summit between then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and the North's leader, Kim Jong-il.
On human rights in the North, Jeong said it would be premature for Seoul to raise the matter with Pyongyang. South Korea has been criticized for not tackling the North's human rights record -- activists say there are large labor camps and summary executions, for example.
``Honestly, it is too early to deal with human rights when there are people going hungry and starving, people defecting, people starving to death,'' Jeong said.
--------
N.Korea Seen Building Nuclear Arms, Open to Deal
January 15, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-pritchard.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An American envoy who made an unprecedented visit to North Korea's nuclear complex said on Thursday he believes Pyongyang is determined to build nuclear weapons but may still be persuaded to abandon its ambitions as part of a deal with the United States.
In his first substantive public comments on last week's visit, Charles ``Jack'' Pritchard, a former U.S. envoy to North Korea, said he was troubled by Pyongyang's increasingly firm denials of a program for enriching uranium to fuel nuclear bombs.
Pritchard said he is certain the program exists and urged the CIA to share intelligence with North Korea, as well as with China, South Korea and Japan who doubt U.S. assertions that Pyongyang is covertly producing the banned nuclear material.
``I have since last year fully believed that the North Koreans have already made a final decision that they would be pursuing and developing a nuclear weapons program,'' he said.
``That's not to say they could not be deterred from doing that or they might not be willing to give up what they had in exchange for an endgame relationship with the United States,'' he said.
Both the highly enriched uranium program (HEU) -- which Pyongyang denies -- and a plutonium-based weapons program -- which Pyongyang seems determined to prove is robust -- must be ended in order to resolve the North's nuclear crisis, he said.
Pritchard and other members of an unofficial U.S. delegation, including the former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and two senior U.S. Senate aides, visited the North's Yongbyon nuclear facility last week.
Pritchard declined to confirm a Washington Post report that North Korea showed the delegation reprocessed plutonium, which would be the first direct confirmation of Pyongyang's nuclear capability. But a source briefed on the trip told Reuters the group ``was shown plutonium.''
The former Los Alamos chief, Siegfried Hecker, a respected nuclear scientist, is to brief the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee next Tuesday, so Pritchard deferred answers on most nuclear issues to him.
In last week's talks, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gae Gwan told the delegation ``time is not on the U.S. side (and) the lapse in time (in resolving the crisis) will result in the quantitive and qualitative increase in our nuclear deterrence,'' Pritchard said.
Pritchard said ``it was clear to me in this visit that they are still of the mind that it's more important than not to develop a relationship with the United States and in that regard they are prepared at this point to give up their nuclear weapons program,'' although the HEU program ``isn't on the table for discussion yet.''
Initially, Pyongyang acknowledged the program in private talks that included Pritchard but since then has denied it.
Kim, the North's vice foreign minister, ``went further in his denials'' than previously, insisting Pyongyang not only did not have an HEU program but also did not have the equipment or trained scientists to run such a program, Pritchard said.
Still, Kim said ``that was a topic they certainly were willing to talk about once the United States sat down with them'' in negotiations, Pritchard added.
China, the United States, South Korea and Japan have tried for months to arrange a second round of six-party talks on the nuclear crisis after a round last August ended inconclusively.
Some officials predict a new round next month.
Pritchard said the delegation was shown an empty holding pond that once contained 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, but did not know if the rods were reprocessed into fuel for bombs.
The United States has long asserted Pyongyang possesses one or two nuclear weapons fueled with plutonium.
After ousting U.N. inspectors a year ago, the North said it was unfreezing a plutonium reprocessing plant and reprocessing the 8,000 spent fuel rods.
If true, this would produce fuel for half a dozen more nuclear bombs and greatly enhance Pyongyang's capability.
The current crisis erupted on October 2002 when Washington accused the North of pursuing a covert HEU program in violation of a 1994 accord freezing its nuclear activities.
The administration is often divided on North Korea policy, but there is consensus the HEU program exists. CIA reluctance to share evidence with China, South Korea and Japan is a ``huge disadvantage'' in resolving the dispute, Pritchard said.
-------- pakistan
Arrest Ties Pakistan to Nuke Black Market
January 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Smuggling-Pakistan.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The arrest this month of a businessman accused of smuggling nuclear bomb triggers to Pakistan is the latest sign that the important U.S. ally in the fight against terrorism remains a major player in the nuclear black market.
Asher Karni, 50, is accused of being the middleman for a Pakistani company's purchase of dozens of triggered spark gaps -- electronic devices that can be used to trigger nuclear weapons. Agents arrested Karni on Jan. 2 at Denver International Airport.
If the devices were indeed headed for Pakistan's nuclear program, the most likely explanation would be that Pakistan was planning to construct more nuclear bombs. That could complicate Pakistan's relations with nuclear rival India.
The United States has restricted sales of nuclear and missile equipment to Pakistan for years because of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.
Officials from the United States and other governments say Pakistan also was the likely source for at least some of the know-how and equipment for nuclear weapons programs in Libya, North Korea and Iran. Secretary of State Colin Powell said this month that American officials have presented evidence to Pakistan's leaders of Pakistani involvement in the spread of nuclear weapons technology.
Pakistani officials say the government is not involved in any black-market nuclear deals. But Pakistan has questioned three top nuclear scientists in recent months based on information from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
``We have investigated. We haven't come across any evidence'' of proliferation, Ashraf Qazi, Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, said Wednesday.
The possible spread of nuclear technology from Pakistan is a greater worry than any attempts by Pakistan to clandestinely supply its own nuclear program, said Robert Einhorn, a former State Department arms control official under President Clinton.
``If we can do it, we should stop both, but clearly Pakistan's export of nuclear materials and technology is a lot worse,'' said Einhorn, now with the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
But court documents in Karni's case offer a window on the worldwide nuclear black market.
The deal involved triggered spark gaps, electrical devices whose uses include breaking up kidney stones and triggering nuclear detonations. Anyone exporting triggered spark gaps from the United States to Pakistan must have a license issued by the U.S. government.
Karni heads Top-Cape Technology in Cape Town, South Africa, which trades in military and aviation electronic gear. Karni used an elaborate scheme to try to get around U.S. export restrictions to Pakistan, Commerce Department Special Agent James Brigham charged in a federal court affidavit.
An anonymous source in South Africa tipped off U.S. authorities and provided information, including detailed shipping information to allow tracking of the devices and copies of e-mails and other correspondence to and from Karni, the agent wrote.
Karni's contact in Pakistan asked Karni to try to buy 100 to 400 spark gaps, Brigham alleged in his affidavit. Karni worked to get the devices from an American manufacturer, PerkinElmer Optoelectronics of Salem, Mass.
A PerkinElmer representative in France wrote to Karni last summer that exporting spark gaps to Pakistan would require a U.S. license, Brigham wrote. Karni then contacted a company in New Jersey, which ordered 200 of the devices from PerkinElmer, the agent wrote.
At the request of federal agents, PerkinElmer disabled the 66 spark gaps in an initial shipment to the New Jersey company, Giza Technologies Inc. of Secaucus.
Giza, which has not been charged in the case, shipped the devices to South Africa, listing them on shipping documents as electrical equipment for a hospital in Soweto. Karni repackaged the spark gaps and sent them to Pakistan via Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Brigham alleged in the affidavit.
While spark gaps can be used in machines called lithotripters to break up kidney stones, even the largest hospital would need only a half-dozen or so, experts say. Orders of large numbers raise red flags with nuclear experts.
A PerkinElmer brochure notes they are useful ``for in-flight functions such as rocket motor ignition, warhead detonation and missile stage separation.'' PerkinElmer's corporate predecessor, EG&G, similarly disabled a shipment of 40 similar devices called krytrons in the 1980s during a sting operation against Iraq's nuclear program.
Karni's case is not the only one involving Pakistani attempts to buy potential nuclear triggers. In 1985, Pakistani citizen Nazir Vaid was convicted in the United States for trying to buy 50 krytrons.
South African police searched Top-Cape's offices last month and Karni acknowledged he had shipped the spark gaps to Pakistan, Brigham alleged in the affidavit.
Under U.S. law, prosecutors would have to prove only that Karni exported the devices without a license and would not have to prove he knew they would be used in a weapons program. Exporting spark gaps to Pakistan without a license is illegal even if the devices are used for health care.
Federal prosecutors are appealing a ruling by a Denver federal magistrate that would set Karni free on $75,000 bond raised by supporters. Prosecutors argue that Karni, an Israeli citizen, should be jailed because he could flee to South Africa or Israel and avoid extradition to the United States.
Karni's Denver lawyer, Harvey Steinberg, did not return telephone messages. Giza's president and chief executive officer, Zeki Bilmen, declined comment.
-------- treaties
Libya Ratifies the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
January 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/international/africa/15LIBY.html?pagewanted=all
VIENNA, Jan. 14 - Libya has ratified the nuclear test ban treaty, a United Nations agency said Wednesday, less than three weeks after Libya publicly renounced its plans to develop outlawed weapons.
Libya's nuclear program was nowhere near producing a weapon. Still, the announcement appeared to be a further sign of commitment by its leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, to give up the program.
Libya has also announced it will join the Chemical Weapons Convention, obliging it to halt the development of banned weapons and destroy any stocks it holds.
The nuclear test ban treaty is 12 nations short of the 44 ratifications needed for it to take effect. Once it comes into force, the treaty will ban any nuclear weapon test explosion.
The United Nations agency, the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Organization, said that by ratifying the pact Libya had agreed to permit a monitoring station at Misurata, to be part of a 337-station network being set up to verify compliance.
Libya announced Dec. 19 that it was giving up its unconventional weapons after months of secret talks with the United States and Britain.
--------
Libya Ratifies Nuclear Treaty
Once Approved by Others, Pact Will Ban Weapons Tests
Associated Press
Thursday, January 15, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18432-2004Jan14.html
VIENNA, Jan. 14 -- Libya has ratified the nuclear test ban treaty and approved establishment of a monitoring station on its territory, U.N. officials said Wednesday.
The Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Organization said that in ratifying the pact earlier this month, Libya agreed to host a monitoring station at Misratah. That would be part of a network of 337 stations being set up worldwide to verify compliance with terms of the treaty.
Libya announced Dec. 19 that it was giving up its weapons of mass destruction after months of secret talks with the United States and Britain. It said then that it would sign the test ban treaty and become a party to the convention prohibiting chemical weapons.
Once it is ratified by the needed number of countries, the treaty will ban any nuclear weapon test explosion in any environment.
Libya's nuclear program was far from being capable of producing a weapon, and the treaty is 12 nations short of the 44 needed for it to enter into force. Still, the announcement by the U.N. agency overseeing the agreement appeared to be a further sign of commitment by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to give up nuclear weapons ambitions.
A Western diplomat who works with the preparatory commission said the ratification "fit the picture" of Libya's actions to prove it was serious about scrapping programs or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
Both the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S. government have sent experts to Libya to take inventory of its nuclear activities ahead of supervising their destruction.
Differences remain over who should take the lead, however.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said this month that the IAEA should assume that role. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei also staked out his agency's claim. But U.S. officials insist that with U.S.-British negotiations leading to the Libyan decision, Washington and London should have primacy.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Court Hears Arguments on Waste Site in Nevada
January 15, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/national/15NUKE.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - A majority of the judges on a federal appeals court panel expressed skepticism on Wednesday about a central element of the government plan to bury radioactive waste in the Nevada desert about 90 miles from Las Vegas.
In an unusual three-and-a-half-hour hearing that combined 12 lawsuits and a web of issues, the judges seemed to side with opponents of the site, Yucca Mountain, on the issue of how long a repository should have to retain the waste. Two of the three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit indicated through their questions that the Environmental Protection Agency had erred when it said the Department of Energy would have to be concerned with leakage for only the first 10,000 years.
The judges noted that the National Academy of Sciences had estimated that the time of peak release of radioactive materials would probably come hundreds of thousands of years later.
"Ten thousand years is incorrect," Judge Harry T. Edwards told a lawyer from the Justice Department, saying the environmental agency had not obeyed instructions by Congress to follow the academy's advice in setting standards. The federal government argued that 10,000 years was commonly used in other kinds of hazardous waste disposal.
Judge David S. Tatel joined Judge Edwards in close questioning of government lawyers on that point. The third judge on the panel, Karen LeCraft Henderson, asked few questions.
Opponents and proponents alike described this as Yucca Mountain's big day in court. The consolidated case being argued is the major legal challenge to the government's multibillion-dollar, multidecade plan for storing thousands of tons of spent reactor fuel and nuclear bomb waste. Hundreds of lawyers, government officials and others began lining up before 6 a.m. for seats.
The parties said they hoped the judges would rule later this year.
On Wednesday, the panel seemed to reject many arguments brought by Yucca Mountain's opponents, including the State of Nevada, the unwilling host of the repository, and various environmental groups.
Nevada contended that the federal government could not force the repository on a state because it had not proved its assertion that there was anything special about the site's geology. The state said the Energy Department's own plan said that the natural geology of the site would play only a minor role in its performance for 10,000 years, because the metal casks planned by engineers would take care of most of the problem.
Judges Tatel and Edwards suggested that the fairness of the department's choice was now moot, because its recommendation had been endorsed by both houses of Congress in a bill signed by President Bush in 2002.
A court could still find the site selection unconstitutional, but the two judges seemed unsympathetic. Rather, their questions indicated that they sided with a government argument that it had the right to build there because it owned the land. The mountain is on the edge of the Nevada Test Site, where the Atomic Energy Commission and later the Energy Department exploded hundreds of nuclear bombs.
Nevada argued that the laws Congress passed on establishment of the repository required that the geology of whatever site was chosen form the primary barrier to the spread of radiation. The rock is too permeable in Yucca Mountain's case, they argued. One lawyer, Geoffrey Fettus of the Natural Resources Defense Council, describing the department's design as a "septic field" in which radioactive particles, carried by rain water into the underground water flows, would spread over a broad area, diluted enough at the border to meet radiation exposure standards.
But supporters of the project said that while Congress made geology a criterion, it did not specify that natural features had to be the most important factor once the site was chosen.
The balance between the importance of the rock versus the man-made features is linked to the 10,000-year question. If the department must prove that the mountain will hold the radioactive material for hundreds of thousands of years, it will be difficult or impossible to argue that the containers will remain intact.
Judge Edwards listened to a lawyer for Nevada, Antonio Rossmann, argue that the standard should be for 300,000 years or longer and then asked, "Is this a backdoor way to say the focus should be on geology, and not engineered barriers?"
"It's our front door," Mr. Rossmann replied.
--------
Court Hears Arguments Over Nuclear Waste Dump
Nevada, Others Oppose Yucca Mountain Project
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18112-2004Jan14.html
Attorneys for the state of Nevada and environmental groups told a U.S. appellate court yesterday that federal agencies ignored science and law in deciding to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste in a mountain outside Las Vegas.
Taking up the Yucca Mountain dispute, which has raged for two decades, the panel of three judges with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard federal government lawyers argue that the decision to create the dump for waste from the nation's nuclear reactors was based on sound reasoning.
Nevada officials consider the federal court one of their last hopes of stopping the $58 billion project, located in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The panel is expected to issue its decision in late spring or summer, and attorneys on both sides said they would appeal to the full appellate court if they lose.
The Energy Department hopes to accept the first shipments of nuclear waste, now stored at 17 locations around the country, by 2010.
Yesterday, two of the three judges closely questioned the Environmental Protection Agency's actions on the recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences, but they appeared to favor the government on a constitutional argument.
Judges Harry T. Edwards and David S. Tatel repeatedly expressed concern that the EPA appears to have ignored Congress's instructions to rely on advice from the National Academy of Sciences to ensure public safety. EPA officials decided that, to protect public safety, radiation levels inside the mountain will need to be measured for 10,000 years, rejecting the academy's finding that the nuclear material will remain dangerous much longer, perhaps for 300,000 years.
Christopher Vaden, a Justice Department lawyer representing the EPA, said the agency had to weigh "policy considerations" that the academy had sidestepped. Edwards said that was irrelevant.
"The statute doesn't say that EPA adopts the National Academy's recommendations . . . unless you determine the recommendations are too burdensome," Edwards said. "They're very clear in saying 10,000 years is wrong."
Edwards also rejected Vaden's argument that the EPA has discretion because of its rulemaking authority. "That's nonsense," he said. "That's an old argument and you lose."
But the judges said they had serious doubts about whether they could consider Nevada's claim that its constitutional rights had been violated and that President Bush's decision in February 2002 to select Yucca Mountain as the site of the waste dump was flawed and illegal. They suggested that their court has no reason to revisit the president's decision because Congress passed legislation in July 2002 affirming Bush's choice and rejecting Nevada's objections.
The three-judge panel has consolidated the arguments of 13 lawsuits aimed at stopping the Yucca project into three main categories that it considered yesterday. Project opponents have argued that the EPA's radiation standards are too weak to protect the public, that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should demand that the mountain's natural geology ought to be able to contain the nuclear material without the use of man-made barriers, and that the Energy Department used flawed criteria in selecting the site, violating the state's constitutional rights.
An Energy Department spokesman said the agency is confident in its decisions and will proceed to seek a license for the waste site.
But Geoffrey H. Fettus, who argued the case yesterday for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the judges would order the EPA to meet a higher standard in protecting the public. He and Antonio Rossman, who represented Nevada, said new scientific standards will lead to the conclusion that the Yucca site is not safe.
"The site leaks like a sieve," Fettus said. "They jiggered the facts to avoid dealing" with the dangers that would arise.
-------- north carolina
Hearing On Duke's MOX Fuel Plans Continues
January 15, 2004
WSOTV News
http://www.wsoctv.com/news/2768360/detail.html
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Environmentalists and Duke Energy Corp. clashed Thursday over Duke's plans to test fuel containing a small amount of weapons-grade plutonium at one of its nuclear plants by 2005.
The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League asked a three-judge panel to allow it to present new information about safety issues raised by French scientists about the mixed oxide fuel, also known as MOX, used in nuclear reactors in that country.
Duke Energy argued against allowing the NRC to consider the information, saying it wasn't new and should have been presented earlier.
The hearing was conducted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.
"We disagree with their argument that this information is new at all and should even be considered," said Duke Energy spokeswoman Rose Cummings, who said some of the research dates back to 1998.
BREDL's Louis Zeller said Duke was quibbling about the research and using it as an excuse to keep important information out of the hearing.
"If it wasn't new and important, then why did some French scientists fly over in October to present their findings to the NRC?" he said during a break.
Specifically, BREDL wants to present information from the French Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire showing that MOX fuel rods fail at lower temperatures than traditional uranium fuel rods. It also wants to present findings showing malfunctions with the sheath around the fuel rod that could result in uncontrolled core meltdowns.
Duke Power Co., the electric utility subsidiary of Duke Energy, eventually wants to use the MOX fuel at its McGuire Nuclear Power Station near Huntersville, N.C., and the Catawba Nuclear Power Station near York, S.C. They would be among the first in the United States to use MOX fuel.
The hearing in Charlotte's federal courthouse is being conducted by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. The board will decide if there are grounds for a full hearing by the NRC on any of 12 safety issues raised by BREDL.
The panel is not expected to rule until next month whether to dismiss BREDL's case or schedule a hearing by the NRC.
"We recognize that this is part of the process," Cummings said, adding that Duke is confident it will receive the approval to go ahead with the testing.
-------- us nuc waste
Panel: Energy Dept. Must Test Nuke Waste
January 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Radioactive-Waste.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Energy Department has not done the necessary tests to justify relaxing the testing of radioactive waste shipments bound for a New Mexico storage site, a panel of scientists said Thursday.
The department has argued that safety checks required on shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., cost $3.1 billion and create delays. Changing the requirements would save time and money, the department said in petitioning for changes last week.
A report by a panel of scientists appointed by the National Research Council -- a division of the National Academies of Science -- said Energy has not done adequate studies to support its argument for easing regulations and those analyses should be done before it seeks to modify the state waste disposal permit.
However, a provision backed by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and signed into law last month by President Bush orders the Energy Department to request that New Mexico relax its testing requirements and restricts the state's ability to refuse the request.
``This is another example of the management failures coming from the highest levels of DOE,'' said New Mexico Environment Secretary Ron Curry. ``It is another example of DOE putting the cart before the horse and making unfounded assumptions to the detriment of New Mexicans.''
The Carlsbad facility buries transuranic waste -- such as gloves, rags, tools, dried sludge and other debris contaminated during nuclear weapons making -- in ancient salt beds 2,150 feet below ground.
Under the Energy Department's proposed changes, instead of testing each shipment of waste, records kept on each drum of radioactive material would be used to determine whether the waste inside is eligible to be buried at the site.
There is no deadline for the state to act on the Energy Department application.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who objected to the Domenici provision, said the scientists' report shows that Congress should only pre-empt state regulatory authority ``after a transparent process has taken place -- a process that yields thoughtful and careful analysis.''
The law cannot be undone, Bingaman said, but it should serve as a reminder ``that there is a well-established process for modifying existing state regulations and that the federal government should respect it.''
Domenici defended the provision. ``Experience has shown us that intrusive sampling techniques have shown to have little environmental, public safety or health benefits,'' he said.
The National Research Council panel said that when the Carlsbad plant became the first operational waste facility of its kind four years ago, it made sense for regulators to be cautious and impose rigorous measures for screening waste.
Today, the site's track record could help identify changes that could be warranted. However, a systematic analysis is needed before the Energy Department can make its case that changes are justified, the panel said.
-------- us politics
A CRITIC
Kennedy Says War in Iraq Was Choice, Not Necessity
January 15, 2004
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/politics/15KENN.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - In a blistering - and at times deeply personal - critique of President Bush and his policy on Iraq, Senator Edward M. Kennedy declared on Wednesday that Mr. Bush "broke the basic bond of trust between government and the people." He also accused the administration of marketing the war like a "political product" to help elect Republicans.
"We are reaping the poison fruit of our misguided and arrogant foreign policy," Mr. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a speech before the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy organization in Washington. "The administration capitalized on the fear created by 9/11 and put a spin on the intelligence and a spin on the truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."
This is not the first time Mr. Kennedy, who has previously worked with Mr. Bush on education and health care, has lashed out at the administration on Iraq. But his remarks on Wednesday were more pointed and partisan than in the past.
The speech drew an immediate and harsh reply from Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House Republican leader. "His hateful attack against the commander in chief would be disgusting if it were not so sad," Mr. DeLay said, adding that Mr. Kennedy "insulted the president's patriotism."
The White House response was more muted. "Let me remind you that the world is safer and better because of the action that we took to remove a brutal regime from power in Iraq," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said, adding, "The president worked to exhaust all diplomatic means possible before taking the action that we took."
Mr. Kennedy, who has served in the Senate for 40 years and is regarded by many as the chamber's leading liberal Democrat, often gives a major speech in January, typically focusing on domestic policy.
In the speech on Wednesday, Mr. Kennedy made the case that the administration used "scare tactics" to persuade Congress to approve a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, just as the hotly contested 2002 election campaigns were coming up, to distract attention from the economy and the failed effort to find Osama bin Laden.
The senator did not mince words. At one point, he called the administration "breathtakingly arrogant"; at another, "mean-spirited and vindictive." He also singled out Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, for particular criticism, labeling them "the axis of war" - a reference to the "axis of evil" phrase Mr. Bush has used to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
"War in Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity," Mr. Kennedy said. "It was a product they were methodically rolling out."
He went on to complain about a "gross abuse of intelligence," citing in particular the president's State of the Union address last January, when Mr. Bush said the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" - an allegation that American intelligence officials had previously discounted.
"No president of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of truth to take the nation to war," Senator Kennedy said. "If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war."
--------
Kennedy Hits Bush On War
By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17897-2004Jan14.html
President Bush marketed the war on Iraq as a "political product" to influence the 2002 elections and is doing so again this year, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) charged yesterday in a scathing speech accusing Bush of putting politics ahead of national security.
In a speech to the liberal Center for American Progress, Kennedy said the war has increased hatred for the United States abroad, diverted attention from the broader war against terrorism and put the country more "at risk" than it was before.
Kennedy, a leading Democratic liberal who was among the small minority of lawmakers to vote against the congressional authorization for war in 2002, has been criticizing Bush on Iraq for months, but rarely in such a sweeping fashion. He accused the administration of distorting intelligence and pursuing an ideological agenda in building the case for war.
"No president of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war," he said. "In doing so, the president broke the basic bond of trust between the government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war."
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) denounced the speech, calling it a "hateful attack against the commander in chief." He said Kennedy "insulted the president's patriotism, accused the Republican Party of treason, and resurrected the weak and indecisive foreign policy of Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis."
Kennedy referred approvingly to an assertion by former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill in a new book that Bush began planning for war against Iraq shortly after taking office in 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has denied the assertion, but Kennedy indicated he believes it, praising O'Neill's "integrity, intelligence and vision" and saying the book has "now revealed what many of us have long suspected."
Kennedy said "the steamroller of war was moving into high gear" by fall of 2002. "The administration insisted that Congress vote to authorize the war before it adjourned for the November elections. Why? Because the debate in Congress would distract attention from the troubled economy and the troubled effort to capture [al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden. The strategy was to focus on Iraq and do so in a way that would divide the Congress. And it worked."
Now, Kennedy said, "there is little doubt as well that the administration's plan to transfer sovereignty to the Iraqi people by this summer -- and the pressure to hold elections in Afghanistan at that time -- are intended to build momentum for the November elections in this country." The war, he said, "could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy."
-------- MILITARY
Understanding Fourth Generation War
by William S. Lind,
January 15, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=1702
Rather than commenting on the specifics of the war with Iraq, I thought it might be a good time to lay out a framework for understanding that and other conflicts. The framework is the Four Generations of Modern War.
I developed the framework of the first three generations ("generation" is shorthand for dialectically qualitative shift) in the 1980s, when I was laboring to introduce maneuver warfare to the Marine Corps. Marines kept asking, "What will the Fourth Generation be like?", and I began to think about that. The result was the article I co-authored for the Marine Corps Gazette in 1989, "The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation." Our troops found copies of it in the caves at Tora Bora, the al Quaeda hideout in Afghanistan.
The Four Generations began with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the treaty that ended the Thirty Years' War. With the Treaty of Westphalia, the state established a monopoly on war. Previously, many different entities had fought wars - families, tribes, religions, cities, business enterprises - using many different means, not just armies and navies (two of those means, bribery and assassination, are again in vogue). Now, state militaries find it difficult to imagine war in any way other than fighting state armed forces similar to themselves.
The First Generation of Modern War runs roughly from 1648 to 1860. This was war of line and column tactics, where battles were formal and the battlefield was orderly. The relevance of the First Generation springs from the fact that the battlefield of order created a military culture of order. Most of the things that distinguish "military" from "civilian" - uniforms, saluting, careful gradations or rank - were products of the First Generation and are intended to reinforce the culture of order.
The problem is that, around the middle of the 19th century, the battlefield of order began to break down. Mass armies, soldiers who actually wanted to fight (an 18th century's soldier's main objective was to desert), rifled muskets, then breech loaders and machine guns, made the old line and column tactics first obsolete, then suicidal.
The problem ever since has been a growing contradiction between the military culture and the increasing disorderliness of the battlefield. The culture of order that was once consistent with the environment in which it operated has become more and more at odds with it.
Second Generation warfare was one answer to this contradiction. Developed by the French Army during and after World War I, it sought a solution in mass firepower, most of which was indirect artillery fire. The goal was attrition, and the doctrine was summed up by the French as, "The artillery conquers, the infantry occupies." Centrally-controlled firepower was carefully synchronized, using detailed, specific plans and orders, for the infantry, tanks, and artillery, in a "conducted battle" where the commander was in effect the conductor of an orchestra.
Second Generation warfare came as a great relief to soldiers (or at least their officers) because it preserved the culture of order. The focus was inward on rules, processes and procedures. Obedience was more important than initiative (in fact, initiative was not wanted, because it endangered synchronization), and discipline was top-down and imposed.
Second Generation warfare is relevant to us today because the United States Army and Marine Corps learned Second Generation warfare from the French during and after World War I. It remains the American war of war, as we are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq: to Americans, war means "putting steel on target." Aviation has replaced artillery as the source of most firepower, but otherwise, (and despite the Marine's formal doctrine, which is Third Generation maneuver warfare) the American military today is as French as white wine and brie. At the Marine Corps' desert warfare training center at 29 Palms, California, the only thing missing is the tricolor and a picture of General Gamelin in the headquarters. The same is true at the Army's Armor School at Fort Knox, where one instructor recently began his class by saying, "I don't know why I have to teach you all this old French crap, but I do."
Third Generation warfare, like Second, was a product of World War I. It was developed by the German Army, and is commonly known as Blitzkrieg or maneuver warfare.
Third Generation warfare is based not on firepower and attrition but speed, surprise, and mental as well as physical dislocation. Tactically, in the attack a Third Generation military seeks to get into the enemy's rear and collapse him from the rear forward: instead of "close with and destroy," the motto is "bypass and collapse." In the defense, it attempts to draw the enemy in, then cut him off. War ceases to be a shoving contest, where forces attempt to hold or advance a "line;" Third Generation warfare is non-linear.
Not only do tactics change in the Third Generation, so does the military culture. A Third Generation military focuses outward, on the situation, the enemy, and the result the situation requires, not inward on process and method (in war games in the 19th Century, German junior officers were routinely given problems that could only be solved by disobeying orders). Orders themselves specify the result to be achieved, but never the method ("Auftragstaktik"). Initiative is more important than obedience (mistakes are tolerated, so long as they come from too much initiative rather than too little), and it all depends on self-discipline, not imposed discipline. The Kaiserheer and the Wehrmacht could put on great parades, but in reality they had broken with the culture of order.
Characteristics such as decentralization and initiative carry over from the Third to the Fourth Generation, but in other respects the Fourth Generation marks the most radical change since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. In Fourth Generation war, the state loses its monopoly on war. All over the world, state militaries find themselves fighting non-state opponents such as al Quaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the FARC. Almost everywhere, the state is losing.
Fourth Generation war is also marked by a return to a world of cultures, not merely states, in conflict. We now find ourselves facing the Christian West's oldest and most steadfast opponent, Islam. After about three centuries on the strategic defensive, following the failure of the second Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, Islam has resumed the strategic offensive, expanding outward in every direction. In Third Generation war, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a state army.
Nor is Fourth Generation warfare merely something we import, as we did on 9/11. At its core lies a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state, and that crisis means many countries will evolve Fourth Generation war on their soil. America, with a closed political system (regardless of which party wins, the Establishment remains in power and nothing really changes) and a poisonous ideology of "multiculturalism," is a prime candidate for the home-grown variety of Fourth Generation war - which is by far the most dangerous kind.
Where does the war in Iraq fit in this framework?
I suggest that the war we have seen thus far is merely a powder train leading to the magazine. The magazine is Fourth Generation war by a wide variety of Islamic non-state actors, directed at America and Americans (and local governments friendly to America) everywhere. The longer America occupies Iraq, the greater the chance that the magazine will explode. If it does, God help us all.
For almost two years, a small seminar has been meeting at my house to work on the question of how to fight Fourth Generation war. It is made up mostly of Marines, lieutenant through lieutenant colonel, with one Army officer, one National Guard tanker captain and one foreign officer. We figured somebody ought to be working on the most difficult question facing the U.S. armed forces, and nobody else seems to be.
The seminar recently decided it was time to go public with a few of the ideas it has come up with, and use this column to that end. We have no magic solutions to offer, only some thoughts. We recognized from the outset that the whole task may be hopeless; state militaries may not be able to come to grips with Fourth Generation enemies no matter what they do.
But for what they are worth, here are our thoughts to date:
If America had some Third Generation ground forces, capable of maneuver warfare, we might be able to fight battles of encirclement. The inability to fight battles of encirclement is what led to the failure of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda stood, fought us, and got away with few casualties. To fight such battles we need some true light infantry, infantry that can move farther and faster on its feet than the enemy, has a full tactical repertoire (not just bumping into the enemy and calling for fire) and can fight with its own weapons instead of depending on supporting arms. We estimate that U.S. Marine infantry today has a sustained march rate of only 10-15 kilometers per day; German World War II line, not light, infantry could sustain 40 kilometers.
Fourth Generation opponents will not sign up to the Geneva Conventions, but might some be open to a chivalric code governing how our war with them would be fought? It's worth exploring.
How U.S. forces conduct themselves after the battle may be as important in 4GW as how they fight the battle.
What the Marine Corps calls "cultural intelligence" is of vital importance in 4GW, and it must go down to the lowest rank. In Iraq, the Marines seemed to grasp this much better than the U.S. Army.
What kind of people do we need in Special Operations Forces? The seminar thought minds were more important than muscles, but it is not clear all U.S. SOF understand this.
One key to success is integrating our troops as much as possible with the local people.
Unfortunately, the American doctrine of "force protection" works against integration and generally hurts us badly. Here's a quote from the minutes of the seminar:
There are two ways to deal with the issue of force protection. One way is the way we are currently doing it, which is to separate ourselves from the population and to intimidate them with our firepower. A more viable alternative might be to take the opposite approach and integrate with the community. That way you find out more of what is going on and the population protects you. The British approach of getting the helmets off as soon as possible may actually be saving lives.
What "wins" at the tactical and physical levels may lose at the operational, strategic, mental and moral levels, where 4GW is decided. Martin van Creveld argues that one reason the British have not lost in Northern Ireland is that the British Army has taken more casualties than it has inflicted. This is something the Second Generation American military has great trouble grasping, because it defines success in terms of comparative attrition rates.
We must recognize that in 4GW situations, we are the weaker, not the stronger party, despite all our firepower and technology.
What can the U.S. military learn from cops? Our reserve and National Guard units include lots of cops; are we taking advantage of what they know?
One key to success in 4GW may be "losing to win." Part of the reason the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not succeeding is that our initial invasion destroyed the state, creating a happy hunting ground for Fourth Generation forces. In a world where the state is in decline, if you destroy a state, it is very difficult to recreate it. Here's another quote from the minutes of the seminar:
"The discussion concluded that while war against another state may be necessary one should seek to preserve that state even as one defeats it. Grant the opposing armies the 'honors of war,' tell them what a fine job they did, make their defeat 'civilized' so they can survive the war institutionally intact and then work for your side. This would be similar to 18th century notions of civilized war and contribute greatly to propping up a fragile state. Humiliating the defeated enemy troops, especially in front of their own population, is always a serious mistake but one that Americans are prone to make. This is because the 'football mentality' we have developed since World War II works against us."
In many ways, the 21st century will offer a war between the forces of 4GW and Brave New World. The 4GW forces understand this, while the international elites that seek BNW do not. Another quote from the minutes:
"Osama bin Ladin, though reportedly very wealthy, lives in a cave. Yes, it is for security but it is also leadership by example. It may make it harder to separate (physically or psychologically) the 4GW leaders from their troops. It also makes it harder to discredit those leaders with their followers... This contrasts dramatically with the BNW elites who are physically and psychologically separated (by a huge gap) from their followers (even the generals in most conventional armies are to a great extent separated fro their men)... The BNW elites are in many respects occupying the moral low ground but don't know it."
In the Axis occupation of the Balkans during World War II, the Italians in many ways were more effective than the Germans. The key to their success is that they did not want to fight. On Cyprus, the U.N. commander rated the Argentine battalion as more effective than the British or the Austrians because the Argentines did not want to fight. What lessons can U.S. forces draw from this?
How would the Mafia do an occupation?
When we have a coalition, what if we let each country do what is does best, e.g., the Russians handle operational art, the U.S. firepower and logistics, maybe the Italians the occupation?
How could the Defense Department's concept of "Transformation" be redefined so as to come to grips with 4GW? If you read the current "Transformation Planning Guidance" put out by DOD, you find nothing in it on 4GW, indeed nothing that relates at all to either of the two wars we are now fighting. It is all oriented toward fighting other state armed forces that fight us symmetrically.
The seminar intends to continue working on this question of redefining "Transformation" (die Verwandlung?) so as to make it relevant to 4GW. However, for our December meeting, we have posed the following problem: It is Spring, 2004. The U.S. Marines are to relieve the Army in the occupation of Fallujah, perhaps Iraq's hottest hot spot (and one where the 82nd Airborne's tactics have been pouring gasoline on the fire). You are the commander of the Marine force taking over Fallujah. What do you do?
I'll let you know what we come up with.
Will Saddam's capture mark a turning point in the war in Iraq? Don't count on it. Few resistance fighters have been fighting for Saddam personally. Saddam's capture may lead to a fractioning of the Baath Party, which would move us further toward a Fourth Generation situation where no one can recreate the state. It may also tell the Shiites that they no longer need America to protect them from Saddam, giving them more options in their struggle for free elections.
If the U.S. Army used the capture of Saddam to announce the end of tactics that enrage ordinary Iraqis and drive them toward active resistance, it might buy us a bit of de-escalation. But I don't think we'll that be smart. When it comes to Fourth Generation war, it seems nobody in the American military gets it.
Recently, a faculty member at the National Defense University wrote to Marine Corps General Mattis, commander of I MAR DIV, to ask his views on the importance of reading military history. Mattis responded with an eloquent defense of taking time to read history, one that should go up on the wall at all of our military schools. "Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation," Mattis said. "It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead."
Still, even such a capable and well-read commander as General Mattis seems to miss the point about Fourth Generation warfare. He said in his missive, "Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face NOTHING new under the sun. For all the '4th Generation of War' intellectuals running around today saying that the nature of war has fundamentally changed, the tactics are wholly new, etc., I must respectfully say...'Not really..."
Well, that isn't quite what we Fourth Generation intellectuals are saying. On the contrary, we have pointed out over and over that the 4th Generation is not novel but a return, specifically a return to the way war worked before the rise of the state. Now, as then, many different entities, not just governments of states, will wage war. They will wage war for many different reasons, not just "the extension of politics by other means." And they will use many different tools to fight war, not restricting themselves to what we recognize as military forces. When I am asked to recommend a good book describing what a Fourth Generation world will be like, I usually suggest Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century.
Nor are we saying that Fourth Generation tactics are new. On the contrary, many of the tactics Fourth Generation opponents use are standard guerilla tactics. Others, including much of what we call "terrorism," are classic Arab light cavalry warfare carried out with modern technology at the operational and strategic, not just tactical, levels.
As I have said before in this column, most of what we are facing in Iraq today is not yet Fourth Generation warfare, but a War of National Liberation, fought by people whose goal is to restore a Baathist state. But as that goal fades and those forces splinter, Fourth Generation war will come more and more to the fore. What will characterize it is not vast changes in how the enemy fights, but rather in who fights and what they fight for. The change in who fights makes it difficult for us to tell friend from foe. A good example is the advent of female suicide bombers; do U.S. troops now start frisking every Moslem woman they encounter? The change in what our enemies fight for makes impossible the political compromises that are necessary to ending any war. We find that when it comes to making peace, we have no one to talk to and nothing to talk about. And the end of a war like that in Iraq becomes inevitable: the local state we attacked vanishes, leaving behind either a stateless region (Somalia) or a façade of a state (Afghanistan) within which more non-state elements rise and fight.
General Mattis is correct that none of this is new. It is only new to state armed forces that were designed to fight other state armed forces. The fact that no state military has recently succeeded in defeating a non-state enemy reminds us that Clio has a sense of humor: history also teaches us that not all problems have solutions.
-------- arms
India, Sri Lanka hold defence cooperation talks
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Jan 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040115144629.a4uh2ytz.html
India and Sri Lanka held high-level talks Thursday on possible military training and arms sales to the island nation by its giant neighbour, an Indian defence ministry spokesman said.
He said Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Cyril Herath led a three-member team into the talks with officials accompanying his Indian counterpart Ajay Prasad in New Delhi, he said.
"The two sides also discussed regional security and the fight against global terrorism. The talks will continue tomorrow after which the Sri Lankan team will meet Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes," spokesman Amitava Chakravarty said.
He said Sri Lanka was interested in buying Indian helicopters, small transport aircraft and naval vessels for its fledgling navy.
The two sides already have an agreement on intelligence-sharing, training of military personnel and the supply of life-saving equipment.
"Colombo, however, wants the cooperation broadened to include the sale of weapons systems by New Delhi," a ministry source said.
The ongoing visit of the Sri Lankan delegation is widely seen as a follow-up to a call for broader defence cooperation made by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremsinghe during his visit here last October.
India in the late 1980s lost around 1,200 troops when a peacekeeping force New Delhi sent to Sri Lanka to disarm Tamil separatist guerrillas was sucked into a costly bush war in the island's strife-torn northeast.
-------- asia
Thailand and Singapore agree to increase joint military exercises
BANGKOK (AFP)
Jan 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040115121749.01rjefgc.html
Thailand and Singapore agreed Thursday to increase joint military exercises to help boost regional security, the Thai government said Thursday.
The agreement came during talks between Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Co-ordinating Minister for Security and Defence Tony Tan and Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair said.
"Security was one of the issues discussed today and Thailand has proposed to increase joint military exercises between the two countries," he told reporters.
"The proposal also includes the increase of joint cooperation on security measures and Singapore agreed with the idea," Jakrapob said, without providing any details.
Singapore is a participant in the annual joint military exercise Cobra Gold in Thailand along with US troops. The exercises last year drew 13,000 troops, around 100 of which came from Singapore.
-------- business
Pentagon auditors seek inspector general probe into Halliburton contract: officials
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jan 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040115010625.umqf4hk0.html
Auditors have asked the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate information they received about suspected irregularities in a Halliburton contract to restore Iraqi oil and make fuel purchases, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.
It was unclear what information triggered the referral by the Defense Contracts Auditing Agency but a draft audit disclosed last month concluded that US government had been overcharged by some 61 million dollars for oil purchased through a Halliburton subcontractor in Kuwait.
"A referral made on January 13, 2004 by the Defense Contract Audit Agency basically resulting from information that they received is believed to warrant an investigation by the DoD (Department of Defense) inspector general," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Another official said the referral was related to "suspected irregularities related to restore Iraqi oil fuel purchases."
Halliburton's subsidiary, Kellog Brown and Root Services, was awarded contracts to restore Iraq's oil facilities, and provide logistical support for US forces in Iraq and the surrounding region.
News that a draft audit on December 5 had found irregularities in both contracts caused a storm in part because of the company's close ties to the administration through Vice President Dick Cheney, its former chief executive.
President George W. Bush told reporters December 12: "If there is an overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money to be repaid."
But Halliburton, which has vehemently denied the allegations, appeared to have been vindicated by the head of the Army Corps of Engineers, who declared on December 19 that KBRS had provided data that indicated "the fair and reasonable price of these services."
----
Pentagon auditors ask for further investigation of Halliburton
1/15/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-01-15-halliburton_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Pentagon auditors say Vice President Dick Cheney's former company should be investigated for possibly overcharging the military for gasoline delivered to Iraqi civilians.
The Defense Contract Audit Agency this week asked the department's inspector general to investigate Halliburton, Pentagon officials said. DCAA auditors determined last month that Halliburton subsidiary KBR may have overcharged by more than $61 million for fuel it bought in Kuwait and delivered in Iraq.
The request for a deeper probe indicates DCAA auditors found evidence of possible violations of the law or federal regulations. The auditors only track spending on Pentagon contracts and have no power to rule on whether laws or rules were broken.
The referral comes despite Army contract managers' findings that Halliburton's contracts were fair and proper. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last month expanded Halliburton's duties to include shipping kerosene into Iraq from Kuwait.
Halliburton has denied any wrongdoing. The company said in a statement Wednesday it had not been notified of the decision to refer the case for further investigation.
KBR delivers fuel to civilians in Iraq as part of its contract to rebuild the country's crumbling oil industry. Because Iraq's ability to refine gasoline was blocked by the war and postwar sabotage, the largest part of the oil industry contract has been delivering U.S.-subsidized fuel to Iraqis.
The DCAA auditors found that KBR paid double the price - more than $1 per gallon more - for gas from Kuwait than for gas from Turkey.
Halliburton says it had to pay that price because it was set by Kuwait's Altanmia Marketing Co., the only firm authorized by the Kuwaiti government to sell fuel. Halliburton says it saved the military more than $100 million by buying the majority of Iraq's fuel from Turkey.
Auditors also say they found an internal Halliburton document questioning the price paid for fuel in Kuwait. Halliburton refuses to turn over a copy of that document to auditors.
Halliburton said the document did not suggest any wrongdoing and said the auditors may have broken the law by looking at it.
Halliburton got the oil industry contract without bidding as part of its deal to provide the Army with emergency logistical services. The Army Corps of Engineers plans to award a replacement oil industry reconstruction contract through competitive bidding later this spring. Later this year, the Pentagon agency which supplies fuel for military vehicles will take over deliveries of fuel to civilians in Iraq.
Democrats have called for further investigations of the matter and criticized the Halliburton contract as evidence of the Bush administration's rewarding its corporate friends. Cheney ran Halliburton from 1995 until he quit in 2000 to become Bush's running mate, and the company's executives donated thousands of dollars to the Bush campaign.
White House and Pentagon officials say political considerations do not affect the Defense Department's contract decisions. Cheney, a former defense secretary, is not involved in those decisions.
Halliburton has called the Democrats' criticisms unwarranted and politically motivated.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the Pentagon auditor's request for an investigation on its Web site Wednesday night.
----
10 Contracts Maintain U.S. Work in Iraq
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18461-2004Jan14.html
U.S. officials plan to tap a series of broad contingency contracts the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just awarded to 10 firms to keep reconstruction going in Iraq until a delayed round of rebuilding contracts is awarded.
Lt. Gen. Robert B. Flowers, commander of the Corps, said in an interview that the 10 contracts, worth up to $1.5 billion each over five years, cover work the Corps oversees for the U.S. military in 25 countries from the Horn of Africa to Central Asia. They are not specific to Iraq.
He said some contracts will be used to bridge delays in awarding new reconstruction work from the $18.6 billion in supplemental funding that Congress approved last year. Those contracts will now be awarded in early March.
"It's critical you start the infrastructure projects," Flowers said. "The Iraqi people's expectations can be high. You risk having people become upset, take to the streets. It's very important we continue to demonstrate we're moving forward."
The competitively bid contracts, announced Tuesday, are broadly written and allow the Corps of Engineers to issue task orders under a general scope of work, including engineering and construction, temporary base operations and maintenance services.
The contractors include Parsons Inc., Perini Corp., Fluor Intercontinental Inc., Contrack International Inc. and KBR Inc., a Halliburton Co. subsidiary that has a no-bid contract to repair Iraq's oil infrastructure. Perini and Fluor have no-bid contracts to repair the electrical grid.
The Air Force plans to use a similar contract to start building barracks for the new Iraqi army, according to Tony Leqeta, director of construction for the Program Management Office, the group in charge of overseeing taxpayer-funded reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
-------- china
US cautions of "very large" Chinese missile build-up opposite Taiwan
BEIJING (AFP)
Jan 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040115085204.gbdnuals.html
The top US military officer said Thursday China has built up a "very large" missile arsenal facing Taiwan and cautioned that Washington was committed to helping the island defend itself.
"The US is committed to helping Taiwan maintain its ability to resist the use of force or coercion to solve this problem," chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers told journalists as he wrapped up a two-day visit to China during which he met the country's top military brass.
"And it is not just a one-sided issue," he said when questioned by Chinese journalists on US arms sales to the island.
"In fact, if you look at the build-up on the Chinese mainland side of the (Taiwan) Straits in terms of surface-to-surface missiles you would see a very large build-up. And China continues to build up its capability opposite Taiwan.
"Our responsibility under the Taiwan Relations Act is to assist Taiwan in its ability to defend itself. Again, so there will be a peaceful resolution to the problem and no temptation to use force."
The United States is Taiwan's main weapons supplier.
Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian plans to hold the island's first ever referendum alongside presidential polls on March 20, demanding Beijing remove hundreds of ballistic missiles targeting the island.
Last month, US President George W. Bush publicly rebuked Chen's plan and Myers repeated the stance Thursday, but also warned China the US would not stand by if it used force.
"President Bush could not have been clearer when he was speaking to Premier Wen (Jiabao) that the US will resist any attempts to use coercion to solve the problem between China and Taiwan," said Myers.
"Again I think all three parties in this case understand that very thoroughly."
Taipei has repeatedly assured Washington that the referendum has nothing to do with independence and is a symbol of Taiwan's full-fledged democracy.
Beijing nevertheless has repeatedly warned it will use military force against Taiwan, which it sees as a rebel province, if it declares independence and in recent months has stepped up the rhetoric, branding Chen "selfish" and "immoral".
Washington has observed the One-China policy since it switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. It also insists cross-strait disputes must be resolved through peaceful means.
-------- iran
Iranian Cleric Rules in Favor of Some Reformist Candidates
January 15, 2004
By NAZILA FATHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/international/middleeast/15IRAN.html?pagewanted=all
TEHRAN, Jan. 14 - Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, broke his silence Wednesday on the barring of reformist candidates from parliamentary races, saying the incumbents among them should be allowed to run.
Ayatollah Khamenei, meeting with members of the anti-reformist Guardian Council on Wednesday evening, also said nonincumbent candidates should be considered on their merits rather than rejected out of hand.
"If their aptitude was proved in the past," he said, "the principle is that they are still competent unless it can be proved otherwise."
Ayatollah Khamenei has the final word over all state matters, and his intervention is expected to ease the mounting political confrontation.
The crisis developed Sunday after the council, a hard-line body, rejected some 3,600 candidates, including 80 current members of Parliament. The elections are scheduled on Feb. 20.
Legislators taking part in a sit-in since the weekend defied President Mohammad Khatami's request to end their strike despite his vows to prevail against the council.
Rajabali Mazroui, a member of Parliament, said the strikers had unanimously decided to continue their action until their demand for a "free and fair election" was met.
"We are not negotiating only over the approval of the 80 current members of Parliament," Mr. Mazroui said.
"More than 3,000 have been unfairly disqualified and we are against such a procedure."
The Parliament speaker, Mehdi Karoubi, a moderate, also came down on the reformists' side Wednesday, saying he did not accept the attitude of the supervising board of the Guardian Council, which was responsible for disqualifying the candidates.
"The Guardian Council must reverse its decision," he said. "There is no other choice."
The council is expected to make a final ruling on the disqualifications at the end of the month. A final list of candidates is to be released in mid-February.
Ahmad Moradi was the first member of Parliament to resign in protest on Wednesday.
President Khatami responded to a resignation threat from governors general around the country by hinting that he, too, might quit. The officials are demanding that the decision be reversed within a week. "If one day we are asked to leave, then we will leave together," he said Tuesday, the state-run television reported.
But there were doubts about how far Mr. Khatami would go in support of his allies.
"Unfortunately Mr. Khatami has shown in the past that he uses a firm language but his actions are never as firm as he talks," said Mashalah Shamsolvaezin, a journalist and analyst.
"It seems that he is trying to reach a compromise with the Guardian Council," he said. "But people will not show much enthusiasm for the elections if the compromise means that only the current members of Parliament are allowed to run. The turnout will be low, and it will be a loss for both groups."
Mohammad Jahromi, speaker of the supervising board responsible for the disqualifications, said Tuesday that the Guardian Council would not back down.
"We will not speak to those who violate the law," he said, rebuffing an offer by strikers to hold a debate with the council, the daily Entekhab reported.
--------
Iran Council Is Ordered To Reconsider Candidate Ban
Associated Press
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17982-2004Jan14.html
TEHRAN, Jan. 14 -- Iran's supreme religious leader ordered hard-liners Wednesday to reconsider the disqualifications of more than 3,000 pro-reform candidates for next month's parliamentary elections.
The move by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was seen as a victory for reformist lawmakers who have staged sit-ins in parliament for four days. Earlier, Khamenei said he would intervene only after the appeals process had been exhausted.
The disqualification of candidates, including more than 80 members of parliament hoping for reelection on Feb. 20, drew outrage from the reformist-led legislature, warnings that President Mohammad Khatami's government may resign and criticism from the United States and the European Union.
Khamenei met Wednesday with members of the Guardian Council, the body responsible for the disqualifications, and told them to reconsider, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
For incumbent legislators, "the basis of decision should be that [candidates] are authorized to run unless it's proven otherwise," Khamenei told the council, the agency reported.
For new candidates, "logical and common qualification is sufficient, and there is no need for further investigation. The Guardian Council must definitely and carefully reconsider the qualification of hopefuls," Khamenei said.
Khamenei, who holds ultimate authority in all matters in Iran, is generally seen as the leader of hard-line clerics who have repeatedly stymied attempts at reform. He has reined in hard-liners in the past to avert destabilizing political clashes. The Guardian Council, a body of clerics and lay jurists, vets all legislation for Islamic orthodoxy.
Earlier Wednesday, reformist lawmakers rejected Khatami's call to abandon their sit-in. Khatami had condemned the disqualifications, but asked lawmakers for patience.
"Khatami is sincere, and will do his best, but his promise to reverse the situation is not sufficient," said Hossein Ansarirad, a reformist cleric and lawmaker who was barred from seeking reelection. "Everything is at stake in this country through the illegal behavior of hard-liners. The time has come to resist."
The elections are seen as a crucial test for Iran's reformers.
--------
The Appearance of Change in Iran
Personal Freedoms Expand As Political Reform Stalls
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18229-2004Jan14?language=printer
TEHRAN -- The young woman dressed in a manner forbidden by law was complaining about something she saw on a television channel that's illegal to watch.
"The stuff on Euro News," said Nesa Hamlehdar, exasperated. "They show Iranian women in chador. Boys as soldiers. Old cars."
She rolled her eyes. "This is the image the West has of us!"
In Iran, reality looks a lot more like Hamlehdar. Pausing in a fashion mall on her way home from a day of college classes, the 22-year-old language student wore tight bell-bottoms under a tunic cut not like the all-enveloping chador, which translates literally as "tent," but more like the little black cocktail dresses that now pass for outer garments in some parts of Tehran.
There was eyeliner and nail polish. And her scarf was pushed back to reveal fully half her hair -- something officially prohibited shortly after then-President Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr in 1981 explained that women's hair emits rays that drive men insane.
"The limitations that used to be," Hamlehdar said, "do not exist now."
That basic fact of Iranian daily life signals a fundamental shift in politics. The dramatic relaxation of the theocracy's strict official dress code is but the most visible aspect of a grudging yet steady expansion of what Iranians call "personal space." The term describes the realm of purely personal liberties that extends from holding hands in public to watching satellite television without fear of a police raid.
Initially championed by reformers who also demanded political freedoms, these personal liberties are being granted by the conservative Islamic clerics who control the most powerful institutions in Iran's government. The hard-liners, who wrote the rules in the first place, now see a political advantage in allowing them to be widely ignored.
Iranians elect a new parliament in February. And years before a hard-line election oversight body caused an uproar this week by summarily banning reformist candidates by the thousands, moderates in the conservative camp plotted a subtler route to victory, one based on giving people more of what they want.
"Already, we have plenty of freedoms on the street. Nobody can curb that," said Mohammed Javad Larijani, a senior official in Iran's judiciary, which is headed and staffed by conservative appointees. "We politicians have staked our future on that freedom. We are hopeful to gain power through that freedom."
Many Iranians, while embracing the new leeway, say they recognize that the gains are meant to relieve pressure for more fundamental political freedoms, which remain closely circumscribed. While taking morals police off the streets, for example, hard-liners have also closed more than 200 newspapers.
"It's like a safety valve to prevent an explosion in society," said Shadi Kohandani, 25, an accounting student. "They want to keep everyone amused so they don't think about more important things. They're investing for the next elections."
"At least we have these -- music, clothes," agreed Nazanin Derakhshanzadeh, shopping for a new overcoat in north Tehran.
The authorities' message, she said, was clear: " 'Don't think further. Don't ask about politics.' It works, because in the old days, people didn't have freedom in choosing clothes and styles of living. People think they are getting a lot."
The changes can be subtle. A young man smoking in public during the month of Ramadan goes unchallenged. A billiard parlor opens in the holy city of Qom. And on the street, vendors who six months ago stealthily hissed "Playing cards" to passersby now hold the forbidden instruments of gambling overhead. "I sold a deck to a cleric," said a dealer in Isfahan, the country's second-largest city.
In downtown Tehran, the feared court formerly known as the Office for the Prevention of Moral Crimes is now the Social Department of the Law Enforcement Teams. On a recent Monday morning, barely 20 people were waiting in a lobby that a few years ago was brimming with parents bailing out children caught up in weekend sweeps of parties featuring bootlegged liquor or forbidden music.
"It's a total defeat for the old methods the conservatives were using," said Mohammad Reza Khatami, a leading reformist legislator and brother of Iran's elected president, Mohammad Khatami, a reformer whose six-year challenge to the clerical establishment is widely seen here as a failure. "If you leave politics and go to every other area of the country, we see that the reformists have been successful."
But as the increasingly fractured reform movement has lost public confidence, conservatives have seized the opportunity to soften their reputation as being intolerant. An adviser to Iran's supreme leader said the new tolerance reflected the eclipse of cultural hard-liners who favored "mechanical methods" for encouraging piety.
"In an Islamic society, selling wines is forbidden, but if somebody is drinking wine in his house, the question is, do we enter the house to arrest him or not?" said the adviser, Amir Mohebian, editor of the conservative newspaper Resalat. "I think the system should apply only to the public sphere, not to the house. If somebody goes from the way of God in his house, that is a problem between him and God."
Mohebian called it "a kind of minimalistic idea of ruling an Islamic system."
Many others contend that the clerics had no choice. The intrusion of morals police into private life played a major role in the landslide election of Khatami as president in 1997 by an electorate largely too young to remember the 1979 Islamic revolution. Today, about 60 percent of the Iranian population is younger than 20, and the voting age is 16.
"They really didn't expect that the girls would put on such tight manteaux," said Shima Kohandii, 20, the accounting student's sister. She used the French word for "cloaks" that, in Tehran today, takes in any outer covering, no matter how slinky. "Suddenly, they're confronted with this."
The change is far from wholesale. The full black chador remains common in much of this country of 70 million, especially in working-class and rural areas. But in fashion-conscious neighborhoods, women venture out confidently in bright colors that show off their figures and wear scarves tugged barely to the top of the head, sometimes with hair cascading down the back.
"Please see to your hijab," reads the sticker on the door of Bossini, the boutique where Bahareh Akhavan, 21, works as a sales clerk. The accompanying graphic suggests a nun's habit. Yet Akhavan arrived in a cloak so tight the buttons strained.
"Most of the people who have beautiful bodies want to put these on," she explained. "Some intentionally go on a diet so they can wear tight clothes. I do that myself."
Iranian women report paying close attention to Fashion TV, a staple of the black-market satellite television common in the Iranian households that can afford it. Nominally outlawed, the dishes are now rarely hidden.
"They can't stop it. How are they supposed to stop it? They don't want to make fools of themselves," said Amir Tajrishi, a clerk in a software store where most of the video games are sold to young men who saw them advertised on satellite.
The new leniency also extends to romance. With morals police no longer on the streets, young couples hold hands in public even while passing Friday prayers in downtown Tehran.
"It has become common behavior," said Amirabbas Sari Aslani, 25, who had tucked his girlfriend's hand inside his jacket pocket on a chilly afternoon. "People need to show this behavior."
Some show more. Scandalized Tehran residents exchange reports of discovering couples necking in public parks -- widely considered outrageous behavior. Cohabitation before marriage is no longer rare, university students and others say.
In a nation that next year marks a quarter-century under clerical rule, deciding for yourself what can be worn in public is a new experience for many young women.
"Well, we put it on, we step outside. If you're bothered, it seems you've guessed wrong," said Mahdis Zare, 21.
"What I find," said Mahsa Nouruzi, 19, "is that the way people look at me determines whether I am crossing a line."
And by Western standards, those lines remain almost Victorian. Pausing in a Tehran mall, Hamlehdar, whose name translates to "woman attacking," gave a little shudder showing how much forearm she dared to show last summer.
"This is enough for us," Hamlehdar said. "We don't want anything special. We just want to live our lives. We're not involved in politics."
-------- iraq
US Army stretches its resources to make life better for Iraqis
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Jan 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040115115817.nyclbcfm.html
The US Army says it has spent 126 million dollars so far on everything from schools and textbooks, public works and electricity generators in an effort to improve the lot of ordinary Iraqis, but admits the challenges given the enormous needs and its own stretched resources.
The biggest amount spent was on education projects, with about 30 million dollars going to rebuilding schools, colleges and institutes and helping them reopen their doors to students, Brigadier General David Blackledge, commander of civil affairs unit in Iraq, told reporters Wednesday.
The next big categories were 24 million dollars for public works, 16 million dollars for restoring damaged buildings, 14.7 million for police and security and nine million dollars for water and sewage projects.
The biggest spenders were the 101st Airborne Division based in the northern city of Mosul with 31.7 million dollars and the 4th Infantry Division with 34 million dollars in Tikrit, the hometown of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
US troops come under frequent attacks in these predominantly Sunni areas.
Blackledge said about 46 million dollars were left from the total 172 million dollars allocated to civil affairs projects.
In the category where most of the money was spent, he admitted that there were problems getting to students enough new text books that erase all reference to Saddam's banned Baath party.
"We have three students sharing a textbook. We are still distributing new text books and getting them printed," said the mild-mannered Blackledge.
"The process will be complete by the end of spring."
It did not stop at text books, as Blackledge was barraged with questions from Iraqi reporters about the sorry state of the war-torn country's power, water, sewerage and telecommunications infrastructure.
"I understand the concern and the frustration, but the CERP (Commander Emergency Response Program) are for smaller projects," Blackledge kept repeating.
He gave an example of how civil affairs officers bought two one megawatt generators for a brickworks in the restive town of Fallujah, allowing it operate again and employee 800 people.
Blackledge said it might be "a small project" but it made a difference in the lives of the local community where US troops face the fiercest resistance.
He then gently broke the news that there might be a "slight reduction" in the number of civil affairs officers working in Iraq as the US army rotates its 130,000-strong force there over the coming months.
He said this had to do with the fact that practically all of the army's civil affairs officers, or eight percent of the force, were already committed in Afghanistan and Iraq and that 97 percent of them were reservists.
"We are running out of civil affairs experts," he said.
Blackledge said the number of civil affairs battalions will remain the same in Iraq but there will be a reduction in the number of officers attached to them.
He said there are 1,600 civil affairs officers in Iraq at present but declined to say how many of them would be sent elsewhere during the upcoming rotation.
--------
Bremer Leaving Iraq for U.S. Before Talks at U.N. on Monday
January 15, 2004
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/international/middleeast/15CND-IRAQ.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 15 - L. Paul Bremer III, the administrator of the occupying authority in Iraq, is leaving for Washington today to consult with the White House before a meeting on Monday at the United Nations. There, both the United States and the Iraqis it has temporarily installed in office will press for a significant United Nations role in support of their plan for a rapid handover of sovereignty.
The meeting, called by Secretary General Kofi Annan and attended by leaders of the American-backed interim Iraqi Governing Council as well as the Americans, will be the first significant, high-level negotiations between them all to discuss the mechanics of selecting a new legislative body for Iraq by this summer. That selection is a crucial step in the handover of power in June that the Iraqi council and the American-led occupation agreed to in November.
Senior Bush administration officials are also likely to join the talks in New York, according to an official of the Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by Mr. Bremer.
Both American and Iraqi officials said today that they would seek specific pledges of help from the United Nations, with its expertise in how to hold elections in frail new democracies, both before and after the June 30 handover that they are planning.
The United States has resisted any suggestion that the United Nations should be a controlling authority over the transfer of power, but it has increasingly come to recognize the support that the United Nations can offer both in putting democratic systems in place and resisting a headlong rush to direct elections. The United Nations, for its part, is wary of assuming a major role, having largely withdrawn its personnel from Iraq after a devastating truck bomb demolished its headquarters here in August.
Both Iraqi and American officials now appear to think that a significant United Nations role would not only give the process legitimacy in the eyes of the world, but might also defuse opposition among some Iraqis, including leaders of the majority Shiite sect, who favor direct elections over the current plan.
In Basra, Iraq's largest southern city, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched today to support calls by Iraq's leading Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, for direct elections to choose a new government, rather than the indirect and incremental approach devised by the coalition and the interim council. The people of Basra are overwhelmingly Shiites, as are the majority of Iraq's population.
As Mr. Bremer was getting ready to leave, the current head of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, said the council is eager to see the United Nations play a prominent role in the tricky transition to democracy. But in an apparent bid to mollify critics in Iraq, he also declared that members of the council, too, would like to see "improvements" in the mechanics of selecting the legislature, even if direct elections cannot be held in such a short time, as many Iraqis would prefer.
Mr. Annan has said he agrees with the American view that it would not be possible to hold valid elections in just a few months.
"If the United Nations is unable or unwilling to play a big role, that would be a matter of great regret for us," Mr. Pachachi said.
But he suggested that given the difficult choice between a quick handover of power this summer and waiting for full, direct elections, Iraqis would prefer the quicker alternative.
"The choice for us is, either we keep this date and settle for something less than elections, which we all want, or we accept a delay of the whole thing for two years," he said. "But I want to tell you this: The Iraqi people would be extremely disappointed and frustrated" by such a delay.
As Mr. Bremer prepared to fly to Washington, an official at his Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters said it was not yet clear what role the United Nations might play.
"The bottom line is this: We want the U.N. to be involved here in some way," he said. Mr. Bremer is to meet with other administration officials, possibly including President Bush, at the White House on Friday, and the administration would also decide soon whether Secretary of State Colin L. Powell or some other senior administration official should attend the talks at the United Nations next week.
In a symbolic display of what the occupying force wants to portray as steady progress to rid Iraq of any remnant of the old regime, currency bearing images of the ousted leader Saddam Hussein was put into furnaces today, replaced by new bank notes.
Getting rid of all remnants of the old Iraqi regime, and making sure that the Baath Party cannot return, is just one of the Americans' goals, though.
Another is preventing a rapid shift to democracy from producing an Islamist state of the kind that some fear could arise by virtue of the long oppressed Shiite majority's flexing its muscles in a direct election.
--------
OCCUPATION
Iraqi Team Disables Bombs With a Snip and a Prayer
January 15, 2004
By NEELA BANERJEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/international/middleeast/15SQUA.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 12 - The four police officers were squeezed into a small pickup truck, screaming down the highway from Baghdad at 90 miles an hour toward a bomb sighting, and they were happy.
They thrive on busy days, and today, the third call of the morning for the Baghdad police bomb squad had come in minutes before, at 11:20, with the usual sketchy information: possible explosives on the road south to Salman Pak.
For every bomb that kills Iraqis and coalition soldiers, many more are defused every day by the ordnance experts of the Baghdad police. The squad existed under the old government but was far less active. Since August, a steady trickle of calls about bomb sightings has become a torrent.
On this morning, Majid Mahdi and Hazim Khadem, both lieutenants in the squad, had already taken down an array of rockets aimed at a police station near Haifa Street. Then they defused what was left of a set of 11 rockets aimed at an American Army base. (Six rockets had been fired, but no soldiers were hurt.)
Lieutenant Mahdi, his feet resting on an AK-47 on the floor of the pickup, lighted a Gauloise cigarette.
Lt. Lotfi Ali, who drives as though he has seen "The French Connection" too many times, turned off the siren, tuned in to Arabic pop and sang along. In one smooth gesture, he took out his Glock pistol and began shifting gears with it in his hand. "Thieves," he said, pointing with the gun out the window. "Fedayeen."
The pickup stopped at a threadbare little roadblock the local police had made of motor oil jugs and soda cans. The bomb was 150 yards up the road, the police said.
Lieutenant Khadem stepped out of the car, dressed only in street clothes, and told himself what he always does as he jogged forward: "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet."
As the American-led coalition begins turning over self-rule and security to Iraqis, some, like those in the Baghdad bomb squad, are already shouldering the burden.
"It's a war," Lieutenant Mahdi said. "It's not a war for the Americans. It's a war for us."
Lt. Col. Mustafa al-Wahab estimated that among the 30 or so calls a day the squad receives, half turn out to be roadside bombs or rockets aimed at some target. In the last nine months, the 11 ordnance experts in the squad have probably defused an average of 40 to 50 bombs per man, Colonel Wahab said.
Car bombs are the most feared. A deep anxiety about them has gripped Baghdad. On a window near the entrance to the squad's offices in the center of the city, someone has taped a diagram in English of vehicles that can be used for car bombs, how much explosive each can hold and the lethal zone around the blast.
Any car parked for an extended period is suspect.
One recent evening, Lieutenants Mahdi and Khadem received a call about a car that had sat all day at a central market. It turned out to be a battered white Volkswagen Passat. The two officers, quickly attracting a group of onlookers, smashed a side window, and opened the doors and the hatchback. They looked under the hood. No bomb. It was all over in less than five minutes.
The Americans, in the Iraqis' place, would have cordoned off the site by several hundred yards, sent for their ordnance team, which in turn would have dispatched a robot equipped with cameras to check the vehicle. If something had been found, an ordnance expert in full body armor would have gone in to defuse the bomb, very slowly.
Sometimes when the Americans arrive first, the Iraqis have a hard time getting through the cordon because they walk around in street clothes, carrying little more than identification and wire cutters.
"Sometimes I don't blame the Americans," said Brig. Gen. Munaam Said Abdul-Qadr, the head of the squad. "They say, `You are heroes, but at the same time, you are crazy.' "
Col. Ismael Ayash of the squad thinks his men are cavalier about wearing body armor because, in part, it takes so long to put it on and take it off, and they have so many calls to respond to. But the Iraqis especially want the robots that the Americans use, as well as better training, neither of which has been forthcoming, they said.
Requests for advanced training and equipment have been "supported by the M.P. chain of command and coalition E.O.D.," said Capt. Kelly Traynham of the 143rd Military Police Detachment, Montana National Guard, referring to the explosives ordnance disposal unit. "But I also know it takes time to get the latest and greatest equipment and training."
It will clearly take time, too, for squad members to adjust to new differences in pay and status. Lieutenant Mahdi, 35, has a new wife and a baby on the way. His squad was among the elite in the old government and were paid much more than other police units. Now, he grumbled, he makes about $150 a month, about the same as a security guard. But he said he had done this kind of work for 16 years and could not imagine chasing criminals.
A few weeks ago, he said, he was at a bomb site when a colleague's arm was blown off. It was the squad's first casualty since the end of major fighting. He answered another call just afterward. "I was thinking, `I could lose an arm or leg, or I could die,' " he said, "But it's my job. This is my life."
Surviving each day is its own gift. So are the big finds, like the squad's discovery near the Doura power station: an ambulance carrying more than 3,000 pounds of explosives. He and the others were recently told that the Americans might present commendations to them at a ceremony soon.
Since the war, the lieutenant says, he has come to expect a different kind of bomb in each part of the city. The Aadhimiya quarter, home to many supporters of the old government, is a trove of roadside bombs. On the west bank of the Tigris, the bombs are made from old munitions. On the east bank, vessels are filled with explosives and metal.
For the most part, the bombs are triggered by simple household items: timers from washing machines, remote controls from doorbells, and receivers from parts of car alarms.
"Of course, I feel a rivalry with the bomb-makers," Lieutenant Mahdi said. "Once I find and defuse one bomb, the next time they will hide it by paving it over. Or they will use walkie-talkies so that they can explode a bomb on us."
Lieutenant Khadem, too, discussed strategy, saying that when he or one of his comrades approaches a bomb, everything else falls by the wayside: the Americans, the fear, one's own family.
Near Salman Pak, he ran down the highway, grabbing his wire cutters from his kit. He and two others came upon some bushes leaning against a fallen tree trunk. Blue and white wires peeked out from under the bushes. In three breaths, the men moved the bushes and Lieutenant Khadem clipped the blue wire, tearing off the link to any remote control. The wires were attached to two huge artillery shells. The men heaved them into the bed of the truck and returned to Baghdad, playing pop music again, dancing in their seats and waving their hands.
Back at the station, General Abdul-Qadr was worried. He had talked to the Americans about removing the two and a half tons of munitions the Iraqis have accumulated in a storehouse just behind his office, but no one has come. "If there is any bit of friction in that room . . . ," the general said, his voice trailing off.
He also had some news for Lieutenant Mahdi. That medal ceremony he had been waiting for? The bomb squad would not be included in it.
-------- israel / palestine
Gaza Mother, 22, Kills Four Israelis in Suicide Bombing
January 15, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/international/middleeast/15MIDE.html
EREZ, Gaza Strip, Jan. 14 - A young Palestinian mother, feigning a limp and requesting medical help, blew herself up Wednesday at the entrance to a security inspection center for Palestinian workers, killing four Israeli security personnel and wounding seven people, the Israeli military said.
The bomber, Reem al-Reyashi, 22, said in video released after her attack that "it was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists." Ms. Reyashi left behind a son aged 3, and a year-old daughter.
Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, said this was the first time his group had dispatched a woman to be a suicide bomber. Some militant Palestinian factions have been reluctant to do so, and some Islamic groups have questioned whether it is permitted under Islamic law.
But when Sheik Yassin was asked why Hamas had decided to send a woman, he cited purely tactical concerns. "It could be that a man would not be able to reach the target, and that's why they had to use a woman," he said.
Ms. Reyashi's attack, in an industrial zone at the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, was the first Palestinian suicide bombing to kill Israelis since a Dec. 25 blast at a bus stop outside Tel Aviv, which also left four dead. Middle East violence has been down recently, but the blast ratcheted up tensions and dealt another blow to peace efforts that have been stalled for months.
Israel responded by immediately shutting down the industrial zone and sending home the roughly 4,000 Palestinian workers employed in its factories.
"Palestinian terrorists are not only committed to striking Israelis at every opportunity, they are also bent on destroying their own economy," said David Baker, an official in the office of Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon.
Palestinians have carried out more than 100 suicide bombings during the past three years of violence. But such attacks have been extremely rare in the fenced-in Gaza Strip, where Palestinian contact with Israelis is largely limited to security checks at places such as Erez.
Ms. Reyashi was able to carry out her bombing by momentarily deceiving the soldiers with her claim that she needed medical treatment inside Israel, the military said.
She joined the line where the Palestinians go through a security check each morning as they enter the industrial zone.
As she approached the building's entrance, which has a metal detector at the doorway, she was limping, the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses said. She told soldiers she had a recent leg operation, and a metal pin had been implanted that the detector would register.
She was allowed to pass, and when the alarm sounded, the soldiers told her to wait while they called an army woman to search her, the military said. Seconds later, Ms. Reyashi detonated her bomb, estimated at about 10 pounds and packed with ball bearings and screws to make it more lethal, the military said.
The blast tore apart the simple structure, sending part of the roof skyward and leaving behind dangling strips of metal. The floor was sticky with blood and littered with body parts, and bloodstains speckled the walls.
Two soldiers, a border policeman and a civilian security guard were killed and seven people were wounded, including both Israeli security personnel and Palestinians heading to work.
Ms. Reyashi, who came from a middle-class family in Gaza City, appeared in her video wearing combat fatigues, with an automatic rifle in her hands and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on the desk in front of her.
"God gave me the ability to be a mother of two children who I love so," she said. "But my wish to meet God in paradise is greater, so I decided to be a martyr for the sake of my people. I am convinced God will help and take care of my children."
After the bombing, her husband was seen crying outside the family home. A relative said he had no knowledge of his wife's plans, Reuters reported.
Hamas, the Islamic movement, and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a faction loyal to the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, took joint responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for Israel's killing of Palestinians.
Mr. Arafat and the Palestinian leadership usually condemn suicide bombings inside Israel, but issued no such statement after Wednesday's blast.
The Palestinian leaders rarely criticize attacks against Israeli soldiers or settlers in the West Bank or Gaza, land Israel has occupied since the 1967 war.
Hamas had not carried out a suicide attack for the past four months, and senior Israeli military officials said last month that they believed Hamas had temporarily suspended them.
But Sheik Yassin said Wednesday that "there is no truce, operations will continue."
Wednesday's bombing raised the prospect of a step-up in battles between Hamas and the Israeli military.
Last summer, Israel's military struck at four senior Hamas leaders, including Sheik Yassin, while the Islamic faction carried out several suicide bombings.
-------- nato
New NATO chief rings changes with Russia hotline
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Jan 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040115124016.54g2k5p8.html
New NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer inaugurated a hotline with the alliance's former Cold War foe Russia this week, calling Moscow on the bug-free link for the first time, officials said.
The former Dutch foreign minister, who took up his Brussels post this month, used the secure telephone line as part of his round of courtesy calls to NATO and partner countries.
"Mr. de Hoop Scheffer spoke briefly to Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov" in the inaugural call, said NATO's website.
The direct and secure link between the NATO Secretary General and the Russian minister was established in December. "It is a further practical contribution to an ever-deepening NATO-Russia relationship," said NATO.
De Hoop Scheffer's predecessor, Britain's George Robertson, pushed through the establishment of formal and regular contacts between NATO and Moscow in the NATO-Russia Council.
He also oversaw agreement, in the teeth of Russian reluctance, on the 19-member bloc's enlargement into Moscow's back yard. Seven ex-communist states -- including three ex-Soviet republics -- are due to join NATO in June.
-------- space
Bush details 'vision' for space travel
January 15, 200
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040115-120209-1659r.htm
Man will return to the moon as early as 2015 to establish a permanent base from which to launch exploratory ventures into space, including a manned mission to Mars and "worlds beyond," President Bush declared yesterday.
"We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own," the president said at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "Human beings are headed into the cosmos."
Mr. Bush said the aging space shuttle fleet, which has flown 100 missions, will be retired in 2010, by which time the International Space Station will have been completed.
Robotic missions to the moon will commence in 2008, and by 2015, humans - using a "Crew Exploration Vehicle" - will be ferried to the moon to begin extended missions living and working on the lunar surface. The exploration vehicle is to start testing no later than 2008.
Several years after the manned missions to the moon, the president seeks to use the moon to start missions to other planets.
"Our third goal is to return to the moon by 2020 as the launching point for missions beyond," the president said. The last time a U.S. astronaut went to the moon was December 1972.
Mr. Bush pre-empted concerns about the plan's military implications while dismissing the notion that the country was embarking on a costly "space race" akin to the one in the 1960s, as the United States and the Soviet Union spent billions on space-travel efforts. China last year launched its first manned space flight.
"We'll invite other nations to share the challenges and opportunities of this new era of discovery. The vision I outline today is a journey, not a race, and I call on other nations to join us on this journey, in a spirit of cooperation and friendship," he said.
Although critics say the plan is too costly, Mr. Bush put the expense at $12 billion for exploration over the next five years, with $1 billion of the amount in new funds. The beleaguered space agency's budget would be reallocated to push the manned missions to the moon and Mars to the top of its agenda.
"I think it's just a total fiscal absurdity. Bush has been spending money like we've got money to burn, and we don't," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a politically powerful conservative group.
Mr. Bush said establishing a permanent base on the moon could reduce the cost of future space travel and, perhaps, become a source of needed ingredients for such travel.
"Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth's gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air," he said.
The president's announcement comes less than a year after the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry in February, killing seven astronauts. Embattled NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, whom Mr. Bush praised, said the president's proposal proves his confidence in the agency.
Speaking to astronauts present and past and workers at the NASA headquarters, Mr. Bush said robots cannot replace man on the future journeys "across our solar system."
"Robotic missions will serve as trailblazers - the advanced guard to the unknown," he said. "Yet the human thirst for knowledge ultimately cannot be satisfied by even the most vivid pictures, or the most detailed measurements. We need to see and examine and touch for ourselves.
"And only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space travel."
The president employed lofty rhetoric - which made him misty eyed several times during his 20-minute speech - as he sought to set America on a renewed path to explore space.
"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey," he said.
Mr. Bush listed the vast benefits of space exploration and research, saying astronauts have "expanded human knowledge, have revolutionized our understanding of the universe, and produced technological advances that have benefited all of humanity."
"The exploration of space has led to advances in weather forecasting, in communications, in computing, search and rescue technology, robotics, and electronics. Our investment in space exploration helped to create our satellite telecommunications network and the Global Positioning System," he said, noting that research also has led to medical technologies that "help prolong life." The White House said those include CAT scanners, magnetic resonance imaging, kidney dialysis machines and programmable heart pacemakers.
Mr. Bush named Pete Aldridge, a former Air Force secretary and chief Pentagon weapons buyer and current board member of defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., to lead a commission to advise the government on the new space program.
The president was greeted on stage yesterday by astronaut Michael Foale, whose face was beamed onto a giant video screen from the space station 240 miles above the Earth, orbiting at 17,000 miles per hour. He told Mr. Bush that he is just one chapter in the " ongoing story of discovery."
"I feel fortunate to be part of this agency's historic legacy, but I also know the NASA journey is just beginning," said the astronaut, who is on his sixth space mission.
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Bush Outlines Space Agenda President Calls for Moon Trip by 2020
By Mike Allen and Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16651-2004Jan14?language=printer
President Bush vowed yesterday to "extend a human presence across our solar system," starting with a return to the moon within 16 years to build a permanent staging ground for manned missions to Mars and planets beyond.
The election-year plan calls for retiring the three remaining space shuttles by 2010, after the international space station is complete. Bush wants to develop a manned exploration vehicle to travel to the moon and farther, and he made a commitment that Americans would return to the moon between 2015 and 2020.
In a concession to objections in Congress and elsewhere that such an audacious goal is out of place in an era of deep deficits, Bush said the research and development for the exploration venture can be done for relatively little over the course of this presidential term and the next one -- $12 billion over five years, just $1 billion of which would be new money for NASA. Bush's plan would gradually shift more and more of the space agency's budget and resources to the lunar and Mars missions and away from the space shuttle and space station.
The Pentagon and private companies will collaborate with NASA on the venture. Bush invited other countries to join, and officials said Russia has already expressed interest.
"We may discover resources on the moon or Mars that will boggle the imagination, that will test our limits to dream," Bush said. "We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos."
Administration officials said they hope the astronauts will find traces of water on the moon that could be converted to hydrogen fuel and oxygen to propel spacecraft through the solar system.
The president's speech was a major morale boost for an agency still struggling to recover from disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, and seeking to resume flights of the three remaining shuttles. The Columbia Accident Review Board concluded last summer that serious problems in NASA's management culture were as much to blame for the loss of the seven astronauts as a foam strike that left a gaping hole in the shuttle's left wing.
"This resolves the question of what is the vision," NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said at a briefing after Bush spoke. "This is what it is."
Officials acknowledged that the project carries great risk and said they have not determined how to shield astronauts from the high radiation levels in outer space and how to counter the physiological effects of prolonged weightlessness.
The White House plan calls for the use of robots for preliminary forays to the moon, which could begin by 2008. The long-term goal would be to establish a permanent colony and scientific laboratory on the moon, where astronauts would live and work for extended periods, then push on to Mars.
Bush, who called for "a new course for America's space program," plans to seek an average increase of 5 percent a year for the next three years in NASA's current $15.4 billion budget.
Bush's new space policy had a partly political genesis, with presidential advisers saying that it emerged from a White House search for a bold goal that would help unify the nation before Bush's reelection race and portray him as visionary. Officials said that Bush had always planned to reexamine NASA's mission, but the disintegration of Columbia was the immediate catalyst.
The president's promised "new era of discovery" was developed by a multi-agency group, coordinated at the National Security Council. Officials said the lunar and Mars program will have a military component, noting that the Pentagon will be consulted and may help with launches.
Republican officials said conservative lawmakers who might balk at the cost are likely to be lured by the chance to extend the U.S. military supremacy in space when China is pursuing lunar probes and Russia is considering a Mars mission.
The president spoke at NASA headquarters after meeting 18 current and former astronauts, some of them in flight suits. Before Bush spoke, he was greeted on an overhead screen by Michael Foale, commander of the international space station, which is 240 miles above Earth. "It's difficult to drop in for a quick visit," Foale quipped.
Bush spoke in front of screens that gave viewers the impression of mission control, with one of the images showing workers applauding his speech as they watched on giant screens at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA branch in Pasadena, Calif., where scientists are managing the Mars rover that landed safely two weeks ago.
"We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own," Bush said. "With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond."
The administration outlined a piecemeal program that had no overall price, although a chart released by NASA suggested it could add up to as much as $170 billion by 2020. Bush's aides were eager to avoid the mistake made by his father, who in 1989 proposed establishing a base on the moon, sending an expedition to Mars and beginning what he described as the permanent settlement of space. NASA responded with a plan estimated to cost as much as $500 billion over decades, and Capitol Hill rejected the plan.
The president's strategy appeared to be working yesterday, as several key lawmakers said Bush's plan seemed affordable.
"Sure, the money is a big question," said House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.). "But I think the president was realistic."
Bush's speech was a president's most ambitious articulation of a space vision since 1961, when John F. Kennedy called the nation to send a man to the moon by the end of the decade. That was the height of the Cold War, and the United States was bent on beating Russia.
Eugene A. Cernan -- commander of the crew members of Apollo 17, who in 1972 were the last humans to set foot on the moon -- said in an interview that NASA has lacked a long-range, reachable goal. "We haven't had a space program," said Cernan. "We've had a series of space events."
While the public and Congress continue to support manned space flight in the wake of the Columbia space shuttle disaster, polls suggest there is widespread skepticism about the president's plans for an aggressive and costly new program.
In an effort to overcome congressional doubts about NASA, Bush appointed Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., former secretary of the Air Force, to head a commission of private- and public-sector experts to offer advice on the implementation of his vision.
O'Keefe said officials are still determining how much of the project would be done "in-house" by NASA and how much would be done by partners, including universities, and whether there would be "an industry-driven approach."
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Bush urges other nations to join his new push for space exploration
Thursday January 15, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jan2004-daily/15-01-2004/world/w8.htm
WASHINGTON: US President George W. Bush will urge other nations on Wednesday to join his new push for space exploration, the White House said, downplaying the potential military impact of his new initiative.
"The long-term vision he outlines today for further exploration of space is a journey, it's no longer a race," spokesman Scott McClellan said ahead of Bush's speech at National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters.
"We want to pursue this journey together with other nations in a spirit of cooperation and friendship," he said. "Our space program has a proud history of expanding human knowledge and advancing technology for the benefit of all."
At the height of the Cold War, Washington and Moscow fiercely competed in a "space race," which came to an end when US astronauts first walked on the moon in 1969.
And Bush's announcement came after China, heartened by its first successful manned space flight, said in December that it would send a spacecraft to orbit the moon within three years and planned an unmanned landing in 2010.
The president was expected to call for establishing a permanent human base on the moon with an eye on sending manned missions to Mars, coupled with ending the US space shuttle program, according to media reports.
Asked whether the White House had considered the potential military benefits of such a mission, McClellan told reporters "what the president is talking about is really focused on the civilian side of space exploration today.
"We have had great success in our space program yet there is much that remains for us to explore and learn and that's what the president will be talking about today," said McClellan.
"The spirit is going to be one of continued exploration and seeking new horizons and investing in a program that meets that objective," Bush said in a preview to his much-awaited speech at NASA's Washington headquarters.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe echoed that message on Wednesday while insisting the cost would not be prohibitive.
"The real objective is to explore," he told NBC television. "It's not about a destination; it's about looking at any number of different capabilities or different things we may want to explore in the solar system."
"It's about the capacity, the capability, the technology to get anywhere, and that's what he's (Bush is) going to outline today, is that broader
Direction for exploration goals," O'Keefe said. He added that the focus is "a new direction, a renewed direction to explore and discover, to use technologies and science to really expand for our benefit across the board."
But Bush and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration face questions over the scientific and economic benefits of the return to space and how it will be financed.
Critics, particularly in Congress, have criticized the government's space policy since the shuttle Columbia broke apart February 1, killing all seven astronauts on board.
Shortly after the disaster, Bush promised, "our journey into space will go on."
And his speech will come just 10 months away from a presidential election, which is starting to dominate many decisions in the United States.
According to leaks to the media, Bush wants to capture the spirit of President John F. Kennedy's 1961 promise to reach the moon by the end of the decade. US astronauts landed on the moon in 1969 and last visited in 1972.
However, Bush faces formidable obstacles, particularly cost as the United States faces years of soaring budget deficits. While experts have said the planned moon mission could cost 750 million dollars or more, O'Keefe commented: "We're spending less than one percent of the federal budget on the science and technology that NASA employs for exploration objectives, and that won't change."
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Iraq Military Suicides at 21
January 15, 2004
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/politics/15SUIC.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - The top health official in the Pentagon said there were at least 21 suicides last year among troops serving in Iraq.
The official, Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said 18 of the deaths were Army soldiers. He said the rate was a slight increase over past years.
Dr. Winkenwerder said the figures reflected a suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq of about 13.5 per 100,000. In 2001, the overall suicide rate in the United States was about 11 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Military Cites Elevated Rate of Suicides in Iraq
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18452-2004Jan14.html
At least 22 U.S. service members committed suicide in Iraq last year, prompting concern among defense officials who describe the rate as elevated but not alarmingly high.
Soldiers accounted for 19 suicides, officials said yesterday. The tally included a spike in deaths in July that prompted the Army to dispatch a 12-member mental health assessment team to Iraq in September.
William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said in an interview yesterday that military health officials have not discovered "any trend" or identified specific steps the Army could have taken that would have prevented the suicides. Nothing has been found, he said, "that tells us that there's more we might be doing."
Col. James K. Gilman, director of health policy and services for the Army surgeon general, said that July's spike in suicides caused "great concern" but that no obvious common factor has emerged linking the individual cases. July's high rate, he said, did not reappear.
"You don't see worsening over time," Gilman said. The findings of the mental health team sent to Iraq in September have not been publicly released, he said.
The 19 Army deaths represented a suicide rate of more than 13.5 per 100,000 troops, officials said, which is higher than the Army's average of 10.5 to 11 per 100,000 troops in recent years. The overall suicide rate in the 1.2 million-member, active duty military is about one-third lower than that of the civilian population of about the same age range, defense officials said.
One official who spoke on the condition of anonymity called suicides in Iraq "an issue of concern, not an epidemic" and said: "It certainly is not at the 'Oh, my God' stage or panic or anything. But when the Army saw the numbers start to go up, they took very swift action, and have been working very hard ever since."
The Army and the Marines have stressed suicide prevention since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, after suicides that officials say may be at least partly attributable to lengthy deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The numbers last year run counter to experience in past conflicts, when military suicides dropped during times of combat, officials said. During those conflicts, officials thought the reduction could be linked to troops' preoccupation with surviving combat, and with their removal from domestic problems and other personal pressures.
Whatever the cause of the elevated number of suicides in Iraq, Gilman said, "we want to get the rate lower. These are soldiers, and we care about every one of them. We want to get inside the problem even more and try to drive the rate down, in Iraq and in the Army as a whole."
To date, the 22 suicides represent about 14 percent of 153 nonhostile deaths in Iraq since the war began in March. An additional 343 service members have been killed in combat, bringing the total number of dead to 496, the Pentagon reported yesterday.
Winkenwerder said the military has committed considerable resources to treating soldiers' mental health problems, with the Army deploying nine combat stress company detachments to Iraq. Each Army division in Iraq, he said, has a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a social worker, with an emphasis on trying to treat soldiers' stress problems as close to the front lines as possible.
"We believe they are being identified, they are being supported," Winkenwerder said. Of 10,128 service personnel transported out of Iraq for medical reasons since the war began, he noted, 300 to 400 have been for mental health problems.
As Winkenwerder expressed concern about suicides in Iraq during an interview with reporters, he said military doctors and medical personnel have proven more successful than ever in saving the lives of wounded service members.
Of 2,413 soldiers wounded in action as of Jan. 8, he said, about 37 were said officially to have "died of wounds" after arriving at a combat medical facility, a rate of about 1.5 percent. "That is stunning. It is remarkable. It has never been seen before," said Winkenwerder, a physician who became the Pentagon's top health official in late 2001 after serving as executive vice president of health care services for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.
He attributed the low rate of soldiers who died of wounds to a combination of high-tech body armor worn by all soldiers in Iraq, surgical teams much closer to the front lines than in previous wars, new clotting agents that help stop bleeding on the battlefield, and new, portable ultrasound devices to determine whether soldiers are bleeding internally.
"All of our people have been working on these things for years, and I think it all came to fruition" in Iraq, Winkenwerder said. "We're saving people."
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Chalmers Johnson on garrisoning the planet
January 15, 2004
Tom Dispatch
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1181
Our base-mad administration now wants to establish a "research base" on the moon by 2020, or so the President proclaimed yesterday. It makes a certain sense actually. At our present pace, the United States will by then have established military bases -- as Chalmers Johnson indicates below - on just about every possible space left on our planet. Of course, by that time who knows what shape our overstretched military and our overstretched empire of bases will be in. Only yesterday, a report from the Army War College pronounced the Army "near the breaking point," given the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By spring, 40% of the troops in Iraq will be either Reservists or National Guard members, no longer doing support work for front-line units, but in the front-lines (such as they are) themselves. The suicide rate among our troops in Iraq is up. Stop-orders have been issued blocking the departure from the service of 40,000 troops, almost half of whom are Reserves or Guard members -- in an "all-volunteer" army a covert form of the draft; sizeable bonuses are suddenly being offered to soldiers willing to reenlist and serve in a war zone; and according to the Albany Times Union, rumors are circulating that the military may soon start calling up retired reservists. Yet Pentagon planning for ever more "forward basing" proceeds apace.
In the piece that follows, Chalmers Johnson lays out the skeletal structure of America's "Baseworld" and in the process offers us a powerful snapshot of an overstretched, heavily militarized empire whose leaders are ready to stretch further yet -- even, it seems, to the moon. Johnson, whose pre-9/11 book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was prescient on the kinds of attacks our covert imperial policies opened us up to, has just published a new work, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic as part of the American Empire Project. His new book tackles a great taboo subject in our country -- militarization and its effects on us as well as the rest of the planet. It's a magnificent, path-breaking work and -- I assure you -- a must-read if you really want to grasp the contours of our world. Don't miss it. Tom
America's Empire of Bases
By Chalmers Johnson,
January 15, 2004
As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.
Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.
Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services to build and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example, while the Defense Department was ordering up an extra ration of cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing tank shells, it also acquired 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida.
At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases
It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591.5 billion to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.
These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.
For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.
For their occupants, these are not unpleasant places to live and work. Military service today, which is voluntary, bears almost no relation to the duties of a soldier during World War II or the Korean or Vietnamese wars. Most chores like laundry, KP ("kitchen police"), mail call, and cleaning latrines have been subcontracted to private military companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root, DynCorp, and the Vinnell Corporation. Fully one-third of the funds recently appropriated for the war in Iraq (about $30 billion), for instance, are going into private American hands for exactly such services. Where possible everything is done to make daily existence seem like a Hollywood version of life at home. According to the Washington Post, in Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, waiters in white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties serve dinner to the officers of the 82nd Airborne Division in their heavily guarded compound, and the first Burger King has already gone up inside the enormous military base we've established at Baghdad International Airport.
Some of these bases are so gigantic they require as many as nine internal bus routes for soldiers and civilian contractors to get around inside the earthen berms and concertina wire. That's the case at Camp Anaconda, headquarters of the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, whose job is to police some 1,500 square miles of Iraq north of Baghdad, from Samarra to Taji. Anaconda occupies 25 square kilometers and will ultimately house as many as 20,000 troops. Despite extensive security precautions, the base has frequently come under mortar attack, notably on the Fourth of July, 2003, just as Arnold Schwarzenegger was chatting up our wounded at the local field hospital.
The military prefers bases that resemble small fundamentalist towns in the Bible Belt rather than the big population centers of the United States. For example, even though more than 100,000 women live on our overseas bases -- including women in the services, spouses, and relatives of military personnel -- obtaining an abortion at a local military hospital is prohibited. Since there are some 14,000 sexual assaults or attempted sexual assaults each year in the military, women who become pregnant overseas and want an abortion have no choice but to try the local economy, which cannot be either easy or pleasant in Baghdad or other parts of our empire these days.
Our armed missionaries live in a closed-off, self-contained world serviced by its own airline -- the Air Mobility Command, with its fleet of long-range C-17 Globemasters, C-5 Galaxies, C-141 Starlifters, KC-135 Stratotankers, KC-10 Extenders, and C-9 Nightingales that link our far-flung outposts from Greenland to Australia. For generals and admirals, the military provides seventy-one Learjets, thirteen Gulfstream IIIs, and seventeen Cessna Citation luxury jets to fly them to such spots as the armed forces' ski and vacation center at Garmisch in the Bavarian Alps or to any of the 234 military golf courses the Pentagon operates worldwide. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld flies around in his own personal Boeing 757, called a C-32A in the Air Force.
Our "Footprint" on the World
Of all the insensitive, if graphic, metaphors we've allowed into our vocabulary, none quite equals "footprint" to describe the military impact of our empire. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers and senior members of the Senate's Military Construction Subcommittee such as Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) are apparently incapable of completing a sentence without using it. Establishing a more impressive footprint has now become part of the new justification for a major enlargement of our empire -- and an announced repositioning of our bases and forces abroad -- in the wake of our conquest of Iraq. The man in charge of this project is Andy Hoehn, deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. He and his colleagues are supposed to draw up plans to implement President Bush's preventive war strategy against "rogue states," "bad guys," and "evil-doers." They have identified something they call the "arc of instability," which is said to run from the Andean region of South America (read: Colombia) through North Africa and then sweeps across the Middle East to the Philippines and Indonesia. This is, of course, more or less identical with what used to be called the Third World -- and perhaps no less crucially it covers the world's key oil reserves. Hoehn contends, "When you overlay our footprint onto that, we don't look particularly well-positioned to deal with the problems we're now going to confront."
Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America's version of the colony is the military base. By following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever larger imperial stance and the militarism that grows with it. Militarism and imperialism are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Each thrives off the other. Already highly advanced in our country, they are both on the verge of a quantum leap that will almost surely stretch our military beyond its capabilities, bringing about fiscal insolvency and very possibly doing mortal damage to our republican institutions. The only way this is discussed in our press is via reportage on highly arcane plans for changes in basing policy and the positioning of troops abroad -- and these plans, as reported in the media, cannot be taken at face value.
Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, commanding our 1,800 troops occupying the old French Foreign Legion base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti at the entrance to the Red Sea, claims that in order to put "preventive war" into action, we require a "global presence," by which he means gaining hegemony over any place that is not already under our thumb. According to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, the idea is to create "a global cavalry" that can ride in from "frontier stockades" and shoot up the "bad guys" as soon as we get some intelligence on them.
"Lily Pads" in Australia, Romania, Mali, Algeria . . .
In order to put our forces close to every hot spot or danger area in this newly discovered arc of instability, the Pentagon has been proposing -- this is usually called "repositioning" -- many new bases, including at least four and perhaps as many as six permanent ones in Iraq. A number of these are already under construction -- at Baghdad International Airport, Tallil air base near Nasariyah, in the western desert near the Syrian border, and at Bashur air field in the Kurdish region of the north. (This does not count the previously mentioned Anaconda, which is currently being called an "operating base," though it may very well become permanent over time.) In addition, we plan to keep under our control the whole northern quarter of Kuwait -- 1,600 square miles out of Kuwait's 6,900 square miles -- that we now use to resupply our Iraq legions and as a place for Green Zone bureaucrats to relax.
Other countries mentioned as sites for what Colin Powell calls our new "family of bases" include: In the impoverished areas of the "new" Europe -- Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria; in Asia -- Pakistan (where we already have four bases), India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and even, unbelievably, Vietnam; in North Africa -- Morocco, Tunisia, and especially Algeria (scene of the slaughter of some 100,00 civilians since 1992, when, to quash an election, the military took over, backed by our country and France); and in West Africa -- Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and Sierra Leone (even though it has been torn by civil war since 1991). The models for all these new installations, according to Pentagon sources, are the string of bases we have built around the Persian Gulf in the last two decades in such anti-democratic autocracies as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.
Most of these new bases will be what the military, in a switch of metaphors, calls "lily pads" to which our troops could jump like so many well-armed frogs from the homeland, our remaining NATO bases, or bases in the docile satellites of Japan and Britain. To offset the expense involved in such expansion, the Pentagon leaks plans to close many of the huge Cold War military reservations in Germany, South Korea, and perhaps Okinawa as part of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's "rationalization" of our armed forces. In the wake of the Iraq victory, the U.S. has already withdrawn virtually all of its forces from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, partially as a way of punishing them for not supporting the war strongly enough. It wants to do the same thing to South Korea, perhaps the most anti-American democracy on Earth today, which would free up the 2nd Infantry Division on the demilitarized zone with North Korea for probable deployment to Iraq, where our forces are significantly overstretched.
In Europe, these plans include giving up several bases in Germany, also in part because of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's domestically popular defiance of Bush over Iraq. But the degree to which we are capable of doing so may prove limited indeed. At the simplest level, the Pentagon's planners do not really seem to grasp just how many buildings the 71,702 soldiers and airmen in Germany alone occupy and how expensive it would be to reposition most of them and build even slightly comparable bases, together with the necessary infrastructure, in former Communist countries like Romania, one of Europe's poorest countries. Lt. Col. Amy Ehmann in Hanau, Germany, has said to the press "There's no place to put these people" in Romania, Bulgaria, or Djibouti, and she predicts that 80% of them will in the end stay in Germany. It's also certain that generals of the high command have no intention of living in backwaters like Constanta, Romania, and will keep the U.S. military headquarters in Stuttgart while holding on to Ramstein Air Force Base, Spangdahlem Air Force Base, and the Grafenwöhr Training Area.
One reason why the Pentagon is considering moving out of rich democracies like Germany and South Korea and looks covetously at military dictatorships and poverty-stricken dependencies is to take advantage of what the Pentagon calls their "more permissive environmental regulations." The Pentagon always imposes on countries in which it deploys our forces so-called Status of Forces Agreements, which usually exempt the United States from cleaning up or paying for the environmental damage it causes. This is a standing grievance in Okinawa, where the American environmental record has been nothing short of abominable. Part of this attitude is simply the desire of the Pentagon to put itself beyond any of the restraints that govern civilian life, an attitude increasingly at play in the "homeland" as well. For example, the 2004 defense authorization bill of $401.3 billion that President Bush signed into law in November 2003 exempts the military from abiding by the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
While there is every reason to believe that the impulse to create ever more lily pads in the Third World remains unchecked, there are several reasons to doubt that some of the more grandiose plans, for either expansion or downsizing, will ever be put into effect or, if they are, that they will do anything other than make the problem of terrorism worse than it is. For one thing, Russia is opposed to the expansion of U.S. military power on its borders and is already moving to checkmate American basing sorties into places like Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The first post-Soviet-era Russian airbase in Kyrgyzstan has just been completed forty miles from the U.S. base at Bishkek, and in December 2003, the dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, declared that he would not permit a permanent deployment of U.S. forces in his country even though we already have a base there.
When it comes to downsizing, on the other hand, domestic politics may come into play. By law the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closing Commission must submit its fifth and final list of domestic bases to be shut down to the White House by September 8, 2005. As an efficiency measure, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has said he'd like to be rid of at least one-third of domestic Army bases and one-quarter of domestic Air Force bases, which is sure to produce a political firestorm on Capitol Hill. In order to protect their respective states' bases, the two mother hens of the Senate's Military Construction Appropriations Subcommittee, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Dianne Feinstein, are demanding that the Pentagon close overseas bases first and bring the troops now stationed there home to domestic bases, which could then remain open. Hutchison and Feinstein included in the Military Appropriations Act of 2004 money for an independent commission to investigate and report on overseas bases that are no longer needed. The Bush administration opposed this provision of the Act but it passed anyway and the president signed it into law on November 22, 2003. The Pentagon is probably adept enough to hamstring the commission, but a domestic base-closing furor clearly looms on the horizon.
By far the greatest defect in the "global cavalry" strategy, however, is that it accentuates Washington's impulse to apply irrelevant military remedies to terrorism. As the prominent British military historian, Correlli Barnett, has observed, the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq only increased the threat of al-Qaeda. From 1993 through the 9/11 assaults of 2001, there were five major al-Qaeda attacks worldwide; in the two years since then there have been seventeen such bombings, including the Istanbul suicide assaults on the British consulate and an HSBC Bank. Military operations against terrorists are not the solution. As Barnett puts it, "Rather than kicking down front doors and barging into ancient and complex societies with simple nostrums of 'freedom and democracy,' we need tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a profound understanding of the people and cultures we are dealing with -- an understanding up till now entirely lacking in the top-level policy-makers in Washington, especially in the Pentagon."
In his notorious "long, hard slog" memo on Iraq of October 16, 2003, Defense secretary Rumsfeld wrote, "Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror." Correlli-Barnett's "metrics" indicate otherwise. But the "war on terrorism" is at best only a small part of the reason for all our military strategizing. The real reason for constructing this new ring of American bases along the equator is to expand our empire and reinforce our military domination of the world.
Chalmers Johnson's latest book is The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan). His previous book, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, has just been updated with a new introduction.
-------- war crimes
NATO Troops, Acting on a Tip, Press Hunt for Serbian Fugitive
January 15, 2004
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/international/europe/15KARA.html?pagewanted=all
NATO troops conducted raids this week close to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in an attempt to track down a leading war-crimes suspect, Radovan Karadzic.
In the latest operation, early Tuesday morning, American, British and Italian soldiers, some equipped with sniffer dogs, surrounded and searched a house in Pale, the former wartime capital of the Bosnian Serbs.
The building was used by Dr. Karadzic, the former leader of Bosnian Serbs, during the 1992-95 war, which tore the country apart and left as many as 200,000 people dead.
Along with the former Bosnian Serb military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, Dr. Karadzic is on the top of the list of suspects sought by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He is wanted for 16 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity during the war.
A NATO spokesman said the raids began on Saturday with a tip that Dr. Karadzic, 58, was seeking medical attention in Pale.
Hundreds of troops combed the area and searched the home of Dr. Karadzic's wife, as well as a local hospital and church.
One man, whom peacekeeping troops said was part of the network used by the fugitive to hide from NATO peacekeepers, was detained for questioning. Documents were also seized, and military officials said those papers prompted Tuesday's search.
NATO is under growing pressure to arrest Dr. Karadzic before its withdrawal from Bosnia, which is planned for the end of this year.
The arrest of war crimes suspects is also a condition for joining NATO's partnership program, for which Bosnia has applied. The program is regarded as a first step toward full membership.
"We are getting closer than ever," said Capt. David Sullivan, spokesman for the peacekeepers, speaking by telephone from Sarajevo.
He stressed that co-operation with the Bosnian Serb authorities, which have been accused in the past of helping to hide Dr. Karadzic, had been "outstanding."
Bosnia has been split into two entities, the Serb-controlled Republika Srpska and a Muslim-Croat Federation, since the end of the war.
Bosnian Serb officials have barely hidden their reluctance to help track down their former leader, but admit to being under increased pressure to co-operate.
Dragan Kalinic, the speaker of Parliament in Republika Srpska, was quoted Monday by Agence France-Presse as telling journalists that the Serb-run part of Bosnia had been threatened with unspecified sanctions if cooperation was not forthcoming.
In early December, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced at NATO headquarters in Brussels that American forces would assist in peacekeepers' efforts to arrest Dr. Karadzic and other indicted suspects in the coming year.
"I believe that there is a concern that it would be shameful to leave without capturing him," said Senad Slatina, an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Sarajevo.
Most previous attempts to detain Dr. Karadzic have centered in southern Bosnia, around Foca.
Mr. Slatina said many Bosnians still doubted any outsiders' commitment to finding Dr. Karadzic.
"With just 10 men, 8 years and the resources of the strongest military alliance in the world, I would guarantee that by now I would have $5 million in my pocket," he said referring to the reward offered in exchange for information leading to Dr. Karadzic's arrest.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
2 on 9/11 Panel Are Questioned on Earlier Security Roles
January 15, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/national/15TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - The executive director of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has become a witness in the inquiry and has been interviewed by his own staff about his involvement in shaping the Bush administration's early counterterrorism strategy, officials said on Wednesday.
In addition, one of the 10 commissioners on the panel, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, was also interviewed this week. The unusual dual roles of the director, Philip D. Zelikow, and the commissioner, Jamie S. Gorelick, have raised fresh questions about potential conflicts of interest in the commission, which has been dogged by concerns about its independence since it was created in 2002.
In the transition before President Bush's inauguration in January 2001, Mr. Zelikow worked on Mr. Bush's team to help formulate national security policy. Because he participated in those discussions, investigators interviewed him to learn how much information the incoming administration had about the possibility of a major attack and what steps it took to guard against that threat.
The transition period between the Clinton and Bush administrations remains a sensitive issue, particularly in an election year. Many conservatives and supporters of Mr. Bush have argued that President Bill Clinton did not do enough to deal with the threat from Al Qaeda. Some Democrats and former Clinton administration officials have countered that the Bush administration did not take terrorism seriously enough, either, before 9/11.
Mr. Zelikow, a staff member of the National Security Council in the first Bush administration and a close associate of Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, has been a target of criticism because of concerns that his role as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission could pose a potential conflict. But it had not previously been disclosed that the panel interviewed him about the early planning of the Bush administration.
"He does have information that could be of interest to the commission's report," a spokesman for the commission, Al Felzenberg, said. "He wanted to be interviewed. He said, `If I have anything that can be germane, ask me, and I'll tell you what I saw and what I heard and what I recommended.' "
Mr. Zelikow declined to be interviewed about the issue because of commission policy, Mr. Felzenberg said. Commission officials said they did not believe that his role as a witness would impede the investigation because he had removed himself from decisions or oversight involving his work on the transition team. But the general counsel is continuing to examine the terms of his recusal to determine whether it goes far enough to avoid any possible conflicts, officials said.
"This is not a closed issue," said a commission official.
In addition, Ms. Gorelick, one of the 10 commissioners to whom Mr. Zelikow reports, said she had been interviewed this week about her involvement in terrorism policy. She was the top deputy in the mid-90's to Attorney General Janet Reno. Like Mr. Zelikow, she has also recused herself from dealings involving decisions in which she was involved.
Officials said Ms. Gorelick and two other commission members had also withdrawn from involvement in aviation issues because their law firms had airlines as clients. A handful of other staff members besides Mr. Zelikow have recused themselves from specific areas, as well, because of past positions.
Mr. Zelikow and Ms. Gorelick are the sole commission officials known to have been interviewed. They are also the only two commission officials with wide access to highly classified White House documents.
Mr. Zelikow's arrangement has caused particular concern among some commission officials because it means that the man responsible for the day-to-day operations of the panel will be removed from what could be an important part of its inquiry.
Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the World Trade Center and who has helped lead a group of survivors pushing for more answers about the attacks, said the situation called into question the independence of the commission.
"He has a huge conflict of interest," Ms. Breitweiser said when told that Mr. Zelikow had been interviewed. "This is what we've been concerned about from Day 1."
Her concern, Ms. Breitweiser said, is that the commission report "is going to be a whitewash."
"What we want to know is why they didn't investigate Osama bin Laden sooner," she added.
Her group plans to meet commission officials on Thursday, and family members are likely to raise their concerns about possible conflicts, she said.
Ms. Gorelick said potential conflicts and recusals were the price that the commission had to pay for having workers with extensive experience in national security.
"You want to have people who are knowledgeable," she said. "So you make certain accommodations to have that, and the accommodations we've made don't undermine the investigation in any way."
Since its inception, the commission has been a focus of questions about whether possible conflicts could taint its findings. The White House's first choice for chairman, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, stepped down rather than release a list of business clients at his consulting firm.
Some family members had protested that Mr. Kissinger's ties to multinational corporations, foreign governments and the Republican establishment in Washington would make it difficult for him to lead an objective investigation.
The first choice of Congressional Democrats for vice chairman, George J. Mitchell, the former Senate leader, also stepped down after questions about possible conflicts over his corporate clients.
-------- homeland security
Brazil Jails American Airlines Pilot Over Fingerprinting Snub
January 15, 2004
By LARRY ROHTER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/international/americas/15BRAZ.html?pagewanted=all
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan. 14 - An American Airlines pilot arriving in São Paulo, Brazil's largest city, was jailed Wednesday after he protested new procedures requiring the fingerprinting and photographing of all incoming United States citizens by making what Federal Police officers described as an obscene gesture.
Eleven other crew members on the same flight from Miami were refused entry to Brazil and detained after the police said that they had refused to be fingerprinted and behaved in a "derisive" manner. They were ordered to return to the United States on the next available flight, which was to leave São Paulo on Wednesday night.
The dispute heightened Brazilian-American tensions that started Jan. 1 when Brazil demanded that arriving American citizens - and American citizens alone - be photographed and fingerprinted. The policy was in retaliation for increased security measures in the United States that require citizens of all but 27 countries, mostly European, to undergo nearly identical procedures.
At a conference of Western Hemisphere heads of government on Monday, Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, personally asked President Bush that Brazilians be exempted from the requirements. He followed that on Tuesday with public criticism of the United States procedures, saying to reporters that "if the problem is to fight terrorism, this measure makes no sense" because "we have no culture of terrorism" in Brazil.
The police said that the American Airlines pilot, Dale Hersh, 52, had been charged with "disrespect for authority," an offense that carries a jail term of six months to one year. It was unclear whether he would be allowed to leave the country before facing trial, and the United States Consulate in São Paulo issued a statement saying that American officials were "working with both the Federal Police and American Airlines to resolve the matter."
American Airlines is one of the biggest carriers from the United States to Brazil and the rest of Latin America, with flights from New York City, Miami and Dallas to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte. A spokeswoman in Miami, Martha Pantin, said in a telephone interview that the company "regrets any misunderstanding" with the Brazilian authorities and plans to continue its normal flight schedule.
"American Airlines and its employees pride themselves on always being professional and courteous with everyone with whom they come in contact," she said. "The company apologizes to the Brazilian government, the airport authorities, the police or anyone else who may have perceived anything they believe to be disrespectful."
Warsaw's Mayor to Cancel Visit
WARSAW, Jan. 13 (Reuters) - The mayor of Warsaw said Tuesday that he would cancel a visit to the United States to protest its policy of fingerprinting visitors as part of new antiterror measures.
The mayor, Lech Kaczynski, who leads a major right-wing party, was supposed to pay a visit in April to Chicago and New York, both home to large Polish communities. "I will go only when there will be no need for taking pictures and fingerprinting," Mr. Kaczynski told reporters.
Poland had hoped that as a reward for its help in the war in Iraq, the United States would relax entry visa rules for its citizens. Poland has sent 2,500 troops to Iraq and is one of America's staunchest allies in Europe.
--------
F.B.I. Director Calls Attack Quite Likely
January 15, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/national/15FBI.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 - The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said on Wednesday that terrorists would "quite probably" strike the United States again and that Al Qaeda remained a major threat despite the lowering of the nation's threat status last week.
"Al Qaeda would very much relish another high-profile attack within the United States in which numerous U.S. citizens would be killed," Mr. Mueller told reporters at a luncheon meeting sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. "We have disrupted their capability, but there are still persons out there who have that capability."
The sobering assessment echoed comments that he and other officials like Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge have made in recent months.
After three weeks of intense concerns about the threat of a hijacked airliner or other terrorist attack, the Bush administration lowered the threat level on Friday to yellow, or "elevated" status.
But, Mr. Mueller said, "We are still in a position where we have substantial concern about an attack from Al Qaeda," based on intelligence from the United States and overseas. "We quite probably will at some point in time have another attack."
Mr. Mueller said he saw reason for optimism because of improved sharing and analysis of intelligence, cooperation from allies and the captures of leading Qaeda figures.
But much to the frustration of American officials, the two senior leaders of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, have eluded capture since the United States uprooted the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001. Most intelligence officials say they believe that the two are hiding on the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Mr. Mueller acknowledged that the remote terrain of Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan made it exceptionally difficult to hunt for Mr. bin Laden.
"It's somewhat like finding a needle in a haystack," he said.
Even so, he added that American officials had made progress in pursuing Mr. bin Laden.
"I am confident that we will find him," Mr. Mueller said.
-------- terrorism
FBI Chief Says Tribunals May Try 9/11 Suspects
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18261-2004Jan14?language=printer
The director of the FBI said yesterday that he expects the accused conspirators in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, to be tried by military tribunals rather than by criminal courts.
An aide to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said later in the day that Mueller "did not intend to imply" that decisions had been made about Mohammed or the other accused al Qaeda conspirators. Administration sources also said that there are no immediate plans to move Mohammed or the other alleged Sept. 11 plotters to the controversial military tribunals.
But Mueller's comments, made in response to a reporter's questions at a news media luncheon in Washington, provide a rare hint of the direction the Bush administration might pursue in its treatment of key suspects in the terrorist plot, who have been held secretly and interrogated since their captures.
Mueller's remarks also appeared to bolster previous indications that the government is reluctant to attempt more criminal prosecutions like the one against alleged al Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, who has bedeviled federal officials with his courtroom antics and has brought the case to a halt with demands to call the alleged conspirators as witnesses.
During the lunch, sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, Mueller said the FBI has been gathering evidence for use in a possible legal case against Mohammed and other detainees.
"I would expect that there would be tribunals at some point," Mueller said.
A Pentagon spokesman said no decisions have been made about trying Mohammed or any other suspects in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A White House spokesman declined to comment. To date, military authorities have designated only six detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as eligible for the tribunals. The facility holds alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Mohammed, who was captured by U.S. forces in Pakistan in March 2003, was al Qaeda's operations chief and is believed to have served as the mastermind of the plan to hijack the airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Also in U.S. custody are Ramzi Binalshibh, who is accused of helping to organize the attacks, and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster of the hijackers.
Mueller's remarks come at a time when the Supreme Court has taken an interest in the executive branch's assertion that it has the authority to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects without giving them access to courts or lawyers.
The court announced last week that it will consider the appeal of Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen captured in Afghanistan who was designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush and has been held in a military brig without access to a lawyer. The Justice Department says the Constitution authorizes the president to order the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens fighting for terrorist groups abroad.
The high court has also agreed to consider an appeal by foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, who say that they are entitled to have access to U.S. criminal courts.
Michael Greenberger, a law professor who heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, said that turning to military tribunals in terrorism cases would be "a clear reaction to the problems [the government has] encountered with the criminal approach."
"They obviously believe they will circumvent the persistent problems that they have found in Moussaoui, particularly his claim that he has a right to interview detainees," Greenberger said. "They want to appear to be giving these people some kind of process. This idea that they would be held indefinitely is not one that is being well-received by the courts."
Prosecutors have refused to grant Moussaoui access to Mohammed and other detainees, prompting a judge to eliminate the death penalty as a possible punishment for Moussaoui and to bar the introduction of evidence linking him to the terrorist attacks. The government has appealed that ruling and has indicated that it could transfer Moussaoui to a military tribunal if it loses.
At the media lunch, Mueller was asked whether he believes Mohammed, Binalshibh and other alleged plotters should be put on trial in criminal courts or military tribunals, and whether the FBI is gathering evidence for such proceedings.
"Our general role is obtaining the evidence, and, yes, we have taken steps to obtain evidence in furtherance of any possible future prosecutions of them, absolutely," Mueller said, according to an FBI transcript.
The reporter then asked if there are any future prosecutions planned.
"I would expect that there would be tribunals at some point, yes," Mueller said.
FBI spokesman Michael Kortan said in a prepared statement issued yesterday evening that "the director acknowledged that the FBI's role is to collect evidence in furtherance of a possible future proceeding. He did not intend to imply what form that will take with respect to any individual . . . only that the FBI has taken steps to obtain and preserve evidence in support of whatever proceeding may ultimately be held."
Asked about the status of al Qaeda in the wake of the recent heightened terrorism alert, Mueller warned that Osama bin Laden's network is likely to strike the United States again.
"Al Qaeda would very much relish another high-profile attack within the United States," Mueller said.
Researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Scientists Find New Way To Store Hydrogen Fuel
SpaceDaily
Jan 15, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-04a.html
Chicago - University of Chicago scientists have proposed a new method for storing hydrogen fuel in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The lack of practical storage methods has hindered the more widespread use of hydrogen fuels, which are both renewable and environmentally clean. The most popular storage methods-liquid hydrogen and compressed hydrogen-require that the fuel be kept at extremely low temperatures or high pressures.
But the University of Chicago's Wendy Mao and David Mao have formed icy materials made of molecular hydrogen that require less stringent temperature and pressure storage conditions.
"This new class of compounds offers a possible alternative route for technologically useful hydrogen storage," said Russell Hemley, Senior Staff Scientist at the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The findings also could help explain how hydrogen becomes incorporated in growing planetary bodies, he said.
The father-daughter team synthesized compounds made of hydrogen and water, hydrogen and methane, and hydrogen and octane in a diamond-anvil cell, which researchers often use to simulate the high pressures found far beneath Earth's surface.
The hydrogen-water experiments produced the best results. "The hydrogen-water system has already yielded three compounds so far, with more likely to be found," said Wendy Mao, a graduate student in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago.
The compound that holds the most promise for hydrogen storage, called a hydrogen clathrate hydrate, was synthesized at pressures between 20,000 and 30,000 atmospheres and temperatures of minus 207 degrees Fahrenheit. More importantly, the compound remains stable at atmospheric pressure and a temperature of minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which liquid nitrogen boils.
"We thought that would be economically very feasible. Liquid nitrogen is easy and cheap to make," Wendy Mao said.
The hydrogen in a clathrate can be released when heated to 207 degrees Fahrenheit. The clathrate's environmentally friendly byproduct: water.
David Mao noted that while petroleum-based fuels will eventually run out, the supply of hydrogen is limitless. "Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe," said David Mao, a Visiting Scientist in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. If the new method of storing hydrogen fuel works as expected, "that's going to change everyone's life in a big way," he said.
The Maos have applied for a patent on their hydrogen clathrate synthesis technique, but one problem still remains: how to make the clathrates in quantities sufficient to power a car.
"We've only made them in very small amounts in diamond-anvil cells," Wendy Mao said. The Carnegie Institution's Hemley noted that the clathrates can be produced in gas pressure devices as well as diamond-anvil cells.
In the realm of planetary science, the study helps explain how some of Jupiter's moons could have incorporated hydrogen during their formation. Scientists once thought that the moons were incapable of retaining hydrogen during their formation.
Now it appears that Callisto, Ganymede and especially Europa contain large quantities of water ice, which would require the presence of hydrogen. The hydrogen clathrates that the Maos synthesized in the laboratory could have formed naturally under the temperature and pressure conditions expected to prevail inside these Jovian moons, Wendy Mao said.
-------- energy
Small Biz Owners Get Advice on Energy
By JOYCE M. ROSENBERG
AP Business Writer
Jan 15, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SMALL_TALK?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NEW YORK (AP) -- With parts of the country already suffering through bitter cold, small business owners are caught between the need to keep their offices and buildings warm and the need to save money.
If it's too cold at your company or you're spending too much on heating, there are steps you can take to improve the situation. What you're able to do might be somewhat limited, however, if you rent rather than own the premises.
Either way, the first thing to do is figure out why it's cold inside. Chances are you've got drafts from windows, doors, the roof, floors and even cracks in the walls that are letting the cold air in and allowing warm air to escape.
The solution to this problem is easy and can be done immediately: weather-strip, caulk and insulate the place, making it as airtight as possible.
Even if you spend a relatively small amount, you can do a lot to make yourself and employees more comfortable. As the utility Public Service of New Hampshire says in its Web site, "these measures should be the first line of attack against wasting energy." If you opt for a major insulation project, the Internet can help you decide what kind of insulation you need. The North American Insulation Manufacturers Association Web site at www.simplyinsulate.com has state-by-state information.
The Web is a good source for information on many aspects of energy savings. The site for the Alliance to Save Energy, www.ase.org, has tips and calculators on energy savings and has links to other sites. Some utilities also offer small businesses online help, among them Public Service of New Hampshire at www.psnh.com/Business/SmallBusiness/ReduceBill.asp. Also look at sites that offer advice to homeowners.
And don't overlook the U.S. Department of Energy. Its Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy site, www.eere.energy.gov/consumerinfo, has a lot of helpful tips. For example, its advice includes insulating cooling and heating ducts; if your heated air is passing through cold spaces, it will cool off rapidly.
Your problem might be that the building's heating system isn't what it used to be. Obviously this is not the optimum time of the year to replace it - unless it is broken beyond repair and you have no choice - but you can and should get it serviced. Even the simple task of replacing an air filter on a furnace will save you money because the furnace will operate more efficiently.
If the heating system is the problem, but you don't own the building, it will be hard for you to get it repaired or replaced unless the landlord agrees. So you're going to need to do some negotiating with the landlord.
Some other options are simple and free and just require a little common sense. Open the blinds and shades as fully as possible to let in the sunlight, which will warm up the office during the day. If the door to your business opens to the outside and us used frequently, consider building an enclosure around it that will cut down on some of the drafts; some restaurants have such enclosures so patrons seated near the front door don't freeze.
You might be tempted to buy electric space heaters, and for some businesses, that might be a sensible option. They'll help warm up small and medium-sized rooms. But they are expensive to operate and should be a last resort. You're probably better off tackling the cold problem at the source.
Whatever steps you take, remember that your investment in energy savings is tax deductible. But remember that if you decide to do something major like replace the heating system or install double-paned windows, such improvements must be amortized. They don't qualify for a Section 179 small business equipment tax deduction, since they are an integral part of a building.
If you have a home-based business, any money you put into keeping your office or other work area warmer will be tax deductible. Just remember that if you take steps to keep the whole house more comfortable, say by installing a new furnace, you can only deduct part of the cost. For example, if your office takes up 5 percent of your home's square footage, you can deduct only 5 percent of what you pay for the new furnace.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Israeli soldier awaits revised charge
January 15, 2004
The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/14/1073877897997.html
An Israeli soldier has been charged with aggravated assault for shooting a British peace activist.
But, in a rare prosecution of an Israeli soldier for shooting a civilian, the charge is likely to be revised to murder or manslaughter after Tom Hurndall, 22, who had been in a coma since the shooting, died yesterday.
The activist who had been in a coma since being shot by Israeli troops while acting as a so-called human shield has died nine months after the shooting, his family said on Wednesday.
Tom Hurndall, 22, died late on Tuesday in the London hospital where he had been lying clinically dead after being shot in the head by Israeli forces on April 11 last year.
"Tom died last night just before 8 p.m.," his mother, Jocelyn Hurndall, said in a statement.
Hurndall's sister, Sophie, said Tom had contracted pneumonia in the past few days. She said his death was a relief for the family, who had seen him lying in a coma for nine months.
"It is definitely a sense of relief," she told BBC radio. "But obviously there is great sadness, because it's a time when we have to finally accept that we're not going to have Tom back."
A statement on the Web site of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the pro-Palestinian peace group Hurndall was working with when he was shot, said his parents had called a vigil in central London on Wednesday to mark his death.
The Israeli army arrested a soldier late last year for the shooting and charged him on Monday with grievous bodily harm in the case.
Israeli sources said that with Hurndall's death the charges against the soldier were likely to be upgraded to manslaughter.
The activist's supporters say he was wearing a bright orange jacket and helping Palestinian children cross a street under fire in the Gaza Strip town of Rafah when he was shot.
The soldier, who has not been named, has also been charged with obstruction of justice for shooting the activist through the forehead as he tried to protect Palestinian children from Israeli bullets, and afterwards sought permission from his commander to kill Mr Hurndall, on the fabricated grounds that he was carrying a gun.
The soldier initially maintained he had opened fire on a man armed with a pistol, but later "admitted to firing in proximity to an unarmed civilian as a deterrent", according to the Israeli military. It said the army viewed the matter with "utmost severity".
An American ISM activist, Rachel Corrie, was crushed to death last March when she tried to stop an Israeli army bulldozer demolishing a Palestinian house in Rafah. The army said she was hit by a concrete slab that slid down a mound of earth and that the bulldozer driver did not see her.
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Shiites back cleric's call for elections in Iraq
1/15/2004
Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-01-15-iraq_x.htm
BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims shouting "No to America!" marched Thursday through this southern city to back their spiritual leader's call for early elections, a stand that could stymie a U.S. blueprint for transferring power to a new Iraqi administration.
The peaceful demonstration in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, came amid a string of bombings and clashes across the country over recent days that has killed 23 people. In latest incident, a university bus in Tikrit on Thursday ran over an anti-land mine, which exploded, killing two students and the driver.
An estimated 20,000-30,000 Shiite Muslims turned out to support Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani's demand that an interim legislature be elected directly and not chosen in provincial caucuses, as called for under the American plan.
The massive demonstration for the most powerful cleric of Iraq's majority Shiites showed that the United States cannot afford to take al-Sistani's criticism of the transfer plans lightly.
The Shiites appear to be becoming more vocal in their concerns about the political process - but, in contrast to the Sunni militants thought to be behind the anti-U.S. insurgency, the Shiites have not turned to violence. Since the U.S. invasion, Shiites, who suffered the most under Saddam, have largely refrained from attacking Americans.
Smaller demonstrations also took place Thursday in Baghdad, Ramadi and Mosul, of a few hundred people each, cautioning against aspects of the U.S. plan for Iraq's future, which they fear will divide the country.
Under the current plan, the United States will transfer power by July 1 to a provisional Iraqi government to be created by a legislature chosen by provincial caucuses. The plan envisions a two-year political transition before full elections in 2005.
U.S. officials say al-Sistani's demand for elections to choose members of the assembly are unreasonable because a credible election could not be conducted on such short notice due to the country's precarious security situation.
Iraqi leaders and U.S. authorities hope a meeting in New York on Monday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan will help resolve the impasse over al-Sistani's objections.
Annan has written to the Governing Council, saying that holding a credible election before June 30 may be impossible. Shiite council members dismissed that as the view of "faraway" experts unfamiliar with the realities of Iraq. Many Iraqis would like the United Nations to play a major role in the transfer of power.
"If the agreement is implemented under the supervision of the Americans alone or the coalition as a whole, it will be deficient because it will have been carried out under occupation," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish Governing Council member.
"But if it's implemented under the supervision of the United Nations, the Europeans and the Arab League, then it will be much more acceptable."
The question of legitimacy has dogged Iraqi politics since the downfall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April. The Governing Council is viewed by many Iraqis as a tool of U.S. administrator Paul Bremer, who hand-picked its 25 members in July. Many council members are Saddam critics who spent many years outside Iraq before returning home.
At a news conference Thursday in Baghdad, the current president of the Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi, said he believes al-Sistani can be convinced that elections cannot be held right away.
But even if al-Sistani relented on immediate elections, "he wants to see a better way of electing the legislature, better than the one proposed in (the) Nov. 15 agreement," said Pachachi, who met al-Sistani last week and is in frequent contact with him through intermediaries.
"We agreed that there is room for improvement, there are many many ideas to make it more transparent and inclusive ... whereby the Iraqi people, in a very obvious way, can manifest their desires," Pachachi said.
The Basra protesters shouted "No, no to America! Yes, yes to al-Sistani!" as they marched through the streets under the close watch of British soldiers before dispersing.
"We are here to support Sistani's edict to avoid an appointed council laying down our constitution. If that happens we will resist," said Osama Mohammad, a 32-year-old unemployed man.
Meanwhile, in Tikrit, a bus was taking home students from the University of Tikrit when it hit a mine planted in the road, throwing the vehicle into the air, Lt. Col. Steve Russell, commander of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, told reporters.
The bus driver had already dropped most of the students off at their homes before the explosion, Russell said. Two students and the driver were killed. The only other student on the bus had been sitting at the rear of the bus and was wounded but was expected to live, he said.
"What it shows us is how evil and sick minded these people (the attackers) are that they would target innocent university students," Russell said.
Tikrit is part of the so-called Sunni triangle in central Iraq, home to diehard Saddam loyalists who have been blamed for most of the insurgent attacks on civilians and U.S. forces.
U.S. troops conducted some 28 raids on Wednesday around Baqouba, 45 miles southeast of Tikrit, capturing 31 Saddam loyalists, the military said. The raids came hours after a car bomb attack against a police station in Baqouba that killed three people, including the car's driver.
In one of the raids, troops clashed with attackers, killing four, in the village of Abu Kharma, said an Army spokesman, Master Sgt. Robert Cargie.
In Khalas, 6 miles northwest of Baqouba, a patrol shot and killed two Iraqis digging a hole in the ground, apparently to plant bombs, Cargie said. He said the men did not fire at the troops but attempted to run away on spotting the patrol.
In Jalula, near Tikrit, U.S. soldiers returned fire at two people who attacked them with automatic weapons, killing one of them and injuring the other, Cargie said.
Elsewhere, two foreign civilian drivers were killed Wednesday during an attack near Tikrit on a convoy operated by U.S. contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root. On Tuesday, cars driving past a U.S. patrol in Samarra began shooting at the soldiers, who returned fire, killing eight Iraqis.
Also Thursday, bank notes bearing Saddam's portrait became obsolete as a three-month period to exchange them for the new dinar ended. More than 10,000 tons of worthless notes are being destroyed, said a joint statement by the Central Bank of Iraq and the Coalition Provisional Authority.
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Anti-war play scorches Bush and the case for war
Tim Robbins' Embedded takes aim at US troops, presidential strategists and military-controlled media
Pat McDonnell Twair
The Daily Star
15/01/04
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/features/10_01_04_c.asp
LOS ANGELES: Tim Robbins' black comedy, Embedded is a thinly disguised satire of the US invasion of Iraq.
The play focuses on three elements: enlisted US troops, presidential strategists labeled "the Cabal," and journalists who accept military censorship of their dispatches.
There are no revelations during the 82 minutes that Embedded unfolds; in fact, it is a rehash of stories emanating from Iraq since March 19. However, when observed through the prism of Robbins' sarcastic wit, the play makes for big time entertainment and hilarity.
The lobby of the 99-seat Actors Gang Theater is festooned with European and US newspaper photo spreads of the initial days of the war. The contrast is stunning between British dailies, which focus on Iraqi wounded, and US coverage emphasizing "surgical strikes."
The darkened stage opens on two enlisted men bidding farewell to their wives. "Are you going to miss me," a woman asks her husband who is about to ship off to Gomorrah, a petroleum-producing country ruled by the "Butcher of Babylon."
"With an ache," the sergeant (Brian T. Finney) replies.
We see Private Jen-Jen Ryan (Kaili Holister) bidding farewell to her parents. Her father apologizes that if he'd had a better job, he could have sent her to college instead of her having to enlist in the military to get a job. An announcement warns the audience that if it has any objections to the message of Embedded, it can go to a designated spot three blocks away and voice its dissent.
"If you don't like what's happening, move to Iran."
The foolish bombasity of the Cabal, ensconced in a Washington "Office of Strategic Plans" reaps the most laughs, beginning with the statement that "to lead by example is cowardly." Wearing grotesque masks, Rum-Rum, Woof, Pearly While, Cove, Dick and Gondola conspire on when and how to launch the war. An attack on the US is proposed, but is put down for being "so in the 70s."
The urgency for a pre-emptive strike is uppermost.
"If we don't get this war started soon," says one, "we'll be competing with NBA playoffs."
Gondola, wearing a necktie and pantsuit, is the only woman in the Cabal. The super-hawks frequently pay homage to Leo Strauss, the political philosopher credited with founding the neoconservative movement.
"Leonardo Strauss. All hail Leo Strauss," they shout to the German-born strategist who blamed liberals for the rise of Adolph Hitler and extolled the usefulness of lies in politics.
The show is stolen by Colonel Hardchannel (V.J. Foster) who curses at, berates and demeans American journalists enduring his boot camp for reporters about to be "embedded" with invading US troops.
Calling his recruits maggot journalists, the gravel-voiced colonel tells his subjects they must submit all reports to him.
"If a Babylonian granary is bombed," he thunders, "it is to be called a poison factory."
Vignettes of each group are rapidly juxtaposed. We see Private Jen-Jen on patrol with her boyfriend, Private Perez (Jay R. Martinez). "Do you think there's depleted uranium in them thar hills?" she asks.
Perez replies that there probably is that's why he's taking extra vitamins, as if to ward off the radioactivity.
As Hardchannel warns embedded reporters not to reveal that it was a wrong turn led to Jen-Jen's capture by the Gomorrans, the Cabal fusses: "We must save Private What's-Her-Name."
In the meantime, Hardchannel encourages embedded photographers to take close-ups of corpses recovered from mass graves, but to avoid taking photos of new Gormorran casualties. The audience also sees Jen-Jen being treated kindly by a British- educated Babylonian doctor. Later, she tells her parents that her captors were kind to her. Her parents assure her she was drugged and doesn't recall the facts.
Jen-Jen laments over the women she shared a tent with. Four of them were single mothers who joined the Army after their welfare payments stopped. One of them was killed; now her children are orphans.
There is nothing new for informed Americans in this scornful examination of George W. Bush's war on Iraq, but it probably will make them feel justified for all the hours spent marching in anti-war demonstrations before March 19. It might even educate some "undecideds" who remain unidentified in a country divided between pro- and anti-Bush proponents.
"Embedded" is Robbins' seventh play. It came about in response to retaliations against him and his partner of 15 years actress Susan Sarandon for speaking out against the war.
In January 2003, Sarandon appeared in 30-second TV spots, stating: "Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags and women and children start dying in Iraq, I need to know what Iraq did to us."
Bush supporters did not like these announcements appearing. They complained and they threatened. They even went on right-wing radio shows and called the pair actor-vists, unpatriotic and traitors.
After the war started, United Way canceled Sarandon's appearance for a conference on women. Days later, Robbins was told not to come with his family for the 15th anniversary of the film Bull Durham at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Just three days later, Robbins was scheduled to speak at the National Press Club in Washington. In that speech, he emphasized that "a chill wind is blowing in this nation. A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown: If you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications."
Once his script was ready, Robbins decided to debut his polemic Nov. 15 at the Actors Gang Theater, which he founded with other UCLA graduates in 1981. Embedded has played to a full house ever since.
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Activist rabbi faces trial in Israel
By Ben Lynfield,
January 15, 2004
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0115/p06s02-wome.html
JERUSALEM - To Israeli state prosecutors Arik Ascherman is a criminal, but to Palestinian Bassam Kiswani he is "the sweetest rabbi."
Ascherman, an immigrant from Erie, Pa., is the head of Rabbis for Human Rights, an organization of 90 rabbis, almost all of them immigrants from Western countries, who bring alleged human rights abuses, usually against the Palestinians, to the attention of the Israeli public and authorities. It is at times unpopular work in a society that views itself as being in a war for survival and where rabbis are often identified with hawkish, right-wing attitudes.
Ascherman, joined by two other defendants, went on trial Wednesday for interfering with police during demolitions of two Palestinian homes last year. In one case, he blocked a bulldozer and in another, he refused to leave the roof of a house threatened with destruction. The houses were destroyed on grounds they were built without permits.
Former municipality officials admit that many Palestinians are forced to build illegally because the city denies them the chance to obtain permits as part of a policy to maintain Jewish demographic superiority in Jerusalem.
Mr. Kiswani says he poured about $100,000 into building his home despite being denied a permit and lived in it for two years until he and his family of 12 became homeless when police dragged Ascherman away and completed the demolition. "I saw him defending my house," said Kiswani outside the courtroom.
The trial is the highlight of a decade of activism for Ascherman, who draws on the Bible, Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Martin Luther King Jr. as inspirations. Ascherman and other activists accompany Palestinians every fall as they harvest olives, to discourage West Bank settlers from attacking the farmers. He tries to help Palestinians in need of medical treatment get past checkpoints speedily. His group also lobbies against government budget cuts which hit Israel's poor hard. But his critics say his universalism has taken him too far and that he neglects self defense and other rights of Jewish Israelis.
Seated in his office, the lanky Harvard graduate says his human rights emphasis derives foremost from Genesis Chapter 1 verse 27, which says that "God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them."
He also emphasizes Leviticus 19 verse 33, which highlights the need to not maltreat the stranger, and verse 35, which rules out double standards in judgment.
Ascherman says that Israel's demolition policy contravenes that and he hopes to use his trial to put government actions in the public spotlight. "Not everything that is legal is just and that is the whole point of civil disobedience," Ascherman says. "The demolition policy tramples on the torah, which is my duty as a rabbi to uphold."
Heschel, a Vietnam War opponent, taught that "in a free society some are guilty and all are responsible," Ascherman stresses. "The principle is that if the law is unjust you challenge it as a last resort," Ascherman says."There is something more confrontational about facing a bulldozer than sitting at a lunch counter but the principle is absolutely the same and some of the things Dr. King did become confrontational."
Israeli state prosecutor Shlomit Landes has little patience for Ascherman's arguments. "This trial is not the place to deliberate over the question of discrimination," she says. "They can turn to the political system for that. They interfered with the police." More than 300 US rabbis have petitioned the Israeli government asking that the charges be dropped and that the demolitions be halted.
But inside Israel Ascherman has many critics, including several rabbis that dropped out of Rabbis for Human Rights on the grounds that he was soft on Palestinian human rights violations or was inattentive to Israeli concerns.
"The problem is not only Israeli bulldozers, it's Palestinian suicide bombers and [the] hate being taught in their schools," says Jerusalem rabbi and philosopher David Hartman. "They should protest against mosque sermons that demonize the Jews."
"Occupation is not an abstraction," he adds. "There is a reality of war and that reality has not been given up by the Palestinians. They still are in armed conflict against us. It's a terrorist war. The occupation is a result of trying to protect human lives. It's an attempt to enhance the dignity of man. I wonder about Israeli lives as well, which also concern the dignity of man. There is a horrible perversion here of seeing the enemy aggressor as victim."
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