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NUCLEAR
Study Probes Cancer Risk of X - Rays, Scans
US Concerned Over Any Nigeria - N.Korea Missile Sale
The Effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq
Past crime, present fear
Nuclear Inquiry Skips Pakistani Army
Musharraf Faces Tough Choice Over Nukes
Congressional Staffers to Go to Tehran
Iraqi scientists call on Blair to resign over 'arsenal lies'
'The public must look to what is missing from the [Hutton] report'
Roh replaces top defense, national security aides
U.S. Envoy Hopeful About N. Korea Talks
U.S. Sees No Future for Reactor Program
Bush Seeking Big Increase in Missile Defense
Bush Seeks More Money for Missile Defense
AN ECODETECTIVE'S JOURNEY INTO THE CENTER OF NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE
US fails to get Russia on board in fight against spread of WMD
Russia planning maneuvers of its nuclear forces next month
Russia-Iran nuclear ties fully legal: minister
Russia Said Preparing Nuclear Exercise
U.S., Russian Officials Hold Arms Talks
Energy Department postpones picking site to make nuclear triggers
Nuclear Testing
Hanford jobs to plunge by 2008
'Hot' waste issue heats up at Capitol
Plutonium is a silvery radiological poison
White House rejects independent Iraq probe
Defogging war
Life lessons - Robert Strange McNamara
News Analysis: Bush's Risky Options
Intelligence Probe Would Be Risky for Bush
White House Cites Iraq's History of Seeking Arms as a Reason for War
The Hypocrisy of Powell's Lecture
MILITARY
U.S. Probes Cause of Deadly Afghan Blast
7 G.I.'s Are Killed in Explosion in Afghanistan
Explosion in Afghanistan Kills 7 U.S. Soldiers, Wounds 3
Brazilian president attends India's Republic Day military show
Bosnian Serbs to destroy some 4,000 surface-to-air missiles
Bio-weapon sensors
Bush budget proposes more bio-surveillance
General Dynamics inks $8 billion sub deal
Northrop Grumman, GD to Split Contract
Iraqi nerve agent
No moderates in Iran
U.S. Commander Surveys Challenges in Iraq Region
Kurds Press for Independence
Israeli Military Blows Up Attacker's Home
11 Killed By Bomb On Bus in Jerusalem Deaths Shadow Prisoner Swap
Israel, Hezbollah Complete Prisoner Swap
NATO chief sees possible wider role in Iraq, Afghanistan
Powell asserts NATO 'priority'
Three teens freed from Guantanamo
Leading Space Organizations Announce Creation
Tinker, Tailor, Jurist, Spy
U.S. Acknowledges Flaws in Iraq Intelligence
Hill Probers Fault Iraq Intelligence
Commander of US navy ship captured by N. Korea in 1960s dies
Army Expansion Could Last 5 Years
The mess on military bases
Bipartisan Request Seeks Halt to Internet Voting
Gilligan Resignation Statement in Full
Inquiry Leaves BBC in Crisis
"Embedding" hampered Iraq media independence -book
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Veto Threatened on Bill to Restrict Powers Under Terrorism Law
White House Intensifies Efforts to Safeguard Patriot Act
Senators to Request Extension for 9/11 Panel
3 Teenagers Are Released From Guantánamo and Sent Home
U.S. Releases 3 Teens From Guantanamo
General Warns of Pakistani, Saudi Extremists
ENERGY
Energy Department Backs Away From Alternative Fuel Fleets
Firms Win Energy Grants for Idling Reduction Technologies
OTHER
Non-Stick Chemicals Poisoning Wildlife
Panel of Experts Finds That Anti-Pollution Laws Are Outdated
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Study Probes Cancer Risk of X - Rays, Scans
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-X-Rays-Cancer-Risk.html
LONDON (AP) -- The risk of cancer from common X-rays and increasingly popular CT scans ranges from less than 1 percent to about 3 percent, according to a new study.
The small risk posed by X-ray radiation is well-known, but the study by researchers from Oxford University and Cancer Research U.K. makes the most careful effort to date to estimate it precisely, the scientists said.
CT scans, also known as CAT scans, are computer-enhanced X-rays that can provide a better view of all parts of the body. But they emit significantly more radiation than a standard X-ray.
In the United States, doctors have urged caution about unnecessarily using the scans on children. Children are more sensitive to radiation and exposure is cumulative.
The new research indicates the cancer risk -- ranging from 0.6 percent to 3.2 percent -- varies depending on the frequency of X-rays and scans in 15 countries surveyed. Experts not involved in the study wrote in the journal The Lancet, which published the findings, that the benefits of X-rays and CT scans far outweigh the risk.
Of the 15 countries surveyed, the cancer risk believed linked to X-rays was lowest in Britain, where they are used least frequently. They estimated that 0.6 percent of the cumulative British cancer risk for those under 75 years old came from X-ray exposure, accounting for about 700 of the nation's 124,000 annual cancer diagnoses.
The American figure nearly doubled a 1981 estimate that about 0.5 percent of U.S. cancer cases were linked to X-rays. The new 0.9 percent estimate translates into 5,695 cases per year, the researchers said
The highest risk was in Japan, where X-rays are done much more frequently and accounted for 3.2 percent of cancer risk, or 7,587 cases per year, wrote the researchers, Amy Berrington de Gonzalez of Cancer Research U.K. and Sarah Darby of Oxford.
Dr. Peter Herzog and Dr. Christina Rieger, of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, noted in a separate Lancet piece that the researchers did not assess the benefits of X-rays and CT scans.
``Benefits include the earlier detection of cancers ... and the possibility of early treatment, which probably allows more cure of cancers than radiological exposure is able to cause,'' they wrote. Herzog and Rieger were not involved in the study.
In all the other countries for which Berrington de Gonzalez and Darby analyzed data, they estimated that X-rays accounted for less than 2 percent of the cancer risk -- 0.9 percent in Sweden, 1.3 percent in Australia, 1.1 percent in Canada and the Czech Republic, 1.8 percent in Croatia, 0.7 percent in Finland, 1.5 percent in Germany, 0.7 percent in Kuwait and the Netherlands, 1.2 percent in Norway, 0.6 percent in Poland, and 1.0 percent in Switzerland.
Dr. Adrian Dixon, radiology professor at Cambridge University, said the estimates were not surprising and the risk posed by X-rays was relatively small compared to the overall chance of getting cancer.
``I don't think (people) should be worried at all,'' he said. ``You shouldn't be having an X-ray unless the benefits are greater than the harm and that's why we vet every request fairly carefully.''
All the rates cover only cancer diagnoses in people under age 75, since data for cancer incidence among those over 75 was unavailable in all 15 countries, the researchers said.
They based their estimates on the incidence of cancer in each country, the national rates of X-ray and CT scan use between 1991 and 1996, the most recent years for which data were available, and mathematical models of the links between radiation exposure and cancer.
They said that while their model may have overstated the risk, they believed they had not significantly understated it.
While any individual's risk of developing cancer because of an X-ray was tiny, the widespread use of X-rays and CT scans means the risks translate into a significant number of cases, the researchers said.
They said reducing the radiation dose delivered by each X-ray or CT scan and cutting the frequency of use could lessen cancer risks.
Herzog and Rieger, the outside commentators, noted that development of lower-radiation scanning equipment had already reduced the risk and was likely to continue to do so. They agreed with the researchers that doctors should avoid unnecessary X-rays and CT scans.
-------- arms
US Concerned Over Any Nigeria - N.Korea Missile Sale
January 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nigeria-korea-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Friday it was concerned about a proposed deal for North Korea to sell Nigeria ballistic missiles and U.S. officials hinted at the possibility of sanctions against the African nation.
A U.S. ally and key oil supplier, Nigeria announced this week it could soon sign an agreement with North Korea, which the United States considers the world's largest exporter of ballistic missiles.
``We expressed concerns about the possibility there might be a purchase of missiles from North Korea and that's an issue we will be discussing with them,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters, referring to talks with the Nigerian government.
U.S. officials doubted Nigeria, which faces no obvious military threat, would go ahead with a deal but said the government had so far failed to assure American diplomats it would reject the communist nation's offer.
They said the U.S. arsenal of tools to stop such deals include seizing arms in transit or imposing sanctions on nations buying from a country that President Bush has labeled part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iran and pre-war Iraq.
``We don't think the Nigerians are really going to do anything,'' said one State Department official, who asked not to be named. ``But, as long as there is any gray, we will say publicly we strongly oppose any proliferation. And with any parties engaged in such proliferation we would look at using those legal means, including interdictions and sanctions.''
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks showed how vulnerable the country was, Washington has sought to clamp down on the trade of missiles and weapons of mass destruction to prevent militant groups from acquiring such arms.
The United States has intervened in recent North Korean missile deliveries to Yemen.
Nigeria, which has bought arms from the United States, Britain and Russia, says its weapons are needed for security and peacekeeping. Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria sees itself as a regional superpower and currently has troops in war-torn Liberia.
The government of President Olusegun Obasanjo is a key Washington ally in Africa, and is the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the United States. But Nigeria has also been reaching out to Asia in an effort to attract investment and alliances.
Missile sales are a major source of revenue for cash-strapped North Korea, which is expected to resume talks soon with Washington and other nations on dismantling its suspected nuclear programs.
Nigerian officials ruled out any nuclear-related purchases.
-------- depleted uranium
The Effects of Depleted Uranium in Iraq
by Ewa Jasiewicz
Voices in the Wilderness
Friday January 30, 2004
http://progressivetrail.org/articles/040128Jasiewicz.shtml
Depleted Uranium is a highly toxic heavy metal derived from nuclear bomb and fuel waste. It's heavy weight and pyrophoric qualities cause it to burn-melt like a blowtorch through steel when a DU coated/loaded penetrator, self-sharpening by nature, strikes a hard target. It's mainly used to incinerate battle tanks, and on contact pulverizes into breathable aerosol-like dust that can travel 26 miles and remains radioactive for 4.5 billion years.
Despite the name "Depleted" Uranium, DU has 60% the radioactivity of natural uranium, which is pure uranium, and all uranium whether "natural", "depleted" or "enriched" is a chemical and radiological toxic substance emitting alpha, beta and gamma particles, all of which have a destructive effect on the cellular make-up of the human body, ie they attack the human body at the most essential, primary and vital levels.
Imagine the effect of DU weapons on tanks and compare it to that of the after-drift and settlement into water systems, soil, vegetation, and the animal/human body. The energy of a single alpha particle, never mind the gamma, the heaviest penetrating rays known to science - is more than the amount required to damage important macromolecules (the glue that holds us together) such as DNA, RNA, enzymes and proteins. It does this by breaking molecular bonds and chemical reactions, which alter or destroy the shape, organization and function of these essential life sustaining molecules. DU particles have the capacity to penetrate, corrode, crack and break down the building bricks of human life within the body, through generating cancer. It can kill, slowly and undetectably at first, with the effects of DU invisible for the first 4 years of exposure.
According to Dr Durakovic, a former US army colonel and current professor of medicine, in the course of one year, 1 milligram of uranium emits 390 million alpha particles, 780 million beta particles and associated gamma rays. This is over one billion high-energy, ionizing, radioactive particles and rays which can produce extensive biological damage--biological warfare fought out across the inner terrains of the human body: attacking the ovaries, lungs, lymph nodes, kidneys, breast, blood, bones, brain, stomach and fetuses. There are over 1000 different cancer types known to medical science. Cancer means mutated cells. The body's immune system kicks in to combat the cancerous cells and in doing so begins to attack the whole body. White blood cells do the fighting. They're designed to attack any foreign cells, or any foreign object entering the body, be it viruses, mutated cells or even organs such as mismatched transplanted kidneys. As cancer spreads through the body, the immune system strategy is to try to defeat it. Cancer cells divide rapidly, overtake other cells and can spread faster than the immune system can react. Death envelops when cancerous cells reach a critical mass in the body, attacking and multiplying through mutating every cell around them.
An estimated 300-800 TONS of DU were pounded into Iraq during the 1990 Gulf war.
Lab Rat Nation
DU emerged in the 70s as the US's Cold War weapon of choice: cheap, abundant and devastatingly effective in busting new top-line Soviet tanks - US manufacturers had found a captive market and a sustainable enemy.
DU is the modern tyrant's multipurpose must, indispensable for armor-piercing bullets, casing for bombs, shielding on tanks, counter weights and ground penetrators on missiles, Cluster Bomb fragments that penetrate armor and anti-personnel mines.
The destructive effects of DU have been known to scientists, military strategists and politicians for over 60 years.
A 1943 U.S. War Department proposed the 'Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon', defining it as:
1) a terrain contaminating material, the radioactive product of which would be spread on the ground and would affect personnel.
2) As a gas warfare instrument, the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicle, or aerial bombs
The US government began experimenting on and poisoning its own subjects long before its military and economic warfare experiments ignited Iraq's already internal and external war savaged environment. Research by Damacio Lopez, Executive Director, International Depleted Uranium Study Team (IDUST) features a 1994 Interim Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments which described intentional releases of radioactive materials into populated areas prior to 1963 as "Experiments involving intentional environmental releases of radiation that
(A) were designed to test human health effects of ionizing radiation; or
(B) were designed to test the extent of human exposure to ionizing radiation.
These releases were generally related to radiation warfare tests, the gathering of intelligence, and the development of instruments. Four such tests were conducted at Los Alamos, New Mexico, however the Department Of Energy reports that the number of such tests approximates 250.
The majority of DU shot in the 1990 Kuwait/US war and in this US/UK war was concentrated on Basra and Baghdad respectively. 1000 to 2000 metric tons are estimated to have been used by US and to a lesser extent British forces, in the 2003 Gulf War. (Figure from Dr Jawad Al Ali)
Sitting in Basra's Talimi Teaching Hospital Dr Jawad Al Ali, a renowned cancer specialist, talks measuredly about his research into the affects of DU and cancer cases in Iraq's radioactive governorate of Basra.
'The rate of cancer here has multiplied 15 times since the last Gulf war. In 2002 we had 644 deaths from cancer in Basra. We have approximately 123 patients per 100,000 of the population. (Basra's is Iraq's second largest city with an estimated population of 2-3 million). People living near the nuclear reactors are affected the worst, but overall, its estimated that 1000-2000 tons of Depleted Uranium were inside Iraqi cities and in west Basra and between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A10 planes were dropping it, and Apaches. Abu Khaseeb, North Rumeilla, and the airport were particularly hard hit. The results of the DU used in this war will not be seen for another 4-5 years - the incubation period for cancer'.
The staff of Talimi hospital theselves have not escaped the DU seep. 13 doctors and nurses at Talimi have contracted cancer since 1990 - Breast, testicular and lymphoma. And in terms of US aggression, in 1990 the hospital itself was the target of a US missile strike which saw its intensive care unit crushed by shells and rockets, killing four patients and burying a specialist doctor alive under a collapsed ceiling.
'Workers smelting old tanks and vehicles in Khor Zubier are known to have contracted leukemia' Tells me Dr Jawad. Hardly suprising, keening over a hot radioactivity accelerating poisonous metal slop, breathing in re-energized particles of depleted uranium all day. But, it's scrap metal, it sells on the market and it brings in the cash to feed families in a country staggering under 70% unemployment. Pity those particular workers are unlikely to ever see their children grow up.
'DU is the cause of these cancers but its difficult to prove', explains Dr Jawad. 'Our patients attest to the fact that cancer rates are skyrocketing. There is three times more DU in the air than is present naturally. Water and food are the key contaminated sources, and also the 're-suspension of particles' - i.e the re-release of DU into the air through strong winds or the digging up of DU.'
'In Gurna we have found cancer clusters, a director of a school plus two teachers are suffering from Luekemia there. We know of one person, Doug Rokke, an American, who was decontaminating tanks. He received 5000 times the proper dose of DU. He now has slurred speech and dizziness, no cancer as yet, but, he has been affected'.
Indeed, Doug Rokke, ex-director of the Pentagon's depleted uranium project, former professor of environmental science at Jacksonville University and onetime US army colonel, was recruited by the US department of defense to handle the post-first- Gulf war depleted uranium desert clean-up. He told Sunday Herald reporters last March, 'A nation's military personnel cannot willfully contaminate any other nation, cause harm to persons and the environment and then ignore the consequences of their actions. To do so is a crime against humanity. We must do what is right for the citizens of the world: ban DU.'
Dr Jawad goes on to describe the threat of DU to the most vulnerable sector of society. 'Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning. They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most, however, cancer of the lymphoma, which can develop anywhere on the body, and has rarely been seen before the age of 12 is now also common.'
'Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with 2 cancers - one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney--he had three different cancer types'. The second is the clustering of cancer in families. We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by cancer. Dr Yasin, a general Surgeon here has two uncles, a sister and cousin affected with cancer. Dr Mazen, another specialist, has six family members suffering from cancer. My wife has nine members of her family with cancer'.
Dr Jawad looks exhausted. He slowly toys with his pen. 'The occupation forces should have protected the stores near the nuclear reactor in Baghdad, in Twaitha.' The case was well documented by Greenpeace in May. Post regime fall, impoverished, mostly squatter families were using barrels meant for toxic nuclear waste to store water for washing, cooking and drinking. 'They should have known to protect the place but they can now say, 'people stole the barrels, its their fault and they spread the radioactive materials'. They will be held responsible for DU contamination, not the forces. And I think they did this on purpose, this is my opinion, just my opinion'. It makes sense. In April last year, the Pentagon announced that the US government had no intention of conducting a post war clean up of DU, believing that that there was no evidence for long-term affects of DU. The 200,000 US soldiers suffering from mystery fatigue, memory loss, and chronic muscle and joint pain aka Gulf War Syndrome, not being evidence enough on their own soil, and the eyeless children, multiple cancer bearing and leukemia fighting victims filling hospital wards in Basra and Baghdad and other war-scarred Iraqi cities, are too not evidence enough to seriously confront the effects of the radioactive killer.
For Dr Jawad, the constant cancer cases (many of which go unreported he stresses) are a spiraling emergency which needs to be investigated promptly, efficiently and accurately soon. 'For the past 13 years we were unable to test people properly, we didn't have sufficient or appropriate equipment. WHO teams were banned from visiting us and the US took away parts for our MRE machines and our computer systems, saying that they could be used for making weapons of mass destruction. We really need special sensitive tissue testing equipment, but under the sanctions, this was unavailable. And it's not just lack of equipment, we need physicists and specialist doctors, people who can help conduct tests and do analysis. A woman from Britain came to visit me and said that doctors from The Royal College of Physicians would be coming to conduct studies. But noone has come. We were accused of spreading propaganda for Saddam before the war. When I have gone to do talks I have had people accuse me of being pro-Saddam. Sometimes I feel afraid to even talk. Regime people have been stealing my data and calling it their own, and using it for their own agendas. The Kuwaitis banned me from entering Kuwait - we were accused of being Saddam supporters.'
Dr Jawad and his patients have suffered acutely from the kill of the ecocidal tons of nuclear weapons deployed in the last two gulf wars. The killing continues. War casualties continue to be hospitalized, expire, and pile up in the graveyards of Basra. Some of the alive are slowly dying already, from the first breath of heavily radiated air breathed after The Fall. Others are set to bring deformed babies into the world, with crownless skulls or fused fingers, while whole families watch listlessly as taut bed-bound members reel from the violence of the poison in their veins, in their flesh.
There are weapons of mass destruction everywhere in Iraq. They were made in America, bombed over here, and lie left vitiating in the dessert, beside highways, in demolished homes, rubble buildings; a fine murder dust on the breeze, upon the water, inside the roasting tissues of a chicken on a spit in the street, inside the bodies of bone-eating cancer bearing children, or inside the wombs of women sick with dizziness--just pregnancy or poisoning? Their birth-days can only tell. But one thing is certain in occupied Iraq circa 2004, the UK and US governments are guilty of deploying in effect, biological warfare against the Iraqi civilian population. And the killing continues. The killing continues.
-------- india / pakistan
Past crime, present fear
Scientists have been made scapegoats for the Pakistan army's nuclear misadventure
Friday, January 30, 2004
Indian Express
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=40065
For weeks now new evidence has been mounting about nuclear weapons proliferation from and by Pakistan to North Korea, Iran, Libya, and possibly other countries. This does not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed Pakistan's nuclear policies over the years. After all, no country of its capabilities can afford to run two parallel programmes for nuclear weapons to make a plutonium as well as an uranium-based bomb, while also pursuing two parallel programmes for ballistic missiles separately for those of China-origin and the ones from North Korea. But this is exactly what they have been doing for two decades. And obviously there have to be costs. Besides this, the US needs to recognise the difference between how India and Pakistan deal with nuclear weapons and technology rather than slide into an India-Pakistan hyphenation.
Pakistan must believe the world to be either really naive, or they are so confident of being able to confuse it, that they have adopted a public stance that only a handful of "rogue" nuclear scientists were responsible for transferring what the UN watchdog agency for nuclear non-proliferations has treated as the biggest challenge to nuclear non-proliferation efforts in decades. The top military leadership, especially General Pervez Musharraf, have been at pains to repeatedly assert that Pakistan's nuclear weapon programme has been, and is, tightly controlled. It has been no secret that that all aspects of the nuclear programme have been completely under the army's control. Making a few scientists into scapegoats may make it easier for the US to turn the proverbial blind eye on Pakistan, but would not alter the reality of proliferation and its accompanying risks.
Pakistan's status as a frontline state for the US would no doubt impact on how far it would go in pursuit of its non-proliferation policy in the present case. In the eighties the US had side-stepped its policy, disregarding its clandestine nuclear programme after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Its numerous post-1990 sanctions for Pakistani missile proliferation rarely lasted two years with Islamabad continuing to press its programmes further without any serious disruption. This in a way also explains the logic of parallel programmes for nuclear bomb and missile delivery systems. It should not come as a surprise to anybody, therefore, to see the White House actually playing down the massive proliferation from Pakistan by simply stating that this is "part of the past, and the past is past".
--------
Nuclear Inquiry Skips Pakistani Army
January 30, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/international/asia/30NUKE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Jan. 29 - For the past week, senior government and intelligence officials, speaking anonymously, have steadily disclosed details of a deepening inquiry into what seems to have been the transfer of Pakistan's nuclear technology to Iran and other countries in the late 1980's and early 1990's.
Their version of events - expected to be released publicly this weekend - blames the country's nuclear scientists, including Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, for selling technology for personal gain.
But one issue rarely addressed by officials of the military-led government is the extent to which the inquiry has examined the role Pakistan's powerful military - which had tight control over the nuclear program - may have played in the sale or sharing of nuclear technology.
In interviews this week, retired Pakistani civilian and military officials, former American diplomats and proliferation experts said the country's military-led government appeared to be glossing over evidence that senior military officials might have approved the sales.
More recent reports of proliferation - including allegations that the governments of the current president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto shared nuclear technology with North Korea - are also being given short shrift, they said.
The officials and analysts emphasized that they had no proof that the army was involved, but wondered why Pakistani investigators had not questioned any senior army officials.
George Perkovich, a proliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington, said General Musharraf, who seized power in 1999, was trying to appease American demands for an investigation while not angering the army, his base of support.
"The problem for Musharraf is that people in the army would know about this," Mr. Perkovich said in a telephone interview. "And he wants to protect his club."
One focus of suspicion is Gen. Mirza Aslam Beg, the commander of the Pakistani Army from 1988 to 1991, American analysts said. Robert B. Oakley, who served as the American ambassador in Islamabad from 1988 to 1991, said in a telephone interview that General Beg told him in the spring of 1991 that he was discussing nuclear and conventional military cooperation with Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
"He said he had a good conversation with the Revolutionary Guards about nuclear cooperation and conventional military assistance," Mr. Oakley said. "Iran was going to support Pakistan with conventional military aid and petroleum and the Pakistanis would provide them with nuclear technology."
In an interview this week, General Beg denied ever sharing nuclear technology with Iran. But he did confirm that he proposed that Pakistan adopt a doctrine of "strategic defiance" involving an alliance between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.
General Beg said such an alliance would thwart an American invasion of all three countries that he expected after the United States defeated Iraq in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. This week, he predicted that history would prove him right and that an alliance similar to the European Union would form and the three countries would become "the core of the Muslim world, to emulate."
Mr. Oakley said he was so concerned by General Beg's statements in 1991 that he went to Pakistan's prime minister at the time, Nawaz Sharif, and urged him to quash any such arrangement. Mr. Oakley said that Mr. Sharif agreed to speak to Iran's civilian leaders.
Mr. Sharif, who was toppled by General Musharraf and now lives in exile in Saudi Arabia, declined a request for an interview this week.
Chaudry Nisar Ali Khan, a cabinet minister and senior aide to to Mr. Sharif, said he remembered that General Beg proposed an alliance with Iran and Afghanistan. But he said senior civilian officials did not take General Beg's ideas seriously.
Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, who served as the director of Pakistan's military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, from 1987 to 1989, said some officers joked that the country, which at the time was on the verge of defaulting on loan payments, should sell its nuclear technology. But he said none of the proposals were taken seriously.
"It was nothing more than loose talk," said General Gul, who is now retired. "Bizarre talk. Wild ideas."
Asked if he turned a blind eye to nuclear shipments, General Beg said no reports of proliferation came to him during his tenure.
Lt. Gen. Assad Durrani, who served as director of military intelligence from 1988 to 1990 and intelligence director from 1990 to 1992, said he received no reports of proliferation. General Durrani, now retired, said the agency only tracked efforts by foreign intelligence operatives to penetrate the nuclear program.
He said a separate branch of the nuclear program run by both civilians and military officials monitored the scientists. Government officials have said investigators are questioning two retired generals in charge of nuclear lab security. "The security of Dr. A. Q. Khan was not our responsibility," he said. "The I.S.I. is not a security-providing agency."
General Durrani and a close aide to General Musharraf both suggested that the intelligence service and the army were not the invulnerable, all-knowing institutions Pakistanis perceived.
"I have seen the workings of the I.S.I. and I have seen the workings of the military mind-set," said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Military officials probably saw the scientists as "national heroes" and never suspected them of wrongdoing.
But more recent allegations of proliferation involving North Korea, if true, are more likely to involve direct army involvement, said Mr. Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment. American officials believe that Pakistan traded nuclear technology for ballistic missile technology with North Korea in the mid-1990's. Pakistani officials vehemently deny it.
In 1993, Benazir Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan, visited North Korea and was given the plans for a ballistic missile, current and former Pakistani officials said.
In an e-mail response to written questions this week, Ms. Bhutto, who lives in exile in London, declined to comment on specific details of the nuclear program. But she said she consistently opposed the proliferation of Pakistani nuclear technology while in office.
She said that during her first term, from 1988 to 1990, she tightened security after concern grew that a foreign country might arrest a visiting Pakistani scientist to slow the country's clandestine nuclear program.
"I therefore directed that no scientist should leave the country without written government permission," she wrote, "and without being accompanied by a security detail."
There are also questions about General Musharraf's tenure. In July 2002, American satellites tracked a Pakistani plane as it picked up ballistic missile parts in North Korea, American officials have said. American intelligence officials also believe that within the last two years Pakistani centrifuge designs helped Libya's nuclear program.
But none of the accounts prove that the army, or Pakistan's government, approved the transfer of nuclear technology. American and Pakistani analysts said the evidence that could prove the military approved the transfer would be the discovery of Pakistani nuclear hardware in Libya, North Korea or Iran. They said it was nearly impossible for hardware to leave Pakistan's tightly guarded nuclear facilities, and the country, without at least the tacit approval of the Pakistani Army.
--------
Musharraf Faces Tough Choice Over Nukes
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear-Detentions.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- An investigation into charges that Pakistani scientists sold nuclear weapons technology is nearing its conclusion, and President Pervez Musharraf appears to face a bleak choice: either condemn a national hero or undermine his government's own credibility.
Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of the program that made Pakistan the Islamic world's only nuclear power, has been linked along with a top aide to shady dealings in the nuclear black market that supplied technology to Iran and Libya.
The government has stopped short of publicly condemning them, but a welter of allegations about their personal wealth and overseas bank accounts has increased pressure on Musharraf to take action.
``The government either has to determine there was no leakage or contact of the establishment with the black market, or if they admit there may have been, they have to do something about it,'' Khalid Mahmood, a senior research fellow at Islamabad's Institute of Regional Studies, said Friday. ``They cannot wriggle out of this.''
Prosecuting the scientists risks airing embarrassing evidence, but a mere slap on the wrist for Khan -- such as stripping him of his post as an adviser to the prime minister -- would disappoint Islamabad's Western allies.
``Doing nothing would damage the credibility of the government after they started this entire process,'' Mahmood said.
Pakistan began its investigation in late November after admissions by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated a Pakistani connection. Allegations also have surfaced that Pakistani technology spread to Libya and North Korea.
For years, Pakistan rejected allegations of sharing nuclear weapons knowledge, but the Iranian evidence has forced it to concede publicly that ``one or two people'' from its program acted for personal gain -- possibly exploiting their ties with clandestine suppliers who helped Pakistan get around international restrictions and build its own bomb, tested in 1998.
Officials familiar with the investigation say Khan and Mohammed Farooq, former director-general of the Khan Research Laboratories, had black-market contacts that supplied nuclear technology to Iran and Libya.
``A lot of money has been found in the bank accounts of Khan and Farooq,'' a senior government official said Friday on condition of anonymity. ``It is yet to be determined who gave them this money.''
But in a sign the government may be reluctant to punish Khan, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat came to his defense in a flurry of media interviews published Friday.
``We are questioning a number of scientists and some of them are suspect, but Dr. Khan is not among them,'' Hayyat told The Nation daily.
Late Friday, the government issued a statement saying the quotation was incorrect, and that Khan was being questioned but had not been accused.
In all, six scientists and security officials remain in custody, including Farooq, and several others have been released after questioning. Khan has been questioned and friends say he is restricted to Islamabad, but has not been detained.
Controversy has long surrounded Khan, who was convicted in absentia of stealing blueprints from a nuclear lab in the Netherlands where he worked in the 1970s. He was later acquitted on a technicality.
He remains an icon of impoverished Pakistan's successful campaign to create a formidable nuclear defense against a much larger foe, India.
Punishing him would anger many Pakistani nationalists and likely trigger demonstrations, and the decision on his fate has preoccupied the country's leadership. Musharraf, an army general, discussed the case Thursday with top military commanders.
A public prosecution could embarrass the military and government, which face unanswered questions over how they could have been in the dark about any nuclear transfers.
``Individual scientists might come out into the open and tell the whole story,'' said A.H. Nayyar, a physicist at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University who has closely followed Pakistan's nuclear program.
``That should be in the minds of government people, too, and they are likely to be very careful,'' he said.
-------- iran
Congressional Staffers to Go to Tehran
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iran.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A delegation of congressional aides will visit Iran next month with tacit Bush administration approval, testing whether there can be a warming of the icy relationship between the two longtime antagonists.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said the trip was arranged in a meeting with Iran's ambassador to the United Nations on Wednesday and could lead to follow-up visits to Tehran by members of Congress and then by Bush administration officials.
Iranian officials ``are showing some signs of wanting to improve relations,'' Specter said Friday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his Philadelphia office. ``Now is a good time.''
The senator, who will send an assistant as part of the group, said he had consulted with a senior Bush administration official before taking up the subject with Ambassador Mohammed Javad Zarif at a dinner in the U.S. Capitol. No senators or House members will go with the delegation.
The State Department cleared the ambassador to travel to Washington. Normally, travel of U.N. ambassadors of countries with which the United States does not have relations is limited to a 25-mile radius of New York.
``It's done on a case-by-case basis,' department spokesman Richard Boucher said. ``There were no objections of any national security grounds or other groups for this trip'' by the ambassador to Washington on Wednesday and Thursday.
A group of House members, including Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who has joined Specter in seeking improved relations with Iran, attended the dinner, as well.
Ney, in an interview, said he thought a visit by congressional staffers was a good idea and he supported it.
But ``I don't think it is set in stone,'' he said on the telephone from Philadelphia on his way home to Ohio.
Ney, who taught English in Iran in the early 1970s, said, ``There are signs of reform in Iran, but I stress we should not read into the signs more than is currently happening.''
Apparently, the visit would be the first by congressional staffers to Iran since Iran's 1979 revolution in which the shah of Iran was overthrown and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was overrun by religious extremists. U.S. officials from the embassy were held hostage for 444 days.
Rep. Doug Bereuter, R-Neb., who attended the dinner, said he hoped ``we would reach a point where it would be appropriate for members of the House and Senate to visit later this year.''
Bereuter described the conversation with the Iranian ambassador as ``a good discussion on how to build mutual confidence and understanding.''
Asked about reports of a visit, spokesman Boucher said, ``We've always encouraged exchanges, people-to-people exchanges, wih Iranians, with Iran. We've certainly encouraged congressional travel in general.''
``So it would be fine with us if that's what they decided to do,'' Boucher said.
Officials within the Bush administration appear to hold differing views about prospects for an accommodation with Iran, which President Bush two years ago denounced as part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and North Korea.
Some officials are convinced a strong reformist element exists in Iran, receptive especially to young people's desires for modernization. Other officials believe fundamentalist Muslim clerics remain in ultimate control in Tehran and consistently have vetoed liberalization.
Specter said he told Zarif that if Iran wanted better relations with the United States, it should withdraw its support from Hezbollah, the Lebanese group that has fought a cross-border war with Israel and is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department.
Iran provides weapons to Hezbollah through Syria, which effectively controls Lebanon, according to department officials.
The ambassador retorted that Iran is a force for stability in southern Lebanon, Specter said, but ``I disagreed.''
Specter said Iran was enormously impressed by the Bush administration's use of force in Iraq and had shown signs of wanting better relations. He cited Iran's decision to submit its nuclear facilities to international inspection.
Also, Specter said, ``they have helped us in the fight against al-Qaida and in the Afghanistan situation.''
``I don't think we have given them sufficient credit'' for their support against the terror network headed by Osama bin-Laden, he said.
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraqi scientists call on Blair to resign over 'arsenal lies'
By Jack Fairweather in Baghdad
30/01/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/30/wwmd230.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/30/ixnewstop.html
The scientists who built Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction during the 1980s say Tony Blair lied to the British people over their country's arsenal.
"There is only one thing for Tony Blair to do, and that is resign," said Dr Emad Shamsaldi, a nuclear physicist leading calls by the scientists for Mr Blair to "come clean" over what he really knows about Iraq's weapons.
"We had no weapons of mass destruction when Britain and America invaded my country," said Dr Shamsaldi. "I should know because I spent much the 1980s involved in Iraq's nuclear programme."
That programme, with chemical and biological production, ended when allied aircraft bombed facilities during the first Gulf war, according to Dr Shamsaldi and other WMD scientists at Baghdad's ministry of science and technology.
"The country has not been capable of building WMD for more than a decade," another scientist said.
The scientists ignore the United Nations' list of "unaccounted for" chemical and biological munitions.
"When we showed the UN inspectors our ruined country they agreed with our assessment," Dr Shamsaldi said. "We could not believe it when Blair and Bush said Iraq did [have WMD]. Sadly the British and American people believed it."
Weapons programme specialists meet every day at the ministry. There they discuss the glory days of Iraq's arms race. Few are ashamed of their role, although most will not speak openly for fear of being arrested by American forces or attacked by vengeful Iraqis.
An engineer at the military and industrial commission who helped build Saddam's long-range missiles, said: "I made weapons because I wanted Iraq to be a powerful and prosperous nation. Every true Iraqi would do this."
Dr Fardel Abbas, a chemist, who would not specify his exact area of expertise, said: "Our work was not wrong - but Saddam was a bad leader.
"In that we share the British experience of being misled and betrayed by our leaders."
Many of the scientists at the ministry said they knew David Kelly when he served as a UN weapons inspector.
"He was a true scientist: quiet, dedicated and professional," Dr Shamsaldi said. "As a scientist he could see we did not have the capabilities for WMD.
"He contacted a member of my department last year to say he was unhappy with what Blair and Bush were saying.
"Now the truth about WMD has been revealed and Tony Blair has the suicide of Kelly and the deaths of thousands on his conscience. There can be no worse curse."
----
'The public must look to what is missing from the [Hutton] report'
Scott Ritter - mailto:WSRitter@aol.com
Friday January 30, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1134768,00.html
Tony Blair's government is heralding the Hutton report as a victory, since it absolves it of any wrongdoing regarding the "sexing up" of intelligence about the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
The Hutton report was released at the same time as the former head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, testified before the US Congress that there appear to be no WMD in Iraq, and that the intelligence was "all wrong". Given this, the Hutton findings have taken on an almost Alice in Wonderland aura. By focusing on a single news story broadcast by the BBC, Hutton has created a political smokescreen behind which Blair is seeking to distract the British public from the harsh reality that his government went to war based on unsustained allegations that have yet to be backed up with a single piece of substantive fact. Lord Hutton was in a position to expose this; he chose not to. It is left to the public, therefore, to carefully examine his report, looking not for what it contains but for what is missing.
A review of testimony submitted to the inquiry elicits a single reference to Operation Rockingham, a secretive intelligence activity buried inside the Defence Intelligence Staff, which dealt with Iraqi WMD and activities of the UN special commission (Unscom). This acknowledged that Rockingham managed the interaction between David Kelly, the weapons expert whose suicide led to the Hutton inquiry, and the UN. But Lord Hutton dug no further into this. If he had, some interesting insight would have been provided on several issues of concern, including the possibility of the "shaping" of UN intelligence data by Rockingham to serve the policy objectives of its masters in the Foreign Office and the joint intelligence committee.
Dr Kelly became Rockingham's go-to person for translating the often confusing data that came out of Unscom into concise reporting that could be forwarded to analysts in the British intelligence community, as well as to political decision-makers. Rockingham was in a position to know that, increasingly, the facts emerging from inside Iraq supported Baghdad's contention that there was no longer a biological weapons programme in Iraq, or any hidden biological weapons or agents.
But this data received little or no attention inside Rockingham. Dr Kelly was not only an active participant in the investigations in Iraq, but also a key player in shaping the findings to the British government. He was also one of the key behind-the-scenes advocates of the government position. For some time, the government had allowed him unfettered access to the press, where he spoke, often on the record, about his work with Unscom.
Any probing of Rockingham by Lord Hutton would have exposed it for what it had become - a big player in the shaping of information regarding Iraq's WMD inside the government and, through its media connections, in shaping public opinion as well.
Given Rockingham's penetration of Unscom at virtually every level, there existed a seamless flow of data from Iraq, through New York, to London, carefully shaped from beginning to end by people working not for the UN security council, but for the British government. Iraq's guilt, preordained by the government, became a self-fulfilling prophesy that only collapsed when occupied Iraq failed to disgorge that which Rockingham, and the rest of the UK intelligence community, had said must exist.
· Scott Ritter was formerly chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq
~~
Hutton Report, unedited
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/index.htm
Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly C.M.G.
by Lord Hutton 28th January 2004
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter01.htm
The sittings of the Inquiry
The terms of reference
The facts
Dr Kelly's employment in the Civil Service
The Government's Dossier on Weapons of Mass Destruction
The rules governing the disclosure of information by civil servants
The Intelligence and Security Committee (the ISC)
Chapter 2
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter02.htm
Dr Kelly's discussions with Ms Susan Watts on 7 May 2003 and with Mr Andrew Gilligan on 22 May 2003
The BBC Today Programme and the BBC Five Live Breakfast programme on 29 May 2003
Dr Kelly's discussions with Mr Gavin Hewitt on 29 May 2003 and with Ms Susan Watts on 30 May 2003
Further Broadcasts and Mr Gilligan's article in the Mail on Sunday
The Foreign Affairs Select Committee (the FAC), and MoD concern about leaks to the press
A further broadcast by Ms Susan Watts
The evidence of Mr Andrew Gilligan and Mr Alastair Campbell to the FAC
Chapter 3
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter03.htm
Dr Kelly's letter of 30 June 2003 to the MoD and the MoD interview with Dr Kelly on 4 July 2003
Communications and discussions within the Government in respect of Dr Kelly, 2 to 6 July
The special meeting of the BBC Governors on Sunday 6 July 2003 and the telephone conversation between the Prime Minister and Mr Gavyn Davies on Monday 7 July 2003
The FAC report dated 7 July 2003
Communications and discussions within the Government in respect of Dr Kelly, 7 and 8 July
Press statements by Mr Alastair Campbell and the BBC on 7 July 2003
The MOD Interview with Dr Kelly on 7 July 2003
The press statement issued by the MOD on 8 July 2003
The press statement issued by the BBC on 8 July 2003 and correspondence between the MOD and the BBC
The confirmation of Dr Kelly's name to the press and Dr Kelly's sudden departure from his home
Chapter 4
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter04.htm
Requests by the FAC and the ISC that Dr Kelly should appear before them
Dr Kelly's appearances before the FAC and the ISC
Dr Kelly's actions after he had given evidence to the ISC on 16 July 2003
Chapter 5
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter05.htm
The search for Dr Kelly and the finding of his body
The investigations into the death of Dr Kelly
The evidence of Mr David Broucher
The cause of the death of Dr Kelly
The statement issued by the BBC after Dr Kelly's death
Chapter 6
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter06.htm
The issues which arise
Issues relating to the preparation of the dossier of 24 September 2002
The drafting of the dossier
The intelligence in relation to the 45 minutes claim
The concerns of Dr Brian Jones, the head of the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons section in the Scientific and Technical Directorate of the Defence Intelligence Analysis Staff
The approval of the dossier by the JIC
The differing wording of the 45 minutes claim in the draft dossiers
The dossier published by the Government on 24 September 2002
The allegation that the dossier was sexed-up
The meaning of the term "Weapons of Mass Destruction"
Summary of conclusions on the issues relating to the preparation of the dossier of 24 September 2002
Chapter 7
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter07.htm
Issues relating to Dr Kelly's meeting with Mr Gilligan in the Charing Cross Hotel on 22 May 2003
(a) What did Dr Kelly say to Mr Gilligan in the course of the meeting?
(b) In meeting Mr Gilligan and discussing the dossier with him was Dr Kelly having a meeting which was unauthorised and in breach of the Civil Service rules of procedure which applied to him?
(c) At the time of the meeting or subsequent to it did Dr Kelly realise that the meeting was unauthorised and in breach of the Civil Service rules which applied to him?
Summary of conclusions on the issues relating to Dr Kelly's meeting with Mr Gilligan in the Charing Cross Hotel on 22 May 2003
Chapter 8
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter08.htm
Issues relating to the BBC arising from Mr Gilligan's broadcasts on the BBC Today Programme on 29 May 2003
Denials by the Government
The special meeting of the Governors of the BBC on 6 July 2003
The gravity of the allegation reported in the Today programme
The case made by the BBC and Mr Gilligan
The evidence of Mr Gavyn Davies, the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC, Mr Greg Dyke, the Director General of the BBC, and Mr Richard Sambrook, the Director of News of the BBC
Consideration of the issues relating to the BBC
Summary of conclusions relating to the BBC arising from Mr Gilligan's broadcasts on the BBC Today programme on 29 May 2003
Chapter 9
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter09.htm
Issues relating to the decisions and actions taken by the Government after Dr Kelly informed his line manager in the MoD that he had spoken to Mr Gilligan on 22 May 2003
Did the Government behave in a way which was dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous in revealing Dr Kelly's name to the media, therefore subjecting him to the pressure and stress which were bound to arise from being placed in the media spotlight?
The evidence of Ms Pamela Teare, the Director of News at the MOD, on 18 August 2003
The evidence of Mr Jonathan Powell, the Chief of Staff at 10 Downing Street, on 18 August 2003
The evidence of Sir David Manning, formerly Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister and Head of the Overseas and Defence Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, on 18 August 2003
The evidence of Mr Alastair Campbell, formerly the Prime Minister's Director of Communications and Strategy, on 19 August 2003
The evidence of Sir Kevin Tebbit, Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence, on 20 August 2003
The evidence of Mr Thomas Kelly, one of the Prime Minister's official spokesmen, on 20 August 2003
The evidence of Sir David Omand, the Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator in the Cabinet Office, on 26 August 2003
The evidence of the Rt Hon Geoffrey Hoon MP, the Secretary of State for Defence, on 27 August 2003
The evidence of the Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, the Prime Minister, on 28 August 2003
The evidence of Mr Richard Taylor, the special adviser to the Secretary of State for Defence, on 4 September 2003
The evidence of Ms Pamela Teare on 18 September 2003
The evidence of the Rt Hon Geoffrey Hoon MP, on 22 September 2003
The evidence of Mr Alastair Campbell on 22 September 2003
The evidence of Mr Thomas Kelly on 23 September 2003
The evidence of Sir Kevin Tebbit, 13 October 2003
Consideration of the issue whether the Government behaved in a way which was dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous in revealing Dr Kelly's name to the media
Consideration of the evidence of the Prime Minister and Sir Kevin Tebbit
Consideration of the evidence of the Rt Hon Geoffrey Hoon MP
Conclusion on the issue whether the Government behaved in a way which was dishonourable or underhand or duplicitous in revealing Dr Kelly's name to the media
Consideration of the issue whether the Government failed to take proper steps to help and protect Dr Kelly in the difficult position in which he found himself
Conclusion on the issue whether the Government failed to take proper steps to help and protect Dr Kelly in the difficult position in which he found himself
Chapter 10
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter11.htm
The factors which may have led Dr Kelly to take his own life
Conclusion on the factors which may have led Dr Kelly to take his own life
Chapter 11 - Other matters
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter11.htm
Did Mr Gilligan give adequate notice to the Government on 28 May 2003 of the allegations to be reported in his broadcasts on WMD on the Today Programme on 29 May?
Mr Campbell's evidence to the FAC about his involvement in September 2002 in the preparation of the draft dossiers
Mr Gilligan's e-mail of 14 July 2003 intended for some members of the FAC
Doctor Kelly's meeting with the Mod on 14 July 2003
The manner in which Dr Kelly was questioned when he gave evidence to the FAC on 15 July 2003
The Walter Mitty remark by Mr Thomas Kelly
Dr Brian Jones' letter to the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence dated 8 July 2003
Chapter 12 - Summary of conclusions
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter12.htm
Chapter 13 - Final observations
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter13.htm
APPENDICES
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/appendices.htm
Appendix 1 - Names of counsel and solicitors appearing for parties represented at the Inquiry
Appendix 2 - Transcript of BBC 10pm news broadcast on 29 May
Appendix 3 - Transcript of telephone conversation between Ms Susan Watts and Dr Kelly on 30 May 2003
Appendix 4 - Contingent press lines prepared by the Ministry of Defence on 4 July
Appendix 5 - Drafts of the Question and Answer materials prepared between 4-8 July
Appendix 6 - Handwritten notes of a meeting on 14 July
Appendix 7 - Draft dossier of 20 June 2002
Appendix 8 - Memorandum - Mr Alastair Campbell to Mr John Scarlett of 9 December
Appendix 9 - Draft dossier 10/11 September
Appendix 10 - Draft dossier 16 September
Appendix 11 - Draft dossier of 19 September
Appendix 12 - Draft dossier of 20 September
Appendix 13 - E-mails between officials in 10 Downing Street and officials in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Appendix 14 - Correspondence between the Government and the BBC from 29 May to 27 June
Appendix 15 - Transcript of Alastair Campbell's interview with Jon Snow, Channel 4 News on 27 June
Appendix 16 - Correspondence between 29 June and 10 July 2003
Appendix 17 - Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd [2001] 2 AC 127
Appendix 18 - Correspondence between Dr Brian Jones and the Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence
PDF Report by Lord Hutton [excluding Appendices] http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/huttonreport.pdf
-------- korea
Roh replaces top defense, national security aides
SEOUL (AFP)
Jan 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040130042447.8dx4jia9.html
President Roh Moo-Hyun on Friday replaced his top defense and national security advisors in a cabinet shake-up that comes at a pivotal point in efforts to end the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Kwon Chin-Ho, the former deputy head of the National Intelligence Service, will take over from Ra Jong-Yil as national security advisor and Yoon Kwang-Ung, a retired three-star navy general, will succeed Kim Hee-Sang as adviser for national defense, presidential spokesman Yoon Tai-Young said.
Two weeks ago, Roh replaced his foreign minister and top diplomats were axed amid a public row over foreign policy and relations with the United States.
Ra's exit from the cabinet-level post was a personnel issue and had nothing to do with policy differences, an official with Roh's National Security Council said.
"We expect that the new security adviser, who is well aware of the issues of defense, diplomacy and national unification, will lend his expertise to the president in dealing with pending issues," the spokesman said.
Kwon, a 63-year-old retired three-star army general, is an expert in security and international affairs who has served in key posts including as deputy head of the National Intelligence Service.
He also worked as a military attache at the South Korean embassy in Paris, commanded the army intelligence division and was in charge of security during the 2002 football World Cup co-hosted by South Korea and Japan.
The shake up comes ahead of a visit here by Washington's top diplomat on North Korea and as Seoul prepares to address the nuclear issues directly with North Korea at inter-Korean cabinet-level talks.
"Being modest and composed, intellectual and warm-hearted, Mr. Kwon is considered fit to coordinate policies and achieving cooperation among different government agencies," a statement from the presidential office said.
Two weeks ago Yoon Young-Kwan lost his job as foreign minister and was replaced by Roh's foreign policy advisor Ban Ki Moon following widely reported inter-agency policy conflicts over North Korea and ties to the United States.
A replacement for Ban as Roh's foreign policy advisor has yet to be named.
Roh replaced Yoon after vowing he would no longer tolerate "obstacles to pursuing my foreign policy" and after key foreign ministry officials reportedly accused left-leaning advisers in the presidential Blue House of being pro-North Korean and anti-US.
The president, elected on a wave of anti-American sentiment in December 2002, had complained of "unequal" US-South Korean ties and pledged to pursue an independent policy line while seeking reconciliation with North Korea.
Since taking office, however, Roh has repeatedly stressed the importance of the 50-year-old alliance with Washington despite friction over the handling of North Korea and plans to realign US forces in South Korea.
Efforts to convene a new round of nuclear crisis talks with North Korea next month will top the agenda during the visit here Sunday and Monday of James Kelly, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
He will be the first senior State Department official to meet with Ban since his appointment as foreign minister two weeks ago.
They will discuss hopes for a new round of six-nation talks between the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia, officials said. A first round ended inconclusively in Beijing in August last year.
South Korean officials will raise the nuclear issue directly with North Korea at three-days of cabinet level talks scheduled for Seoul next week.
--------
U.S. Envoy Hopeful About N. Korea Talks
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-US.html
BEIJING (AP) -- A top U.S. diplomat praised China on Friday for its efforts to reconvene negotiations about North Korea's nuclear program, expressing hope that a new round of six-party talks to resolve the dispute could be held without much further delay.
But after a day of meeting with Chinese leaders, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage wouldn't cite a potential date for the talks, saying only that Washington and Beijing expect they would be ``soon.''
The decision on when talks would be resumed ``seems to lie in Pyongyang rather than Beijing,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday, referring to the North Korean government.
``We are working with our partners in these talks to try to prepare another round,'' Boucher said. But ``sitting down at the table again requires the consent of Pyongyang.''
The first round ended in August without a settlement or a date to meet again. The talks involve the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas.
An Australian government delegation was on its way to North Korea on Friday to persuade Pyongyang to agree to a second round, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said. Australia, a close U.S. ally, has diplomatic links with North Korea.
``A constructive, diplomatic solution to North Korea's nuclear crisis, which escalated just over a year ago, is vital for the security of our region and stability in North Asia and among our allies and top trading partners,'' said Downer, who was leading the delegation, which will be in Pyongyang until Tuesday.
The nuclear dispute flared in October 2002 when U.S. officials accused North Korea of running the uranium program in violation of a 1994 deal requiring the North to freeze its nuclear facilities. But North Korea has since denied ever having a uranium program.
Armitage arrived Thursday in Beijing, his first stop in an Asian tour that also will take him to Mongolia and Japan.
He also talked with Chinese leaders about Taiwan's March 20 referendum, and amplified President Bush's misgivings about it.
Many fear the planned vote -- on whether Taiwan should beef up its defenses if China doesn't remove hundreds of missiles pointed at this nearby island -- could feed tensions between China and Taiwan, rivals which split amid civil war in 1949.
Armitage told a small group of reporters Friday that Chinese leaders made no specific promises but reiterated their longtime policy -- ``a peaceful resolution of the question.''
Armitage said he also briefed Chinese leaders, including the defense minister, about Washington's global defense posture and Iraq's reconstruction. Armitage said he believed Chinese firms would be ``excellent subcontractors'' for some of the work.
--------
U.S. Sees No Future for Reactor Program
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-NKorea-Nuclear.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- The U.S.-run consortium that suspended construction of two nuclear reactors in North Korea met Friday to make sure preservation work at the site is going smoothly, and Washington reiterated it saw no future for the project.
The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization had been building the light-water reactors under a 1994 deal between the United States and North Korea. But the deal went sour last year after U.S. officials said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear program in violation of international agreements.
The United States is now deadlocked with North Korea about how to proceed. The North has proposed suspending its nuclear programs if Washington lifts sanctions against the communist state, resumes oil shipments, and removes the North from its list of countries that sponsor terrorism. The United States says North Korea must first verifiably begin dismantling its nuclear programs.
``As we have made clear, we see no future for the light water reactor project,'' the U.S. State Department said in a statement after the KEDO executive board met at its headquarters in New York.
The consortium includes the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea. In November, it suspended work on the reactors for at least one year.
A one sentence statement from KEDO said the board didn't plan any new steps at the site in Kumho, North Korea, and ``chiefly took stock'' of the suspension during the meeting.
KEDO keeps staff in Kumho to make sure the site is maintained while the project is suspended. The situation on the ground and relations between North Korean and KEDO officials there is ``normal,'' KEDO spokesman Roland Tricot said.
The two sides do not agree, however, about what to do with the equipment at the site -- including trucks, cranes, technical documents, computers and medical equipment. KEDO wants to remove some material, while the North has refused and demands compensation for the suspension.
Tricot said Friday that the North Korean stance violates agreements that led to the construction.
``We do not agree with the merits of the DPRK's assertion,'' Tricot said, using the acronym for the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea. ``We hope that the DPRK would cooperate with KEDO in a way to enable the smooth implementation of the suspension.''
The reactors were meant to come online in 2007 and were to supply North Korea with electricity in exchange for a promise by the North to stop its weapons development. Officials have said the fate of the North's reactor project will be tied to progress in resolving the dispute over nuclear weapons.
``KEDO is an important vehicle which can help the overall diplomatic situation move forward,'' Tricot said.
-------- missile defense
Bush Seeking Big Increase in Missile Defense
January 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-usa-budget.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration will ask Congress to boost spending on missile defense by $1.2 billion next year and nearly double funding to modernize the Army in the $401.7 billion U.S. military budget for 2005, according to Pentagon documents released on Friday.
The defense plan is part of a proposed $2.3 trillion federal budget President Bush will send to lawmakers on Monday. It calls for a 7 percent increase in defense spending over the current level of $375 billion.
The Pentagon said the defense budget documents -- scheduled to be formally released on Monday with the president's overall budget -- were inadvertently posted on the Internet on Friday morning. They were later removed.
The administration seeks to boost funding for its controversial missile defense program by 13 percent to $10.2 billion next year from $9 billion requested for fiscal 2004.
The new figure includes spending by the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency of $9.1 billion in 2005, up from $7.6 billion, as well as the Army's Patriot missile program.
The Pentagon's plan to begin deploying later this year the initial parts of a missile defense shield has drawn sharp criticism from some U.S. allies and Democrats who say it has not been adequately tested and could spark an arms race in space.
The budget also calls for $3.2 billion for the Army's ``Future Combat System,'' a high-tech plan to make soldiers more mobile and lethal in the post-Cold War world. That is up from $1.7 billion in the current year.
The Pentagon plans to increase spending on unmanned spy planes -- being used increasingly for intelligence-gathering in Iraq and Afghanistan -- to nearly $2 billion from $1.3 billion in the current year. Some of the remote-controlled Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are armed with missiles.
Bush will also seek $74.9 billion to buy weapons and other equipment in the 2005 fiscal year, starting Oct. 1. For this year, the Pentagon asked Congress for $72.5 billion, but actual spending on weapons systems rose to $81.1 billion due to extra war-related spending approved by lawmakers.
The requested $74.9 billion is also expected to increase sharply under a supplemental spending request expected from the administration after the November presidential election.
DEFENSE CONTRACTORS WELL SERVED
The defense budget does not include up to $40 billion or more in supplemental spending for military operations in Iraq, which congressional sources and analysts say the White House could seek from Congress late this year or early next year.
The budget calls for almost $4.6 billion for Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Joint Strike Fighter, or F-35, up from $4.25 billion requested in 2004. The program to develop a stealthy, long-range fighter includes more than a dozen foreign partners including Britain, the Netherlands and Australia.
The defense budget made waves on Wall Street, with analysts seeking clues on the futures of key defense contractors like Lockheed, Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman Corp., Raytheon Co. and General Dynamics Corp. .
``Boeing appears well served by this budget proposal,'' Wachovia Securities analyst Robert Spingarn said in a research note. The Chicago-based company is the lead contractor for both the ground-based missile defense program and the Future Combat System.
The 2005 budget asks for almost $69 billion in weapons research and development, up from the $64.7 billion it sought last year.
The documents showed Bush will seek to buy 24 of Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F/A-22 Raptor fighter aircraft in fiscal 2005 for a total of $3.6 billion, up from the 22 jets the Pentagon requested a year ago.
The Air Force would get three V-22 ``Osprey'' tilt-rotor aircraft in 2005 for a cost of $305.6 million, up from the two requested in the current fiscal year at a cost of $213.7 million, according to the documents.
The Osprey, which suffered two high-profile crashes in 2000 killing 23 Marines, is being built by Boeing and Textron Inc.'s Bell Helicopter for the Marine Corps, the Air Force and Special Operations forces.
--------
Bush Seeks More Money for Missile Defense
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Military-Budget.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is seeking a big increase in spending for missile defense next year, setting the program on course to have a bare-bones system in place by the end of this year and up to 30 interceptors on land and at sea by the end of 2005.
The money is part of a proposed $401.7 billion Pentagon budget that doesn't include money for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Officials last year went back to Congress for $87 billion beyond their budget to fund those missions, and documents obtained by The Associated Press show they expect to have to ask for money beyond this new budget as well.
The documents say they don't expect to do that until calendar year 2005, after November's presidential election.
Overall, the military plans to spend less next year to buy new weapons systems, more on personnel and more to maintain and upgrade helicopters, tanks and airplanes worn down by heavy duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The request for the Missile Defense Agency is $9.14 billion, according to a copy of the budget that President Bush plans to send to Congress on Monday. That would be nearly 20 percent above last year's $7.6 billion for the agency.
The proposed spending is aimed at having 20 ground-based missile interceptors and up to 10 sea-based interceptors by the end of the 2005, as well as upgraded radars and command and control, according to the documents obtained by The AP.
The administration says the United States needs to develop missile defenses to guard against rogue nations such as North Korea that could fire missiles loaded with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. Critics say the missile defense plan is too costly and relies on unproven technology.
The Bush administration's missile defense plan is a greatly downscaled version of the plan President Reagan offered in the mid-1980s, popularly known as ``Star Wars,'' which was designed to defend against missiles from the now-defunct Soviet Union.
Pentagon documents say the total military budget of $401.7 billion for fiscal year 2005 is 7 percent more than 2004's budget of $375.3 billion, which didn't include the $87 billion supplemental later sought -- $20 billion for Iraq reconstruction and about $67 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents say officials expect to seek to supplement the new $401.7 billion request as well -- but won't ask for it until after calendar year 2004.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said earlier this month that the budget reflects Bush's commitment to prosecuting a global war on terrorism. He said priorities include investment in quality-of-life programs for troops, improved intelligence and spending to ensure the combat readiness of U.S. troops.
Documents obtained by The AP on Friday indicate that budget planners focused on transforming the military, improving intelligence capabilities and further streamlining Pentagon management.
Other details of the budget, normally closely held until the president sends his request to Capitol Hill, were learned when someone in the Pentagon inadvertently posted them on the Internet. They were later withdrawn.
According to the documents mistakenly posted on the Pentagon Web site, the budget request for buying aircraft will decline from $2.1 billion to $1.8 billion.
The proposal also includes more money for spare parts for Army vehicles such as tanks, armored personnel carriers and Humvees: $20.1 million instead of $17.9 million. Soldiers have complained that using the vehicles so heavily in the harsh environment of Iraq has caused them to break down more frequently. There is also a slight increase for ammunition.
Personnel needs, including salaries and benefits, were put at $105 billion, up from $98.3 billion this year. Other major categories in the $401.7 billion total include $141 billion for operation and maintenance; $70 billion for research, development and testing; $5.3 billion for construction and $4.2 billion for family housing.
The Pentagon request is part of an overall $2.3 trillion budget that Bush will propose.
The Pentagon budget represents 17.8 percent of the federal budget, compared with 15.3 percent in fiscal year 2000, according to other documents obtained by The AP.
That's 3.6 percent of gross domestic product, compared with 2.9 percent in 2000.
Associated Press writers Matt Kelley and Alan Fram contributed to this report.
-------- pacific
AN ECODETECTIVE'S JOURNEY INTO THE CENTER OF NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE
By Red Flags Daily
Mark Purdey
1/30/04
High Barn Farm, Elworthy,
Taunton, TA43PX, UK.
Tel; 00 44 1984 656832. MadCowPurdey@aol.com
http://www.redflagsweekly.com/conferences/mad_cow/2004_jan13.html
For several years now, a US research team has pointed to the cause of the world's most intensive cluster of neurodegenerative disease on the isle of Guam as the traditional consumption of 'natural toxins' found in the fruit of the cycad tree (1)(2) - a rather innocuous looking miniature palm tree that has outlived the dinosaurs and provided a staple flour product for the indigenous people who populate the South Pacific islands.
But I remember watching a BBC2 documentary "Poison in Paradise" featuring Oliver Sack's own investigation (3) into this mysterious epidemic of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and motor neurone-based neurodegenerative conditions amongst the Chamorro natives. The majority of cases were confined to three adjoining coastal villages on the southern tip of Guam (See map). Since no cases of the disease had surfaced prior to the 1950s, and few cases have as yet appeared in any person born after the mid 1950s, the key epidemiological factors suggest that this cluster represents a delayed neurotoxic reaction to the introduction of some alien toxic agent into the local environment during the 1940s/1950s.
But the only ring of truth that resonated from Sack's 50 minute programme, was peeled out by the wife of one of the Chamorro victims exhibited on the film. In a 30 second sound bite that had surprisingly escaped the cutting room floor, Mrs Santos challenged the 'cycad' dogma head on; protesting that they had been eating this fruit for eternity, so why the sudden emergence of this crippling disease during the 1950s? She went on; "My husband's auntie said it was during the American invasion of Guam when they were bombing the waters. There was something in the bomb that was polluting the water. The children at that time were bathing in it and drinking it."
So I travelled to Guam in September 2003 to carry out a total environmental analyses and eco-detective investigation of the environment supporting the three neighbouring coastal villages of Umatac, Merizo and Inarajan - the epicentre of this neurodegenerative cluster (2).
Hocus Cocus.
With guidance from the Chamorro people, I rapidly found my investigations focusing upon the history of Cocus island - an eerie, elongated islet rising out of the coral reef and located a couple of miles offshore from the mainland villages of Umatac and Merizo (See map). I sailed out to the once-upon-a-time tropical 'paradise' island, and quickly realised that the health of the coral reef around the former naval base was way below standard. It was kind of cankered and decrepit, like a derelict moonscape devoid of any life. The only evidence of activity was the solitary skeleton of a juvenile crab that appeared to have been frozen 'mid scuttle' across the top of a coral block - as if some powerful poison had compelled the poor crustacea to terminate its life force prematurely. The ecosystem of the former base was no better. It supported little more than a rag-bag ecology of sickly looking vegetation.
The previous evening I had attended an enlightening meeting with ex-serviceman and atomic veteran, Robert Celestial and colleagues. Although I was initially suspected of being a 'CIA plant', I convinced them to the contrary and spent the rest of the evening listening intently to Robert's catalogue of nuclear exposure incidents during the clean-up of the US atomic bomb test sites out at Enewetak and Bikini atolls (4). He had subsequently survived a series of grotesque cancers, which motivated him to devote the rest of his 'half life' to campaigning. He handed me the sworn statement of another ex serviceman, Vancil Sanderson (5), that offered a plausible explanation for the 'leukaemic' state of the life on Cocus isle. Vancil had been stationed at the former mini naval station on Cocus island, and his statement told the tale of a continuous stream of small naval ships entering Cocus lagoon - the waters that lay between the Cocus isle coral reef and the diseased coastal villages on mainland Guam. Disturbingly, these boats had all been involved in monitoring the atomic bomb tests on the atolls between 1946 and 1963. After each detonation, they were sailed back to Cocus for decontamination of their radioactive fall out. Acidic detergents and sand blasting were used in the decontaminating procedure, and the resulting radioactive debris was discharged directly off the decks and into the open sea (6). The life of the coral reef was subsequently exterminated (5) due to the infiltration of the marine foodchain with a radioactive cocktail of strontium 90, barium 137, cesium 137, etc. A high peak of radioactivity was detected in the surface waters around Guam during a radioecological study carried out by the University of Washington in 1959 (7).
The naval boats had left a toxic legacy of radioactive decay in their wake; a fall-out effect that could last for up to 60 years plus. More disturbingly, the radioactive alkali earth metals that were involved, eg; strontium and barium, are readily incorporated into the calcium of the coral beds, since the atomic arrangement of these metals is near identical to that of calcium (8).
My inspection of Cocus - albeit forty years later - seemed to confirm the statements made in Sanderson's report about the annihilation of the coral beds. I found that the ratio of sand to coral on the local seabed was still only about 9:1 - clearly abnormal, since reports written before the US navy arrival in the late 1940s referred to a blanketing of coral across the Cocus seabed (5).
I even witnessed a rusting bulldozer blade, slumped up at the top of the old naval section of Cocus beach - presumably one of the last remnants of the military tackle used to push the contaminated waste into the hollow that had been hewn out from the backbone at the former navy base.
Despite the tropical heat of that afternoon, I felt a chilly shiver down my spine as I watched the arrival of yet another boatload of 'uninformed' Japanese tourist girls onto the newly developed 'Cocus Island Resort'. I wondered whether they would still be so eager to sprawl themselves out along the sand or water ski around the lagoon if the toxic secrets of this island's murky history had been publicly unveiled?
But the very real toxic dangers posed by the decontamination of the boats in Cocus lagoon was no doubt a negligible threat today. For the risks of radioactive intoxication would have been concentrated into the period when the highest levels of contamination existed fifty years ago - the precise window period of exposure that fits the aetiological model of prediction made by the 'experts' who have been studying the origins of this epidemic (1-3).
It seems that the entire epidemic could have been avoided if the local population had been informed of the true purpose behind the US military presence on Cocus. Whilst the villagers can remember the steady trickle of vessels sailing into the lagoon for these 'cleansing' operations during the 1950s and 1960s, they knew nothing about the true nature of the operations at the Cocus station. So the Chamorros had continued to draw their mainstay foods from the last remaining morsels of marine life that had survived the toxic contamination. More disturbingly, they continued to pulverise the chunks of local coral into a fine powder for mixing up with the betel nut and papula leaf - a traditional concoction that is habitually chewed for its stimulatory effects. The Chamorros' unwitting use of the radioactive coral with the betel could represent the most concentrated source of strontium 90 contamination that has ever been endured by the human race.
Perhaps, it was with no surprise that the collection and consumption of shellfish, coral , etc, from any part of the Guam coastline was outlawed during the 1980s.
The Biochemistry of Neurodegeneration.
My environmental analysis confirmed the findings of other teams- that the traditional foodchain of the Chamorro folk is markedly deficient in magnesium (9). This problem was further exacerbated by the customary practise of adding large amounts of salt to their meals - since sodium disrupts the uptake of magnesium across the gut wall(10). Once magnesium is deficient in the biosystem, then these rogue radioactive metals such as strontium 90 or barium are able to substitute at the vacant magnesium sites on enzymes.(since these metals possess a similar atomic arrangement to magnesium/calacium (8)) thereby disrupting the healthy functioning of these enzymes.
The free radicals generated by the rogue replacement radionuclides could cause mutations. In this respect, it is interesting that these neurodegerative diseases stem from specific mutations in the enzymes that mediate the metabolism of cholesterol/lipids (12) the guanosine triphosphate cell signalling (13) - enzyme systems that are magnesium regulated in the healthy mammal (8).
Another magnesium activated enzyme is glutamine synthetase(8), and once its activity is knocked out of action during magnesium deficiency, then the highly neurotoxic glutamate molecule builds up in the brain, thereby triggering the whole downward spiral of these types of neurodegenerative diseases (14).
Likewise, the enzymes which regulate insulin metabolism are largely magnesium activated. It is therefore no surprise to discover that the incidence rates of diabetic/pancreatic disorders amongst the Chamarro people are at a high intensity - particularly in those suffering from Groote syndrome
More relevant to the pathogenesis of Groote suyndrome is the exposure to strontium or barium atoms which leads to a loss of free sulphate in the biosystem (15)(16). For the reactive forms of these metals are well recognised to couple up with sulphur, thereby starving the nervous system of one of its most crucial structural caretakers - the sulphated proteoglycan heparin molecules (8). Once deprived of their sulphur co partners, these ingenious proteoglycans will cease to perform their function in ' sparking' the electro signals that regulate the growth and maintenance of the complex infrastructure of neuronal networking(17). Neurodegenerative wasting ensues.
Interestingly, loss of proteoglycans activity has been shown to be responsible for invoking the cornerstone pathogenic mechanisms which underpin the cause of neurodegenerative wasting conditions such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, Motor Neurone Disease, and BSE. Whilst individual genetics determines which particular type of neurodegenerative disease will emerge at the end of the day, it is the environmental exposure to these sulphur-capturing pollutants, such as barium and strontium that represent the common causal component shared by all of these diseases.
Barium and strontium are employed widely in industries manufacturing paper, munitions, zinc refining, welding, rubber, glass, paint pigments, ceramics, fabrics, TV components and as military atmospheric spray aerosols for enhancing the efficiency of radio/radar signal communications(15)(16) during jet practise and battlefield operations.
"Guamogeddon"
With two major US airbases and a nuclear submarine naval base in operation since World war two, the former paradise isle of Guam has become one of the most explosively contaminated locations on this earth - well evidenced by that fact that Guam was christened the 'coconut curtain' during the pre-1962 period when the isle was out of bounds to any foreign visitors who were not approved by the US military.
The Chamorro elders remember the multitude of bombs that were dropped in the bays during the US invasion of Japanese occupied Guam towards the end of World War Two. Whilst the US liberation of Guam was unanimously welcomed, one of the downsides of the conquest involved the toxic liberation of barium-based explosives into the marine ecosystem following the detonation of so many bombs. Wherever the warplanes from the US Hornet aircraft carrier were involved in heavy bombardments during June /July 1944 - eg. along the coasts of Guam, Rota island, Irian Jaya (New Quinea) and Southern Japan - the clusters of neurodegenerative disease have subsequently emerged (1-3). Other bombs were exploded (from crashed bombers ) in a tiny area of the New Guinea highlands; the local Fore tribe of that region had gotten hit, and subsequently developed an epidemic of TSE during the 1950s - called kuru.
And ever since the war, the US navy have been carting waste munitions - gone beyond their expiry date - up to the central mountainous backbone of the island and then disposing them within an extensive spread of sealed off wilderness under military occupation.
Ironically, the former Senator of Guam, Angel L.G Santos, had only just launched the publication of a major action report on the radioactive contamination of Guam (18)- on behalf of the 'Blue Ribbon Panel Committee'- when he plunged into a rapid attack dementia / neurodegenerative wasting condition which tragically killed the poor man within two months. His disease was diagnosed as Creutzfeldt Jacob disease - related to the infamous mad cow syndrome and 'Kuru'. Hearsay has it that the Senator had been earthing up discarded US ordnance on his own small farm; suggesting that his home grown fruit and vegetables had become contaminated, which, in turn, had contaminated him, leading to his rapid demise health-wise.
Considering the clear-cut correlation that exists between the distribution / timing of the cluster of neurodegenerative disease on Guam and the distribution/timing of nuclear contamination ( See map), one wonders why all of the 'expert' teams of US scientists visiting Guam have failed to recognize such a blatantly obvious causal association.
Apart from the raft of research teams which have ended up promoting the widely-held theory of cycad consumption as the cause of the epidemic (1)(2), a fresh research team was dispatched more recently to the 'atomic frontline' from the US Dept of the Interior. This research was led by William Miller and Richard Sanzolone who conducted a professional geochemical survey of the environment around the epicentre of the cluster (19). But all of the positive ground gained in their excellent geochemical study was blown apart by the bizarre conclusion arrived at in this paper. The authors had plumped for the assumption that Guam syndrome had been caused by yet another 'natural toxin' - the toxic blooms of blue green algae; a phenomenon which they had only casually noticed along the estuaries of the three rivers where the three affected villages are sited.
Not long after this study was finished, the natural water supplies to the villages were abruptly terminated and replaced by the main supply that fed the rest of the island - no reasons given. When the Mayor of Umatac pressed for an explanation, the US governing authorities supplied him with papers that included a copy of the unpublished paper by Miller et al (19), which made anecdotal reference to these blue-green algae toxins as the source of the problem. But how could such a circumstantially-derived explanation provide a sufficiently watertight basis for cutting off the water? Furthermore, no actual analysis had been carried out to determine the presence of this toxin in the drinking water, plus all three villages had been drawing their drinking waters from the mountain springs and not from the estuary stages of the rivers where the toxic blooms were purportedly spotted. One is tempted to believe that this was a cover story for a much more serious contamination of the springs that could have resulted from the long term disposal of munitions in the mountains above the villages (See map - http://www.redflagsweekly.com/conferences/mad_cow/2004_jan13_2.html# ).
The 'free radical' legacy of radioactive metal contamination - DNA damage and deformed proteins.
During my last evening on Guam, I attended the sad and moving funeral ceremony of a young leukaemia sufferer - one of many such cases amongst the Chamorro population in Umatac, I was told.
Whilst it is widely recognized that the toxic mechanism of radioactive contamination is based upon the radionuclide's ability to initiate free radical chain reactions that damage DNA, causing a bizarre array of cancers, it is not so widely recognized that these free radicals can also deform the molecular shape of proteins (20)(11). Once a protein gets malformed, it can no longer perform its proper function in the body metabolism. Nor can it be degraded by enzymes at the end of its working life. The resulting 'rogue' proteins accumulate and clump together to form abnormal tombstone features that choke up the neuronal networks, thereby initiating the progressive, self perpetuating sequence of neurodegeneration that is common to all of these diseases (21). Each condition is hallmarked by its own distinctive 'tombstone' feature (22); so much so that neuropathologists actually seek out the type of tombstone - eg; neurofibrillary tangle, lewy body, bunina body, prion fibril - in order to diagnose the specific type of neurodegeneration responsible for the death - eg. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Motor Neurone disease, and transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE).
I have written previously about the involvement of rogue metals binding to the prion protein (23)(24) in place of its normal copper co-partners (43), and how this aberrant substitution of metals induces the malformation of the prion protein (23)(24), which, in turn, causes the infamous TSE group of 'rapid attack' neurodegenerative disorders - scrapie, CJD, BSE, and CWD. But my most recent observations in the TSE cluster ecosystems indicate that these rogue replacement metals could also carry a radioactive facet to their atomic armory; thereby offering a plausible explanation for the virulent, resistant properties of the deformed prion protein and the causal enigma of BSE.
In this respect, the malformed prion protein becomes much like a trojan horse that trucks around the circadian mediated circuits of the brain carrying its lethal radioactive cargo of metallic missiles on board - a fire power capacity that is potentially capable of detonating a chain reaction of free radical mediated neurodegeneration. "The Atomic Fawns"
Whilst browsing through the vaults of PhD theses stored in the basement of the Colorado State University in Fort Collins, I stumbled upon a raft of chilling studies that provided the initial clue (25-34). A series of carefully designed experiments had been carried out back in the 1960s/ 1970s, when the US atomic energy agency and US government had funded the Colorado department of wildlife and Colorado State Uni's (CSU) Department of radiology and radiation biology at Fort Collins to monitor the exposure of deer to plutonium, strontium 90 and cesium 134 at every level (25-34).
One of the trials involved transporting deer fawns back and forth between the deer pens at the Department's Foothills wildlife facility at Fort Collins and the plutonium contaminated pastures of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Factory at Boulder 60 kilometres away (30). The objective was to monitor the health effects and eco-dynamics of leaked plutonium (and its daughter radionuclides ) through the biosystem of the deer and within the general ecosystem.
A series of radioactive leaks from rusting barrels that stored plutonium contaminated oil at the Rocky Flats Plant (combined with a fire ) had enabled plutonium and its daughter radionuclides to become airborn, contaminating a wide area of the Colorado section of the Front Range (30)(31)(33) - a copper deficient area (35) that has become the CWD endemic area today (36). The peak of contamination was during the 1967-1969 seasons when the air sampler detected Plu as high as .35 pCi /M3 (31). A program of environmental monitoring had picked up significant levels of plutonium as far a field as the Pawnee Butt plains NE of Fort Collins and Roxy Ann mountain (31). Disturbingly, the levels of plutonium were higher in the livers of the wild deer that roamed the Cache le Poudre canyon at .042 dpm/gm than in the deer that roamed near to Rocky Flats itself (.033 dpm/gm ) (33).
Environmental contamination due to The Rocky Flats radioactive leak was probably exacerbated by the emissions from the kiln chimneys of the local cement factory at nearby Lyons; where, according to a 16/12/92 report in the South West Sage by John Dougherty, the EPA's Division of Solid Waste made an emergency response on cement kiln dust, stating that they had found radioactive plutonium and cesium in the kiln dust at Lyons, and at two other plants near to weapons factories in the USA. The Lyons contamination was presumed to be the result of utilizing low level nuclear waste material from the nearby Rocky Flats weapons plant as fuel for the cement kiln (37).
During the 60s/ 70s, it seems that the entire operation of the Fort Collins wildlife facility was geared towards a raft of radiation experiments - including the direct injection of strontium 90 and cesium 134 into the deer - in order to monitor the biological effects of these potentially lethal 'cold war' compounds (25)(26).
But it seems that one of the major biological repercussions of these unique experiments was not revealed until 13 years later, when a 1980 paper by Williams and Young (38) reported on the first ever recorded case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in a deer in 1967- the BSE equivalent in deer. The delay before publication is mysterious, since most scientists would normally be tripping over themselves to achieve the 'prestige' of getting important novel discoveries into the academic press. Whilst the authors made no mention of possible causal factors, they merely stated that the TSE affected deer were resident at the Fort Collins facility - eg; in the very same deer pens that had been involved in these radioactive experiments at that time. Putting two and two together, it is unlikely that the space/time correlation between these novel radioactive experiments and the emergence of a novel neurodegenerative disease is a mere coincidence.
And later I stumbled upon a study by Dr Randolph Crom on a small cluster of CJD amongst the workforce engaged in the assembly of missiles at the former Hughes Missile Plant at Tucson in Arizona (39). The workers had no doubt been working with these same radioactive metals. In this respect, It is also relevant that CWD has erupted in deer grazing across the copper deficient White Sands missile range in the New Mexico desert, the tundra terrain of NATO's Cold Lake air weapons range and the tank shelling range at Camp Wainwright in the Sandhills on the Alberta / Saskatchewan borders - environments that are chronically bombarded by the test firing of similar types of missile and munitions, as well as playing host to the fast expanding oil and gas drilling industry - another major source of natural radioactive metal contamination (40).
In fact, exposure to high intensities of both naturally occurring and man made radioactive metals seems to explain the emergence of every cluster of TSE that has reared its ugly head around the world - like the tiny Aspromonte mountain village in Calabria that was abruptly evacuated for no 'apparent' reason during the 1980s. Since 1995, twenty five cases of CJD have subsequently erupted amongst the former inhabitants of this village (41). When I trekked up that rocky road to their former village, I got to hear of an illegal dumping of radioactive waste on the mountainous slopes immediately above the old houses - an area that represented the main catchment area for the spring waters that supplied the village.
Chernobyl and BSE?
But what about the more aggressive, new strain of TSE - the massive epidemic of BSE / vCJD that suddenly blighted the UK's young cattle and human population post in November 1986? Did this big time epidemic result from an overexposure to the artificial sources of the eco-prerequisites that we are talking about here?
In this respect, it seems likely that the UK's BSE and vCJD epidemics were caused by the simultaneous exposure of cattle, cats, humans and zoo animals to a toxic combination of factors - the widely used copper-chelating organo dithiophosphate (OP) insecticides (35) and the fall out of radioactive metals from the Chernobyl eruption (20).
During the 1980s, British cattle herds and humans were exposed to exclusively high doses of these insecticides for warble fly and head lice control respectively (42), whereupon the prion proteins of the OP treated animals were starved of their copper co partners (35). This rendered the prion protein vulnerable to binding up with certain rogue replacement metals, such as the radioactive strontium 90, which were rained down at high concentrations onto the soils of NW Europe after the Chernobyl accident (20) - the precise region that later became the world's most intensive hotspot of BSE .
Political Perspectives.
The developed nations are only too keen to brandish the rogue states as irresponsible for their clandestine development of nuclear and chemical weapons. But they are not so keen to open the secret pages of their toxic history books when it comes to answering their own public's demands for data that may help them understand the true causes of their ill health.
A substantial number of helpless human and animal populations were deliberately subjected to high doses of radioactivity without their knowledge or consent. The all too powerful politicians and scientific institutions who enacted these atrocities have made damn certain that they can never be brought to account.
The only difference between the positions of the developed vis-a-vis the undeveloped nations regarding their handling of weapons of mass destruction, is that the less sophisticated rogue states have not yet developed a sufficiently watertight infrastructure of secrecy and mass media spin to keep their various acts of human and ecological barbarism under wraps. On the other hand, the developed nations have successfully suppressed their shameful track record; and in so doing they have committed further crime against humanity by deliberately duping their populations with disinformation - a bibliography of bogus science that has successfully misappropriated the cause of so many pollutant-induced modern day ailments onto an assortment of genetic weaknesses, viruses, naturally occurring toxins, or - as in the case of BSE - the sheep scrapie agent.
It seems that governments and corporations are deliberately conjuring up and capitalising upon this phenomena of 'natural' scapegoats' for their own self-protection. It guarantees them a foolproof exemption from the flood of compensation claims that could pop up if the catalogue of ill health effects resulting from their bygone atomic antics and compulsory pesticide policies were ever allowed to see the light of day.
If the western governments had permitted the toxic secrets of their atomic backwaters to permeate the public domain, then we might be a lot further forward in understanding the true causes of these neurodegenerative conditions today. If you can understand the cause of a disease, then you are better equipped to work out the best means of curing, controlling or preventing that disease - a cache of knowledge that would prove extremely beneficial in the current world where neurodegenerative disorders are beginning to reach epidemic proportions.
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20. Eisenbud M, Gesell T. Environmental Radioactivity, 4th Edition. Academic Press, London . 1997.
21. Gajdusek DC. Hypothesis: interference with axonal transport of neurofilament as a common pathogenetic mechanism in certain diseases of the CNS. New England J Med; 1985, 312 (11) 714-718.
22. Calne DB, Eisen A, McGeer E, Spencer P. Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and motor neurone disease: abiotrophic interaction between ageing and environment. A Hypothesis. Lancet 1986 November 8th, 1067-1070.
23. Purdey M, BSE; Are we being fed a lie ? Ecologist, 2002, 32 (9) 33-37
24. Purdey M, Does an infrasonic acoustic shock wave resonance of the manganese 3+ loaded/ copper depleted prion protein initiate the pathogenesis of TSE. Medical Hypotheses 2003 60 (6) 797-820.
25. Alldredge AW, Whicker WF, Hakonson TE. Retention of intravenously administered Cs 134 in mule deer 10th Annual Progress report on AEC contract AT(11-1)-1156.Dept Radiol Radiat Biol, Colorado State Uni, Fort Collins. p14-17, 1972.
26. Hakonson TE. Tissue distribution and excretion of Cs134 in the mule deer. MS thesis. Colorado State University. Fort Collins pp121. 1967.
27. Alldredge AW, Lipscomb JF, Whicker FW. Forage intake rates of mule deer estimated with fall out Cs-137. J Wildlife Management 38 508-516. 1974.
28. Whicker FW, Farris GC, Dahl AH. Concentration patterns of Sr 90, Cs 137, I 131 in a wild deer population and environment. Eds; Aberg B, Hungate FP. Radioecological concentration processes. Pergamon Press, New York. p621-633 1966.
29. Hakonson TE, Whicker FW. Tissue distribution of radiocesium in the mule deer. Health Physics, 1971, 21 (6) 862-866.
30. Arthur WJ 111. Plutonium intake by mule deer at Rocky Flats, Colorado. MS Thesis. Colorado State Uni, Fort Collins, Co. pp123 1977.
31. Little CA. Plutonium in a grassland ecosystem. PhD thesis. Colorado State Uni, Fort Collins, Co. pp170 1979.
32. Whicker FW, Farris GC, Remmenga EE, Dahl AH. Factors influencing the accumulation of fallout Cs 137 in Colorado mule deer.Health Physics 1965, 11: 1407-1414.
33. Hiatt GS, Plutonium dispersal by mule deer at Rocky Flats, Colorado. MS thesis. Colorado State Uni, Fort Collins. pp143 1977.
34. Arthur WJ, Alldredge AW. Soil Ingestion by mule deer in North Central Colorado. Journal of Range Management 1979 32 (1) 67-71.
35. Purdey M, Ecosystems supporting clusters of sporadic TSEs demonstrate excesses of the radical generating divalent cation , manganese, and deficiencies of antioxidant co factors Cu, Se, Fe, Zn. Does a foreign cation substitution at Prp's Cu domain initiate TSE ? Medical Hypotheses 2000 54 (2) 278-306
36. Spraker TR, Miller MW, Williams ES, Getzy DM, Adrian WJ, Schoonveld GG, Spowart RA, O'Rourke KI, Miller JM, Merz PA. Spongiform encephalopathy in free ranging mule deer, white tailed deer and rocky mountain elk in Northcentral Colorado. J Wildlife diseases 1997 33(1) 1-6.
37. Dougherty J. EPA finds plutonium, dioxin in cement dust. Concrete Facts 1993 2 (4) 1-4 (PO Box 58, Laporte, Co 80535.
38. Williams ES, Young S. Chronic wasting disease of captive mule deer; a spongiform encephalopathy. Journal of Wildlife Diseases; 1980, 16: 89-98.
39. Crom R, Cluster of CJD cases in Tucson. Report; The epidemic Intelligence Service of the Arizona Department of Health Services, Pheonix. 1990.
40. Underhill PT. Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material. Advances in Environmental Series. St Lucie Press, Florida. 1996
41. D'Alessandro M, Petraroli R, Ladogana A. Pocchiari M. High incidence of CJD in rural Calabria. Lancet 1998; 352: 1989-1990
42. Purdey M, High dose exposure to systemic phosmet insecticide modifies the phosphatidylinositol anchor on the prion protein; the origins of new variant transmissible spongiform encephalopathy ? Medical Hypotheses 1998 50 (2) 91-111
43. Brown D, Prion and prejudice; normal protein and the synapse. Trends in Neurosciences 2001 24 (2) 85-90.
-------- russia
US fails to get Russia on board in fight against spread of WMD
MOSCOW (AFP)
Jan 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040130170058.nu3du6x4.html
Russia on Friday rejected an initial US bid to convince it to join countries ready to intercept ships and planes which may be trafficking weapons of mass destruction across the globe.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton spent two days in Moscow meeting top defense and foreign ministry officials, but failed to convince them that Russia should join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).
The agreement has been signed by all members of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations except for Russia. Washington would like to see Moscow on board by the time the United States hosts the next G8 summit in June.
But Bolton admitted that Moscow at the moment had too many questions about the PSI despite its participation in the US-led "war on terror".
Russia fears that the PSI initiative will allow the United States to launch unilateral raids without agreement from international institutions like the UN Security Council, where Russia has veto power.
The issue of Russia's role in international affairs has become particularly sensitive after the United States launched the war on Iraq despite Russia's opposition to the campaign.
Meanwhile Bolton is seen as one of the more hawkish officials within the US administration and appeared to receive a curt reception in Moscow during his visit.
He has previously played tough with Russia on issues concerning nuclear disarmament and Washington's recent decision to annul a Cold War-era agreement on preventing the construction of nation-wide nuclear defense shields -- an agreement based on the premise that a nuclear war would assure destruction of both countries and which therefore would never be launched.
Bolton ended his visit to Moscow by saying that "we are prepared to hold more discussions."
"I believe that they are certainly supportive of the PSI," he said of his Russian counterparts.
"And I think they are considering what their objectives will be," Bolton told reporters after meetings that included one with Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev.
But he admitted that Russia at the moment was concerned about how seriously it was being treated by the international community and whether Moscow would be seen as an equal partner in the anti-terror campaign of the United States and other Western nations.
"I don't think that the Russia position is that they are opposed to this (PSI).... I think they are studying the extent of the involvement they would like to have.
Bolton admitted that it was still not clear "whether they (the Russians) are full participants or not" in the war against terror. "We think that Russia brings a lot of advantages to the table."
But the message was far more skeptical when delivered by Russian officials.
"The explanation presented by the US side was far from satisfactory from the Russian point of view," Russian news agencies quoted a defense ministry official who attended Bolton's talks with foreign ministry officials as saying.
The source said that Russia "was unable to understand how the forceful interception of planes and ships that may be carrying weapons of mass destruction agrees with international law."
"We have also failed to receive the technical aspects" of how these operations would be conducted, the source said.
The source added that Russia would only sign up to the agreement "if this initiative answers our national interests."
Bolton's visit came just days after the stay of US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who published an article in a top Russian daily criticizing President Vladimir Putin's approach to the media and political freedoms in Russia.
----
Russia planning maneuvers of its nuclear forces next month
VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Friday, January 30, 2004
Associated Press
http://sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/01/30/international1332EST0582.DTL
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's nuclear forces reportedly are preparing their largest maneuvers in two decades, an exercise involving the test-firing of missiles and flights by dozens of bombers in a massive simulation of an all-out nuclear war.
President Vladimir Putin is expected to personally oversee the maneuvers, which are apparently aimed at demonstrating the revival of the nation's military might and come ahead of Russian elections in March.
The business newspaper Kommersant said the exercise was set for mid-February and would closely resemble a 1982 Soviet exercise dubbed the "seven-hour nuclear war" that put the West on edge.
Official comments on the upcoming exercise have been sketchy. The chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, Col.-Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, was quoted by the Interfax-Military News Agency as saying the planned maneuvers would involve several launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles in various regions of Russia, but he wouldn't give further details.
A Defense Ministry spokesman refused to comment on the reports. The Russian military typically says little about upcoming exercises.
In Washington, the State Department said it has seen reports that Russia has plans to conduct the exercises in February. The department also said Russia is obliged to notify the United States 24 hours before a missile test and has done so in the past.
Kommersant said the maneuvers would involve Tu-160 strategic bombers test-firing cruise missiles over the northern Atlantic. Analysts describe such an exercise as an imitation of a nuclear attack on the United States.
Other groups of bombers will fly over Russia's Arctic regions and test-fire missiles at a southern range near the Caspian Sea, the newspaper said.
As part of the exercise, the military is planning to conduct several launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, including one from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, the Kommersant report said.
The military also plans to launch military satellites from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the Plesetsk launch pad in northern Russia -- a simulation of the replacement of satellites lost in action, Kommersant said.
Russia's system warning of an enemy missile attack and a missile defense system protecting Moscow will also be involved in the exercise, it added.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst, said the military has regularly held nuclear exercises that were timed to coincide with the annual test-firing of aging Soviet-built missiles.
"It has been a routine affair, but it can be expanded if they want a show," he said.
Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think-tank, said the maneuvers would further strengthen Putin's popularity ahead of the March 14 presidential election he is expected to win easily.
Putin has repeatedly pledged to rebuild Russia's military might and restore pride to the demoralized service. When he ran for his first term in 2000, he flew as a second pilot in a fighter jet and later donned naval officer's garb on a visit to a nuclear submarine -- images that played well with many voters who are nostalgic for Soviet global power and military prestige.
"This exercise will make a great show, with Putin receiving reports from military commanders," Safranchuk told The Associated Press.
Kommersant said Moscow had notified Washington about the exercise, describing it as part of efforts to fend off terror threats even though it imitates the Cold War scenario of an all-out war.
"The exercise follows the old scenario, and casting it as anti-terror is absurd," Safranchuk said.
Putin's support for the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks bolstered relations with Washington and helped broker a new U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction deal and a Russia-NATO partnership agreement in 2002.
But the U.S.-Russian honeymoon has soured lately over Moscow's criticism of the war in Iraq , U.S. concerns about authoritarian trends in the Kremlin's domestic policy, and Russia's perceived attempts to assert its authority over ex-Soviet neighbors.
----
Russia-Iran nuclear ties fully legal: minister
MOSCOW (AFP)
Jan 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040130011037.bkqob5wc.html
Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran is fully legal and transparent, Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev insisted ahead of talks Friday with top US arms control diplomat John Bolton.
"We keep to international law, our actions are fully legal and transparent for the International Atomic Energy Agency, and they have no complaints against us," Rumyantsev said as quoted by the Interfax news agency.
Rumyantsev is due to travel to Iran next month to discuss speeding up the construction of a nuclear plant at Bushehr, in the south of the country, a project Russia continues despite Washington's objections.
"We are building a nuclear station (in Iran), for money. This is not some kind of aid, this is a commercial project," Rumyantsev declared.
Non-proliferation of nuclear materials and technologies as well as nuclear security would be the main topic at the meeting, Rumyantsev said.
Nevertheless Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran is high up on the agenda of Rumyantsev's talks with Bolton, a prospect Rumyantsev viewed with some humor.
"I always say that if we did not talk about Iran, it's as if we haven't met," the minister commented.
Uranium enrichment is at the centre of international concern that Iran may be capable of building an atomic bomb. Tehran has said it reserves the right to restart enrichment "at any moment."
Russia has made completion of the Bushehr nuclear plant conditional on Iran signing an undertaking to return the spent fuel.
Russia has overridden strong objections from the United States to maintain its nuclear cooperation with Iran.
--------
Russia Said Preparing Nuclear Exercise
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Exercise.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's nuclear forces reportedly are preparing their largest maneuvers in two decades, an exercise involving the test-firing of missiles and flights by dozens of bombers in a massive simulation of an all-out nuclear war.
President Vladimir Putin is expected to personally oversee the maneuvers, which are apparently aimed at demonstrating the revival of the nation's military might and come ahead of Russian elections in March.
The business newspaper Kommersant said the exercise was set for mid-February and would closely resemble a 1982 Soviet exercise dubbed the ``seven-hour nuclear war'' that put the West on edge.
Official comments on the upcoming exercise have been sketchy. The chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, Col.-Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, was quoted by the Interfax-Military News Agency as saying the planned maneuvers would involve several launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles in various regions of Russia, but he wouldn't give further details.
A Defense Ministry spokesman refused to comment on the reports. The Russian military typically says little about upcoming exercises.
In Washington, the State Department said it has seen reports that Russia has plans to conduct the exercises in February. The department also said Russia is obliged to notify the United States 24 hours before a missile test and has done so in the past.
Kommersant said the maneuvers would involve Tu-160 strategic bombers test-firing cruise missiles over the northern Atlantic. Analysts describe such an exercise as an imitation of a nuclear attack on the United States.
Other groups of bombers will fly over Russia's Arctic regions and test-fire missiles at a southern range near the Caspian Sea, the newspaper said.
As part of the exercise, the military is planning to conduct several launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles, including one from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, the Kommersant report said.
The military also plans to launch military satellites from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the Plesetsk launch pad in northern Russia -- a simulation of the replacement of satellites lost in action, Kommersant said.
Russia's system warning of an enemy missile attack and a missile defense system protecting Moscow will also be involved in the exercise, it added.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst, said the military has regularly held nuclear exercises that were timed to coincide with the annual test-firing of aging Soviet-built missiles.
``It has been a routine affair, but it can be expanded if they want a show,'' he said.
Ivan Safranchuk, head of the Moscow office of the Center for Defense Information, a Washington-based think-tank, said the maneuvers would further strengthen Putin's popularity ahead of the March 14 presidential election he is expected to win easily.
Putin has repeatedly pledged to rebuild Russia's military might and restore pride to the demoralized service. When he ran for his first term in 2000, he flew as a second pilot in a fighter jet and later donned naval officer's garb on a visit to a nuclear submarine -- images that played well with many voters who are nostalgic for Soviet global power and military prestige.
``This exercise will make a great show, with Putin receiving reports from military commanders,'' Safranchuk told The Associated Press.
Kommersant said Moscow had notified Washington about the exercise, describing it as part of efforts to fend off terror threats even though it imitates the Cold War scenario of an all-out war.
``The exercise follows the old scenario, and casting it as anti-terror is absurd,'' Safranchuk said.
Putin's support for the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks bolstered relations with Washington and helped broker a new U.S.-Russian nuclear arms reduction deal and a Russia-NATO partnership agreement in 2002.
But the U.S.-Russian honeymoon has soured lately over Moscow's criticism of the war in Iraq , U.S. concerns about authoritarian trends in the Kremlin's domestic policy, and Russia's perceived attempts to assert its authority over ex-Soviet neighbors.
--------
U.S., Russian Officials Hold Arms Talks
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-US.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia can help prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction even if it doesn't join President Bush's new initiative aimed at steping up interdiction, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said Friday.
Bolton, ending a two-day visit here, has been lobbying for support for the Proliferation Security Initiative, which seeks to boost interdiction of weapons of mass destruction and their components.
The Russian government supports the initiative's goals in reducing trafficking in weapons-related materials, Bolton said after talks with top officials from the armed forces' General Staff.
The Russians have not yet agreed to join, saying they still have not decided if the program is in their national interest and whether it adheres to international law.
Bolton left the door open for further cooperation even if Moscow refuses to join PSI as a full-fledged member. He said Russia's intelligence and law enforcement assets could be a big help.
``The issue they are deciding now is exactly what the extent of their participation in the effort would be because I don't doubt that there are a number of areas where cooperation would be possible whether they became full participants or not,'' he said.
Bolton said he had extensive discussions with Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev regarding Russia's participation in the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, which Washington fears could aid Iran's nuclear weapons program.
The status of discussions between the Iranian and Russian governments about the supply and return of fuel for the reactor was also discussed, he said, declining to give more detail.
Russia has said it will not ship nuclear fuel to Iran until the two countries sign an agreement under which all spent fuel would be returned to Russia -- a measure aimed to prevent it from being used for making weapons.
The signing has been delayed because of disagreements that both Russian and Iranian officials have described as technical. But a U.S. diplomat suggested Friday that Russia was stalling or, as he put it, being ``very prudent'' about sending the fuel.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the diplomat noted that up to 1 1/2 years ago, Moscow had denied that Iran was seeking a nuclear weapons potential. Now Russian officials say ``we don't know,'' the diplomat said.
Tehran signed an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency last month allowing the nuclear agency watchdog full access to its nuclear facilities to ensure they aren't being used to develop weapons.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Energy Department postpones picking site to make nuclear triggers
Friday, January 30, 2004
By H. Josef Hebert,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-01-30/s_12580.asp
WASHINGTON - Bowing to Congress, the Energy Department is putting off further action on selection of a site for making plutonium triggers for the nation's nuclear arsenal.
The department said this week it would postpone development of an environmental impact analysis for the manufacturing plant "in order to address congressional concerns that it is premature to pursue further decisions" on the program. This also would mean a delay in picking a site among the five that have been considered, officials said.
The government halted the production of plutonium "pits," or triggers, for warheads in 1989. The pit, about the size of a softball, is a critical component of a nuclear warhead. Energy Department officials have said the capacity to produce more of them is essential to ensure the reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile.
Nuclear nonproliferation advocates fear the proposed plant would be the first step to developing new warheads. Senior administration officials have denied any such intentions.
Congress also has been skeptical about the proposed manufacturing plant, which is expected to cost as much as $4.4 billion, depending on production capacity. One option calls for making more than 450 plutonium triggers a year.
As part of the department's appropriation, Congress urged that the program be put on hold until hearings can be held. Lawmakers also slashed the department's $23 million request for preliminary work on the program to $10.8 million.
The department has not picked a site. Two years ago it said it was considering two sites in New Mexico and one each in Nevada, Texas, and South Carolina. A final environmental impact statement on the sites was expected to be issued in April.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who was unsuccessful in an attempt to scuttle the program, said she welcomed the delay. She said she hoped the decision "marks the beginning of a more measured review of the administration's nuclear program."
Linton Brooks, undersecretary for nuclear security, said the postponement does not suggest that the department is abandoning the program.
"While there is widespread support in Congress for this project, we need to pause to respond to concerns that some committees have raised about its scope and timing.... Some members clearly have questions about our timing and decision-making process," he said in a statement.
Brooks, who heads the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages nuclear weapons programs, said restoring the capability to make plutonium pits "is an essential element" of defense policy.
Critics saw the delay as evidence that Congress may move to halt the project.
"We applaud the decision to postpone and hope it's the first step to scrapping a dangerous and unnecessary nuclear bomb plant," said Bob Schaeffer, spokesman for the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. The group is a network of local organizations near nuclear weapons facilities.
Tom Clements, a nuclear proliferation expert at Greenpeace International, said the department is "responding to congressional concern about a lack of justification for this facility."
The plan calls for the new trigger production plant to be operating by 2020. Currently the Energy Department refurbishes triggers from disassembled warheads when they are needed.
The five sites under consideration for the new plant are Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant facility, also in New Mexico; the Nevada Test Site; the Pantex facility in Texas; and the Savannah River weapons complex in South Carolina.
----
Nuclear Testing
January 30, 2004
Episode no. 722
(PBS)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week722/cover.html
BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: We have a special report today on the debate over new atomic testing. The administration has proposed that testing resume in Nevada -- underground -- to develop so-called bunker busters: nuclear weapons that could destroy whatever was hidden deep in the ground. The proposal has raised many questions, military, political, and moral, about whether resumed testing would advance national security and, if it would, how to balance that against the fears of people who live downwind from the test site. Lucky Severson reports.
LUCKY SEVERSON: For 47 years, until the first President Bush signed a moratorium in 1992, the U.S. government tested nearly 2,200 atomic devices, an average of one every eight days. Over 500 were open-air tests, many in the Nevada desert northwest of Las Vegas. Now the administration of President George W. Bush has asked Congress for funding to study and develop new types of nuclear weapons, and to prepare the old Nevada site to resume testing on short notice.
(To Baker Spring, Heritage Foundation): Would you sleep better knowing that we were resuming nuclear testing?
BAKER SPRING (Arms Control Expert, Heritage Foundation): Absolutely. Absolutely.
SEVERSON: Baker Spring is an arms control expert with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. He says the Bush administration's rationale to upgrade its aging nuclear arsenal and develop new, smaller weapons makes sense.
Mr. SPRING: It is based on, in my judgment, the correct perception that we're in a completely different strategic environment than we were in the Cold War. As a result, we may need different tools to maintain deterrence in a post-Cold War world.
SEVERSON: It's the so-called rogue nations like North Korea and Iran that worry the administration, particularly their deep bunkers that may be hiding weapons of mass destruction. So the Pentagon wants to develop low-yield bombs that can destroy those bunkers. Critics say it's a dangerous policy because it proposes using battlefield nuclear weapons to destroy even non-nuclear targets like chemical and biological weapon stockpiles. Daryl Kimball is with the Arms Control Association.
DARYL KIMBALL (Executive Director, Arms Control Association): I think it's a very dangerous notion to suggest that nuclear weapons should be viewed as just another weapon in our arsenal. By any standard, these are, no matter who has them, weapons of mass terror and destruction. So the U.S. should not try to expand the role of nuclear weapons from deterring nuclear threats to deterring chemical and biological threats.
Mr. SPRING: Nuclear weapons are inanimate objects. They don't have any moral content. It is the purposes for which they are used that have moral content. I think that is what we have to focus on.
SEVERSON: One of the biggest concerns among critics is that it will provoke a new nuclear arms race.
Mr. SPRING: I disagree fundamentally. I think on balance, the U.S. nuclear deterrent is actually having the effect of dampening down the appetite for nuclear weapons and in the context of adversaries, like North Korea, who, I think, if they saw the U.S. was really traveling down the path of unilateral nuclear abolition, would actually increase the appetite for nuclear weapons.
Mr. KIMBALL: The fact that the U.S. has nuclear weapons that can destroy Teheran and Pyongyang has not deterred either state from pursing nuclear weapons so far. The fact that the U.S. is developing new kinds of nuclear weapons to strike leadership targets in those countries is making the leaders in those states even more committed to developing the kinds of deterrent capabilities that can stop a U.S. attack.
SEVERSON: After an extended debate on Capitol Hill, Congress, in November, voted to approve even more funding than the administration requested. The debate was intense, but it was little noticed outside of Washington, except in communities near the Nevada test site.
Like St. George, Utah, where there are a large number of people who are extremely upset about the prospect of new testing. Michelle Thomas, for instance.
MICHELLE THOMAS (St. George Resident): You can't say to the world that "We're not going to allow you to have these kinds of weapons, you don't know how to handle them," and turn around and do it yourself -- that's hypocrisy in its highest form.
SEVERSON: Michelle Thomas and thousands like her call themselves "downwinders" -- downwind from the test site. Mary Dixon, an executive at Salt Lake public television station KUED, is a downwinder. She's unalterably opposed to more testing.
MARY DIXON (Creative Director, KUED-TV): I think to do that again, to me, that's immoral. Why? Because you do not put your own people at risk. You just do not do that. This government's job is to safeguard its citizens. That's not protecting us. That is putting us at risk.
SEVERSON: The reason downwinders are so angry is because of their personal tragic experience with radioactive fallout. Many were living here during the above-ground testing that ended in 1963. They were assured by the government that the tests were safe, that there was nothing to fear. Claudia Peterson is a downwinder -- a cancer victim.
CLAUDIA PETERSON: My biggest fear as a child was what the Russians were going to do to us, not what our own government was doing to us. SEVERSON: It wasn't until the late 1970s when the truth came out that the U.S. government had deliberately timed dozens of atomic atmospheric explosions on days when the wind blew across communities in rural southern Utah. The wind carried dangerous levels of radiation. But the news came as no surprise here.
Local cemeteries are filled with an unusually high number of cancer victims. One was Mary Dixon's sister.
Ms. DIXON: We've lived with this legacy; we are still living with this legacy. People are still getting sick from the fallout that happened in the '50s and '60s. The way radiation works is it doesn't make you sick right away. It mutates cells and affects you. And thyroid cancer, that one that I got, can take up to 27 years to show its effects.
SEVERSON: But the radiation didn't stop in the West. It dusted communities across America. The largest doses were in upstate New York. The National Cancer Institute reports that there may be as many as 75,000 cases of thyroid cancer among those exposed, although the institute says there is no "certain" link.
Ms. THOMAS: With the kind of breast cancer I got, they knew it was a fallout-related one because it was the same kind the women in Nagasaki and Hiroshima got so many years after the attack there.
SEVERSON: Finally, in the early 1980s, Congress determined that there were indeed casualties of testing and set up a fund to award victims and their families, particularly those who suffered specific kinds of thyroid cancer and leukemia. By mid-June of 2002, 4,200 downwinders had been compensated.
The only Utah politician who voted against a new study was Congressman Jim Matheson. It was his father, Governor Scott Matheson, who spearheaded the battle to get compensation. A few years later, his father died of one of the cancers covered in the downwind legislation.
Rep. JIM MATHESON (D-UT): It was a situation where the government lied, and it's something that a lot of people in southern Utah feel strongly about; and it touched my family in many ways, so I feel strongly as well.
SEVERSON: The government argues that new tests would be safer, because they will be conducted underground. People here disagree.
Rep. MATHESON: Even the underground tests did emit radiation into the atmosphere, so I don't feel that it's safe just because it's underground. It may be different from the above-ground testing, but it still causes a lot of concern for me.
SEVERSON: Over the years, southern Utah has become a popular retirement center with thousands of new residents, some of whom are more inclined to trust the judgment of the government. Russ Butcher is a retired computer scientist.
RUSS BUTCHER (Retired Computer Scientist): Because of the way I feel about our way of life and how we've gotten to where we are as Americans and the type of freedom we enjoy, and I know it's under constant threat, if it requires nuclear [weapons], then I would have to say I am for it. I think America will always be trusted not to use something like that unless it is an absolute must.
FRED ESPLIN (Vice President of Relations, University of Utah): I think we have been far too cavalier in assuming our own virtues and our motives in this.
SEVERSON: Many Utahans, like Fred Esplin, a downwinder, understand the administration's "compelling" reasons to upgrade our nuclear arsenal but still question the morality and wisdom of it.
Mr. ESPLIN: I do believe that the United States is and continues to be the last best hope for democratic reform around the world. How we go about it, and whether we are throwing our weight around or whether we work collaboratively and cooperatively with other people, has long-term implications. We have had far too much of the former and far too little of the latter.
SEVERSON: Congressional supporters say just because $29 million has been approved for research doesn't mean the government will actually get down to testing. But arms control analyst Baker Spring says he won't be at all surprised if testing resumes as soon as possible.
Mr. SPRING: No, I wouldn't be, and the reason I wouldn't be is that most people agree that if you're going to treat an entirely new nuclear weapon, you're going to need to test it. ...
Mr. ESPLIN: There are all of the assurances of safety, but you have people that have been burned once and aren't prepared to be burned twice, literally burned once and don't want to be burned again.
Mr. SPRING: Is it completely risk free? No activity is. But I think we can clearly reassure the people of Nevada and Utah that there is going to be absolutely ironclad commitment to making this activity as safe and reliable as possible.
Ms. DIXON: I cannot ever again believe assurances that this is 100 percent safe. I just cannot believe assurances anymore. I will always be skeptical.
SEVERSON: The earliest testing could resume is 2006. By then, there will be intense public debate that will reach beyond the safety, security, and strategic concerns to the moral implications of resuming nuclear testing. For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I'm Lucky Severson from St. George, Utah.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- washington
Hanford jobs to plunge by 2008
Cleanup efforts to accelerate, 'working the community out of jobs'
Friday, January 30, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/158713_hanford30.html
RICHLAND -- The number of workers handling environmental cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Rreservation will begin to decline in 2006, with about 4,000 jobs expected to disappear by 2008, the Energy Department said.
The figures released Wednesday at the Tri-Cities Regional Economic Outlook Forum are only for environmental cleanup jobs and do not include research unrelated to Hanford by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The lab employs about 3,500 people.
"What we're asking you to do is to help us speed cleanup. At the same time, we're working the community out of jobs. I know that's tough," Jeanie Schwier, chief financial officer for department's Richland office, told the forum.
Hanford and the surrounding area have lived through boom and bust employment cycles since World War II.
A 1945 study declared the mid-Columbia Valley's biggest economic problem was losing Hanford jobs, said Dean Schau, state labor economist for the Pasco, Kennewick and Richland areas.
At the time, the site employed 51,000 people. In 1971, the site dipped to a low of 6,500 employees.
Hanford's early environmental cleanup years beginning in 1989 pushed the site's employment to 18,500 by 1994 amid heavy criticism of a bloated work force.
Two years of belt-tightening then dropped Hanford's cleanup employees to about 12,500 in 1996.
Energy Department officials predict that cleanup will employ about 11,000 people in 2004. That number is expected to rise to about 11,500 by 2006, then fall to about 9,800 one year later as construction work winds down on a complex where highly radioactive and hazardous waste will be transformed to glass.
In 2008, about 7,500 employees will complete construction of that complex and begin testing. In 2011, employment will fall to about 6,300 employees, many of whom will work on completing cleanup of the Columbia River corridor the following year.
Employment numbers will continue to decline through 2033, when about 900 employees will be expected to shut down and demolish the glassification complex.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation in south-central Washington made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons, beginning with the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb during World War II.
Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion.
-------- us nuc waste
'Hot' waste issue heats up at Capitol
Firm, lawmaker at odds over license change
By Donna Kemp
Spangler Deseret Morning News
Friday, January 30, 2004
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,590039748,00.html
A state lawmaker and radioactive waste giant Envirocare of Utah appear to be at odds over the definition of "hotter" waste.
Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, said Thursday he plans to move forward with legislation that forces Envirocare to receive approval of the Legislature and governor before accepting any waste "hotter" in radioactivity than what is currently permitted under its federal and state licenses.
The bill, expected to be filed by the Legislature's deadline Thursday, has struck a chord with Envirocare because Urquhart doesn't want to make any exceptions.
At issue are two license amendments on which Envirocare is seeking approval from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.
Currently Envirocare's landfill in Tooele County primarily handles Class A waste, which consists of mostly dirt that's slightly contaminated with radioactivity from government cleanup projects. It also has a "mixed waste cell," which contains a mix of radioactive and hazardous materials.
Envirocare has asked DEQ to review an order issued to it by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that would allow the company to take "special nuclear material" in larger containers.
On the surface, the waste materials sound ominous. The waste does contain plutonium and other ingredients that go into the making of a nuclear bomb, but none of the materials is "hotter" in radioactivity than what Envirocare's Class A license allows.
"Envirocare is authorized to take larger volumes of liquids, but not hotter," said Dane Finerfrock, executive director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control. The amendment is still under review, he added.
The company also is seeking DEQ approval to take waste that contains the same radioactivity levels at its mixed waste cell that it can take at its Class A operation.
"These types of things are to improve our operation efficiency," said Tim Barney, senior vice president of Envirocare. These license modifications have been in the works for over a year, he added.
"We felt like the policy decision has already been made for Class A waste," Barney said. "These amendments do not exceed the Class A limits, and therefore we are wondering why it is included in the bill."
Urquhart, co-chairman of a legislative task force on waste policy, said he believes both the amendments should be subject to approval by the Legislature and governor. His bill was prompted to stop Envirocare from disposing of uranium mill tailings from a federal cleanup site in Fernald, Ohio - 10 times hotter in radioactivity than the waste now being stored at Envirocare.
Envirocare pulled the plug on that proposal and has no plans presently to take similarly hot radioactive waste from Niagara Falls, N.Y.
"One thing I learned is that the public wants us to make policy decisions over radioactive waste," Urquhart said.
Jason Groenewold of Families Against Incinerator Risk and Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah agreed.
"If we are going to debate whether Ho Ho's are appropriate to have in our schools," he added, "certainly we should be able to debate how much plutonium we want to allow in our state."
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Plutonium is a silvery radiological poison
Deseret Morning News
Friday, January 30, 2004
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,590039748,00.html
Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element (atomic number 94). It is a silvery metal that sometimes has a yellow tarnish and exists in six varieties with different densities and crystal structure. It was first detected in the U.S. in 1940 and is created by bombarding uranium with neutrons. It is an ingredient in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.
Plutonium is a radiological poison and must be handled with very special equipment.
-------- us politics
White House rejects independent Iraq probe
January 30, 2004
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040129-112144-3070r.htm
The White House yesterday rejected calls by Democrats for an independent investigation into how and why intelligence agencies thought Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before the Iraq war.
Speaking on NBC's "Today" show yesterday, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration "simply believes that there is still work to be done" in Iraq before an independent inquiry should take place.
"The Iraq Survey Group [ISG] is trying to complete its work," Miss Rice said. "But let me be very clear: No one will want to know more than the president of the comparison between what we found when we got there and what we thought going in."
David Kay, who resigned as head of the ISG last week, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that President Bush made the right call to go to war, considering the intelligence presented to him.
He also stressed that he has found no evidence the intelligence community was pressured by the Bush administration to write reports that would justify going to war - a theory pushed by Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.
"Never, not in a single case, was the explanation [for the bad intelligence]: 'I was pressured to do this,'" Mr. Kay said Wednesday.
Mr. Kay's inspection of Iraq has turned up no large caches of WMD, suggesting that much of the intelligence the president and Congress received before the war was wrong.
However, Iraq's new foreign minister said yesterday that Saddam's regime had carefully hidden the WMD, and he was confident they would eventually be found.
"I have every belief that some of these weapons could be found as we move forward," Hoshiyar Zebari told reporters in Sofia, Bulgaria. "They have been hidden in certain areas. The system of hiding was very sophisticated."
The White House, meanwhile, refuses to openly suggest, as Mr. Kay has, that weapons of mass destruction will never be found.
"We believe it's important that the search go on," said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. "There are still interviews to conduct, there are still documents to go through, there are still sites to go to."
At Wednesday's hearing, Mr. Kay agreed with a suggestion by Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, that an independent investigation of the intelligence failures should be conducted.
Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chafed at the notion that the investigation he has led for months, mostly behind closed doors, doesn't count.
"I personally take some umbrage at people who, for one reason or another, think we need to have an outside investigation before our inquiry is even complete," Mr. Roberts said.
The intelligence panel is expected to release a report on its findings by the middle of March.
Mr. Levin complained that the committee's investigation is too narrow because it does not examine how the pre-war intelligence "was characterized by policy-makers" in the Bush administration.
A senior Senate aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it is unlikely Congress will start another investigation into the intelligence breakdowns.
"You don't need the committee to do a Nexis-Lexis search to see if someone's statements match the intelligence reports," the aide said. "But this is the kind of stuff you get in an election year. They are just trying to use the committee to hurt the president. It doesn't matter what the facts are."
----
Defogging war
McNamara movie puts Iraq in context
Ellen Goodman
Washington Post Writers Group
01.30.04
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=15188
BOSTON -- There was a moment in "The Fog of War" when I thought this sober film on the life and times of Robert McNamara should be required viewing for those who believe that even a good war is free of moral dilemmas.
Remembering the firebombing of Tokyo -- the death of 100,000 civilians in one night during World War II -- McNamara asks: Would we have been tried as war criminals if we'd lost?
There was another moment when I thought the film should also be viewed by those who believe that American vulnerability began on Sept. 11, 2001.
Remembering the Cuban missile crisis, the old Cold Warrior says: "At the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war."
But by the time the film ran through the aging whiz kid's schoolbook -- "Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara" -- I was convinced that it should be seen most of all by those who are too young to remember when the Vietnam War was called McNamara's War.
No, I am not someone who believes that Iraq is another Vietnam. Every war -- if I may mangle Tolstoy -- is unhappy in its own way. But you can't hear McNamara alternately justifying and apologizing for his role as secretary of defense, running his tongue across the painful tooth of his involvement again and again, without hearing echoes.
"What makes us omniscient?" asks the man once described as an IBM machine with legs. "If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we better re-examine our reasons."
Re-examine our reasons? In the mid-1960s, McNamara remembers, we escalated the war in Vietnam on wrong information, on mistaken and misinterpreted reports of torpedo attacks. In 2003, we launched a pre-emptive war on the grounds that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction at the ready. Wrong again.
Today the fog of this war is also lifting. In his exit interview, David Kay, the weapons inspector, talked openly to reporters about the grave errors of our prewar intelligence. As he led the failed search for weapons of mass destruction, Kay said, analysts came up to him "almost in tears ... apologizing for reaching the conclusions that they did." But no one, he laments, ever stood up and said let's examine the basis for our conclusions.
President Bush remains anything but apologetic. In his State of the Union address, he switched the subject from weapons of mass destruction to "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities." He's switched the justification for this war and its casualties to the insistence that the world is better off without Saddam. He is trying to write the history our grandchildren will read.
McNamara and Bush, Vietnam and Iraq, sent me searching back to the words of my friend the late James Thomson, curator of the Nieman program when I was a young journalism fellow at Harvard. Jim was a golden boy, the son of missionaries to China, who left the government and then spoke out against the Vietnam War.
His powerful autopsy of the War -- "How Could Vietnam Happen?" -- was published in 1968 just weeks after McNamara's resignation in disagreement with President Johnson. Vietnam, he wrote, was the result of wishful thinking, overselling, the neutralizing of dissent within government and the idea that the war was a fundamental test of national will.
He concluded: "To put it bluntly: At the heart of the Vietnam calamity is a group of able, dedicated men who have been regularly and repeatedly wrong -- and whose standing with their contemporaries, and more important, with history, depends, as they see it, on being proven right. These are not men who can be asked to extricate themselves from error."
Do I hear Iraq? When McNamara left the Pentagon and Thomson wrote this autopsy, we were only halfway through the Vietnam War. We were seven years and nearly 31,000 more deaths from the end. How will that chilling fact echo?
Through the primary season, Democrats have debated how we got into Iraq: Was it misinformation or disinformation? In the general election, it is likely to refocus on who can find an end without leaving a greater disaster in its wake.
I think of the question Thomson described in his 1968 piece. Once, Henry Stimson, secretary of war for Taft, FDR and Truman, was asked: How can we bring peace to the world?
Stimson answered: "You begin by bringing to Washington a small handful of able men who believe that the achievement of peace is possible. You work them to the bone until they no longer believe that it is possible. And then you throw them out -- and bring in a new bunch who believe that it is possible."
----
Life lessons - Robert Strange McNamara
In his 88 years, Robert Strange McNamara has lived a life that has encompassed, for better and for worse, the American experience of the 20th century.
01/30/04
The Oregonian
SHAWN LEVY
http://www.oregonlive.com/entertainment/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1075381619263302.xml
Known best for his tenure as secretary of defense under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, McNamara has been widely reviled as the cerebral, heartless architect of the Vietnam War. Before that he was a key strategic analyst in the Pacific theater of World War II, helping to orchestrate the firebombing of Japanese cities, and he subsequently served as a high-ranking executive at Ford during the automotive heyday of the 1950s. After Vietnam, McNamara directed the global economy as president of the World Bank. Few lives have touched so many others in such powerful ways, and even fewer among that handful have been so controversial and polarizing.
In "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert McNamara," the great documentarian Errol Morris ("The Thin Blue Line," "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control") confronts this titanic figure, not so much to call him to task for his deeds, but to cull from his life the benefit of experience -- precepts that might guide current world powers from the missteps that haunt McNamara's career. The film is a lengthy interview, illustrated with period footage and taped audio, divided into 11 chapters or lessons that are summed up in such terse adages as "empathize with your enemy" and "get the data."
The relevance to contemporary events of McNamara's experience, particularly in Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis, is obvious. As the United States is engaged in multiple conflicts around the globe, including outright warfare and military occupation, the hard lessons that this articulate and sharp-witted man has learned are relevant, even if McNamara himself is unapologetic for the costs paid by others for his education.
Indeed, along with his vigor, McNamara chiefly impresses with his obdurateness. With his oil slick of hair, his little round glasses and his snug double-breasted suits, the McNamara of the Vietnam era seemed some sort of robot impervious to criticism. "Mac the Knife," as he was mockingly known, "an IBM machine with legs." Decades later, still mentally alert, he is only marginally more sympathetic a figure, speaking coolly of horrific acts that resulted from his calculations as if they were fictional. He does admit, as one of his final precepts, that "reason has limits," but at the same time he is unwilling to abandon reason to discuss the human costs of his ratiocinative bent of mind.
Morris is less confrontational than in such previous films as "The Thin Blue Line," which managed to free a wrongly convicted man from Texas' Death Row, or as in "Mr. Death," which devastated the credibility of Holocaust denier Fred A. Leuchter. It's as if the fact of having captured McNamara within his gaze for an extended period were enough for him, and as a result his characteristic - chockablock editing and familiar Philip Glass score feel like conventions rather than artistic imperatives.
But, nevertheless, this is an important and compelling film about the hubris of fallible men with unlimited power -- at once an eye-opening exploration of 20th-century history and a grippingly cautionary manifesto about current events.
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NEWS ANALYSIS
News Analysis: Bush's Risky Options
January 30, 2004
By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/politics/30ASSE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 - The intensifying debate over prewar American intelligence about Iraq presents President Bush with difficult and risky alternatives as he balances election year politics with calls to overhaul the intelligence apparatus and to restore the nation's credibility around the world.
He could order the start of an inquiry about the performance of intelligence agencies, as Democrats and the former chief weapons inspector, David A. Kay, have insisted, but his aides fear that that could prove politically damaging and would almost certainly reopen old wounds with the C.I.A.
He could keep arguing that military action was justified no matter how immediate a threat Saddam Hussein posed, and put off an examination and possible overhaul of America's intelligence operations for another year. But his political team worries that doing so could keep the issue alive through a long campaign.
Or the president and those on his national security team who once described how Mr. Hussein could use his stockpiles of weapons to strike at any time could conclude that something went badly wrong during their long march to war.
But the White House does not make a habit of admitting error. And even if Mr. Bush vowed to fix what many say is a broken system, his national security aides note, the fix would not be easy.
"They've made a pretty huge mess of it," said one senior Republican who has been talking to Mr. Bush's top advisers about what steps to take next. "They wove this giant story, based on intelligence assessments that in hindsight - and this is hindsight, remember - were wrong.
"It's exposed a huge problem in our intelligence gathering. But who wants to take that on in an election year? Or while you are fighting terrorists?"
White House officials will not talk at length about why they are so deeply hesitant to start an investigation. But they are facing a situation where Democrats are looking for evidence to blame Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and some Republicans are looking for evidence to blame George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
One White House official said Thursday that there was clearly a risk that an inquiry could spin out of control, exactly what many administration officials fear has happened to the inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks.
Yet some officials are beginning to argue, in background conversations, that such an investigation is inevitable now that Dr. Kay has declared to the Senate that "we were almost all wrong."
The politics of doing what Dr. Kay says needs to be done - conduct an inquiry and overhaul the intelligence community before a similar mistake is made over Iran, North Korea or other potential threats - has grown enormously complex.
Mr. Bush has publicly defended the "unbelievably hardworking, dedicated people" of the American intelligence agencies in part, some administration officials say, because he because he wants to avoid another bitter public dispute with Mr. Tenet and the intelligence apparatus.
Feelings are still raw over last summer's open arguments between the White House and Mr. Tenet over who was to blame for Mr. Bush's faulty claim in the 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was trying obtain uranium in Africa.
They were worsened by the accusations that a White House official blew the cover of Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. officer who operated under cover and is the wife of Mr. Bush's greatest critic on the Africa claim, Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Repairing that damage has taken months, and a grand jury has recently begun to hear evidence about the leak. Many intelligence officials continue to argue that real problem was not the ambiguous intelligence about Iraq's weapons capacity, but how Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney chose to use it.
On Thursday, appearing on NBC, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, insisted that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were not ducking the issue.
"No one will want to know more than the president of the comparison between what we found when we got there and what we thought was there going in," Ms. Rice said. She sounded in no hurry, saying it was important to let the Iraq Survey Group complete its work, work that Dr. Kay believes is 85 percent done.
Many Republicans have a different instinct: to follow Dr. Kay's lead and put the blame on the agency's assessments rather than the White House. In their view, that is the best way to insulate Mr. Bush from the charge that he cherry-picked the most damaging information.
Conveniently, some of them have long been suspicious of Mr. Tenet, who was put in his post by President Bill Clinton, and see this as an opportunity to speed along a retirement that the central intelligence chief has been talking about for a year. But Mr. Tenet has many defenders, including the president's father.
It was a measure of Mr. Bush's problem, and Mr. Tenet's, that Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this week that his committee's draft report of what went wrong, to be issued soon, would be very specific, and very critical.
"This is, indeed, a very egregious problem," he said. "If your intelligence is wrong you're in a world of trouble."
Mr. Bush's political advisers are highly aware that Dr. Kay's report has given Democratic contenders for the presidential nomination something they have long sought: a way to revive the issue of whether Mr. Bush was careless and trigger-happy, willing to twist intelligence findings to fit his own agenda, even at the cost of American credibility abroad.
What that leaves for now is a slow retreat by White House officials - a day-by-day, fact-by-fact backing away from assertions they made with such confidence nine months ago. Mr. Bush no longer declares, as he once did, that he is certain that sooner or later unconventional weapons will be found in Iraq. "He still thinks it," one of his aides said, "but I'm not sure you will hear him say it" until the Iraq Survey Group's investigation is complete.
Mr. Powell, last weekend, started backing away as well, saying more assertively than ever before that there might be no weapons stockpiles in Iraq and that if none are found, an effort had to begin to find out what went wrong. Nonetheless, he and Ms. Rice argue that Mr. Hussein brought his troubles on himself by refusing to account for stockpiles that the United Nations said existed in the mid-1990's.
Only Mr. Cheney, the man who made the most extensive claims about Iraq's readiness to strike out, has failed to back down publicly. Last Friday he was on the air again, talking about Mr. Hussein's mobile biological weapons units, which now appear, Dr. Kay says, to have had no such purpose.
"We'll have to get Cheney the new memo," one White House official said after Mr. Cheney's comments. "As soon as we write it."
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Intelligence Probe Would Be Risky for Bush
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Intelligence.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A full-blown investigation of Iraq intelligence failures would pose election-year risks for President Bush. No one could be certain where it would lead, who it would touch or what it would uncover.
But resisting an investigation has hazards, too, because that would give Democratic presidential rivals an opening to keep the issue alive and question what the White House might be hiding.
A bipartisan proposal for an independent investigation is blossoming into a prominent issue on the presidential campaign trail and on Capitol Hill. The issue moved to the fore when former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said he believed Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and Bush's decision to go to war was based on inaccurate intelligence.
For now, the White House appears to be playing for time, hoping the furor will die down. Bush refused to endorse the idea of an independent investigative commission on Friday but insisted, ``I want to know the facts.'' The administration needs more time to investigate, he said.
With Republicans in control of Congress and the White House, it's unlikely an independent commission would be created without the president's blessing.
While Bush once raised dire warnings, he now seems to say Saddam's weapons were almost beside the point. ``Saddam Hussein was a danger,'' Bush said. ``The world is a better place and a more peaceful place and the Iraqi people are free'' without him
In terms of the weapons, Bush argues that the Iraq Survey Group once headed by Kay should pursue its investigation, as long as that takes.
Whenever that investigation is complete, the administration will compare its findings with the pre-war evidence that Bush found conclusive -- it led him to say that Saddam threatened the world with ``some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.'' Of course, the investigation -- and then the comparison -- will take time and there is no guarantee it would be concluded before the election.
``It's like a basketball game, and he's got the ball and there's a problem here and there and he's just going to play out the clock. And he may be able to do it,'' said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.
The specter of world threats and danger is a key element of Bush's re-election campaign. His strongest suit against Democrats is his leadership of the war against terror, polls show, and the White House is eager to protect and enhance that reputation.
``Presidents don't seem to like to admit mistakes and he can't attack the intelligence community, for heaven's sake,'' said presidential analyst Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. ``He's still the commander in chief. ... And yet if he's doing his job he'd better knock some heads together in the intelligence community, or figure out at least what we should be doing that we didn't do before.''
Democratic presidential candidates already accuse Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of manipulating pre-war intelligence to make the case for invasion.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean says Cheney berated midlevel analysts at the CIA because their weapons' analyses weren't strong enough.
Sen. John Kerry says there are ``very legitimate questions about what the vice president of the United States was doing at the CIA.'' Dean and Kerry, along with their fellow presidential candidate, Sen. John Edwards, support creation of an independent commission. But it is not strictly a partisan issue: Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona supports the idea, too.
Kay's recent comments have created another major headache for an administration already being investigated for the leak of an undercover CIA employe's name, and for mistakes that some say may have left the nation vulnerable to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The administration wants the Sept. 11 commission to wrap up its work and is resisting its request for a deadline extension. The leaks investigation is in the hands a federal grand jury, beyond the control of the White House.
By their very nature, investigations have the potential to embarrass a White House -- such as the Tower Commission's investigation into the U.S. sale of weapons to Iran and the diversion of proceeds to Contra rebels in the mid-1980s. Ronald Reagan gave the commission conflicting accounts of what happened and wound up looking befuddled, concluding that he simply did not remember.
Beyond the obvious political risks, an intelligence investigation could put a heavier strain on ties between the White House and the CIA, particularly Director George Tenet. The White House blamed Tenet last year for the failure to stop Bush from saying in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger for weapons.
The administration seems happy to have that feud behind it.
``I've got great confidence in our intelligence community,'' Bush said this week. ``These are unbelievably hardworking, dedicated people who are doing a great job for America.''
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Terence Hunt has covered the White House since the Reagan administration.
--------
INTELLIGENCE
White House Cites Iraq's History of Seeking Arms as a Reason for War
January 30, 2004
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/politics/30WEAP.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 - The Bush administration, justifying its decision to go to war against Iraq despite its failure since then to find any banned weapons there, said Thursday that even if Saddam Hussein had not amassed stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, the United States could not have afforded to leave him in power because he had a history of trying to acquire them.
On the defensive since its former chief weapons inspector said he now believed that Iraq did not have any substantial stockpiles of banned weapons at the start of the war, the White House sent Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to appear on the three network morning news programs to carry the message that the war was justified even if Mr. Hussein's weapons stockpiles are ultimately found to have been nonexistent.
"With Saddam Hussein, we were dealing with somebody who had used weapons of mass destruction, who had attacked his neighbors twice, who was allowing terrorists to run in his country and was funding terrorists outside of his country," Ms. Rice said on the "Early Show" on CBS.
"Given that, and his history of refusing to account for his weapons of mass destruction and his efforts to conceal his programs, this was a very dangerous man in a very dangerous part of the world," she added. "And the president of the United States had no choice but to deal with that gathering threat to American interests and to the interests of our friends abroad."
Ms. Rice continued to rebuff calls from many Democrats and from the former chief weapons inspector, David A. Kay, for an independent election-year inquiry into how the Central Intelligence Agency and other American intelligence organizations apparently misjudged the extent and the sophistication of Mr. Hussein's weapons programs before the war.
But she signaled that President Bush would support a more narrowly focused review of American intelligence capabilities in the war on terrorism if the inquiry could be done at a time and in a manner under the White House's control.
Before the administration undertakes any review, she said, it wants to have the final report of the organization Dr. Kay headed until last week, the Iraq Survey Group. The group's new leader, Charles A. Duelfer, has said he does not know how long it will take to finish scouring Iraq for arms and evidence of weapons programs.
There is no doubt "that we're going to need to go back and compare what we thought we would find with what we found," she said on "Good Morning America" on ABC. "And at that time, I think there are important questions about how we deal with the proliferation problem with highly secretive regimes that are using dual-use technologies to acquire weapons of mass destruction."
The closest she came to acknowledging a problem with the intelligence used by Mr. Bush in making a case for the war came when she told CBS that "what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground."
She alluded to a feeling at the White House that the intelligence services had played a vital role in stopping or slowing arms programs in North Korea, Iran and Libya, among other nations. But she suggested that any fundamental problems with intelligence capabilities centered on underestimating the threat from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs in those countries rather than on what Democrats have characterized as a deliberate effort by the administration to overstate the threat from Iraq.
"The fact is, it's usually been underestimation of programs of weapons of mass destruction, not overestimation, that has been the problem for the world," she told ABC. On CBS, she cited "a problem of dealing with very closed societies that are doing everything they can to hide the extent and nature of their programs."
In Congress, Republicans closed ranks with the White House to head off any new inquiry.
"The Senate Intelligence Committee, of which I am a member, is well along in a thorough review of the estimates provided to Congress and the executive branch concerning Iraq," said Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "Congress has this responsibility and should complete its work before decisions are made about the need for further analysis."
A Republican aide in Congress said there was almost no chance of an outside inquiry getting under way this year, and little political risk from the issue for the White House or Congressional Republicans.
"The Republicans are not going to push for an investigation and the Democrats don't have enough votes to get one," the aide said.
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The Hypocrisy of Powell's Lecture
by Jacob G. Hornberger,
January 30, 2004
Future of Freedom Foundation
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0401k.asp
Well, no one can ever say that the retired army general and U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, doesn't have gall. In Moscow, Powell criticized the Russian government for "certain developments in Russian politics and foreign policy in recent months" which "have given us pause." In an obvious attempt to extend the world policeman's role to the internal affairs of Russia, Powell was complaining about
1. the arrest and prosecution of a prominent Russian businessman and the seizure of his assets;
2. the lack of several political parties in Russian parliamentary elections;
3. the need for the Russian government to stay out of the affairs of neighboring countries.
If only Russian officials had answered as follows:
"We thank you for your lecture, General Powell. Now, would you please explain your system of politics in which ballot-barrier laws are commonly used to bar third parties from competing against the two-party political monopoly in America?
"Also, would you mind explaining the federal prosecution of prominent businesswoman Martha Stewart for proclaiming her innocence of ludicrous economic crimes in your country?
"And speaking of interference with the affairs of other countries, perhaps you wouldn't mind explaining the many U.S. invasions of Latin American countries, including the invasion of Panama in an alleged attempt to win the decades-long U.S. war on drugs.
"While we're on the subject of your drug war and asset seizures, doesn't your government have a very active campaign of asset forfeiture without due process and trial, the fruits of which help to fund government activities?
"And oh, while we're on the subject of invasions and interferences with the internal affairs of other countries, perhaps you can also explain the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, given your unequivocal statements to the contrary to the United Nations when you were trying your best to frighten your people into supporting your actions."
The American people are faced with two conflicting foreign-policy paradigms:
(1) Unrestrained government power overseas, isolating the American people from foreigners; and
(2) Reining in government power overseas, freeing the American people to interact with foreigners.
In determining which direction would be the better one for our nation, ask yourself the following question, especially in light of Powell's conduct in Russia: Whose actions are more likely to increase tensions in the world and the budget of the military-industrial complex, and whose actions are more likely to increase friendships and harmonies in the world - those of U.S. government officials or those of the American people?
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email - mailto:jhornberger@fff.org .
-------- MILITARY
----- afghanistan
U.S. Probes Cause of Deadly Afghan Blast
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Afghan-Soldiers-Killed.html?pagewanted=all
GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AP) -- The U.S. military Friday was investigating whether an explosion at a weapons cache that killed seven American soldiers and wounded three was an accident or an attack.
Thursday's blast -- one of the deadliest for U.S. forces since they deployed here two years ago -- also left another American soldier missing and wounded an Afghan interpreter.
Afghan officials called it an accident, but Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, a spokesman at U.S. military headquarters in Kabul, said its investigators were still looking into the explosion.
The blast occurred as the soldiers worked around the cache of rifle ammunition and mortar rounds in the village of Dehe Hendu, about 90 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, in Ghazni province.
Hilferty said nothing indicated ``active enemy activity'' at the site of the explosion, but said investigators were exploring the possibility that ``it could have been a booby-trap.''
He said it was unclear whether the soldiers were handling the weapons, which he said included rifle ammunition and mortar rounds. He gave no details of where the weapons were concealed.
Ghazni province Gov. Haji Asadullah Khan said the blast was set off by mistake as the soldiers were trying to defuse arms at an old weapons depot found in an open area.
``I'm sure it wasn't a plot by the Taliban,'' Khan said. ``We know the area and the people are good.''
The deaths come at the end of a bloody month that has underlined the danger and instability still plaguing Afghanistan two years after a U.S.-led invasion ousted the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime for harboring Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida network.
Coalition soldiers regularly uncover and destroy caches of weapons, much of it dating back to the U.S.-backed mujahedeen resistance against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Residents often lead military units to the caches -- a sign, the military says, that it is winning the confidence of Afghans tired after almost a quarter-century of strife.
The wounded soldiers were evacuated to a hospital at Bagram Air Base, the main camp of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. Hilferty said the three soldiers and the interpreter were released after treatment.
Names of the victims were not released.
This month alone, about 80 people have died in violence in Afghanistan, including civilians, militants, police officers, international peacekeepers and American soldiers.
Only 16 U.S. soldiers died in the initial combat in Afghanistan in 2001, but the death toll earlier this month from all anti-terrorist missions worldwide under Operation Enduring Freedom reached 100 -- of those about two-thirds in Afghanistan, half in combat and the rest in accidents.
The United States provides 9,000 of the 11,000-member anti-terror coalition troops stationed in Afghanistan. Officials say U.S. forces are preparing a spring offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida holdouts amid concern that operations in Afghanistan haven't been as effective in breaking up terrorist networks as they had hoped.
Hilferty said Thursday that the U.S. military is ``sure'' it will catch bin Laden -- chief suspect in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that sparked the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan -- this year, perhaps within months.
Separately, investigators also are sifting through evidence from suicide bombings that killed British and Canadian soldiers in Kabul earlier this week. The Taliban has claimed responsibility for both blasts, alleging they are the start of a bombing campaign across the country.
British troops held a memorial Thursday for Pvt. Jonathan Kitulagoda, 23, of Plymouth in southwest England, killed the day before by a suicide bomber.
Kitulagoda was killed when a suicide bomber detonated a taxi next to an unarmored jeep. Four other British soldiers were wounded. That attack came a day after a Canadian soldier was killed in a similar suicide attack.
--------
7 G.I.'s Are Killed in Explosion in Afghanistan
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/international/asia/30AFGH.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 29 - An explosion at a weapons depot in Afghanistan on Thursday killed seven American soldiers and wounded three others, the United States Central Command said. Another American soldier was listed as missing.
An Afghan interpreter was also wounded by the explosion, which occurred at 3 p.m. near Ghazni, 60 miles southwest of Kabul. The soldiers were working near a weapons cache when the blast occurred, the command statement said.
A command spokesman, Capt. Bruce Frame, said the cause of the explosion had yet to be determined.
The wounded soldiers were evacuated to a hospital at Bagram Air Base, headquarters for American-led force in Afghanistan.
The names of the victims were withheld pending notification of relatives. The United States provides 9,000 of the 11,000-member foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan.
Investigators sifted through evidence on Thursday from suicide bombings that killed British and Canadian soldiers in Kabul the two previous days. The ousted Taliban regime has claimed responsibility for both blasts.
Troops at Camp Souter, the British base in eastern Kabul, held a memorial service Thursday for the soldier killed Wednesday by a suicide bomber. The victim was identified as Pvt. Jonathan Kitulagoda, 23, from Plymouth in southwest England.
Officers and diplomats joined about 150 soldiers to hear readings, prayers and tributes from Private Kitulagoda's friends, said Capt. Tom Smith, spokesman for the 300-strong British contingent. Private Kitulagoda's body will probably be flown home next week, he said.
Private Kitulagoda was killed when a suicide bomber detonated a yellow-and-white taxi next to a British jeep. Four other British soldiers were wounded in the attack, which came a day after a Canadian soldier was killed in a similar bombing.
Afghan police officers investigating the most recent attack said they had identified the original owner of the taxi.
"We have a name and an address," said Muhammad Haroon Asefi, a senior police commander at the Interior Ministry. He said no one had been arrested and he refused to release any other details. He said the Kabul police bolstered security in the city in response to the attacks.
--------
Explosion in Afghanistan Kills 7 U.S. Soldiers, Wounds 3
By Stephen Graham
Associated Press
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61700-2004Jan29.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 29 -- An explosion at a weapons cache in Afghanistan on Thursday killed seven U.S. soldiers and wounded three, in one of the deadliest incidents since U.S. forces deployed in Afghanistan. A statement from the U.S. Central Command also said one American soldier was missing.
An Afghan interpreter also was wounded by the explosion near the city of Ghazni, 60 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul. The soldiers were working near an ammunition dump when the blast occurred, according to the statement. The cause of the explosion was not known.
The wounded soldiers were evacuated to a hospital at Bagram air base, headquarters for U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. The names of the victims were withheld pending notification of relatives.
Separately, investigators sifted through evidence Thursday from suicide bombings that killed one British soldier and one Canadian soldier in Kabul on Tuesday and Wednesday. The ousted Taliban militia has asserted responsibility for both blasts.
Troops at Camp Souter, the British base in Kabul, held a ceremony Thursday for their fallen comrade. The victim was identified as Pvt. Jonathan Kitulagoda, 23, from Plymouth, in southwest England.
Commanders and diplomats joined about 150 soldiers to hear readings, prayers and tributes from Kitulagoda's friends, said Capt. Tom Smith, spokesman for the 300-member British contingent. Kitulagoda's body likely will be flown home next week, he said.
Kitulagoda was killed when a suicide bomber set off explosives in a yellow-and-white taxi next to an open-topped British Land Rover. Four other British soldiers were wounded. The attack came a day after a Canadian soldier was killed in a similar suicide attack.
Investigators examined evidence from the two suicide bombings. Afghan police said they had identified the owner of the taxi.
"We have a name and an address," said Mohammed Haroon Asefi, a senior police commander at the Interior Ministry. He said no one had been arrested and would not disclose other details.
Kabul police boosted security in the city after the attacks. Officials said they had added uniformed men, patrol cars and undercover officers.
-------- arms
Brazilian president attends India's Republic Day military show
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Jan 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040126153856.unb2fzlv.html
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Monday attended India's annual Republic Day parade as the chief guest to the annual event displaying the country's military might.
He was seated in a special security enclosure next to Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as Russian-built T-90 tanks and nuclear-capable missiles rolled down New Delhi's historic Rajpath.
The event also featured mechanised military columns and army marching squads, cavalry on horses and camels and military bands along with colourful floats highlighting India's cultural diversity.
Later in the evening, Kalam hosted a reception in the presidential palace where the Brazilian president met several dignitaries including deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and opposition leader Sonia Gandhi.
Lula also had a separate meeting in the presidential palace with Defence Minister George Fernandes and discussed joint production of defence equipment by the two countries.
India is buying five executive jets from Brazil's Embraer for the Indian Air Force, which will be used for flying senior officials and ministers.
The Brazilian president and his wife Leticia Lula Da Silva arrived in New Delhi Sunday for the four-day visit to India and were given a ceremonial reception at the presidential palace by Kalam.
A landmark preferential customs duty agreement between India and the Latin American trading bloc Mercosur was also signed Sunday in the presence of Lula da Silva and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
The agreement is expected to a free trade pact between India and Mercosur -- including Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, with Chile and Bolivia as associate members.
The Brazilian president's visit is also expected to boost annual trade between the two countries which stands at over a billion dollars.
----
Bosnian Serbs to destroy some 4,000 surface-to-air missiles
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina (AFP)
Jan 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040130154535.chqzbdei.html
The Bosnian Serb government has decided to destroy its arsenal of 4,000 surface-to-air missiles, after the United States expressed concern they could be used for terrorist attacks.
"The Republika Srpska's (RS) government gave the green light to the defence ministry to destroy our stockpiles of obsolete surface-to-air missiles," Branko Trkulja, the defence ministry spokesman, told AFP.
Some 4,000 surface-to-air missiles will be destroyed in cooperation with NATO-led peacekeeepers in the near future, he said.
In mid-December the US ambassador to Bosnia Clifford Bond said he was worried shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles held by the Bosnian Serb army might end up in the wrong hands.
"They do represent a danger in the hands of terrorists," he said at the time warning of an "uspecified" threat stemming from foreigners who fought in Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
During the war volunteers from Islamic countries fought alongside the mainly Muslim Bosnian army. After the war a significant number of Islamic fighters remained in the country and obtained Bosnian citizenship mostly by marrying local women.
Republika Srpska along with the Muslim-Croat Federation makes up Bosnia since the Balkans wars. The two entities are linked with weak central institutions and each has its own parliament, government, police and army.
-------- biological weapons
Bio-weapon sensors
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
January 30, 2004
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
The U.S. government is having a difficult time developing accurate sensors to detect the presence of biological weapons.
The Pentagon is in the process of preparing all U.S. military bases and facilities to respond to chemical, biological, nuclear, radiological and high-explosive attacks.
The challenge faced by the Pentagon is that the current sensors cannot reliably tell when a real biological-warfare agent triggers the sensors.
State-of-the-art technology uses a method that detects the presence of an agent such as anthrax when minute particles come in contact with a special strip.
Unfortunately, other particles in the air also trigger the sensors, something that could lead to large-scale disruption of activities as the result of false alarms.
----
Bush budget proposes more bio-surveillance
By Thom J. Rose
UPI Correspondent
January 30, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040129-055250-8746r.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- President Bush's 2005 budget request will include $274 million to expand domestic bio-surveillance.
Of that amount, $129 million will be dedicated to upgrading the BioWatch electronic sensor program.
Speaking surrounded by huge flat-screen monitors used to monitor spreading diseases, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson outlined the president's plans Thursday in the fortified Health and Human Services control room in Washington.
"Better bio-surveillance will mean early detection and improved response to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies," Thompson said.
Perhaps the most advanced element of the U.S. bio-surveillance effort is the BioWatch program of electronic biosensors, which was set up in record time last year and currently includes monitoring stations in over 30 major American cities.
The president's proposal would earmark funding to double the number of BioWatch installations and improve the equipment involved.
"It's not failsafe science or technology yet," Ridge said.
He called the BioWatch program "successful," but added that it is "labor-intensive" and has produced false positives.
A Homeland Security Department official said BioWatch sensors, which can detect a variety of threats, have been useful in tracking natural diseases but have not yet detected any terrorist activity.
The first major step forward envisioned for BioWatch would be developing sensor devices that can not only collect data, but analyze it. Current BioWatch data has to be taken to a laboratory for analysis.
"Right now we have the ability to capture what's in the air, but the technology to analyze what has been captured is not available on-site," Ridge said.
The Homeland Security official declined to say how long it takes to analyze BioWatch data, or how often analyses are done, but did say that the proposed funding could facilitate the transition from periodic data transmissions to real-time information flows.
"We think we can advance (BioWatch technology) rather quickly," Ridge said.
The other major proposed improvement to BioWatch would be better organizing and integrating results from sensors across the country.
The proposed funding supports several initiatives for collecting and crunching nationwide health data.
As symbolized by the joint announcement by Ridge and Thompson, bio-surveillance plans involve the efforts of multiple agencies. Ridge said the proposed new system would work with Department of Agriculture, many branches of the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services and other agencies.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would receive extra funding to expand automated collection of nationwide hospital records and the monitoring of those records for suspicious trends.
The Food and Drug Administration would get money to mine pharmacies' ordering data to detect spikes in the use of particular medications.
"We've never been able to get the information on a daily basis from doctors and pharmacists across America," Thompson said.
Thompson stressed that medical and pharmaceutical records would be collected anonymously. He said their collection would not pose a privacy risk.
An FDA official said tapping into pharmacy drug order information would be technologically simple, but might require minor legal changes. The official said his agency did not expect legal problems with the proposal although some pharmacies -- such as those prescribing large quantities of sometimes-abused drugs -- might oppose the move.
A CDC official said hospital data would include neither patient names nor patient file numbers, although laws allow that information to be accessed for public health purposes. He said the data would have to be organized geographically to be useful, but not by address -- knowing patients' ZIP codes would sufficient.
Bio-terror spending has skyrocketed since 2001. Department of Homeland Security numbers show public health emergency preparedness funding increasing 15-fold between then and 2004.
Still, concerns remain about preparation for a bio-terror attack.
"A year ago, the smallpox threat was so significant that the president called on half a million heathcare workers and first responders to get vaccinated so they could respond to a smallpox outbreak. The program quickly ground to a halt and nothing has been done to fix it. Either the administration needs to tell the country that smallpox is not an urgent threat, or it needs to take immediate action to get us prepared," Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, said in a written statement.
According to the statement, only 40,000 of a planned 300,000 government workers have been vaccinated and only four states have reached 50 percent of their vaccination goals.
Thompson dismissed such concerns, saying the United States now has 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine on hand, up from 15 million.
"From where we started to where we are today, it has been a huge success," he said.
-------- business
General Dynamics inks $8 billion sub deal
January 30, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040129-101404-7161r.htm
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 -- General Dynamics Electric Boat was awarded an $8.4 billion Navy contract Thursday for the construction of five Virginia-class submarines.
Virginia-class boats aren't the biggest or most-heavily armed subs ever built, but they are likely the quietist and are designed to carry out unconventional warfare missions such as dropping off commandos behind enemy lines and launching cruise missiles from close range.
A total of 10 subs in the class have been contracted to Electric Boat and to Northrop Grumman.
The defense contractor said in a release the deal supercedes an earlier contract for six submarines. The new deal still includes the sixth vessel, however, which was authorized in the 2003 fiscal year.
The new multi-ship contracts replace the previous practice of one ship per contract. General Dynamics officials said the new method gives them the ability to stockpile parts at a better price.
----
Northrop Grumman, GD to Split Contract
Jan 30, 2004
(AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SUBMARINE_CONTRACT?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- Northrop Grumman Corp. and General Dynamics will share a five-year, $8.4 billion contract to build five Virginia-class submarines for the U.S. Navy, Northrop Grumman said Friday.
The contract was awarded Thursday to a team consisting of Northrop Grumman's Newport News sector and General Dynamics' Electric Boat division in Groton, Conn.
It replaces a six-ship, block-buy contract announced Aug. 14.
Until now, the Navy had been buying ships one at a time. But House and Senate members worked to pass legislation enabling the Navy to sign a multi-year contract, enabling builders to save costs by buying parts for several ships at the same time.
"The action to convert this contract from a block buy to a multi-year one ... provides stability to the industrial base, which includes our suppliers and our workforce, and results in production efficiencies for our Navy customer," said Tom Schievelbein, Northrop Grumman corporate vice president and president of the Newport News sector. The new contract includes the construction of a sixth Virginia-class submarine that was authorized in fiscal year 2003. But because it is already under construction, it is not part of the multi-year agreement.
Altogether, the two builders now have contracts to build 10 Virginia-class submarines.
The lead ship of the class, Virginia, is to be commissioned this year. The second ship, Texas, will be christened this summer at Northrop Grumman's Newport News sector and will be delivered to the Navy in 2005. The third and fourth ships, named Hawaii and North Carolina, are under construction.
General Dynamics is based in Falls Church.
On the Net:
Northrop Grumman Newport News: http://www.nn.northropgrumman.com/index.asp
General Dynamics: http://www.generaldynamics.com/
--
Keel laid for first Virginia Class nuclear attack submarine.
By NAVSEA Public Affairs
September 9, 1999
NAVSEA Wire Service 99-25 ( -USN-SEP09-01 )
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/docs/990909-ssn-774.htm
A keel-laying ceremony for the future USS Virginia (SSN 774) was hosted on Sep. 2 by General Dynamics Electric Boat Division at their Quonset Point Facility in North Kingstown, R.I. The Virginia is the lead ship in the Navy's new attack submarine class.
Virginia Senator John Warner (R-VA) , chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, inscribed his initials on the keel of the submarine and served as the event's principal speaker.
"Virginia will represent the most flexible and technologically advanced submarine that we or anyone else in the world has ever put to sea," said Sen. Warner. "I applaud the superb efforts made by all of the individuals in both our defense industry and Department of Defense organizations who have contributed to the genesis and reality of this awesome warship. She is an example of success that sets the standard for our future development and procurement programs. Virginia will represent the most flexible and technologically advanced submarine that we, or anyone else in the world, has ever put to sea!"
SSN 774 is the lead ship of the Virginia class with a total of 30 ships planned. Last year, Electric Boat along with Newport News Shipbuilding (of Newport News, Va.) began working on a $4.2 billion contract to build the first four ships of the class. Virginia class submarines have been designed to affordably maintain the U. S. Navy's undersea superiority well into the 21st century.
"Today marks an important beginning for tomorrow with Virginia - a new submarine class with new technologies to meet the challenges of a new millennium," remarked Adm. Frank L. Bowman, director of Naval Nuclear Propulsion. "In either the open ocean or coastal environment, U.S. nuclear submarines will be instrumental in establishing control of the joint battle space and in determining the successful outcomes of our military operations."
In his remarks, Bowman advanced the case for building more submarines.
"In recent years, our warfighting commanders in chief have consistently stated that they need a force structure of about 70 nuclear attack submarines to meet their mission requirements," Bowman said. "Today, we're down to 57 attack submarines, and many of our national and military leaders are feeling the pinch. There's a widening realization that we need to have more attack submarines, and the Virginia class is key to preserving and restoring our submarine force levels - with the right submarines to operate in the 21st century."
This need for more submarines was endorsed by both Senator Charles S. Robb (D-VA) and Senator Warner during the Virginia keel laying ceremony.
The Navy's next-generation attack submarine, Virginia will have improved stealth features, sophisticated surveillance capabilities and special warfare enhancements which will enable it to meet the Navy's multi-mission requirements. Virginia will be able to attack targets ashore with highly accurate Tomahawk cruise missiles and conduct covert long-term surveillance of land areas, littoral waters and other sea forces. Other missions Virginia will conduct include anti-submarine and anti-ship warfare, special forces delivery and support, and mine delivery and minefield mapping. With enhanced communications connectivity, Virginia will also provide important battle group and joint task force support, with full integration into carrier battle group operations.
The Virginia class of attack submarines surpass the performance of any current or projected threat submarine, ensuring undersea dominance for the United States well into the next century. This is the sixth ship of the U.S. Navy to carry the name Virginia which started with the original USS Virginia in 1777.
--
SSN-774 Virginia-class [Nuclear] New Attack Submarine: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/nssn.htm
-------- chemical weapons
Iraqi nerve agent
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
January 30, 2004
WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
David Kay, the former CIA head of the Iraq Survey Group that sought Saddam Hussein's hidden weapons, revealed this week that some of the VX chemical agent unaccounted for was lost in a traffic accident.
Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, on Wednesday asked Mr. Kay what happened to the 1.5 tons of VX that could not be accounted for by United Nations arms inspectors.
Mr. Kay stated during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the missing agent is "still a subject of investigation." He said the Iraqi government tried to account for the missing agent.
"One large amount of VX apparently ... had been forward deployed in Iraq towards the Kuwaiti border," Mr. Kay said. "As they were moving it back in 1991, there was a traffic accident. The truck carrying it was totally consumed in a fire. They documented it in part, but there was the usual embarrassment of 'do we tell Saddam we've just burned up a large amount of chemical-warfare agent?' So it wasn't fully reported and fully documented. They didn't do analytical sampling, so they had only partial records."
Mr. Kay believes the Iraqi explanation. "Some of it was simply accounting errors that were wrong in material balance," he said. "Others are going to be in what I call this 'unresolved ambiguity' that we may simply never know."
-------- iran
No moderates in Iran
Washington Times
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
January 30, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy.htm
Presidential adviser Richard Perle sees no moderates in Iran, only a vast terrorist theocracy that brutalizes its people and crushes any hint of reform.
Mr. Perle, a member of President Bush's Defense Advisory Board, called for a democratic Iran when he recently spoke to about 5,000 Iranian-Americans at a conference in Washington.
He rejected the Clinton administration policy of trying to find moderates in the Iranian government. Mr. Bush, by contrast, cited Iran as part of an "axis of evil."
Mr. Perle said, "There are people here who believe the American policy in respect to Iran is to work with the moderates. But have any of you seen any moderates lately in the government of Iran? No. If there were moderates in the government of Iran, would the mullahs allow them to bring about reform? No.
"Every effort ... at reform has been crushed. The newspapers with the slightest hint of reform have been shut down. The political personalities who advocated reform have been marginalized or sidelined or imprisoned. They are scorned as spies."
Mr. Perle said power in Iran lies among a "handful of self-serving dictators" in religious robes.
"This is a regime that is without question the most single-minded in its devotion to the propagation of terror in today's world," he said. "It is a terrorist regime second to none."
Mr. Perle, one of the leading neoconservative voices in Washington, was among about 30 speakers at the Iran Solidarity Evening, organized by dozens of Iranian-American groups from across the United States.
However, the National Council of Resistance in Iran - which considers itself an Iranian government in exile - was not among the sponsoring groups, although one of its leaders spoke to the conference in a videotaped message, one of the organizers said.
The Clinton administration, when it was trying to reopen relations with Iran, declared the council a terrorist organization. The council is the political arm of Mujahideen Khalq, or People's Mujahideen, which also is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
Council President Maryam Rajavi urged Iranians to refuse to legitimatize parliamentary elections later this month and to press for a referendum on democracy.
"Once again, I reiterate [a call for] a boycott of the mullah's election farce and the need for a referendum for change of the terrorist dictatorship regime," she said.
Sen. Jim Talent, Missouri Republican, and Reps. Bob Filner, California Democrat; Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas Democrat; Tom Tancredo, Colorado Republican; and Edolphus Towns, New York Democrat, sent messages supporting Iranian democracy.
Win Griffiths, a Labor Party member of the British Parliament, spoke by a satellite link from London and called for the removal of a ban on support for People's Mujahideen. Mr. Griffiths represented 305 members of Parliament who have declared their support for the Mujahideen.
-------- iraq
MILITARY
U.S. Commander Surveys Challenges in Iraq Region
January 30, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/politics/30MILI.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 - As Pakistan and Saudi Arabia battle internal Islamic extremists, their struggle presents America with "broader strategic problems" as significant as Iraq or Afghanistan, the commander of American forces in the region said on Thursday.
The officer, Gen. John P. Abizaid, also said the ranks of insurgent forces in Iraq were not being swelled by large numbers of foreigners, although he said some had formal ties to Al Qaeda and some had ideological sympathies with the terrorist network.
And while the American occupation authority in Iraq has set July 1 as the deadline for handing sovereignty to a new government in Baghdad, it appears unlikely that a formal agreement on the status of American military forces in the country will be ready by that deadline, he said.
General Abizaid, chief of the military's Central Command, said that the fight by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia against their own Islamic radicals was critically important to America's global campaign against terrorism, but that their problems could not be solved by American military power.
Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia "are involved in their own fight against extremists that is crucial to the ability of their nations to maintain control over the internal situation," he said at a meeting with military affairs correspondents.
"It's a battle of ideas as much as it is a military battle," he said of Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf has survived two assassination attempts.
Of recent terrorist strikes in Saudi Arabia, he said that this is "not the type of the fight that you're going to send the 82d Airborne Division to go fight," a reference to the first American troops sent into Saudi Arabia after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. "It's the type of fight that you need to send the full support and weight of diplomatic, political and social help."
General Abizaid said the antiterrorist struggle in the region would be a lengthy one, and he warned: "Culturally speaking, our patience quotient is not high. Culturally speaking, the patience quotient of our enemies is very high."
Discussing opposition to the stabilization mission in Iraq, General Abizaid discounted reports that the insurgency was heavily manned by foreigners.
"I am confident that there is no flood of foreign fighters coming in," he said, putting their number as "low" and in "the hundreds." He declined to assess the overall number of insurgent fighters.
While the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority is negotiating the path to sovereignty with the Iraqi Governing Council, the United States has not yet presented a formal proposal governing the status of American military forces after the hand-over, he said.
He predicted that until such an agreement was in place, the United States military presence would continue on "an evolution of the current track that we're on."
"People understand there will be a need for a coalition force of some sort," he said. The American military currently is rotating in about 110,000 troops to replace the contingent of just under 130,000 there now.
"Iraqi security institutions will not be mature enough by July to be able to control the situation throughout the nation without the help of coalition forces," he added. "It remains to be seen what type of entity will emerge. Clearly we hope that we can quickly build a Ministry of National Defense."
A number of domestic security functions, as well as responsibilities for patrolling a growing number of locations, already have been turned over to Iraqi police or civil defense forces, General Abizaid said.
He said that as Iraq moved through an uncertain period of gaining sovereignty and holding elections, civil war might be possible, but he said that in his view it remained unlikely.
"There will be more people fighting to hold Iraq together than breaking it apart," he said.
--------
Kurds Press for Independence
Effort Alarms Neighbors and Threatens U.S. Plan for Iraq
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61702-2004Jan29?language=printer
IRBIL, Iraq -- From a tent lined with the red, white and green flag of Kurdistan, a young man's amplified voice excitedly invited passersby Wednesday to "come sign the petition for federalism. It is a step to independence."
A cluster of laborers, shoppers and office workers pressed up to a table to write their names. Some stuck pins in their fingers and signed in blood.
This was the beginning of a mobilization of Iraq's Kurds. Although autonomy within a new, federal Iraq is their official goal, signer after signer at the tent wanted something more: separation, if not now, sometime in the near future. The boy in the booth did nothing to discourage the hope. On a busy, tree-lined street here, the genie of Kurdish desires was out of the bottle. The mood was one of exhilaration.
"We want to be like the rest of the world. There are plenty of countries much smaller than Kurdistan that have their own government, their own flag and their own freedom. We should not have any less," said Siyamend Kader, a high school student and enthusiastic supporter of independence.
"I don't know what federalism is," said Jabbar Mohammed, a gardener. "I don't care, as long as it means independence."
Kurdish aspirations have caused alarm in neighboring Turkey, Syria and Iran. Each has its own Kurdish minority, and all have warned of turmoil if Iraqi Kurds gain significant autonomy.
It also presents a potentially grave complication for U.S. plans to hand over authority to an Iraqi government by June 30. The Bush administration is committed to maintaining Iraq intact. But Kurdish leaders say they will not endorse the U.S. transition plan for Iraq unless it includes guarantees for autonomy involving disputed territory extending as far south as central Iraq.
Forming a government without the Kurds, until now the most enthusiastic supporters of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, would mean de facto disintegration of the country. Kurds make up 15 to 25 percent of Iraq's population.
There were no overt signs of anti-Americanism here Wednesday. Nonetheless, Kurds expressed dismay that their support for the war, which included putting Kurdish militias under U.S. command, was not being answered with firm help on autonomy. "America is our hope. We don't understand why they don't do more," said Saria Ezzedine, a college English teacher. "They have a federal system, don't they? Independence is our dream, but autonomy can be our reality, and we are having trouble getting that."
Before the war, autonomy was taken for granted. Kurds in the far north enjoyed virtual independence from Baghdad for a dozen years following the 1991 Persian Gulf War in a "no-fly" zone protected by U.S. and British warplanes. Exiled Iraqi opposition parties gathered by the Bush administration had repeatedly endorsed Kurdish autonomy.
This began to change last November, when the administration set a date for the transfer of authority in Iraq. The Kurds wanted ironclad guarantees. Suddenly, some of their erstwhile allies among Iraqi Arab political groups opposed the Kurdish autonomy formula, which included annexation of several areas with large Kurdish populations south of the no-fly zone.
Among the most disputed was Kirkuk, a city in the heart of Iraq's northern oil fields. The Kirkuk fields contain 40 percent of the country's petroleum reserves. The Kurds also want to remove tens of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein's government moved into the area and bring back tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees he expelled.
For the past week, Kurdish political leaders have lobbied Iraqi politicians on the Governing Council, a U.S.-appointed group responsible for formulating rules for a new government, to endorse expanded autonomy. They have yet to succeed, Kurdish officials say.
Under the Kurdish plan, the central government would control national defense, foreign policy and financial and budgetary affairs.
"We view the transition rules as an interim constitution that will be hard to change later," said Saad Othman, who heads the Irbil regional branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which rules far-northern Iraq along with its sometimes bitter rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). "We Kurds have an expression: You struggle during cultivation, not the harvest. We want changes now, not later."
Kurds were signing the autonomy petition throughout the north as well as in Kirkuk and other towns and hamlets. Copies are to be delivered to President Bush, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, the European Union and the Iraqi Governing Council. The Kurds want a Kurdish referendum on their future, based on principles of self-determination.
While the Governing Council wrestles with the basic law, the KDP and PUK are taking steps to shore up their hold on the north. They plan to merge their administrations into a single government. A KDP official would be prime minister, a PUK leader his deputy. The PUK would hold the post of parliamentary speaker. The Kurds plan to hold parliamentary elections next year -- a goal independent of U.S. proposals to hold a nationwide vote in 2005.
From the Kurdish point of view, any decision to remain within Iraq would be purely voluntary. Geographically, culturally and socially, Kurds contend that Iraq begins south of the low Hamrin mountain range, which follows an arc south from the city of Mosul, then east through north-central Iraq. It is virtually impossible to find a red, white and black Iraqi flag in Irbil. Men in their early twenties speak little Arabic, if any.
On Wednesday, Kurds in the street expressed marked mistrust of the Arabs. Hussein's brutal suppression of Kurdish revolts, including the 1988 poison gas attack on civilians in the village of Halabja, massive roundups and executions and vast deforestation campaigns in northern Iraq left their mark. "Our life with the Arabs has been unhappy. Who is to say we won't have trouble again?" said Farhad Ahmed, a telephone technician.
The opposition to federalism voiced by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's leading Shiite Muslim cleric, also awakened Kurdish fears. Sistani and other opponents of autonomy equate federalism with division of Iraq.
Sistani's lieutenants dispatched tens of thousands of demonstrators into the streets of Baghdad last week to press for elections and oppose a federal system for Iraq. Arab Shiites constitute the majority in Iraq, and Kurds -- who are Sunni Muslims -- are afraid their hopes would be crushed by a Shiite-dominated government.
Othman, the KDP leader in Irbil, called Sistani's opposition to federalism, as well as to Governing Council proposals to choose a new government through caucuses, a "dangerous hint" of things to come. "Rejecting a Governing Council decision is like rejecting the rule of civil law," Othman said. "He wants to impose a kind of religious rule on Iraq. Kurds don't accept that. Our parties are secular."
If someone like Sistani runs Iraq, "it will be worse than Saddam. No more dictators for us," said Ali Abdullah, a barber.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Military Blows Up Attacker's Home
By MARK LAVIE
Associated Press Writer
Jan 30, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli forces briefly raided the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Friday and dynamited the home of a Palestinian who blew up a Jerusalem bus - stopping far short of a large-scale reprisal customary after a deadly suicide attack.
Israel's leadership was divided over how hard to hit back but appeared to have decided on a measured response after a meeting Thursday between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.
In the Gaza Strip, the Islamic militant Hamas group belatedly claimed responsibility Friday for the bombing, which killed 10 Israelis and wounded more than 50. A rival faction linked the Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement initially said it sent the bomber.
If Hamas was behind the attack, it would mark a significant change in tactics. Hamas had held off on carrying out bombings in Israel for nearly six months, during Egyptian-brokered efforts to reach a cease-fire with Israel.
In another sign the Islamic militant group is changing course, its leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin declared Friday that his group is making an all-out effort to kidnap Israeli soldiers to use as bargaining chips for Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
Yassin spoke a day after a prisoner swap between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah. Israel released more than 400 prisoners, mostly Palestinians, in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers.
Yassin appeared to be trying to explain why Hamas has failed to free its prisoners from Israeli jails. "The (Palestinian) factions will not spare any effort to kidnap Israeli soldiers," Yassin said outside a Gaza City mosque after Muslim prayers. "And they tried many times, but the Israeli soldier today is as cautious as a bird is about its chick."
About 7,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli custody. "They (Israelis) only understand the language of force, and they will never give us our freedom," Yassin said.
Raanan Gissin, a Sharon adviser, returned the warning, saying Israel had the means to respond to such kidnappings. He did not elaborate.
"With the same tenacity and determination that we use to return prisoners to Israel, we will get at those who kidnap soldiers," Gissin said. "And our long arm has always reached them."
Yassin offered no explanation for his group's delayed claim of responsibility for the Jerusalem bombing. On Thursday, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, an armed group with ties to Fatah, said it dispatched the bomber, Palestinian policeman Ali Jaara, from the Aida refugee camp on the outskirts of Bethlehem.
The blast ripped apart the bus a block from Sharon's official residence; he was not home at the time.
Israel's response was less harsh compared to the large-scale military raids that have followed deadly bombings in the past.
Analysts said Sharon may be trying to keep the conflict at a low level during the U.S. election year.
Another reason, they said, could be that a major military offensive would draw international attention away from the bombing as the world court prepares to hear arguments on the legality of a separation barrier Israel is building in the West Bank. Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep out Palestinian attackers; Palestinians say it amounts to a land grab.
The Bethlehem incursion, the first in six months, lasted just 12 hours, and Israel did not clamp a closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip as it has routinely in the past.
The target was the Aida camp. Several dozen jeeps and armored vehicles moved slowly through darkened streets in convoys, training spotlights onto houses.
Soldiers ringed the bomber's house. Figures could be seen moving past brightly lit windows in second floor and walking down an outdoor staircase. A few hours later, troops blew up the house with explosive charges.
The military said it arrested several suspected militants. It was the first military operation in the city since troops left the town in July as part of a larger withdrawal called for under a U.S.-backed peace plan. Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat condemned the raid. "Instead of sending soldiers and tanks to Bethlehem, Israel's government should have sent negotiators to resume a meaningful peace process," he said.
In other developments Friday:
-Troops shot and killed an Islamic Jihad member, Jihad Suwaiti, near the West Bank city of Hebron. The military said the man fired shots as soldiers came to arrest him, and troops returned fire.
-In the Gaza Strip, a tank crew shot and killed two Palestinians. The military said it fired on a group carrying two explosive devices and rocket-propelled grenades near the Israeli settlement of Dugit shortly after midnight.
-Elsewhere in the West Bank, troops demolished six where Hamas militants captured by Israeli forces used to live. More than 50 people were left homeless. The arrested men are accused in two recent shooting ambushes that killed five soldiers.
-In the West Bank town of Jenin, Israeli troops arrested Islamic Jihad leader, Sharif Tahaymeh, who had been on Israel's wanted list for more than three years.
Thursday's bombing disrupted a visit by two senior U.S. State Department officials, David Satterfield and John Wolf, who were trying to persuade Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia to meet with Sharon as a way of restarting the stalled "road map" peace plan. The two envoys were at Israel's Defense Ministry when the bomber struck.
----
11 Killed By Bomb On Bus in Jerusalem Deaths Shadow Prisoner Swap
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A60722-2004Jan29?language=printer
JERUSALEM, Jan. 30 -- A violent explosion triggered by a Palestinian suicide bomber ripped through a crowded commuter bus in central Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least 11 people, including the bomber, and dealing a sharp setback to a new U.S. effort to restart Middle East peace talks.
The 9 a.m. bombing, which was so powerful that it sprayed body parts into surrounding apartment buildings, wounded more than 50 people, Israeli police and rescue officials said.
It occurred in the middle of an intricately orchestrated prisoner swap between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia that began early Thursday. But the exchange -- which involved Hezbollah's release of an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers exchange for the release by Israel of more than 400 Palestinians and other Arabs and the remains of 60 Lebanese militants -- went ahead and was completed by the end of the day.
"Today, again, cruel Palestinian terror struck in the heart of Jerusalem, murdering innocent civilians without distinction," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said during a memorial service Thursday night at an Israeli air base near Ben-Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv, where families of the dead soldiers received their remains.
"The reality of our lives sometimes imposes on us a horrible mixture of sadness with sadness, sadness with happiness," Sharon said, referring to the exchange. "To some extent, we have a feeling of relief for the families who have known no rest for the last 40 months, who now can feel that their sons can be at ease and rest at peace."
Thursday's bombing occurred about a block from Sharon's official residence and about four blocks from the residence of President Moshe Katsav, in the Rehavia neighborhood of central Jerusalem. Katsav was at home at the time of the blast, but Sharon was at his family's ranch in southern Israel, aides said.
The 15-pound bomb, which was carried in a sack packed with pieces of metal to increase its destructive power, was detonated about two-thirds of the way toward the back of the bus shortly after it pulled away from a passenger kiosk, police and witnesses said.
The explosion blew out the windows of the bus, peeled off half of the roof, created a crater-like hole in the floor and blasted away the metal sides, scattering broken glass, clothes, papers, blood and body parts over a wide area. Investigators collected body parts and pieces of the bus from the roofs and rooms of nearby buildings.
Some of the dead were thrown 30 yards, said Eli Beer, 31, a coordinator for the Magen David Adom emergency rescue service who arrived on the scene minutes after the blast. "People who were killed were demolished. . . . I saw a person running down the street with one foot," he said.
"There were people lying on the ground, not moving -- dead bodies in the bus, on the ground, in the road," said passenger Moshe Benita, 17. "At first there was silence, and then people started to scream."
In a brief interview at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, where he was being treated for injuries to his face and head, the bus driver, Shalom Zaken, said the explosion came without warning. "I didn't see anyone suspicious," he said.
The blast occurred on the green-and-white Egged bus No. 19, which was traveling from Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, in the southwestern part of the city, through central Jerusalem to Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus in the northeast. The injured were taken to both hospitals.
According to statistics compiled by Israel's Foreign Ministry and National Police, it was the 23rd suicide bombing in Jerusalem since the start of the current Palestinian uprising in September 2000. Including Thursday's victims, at least 163 people have been killed in the blasts, not including the bombers, and more than 1,200 wounded.
The radical al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed offshoot of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah political movement, asserted responsibility for the bombing. Early Friday, however, the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, issued a statement claiming that the attack had been carried out in its name.
The bomber was identified by friends and Israeli security officials as Ali Jaarah, a six-year veteran of the Bethlehem police force who lived in the Aida refugee camp and was five days shy of his 25th birthday. Jaarah left a handwritten will that said the bombing was in retaliation for the killing of eight Palestinians by Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning. A statement by al-Aqsa faxed to Arab news services in Gaza made the same claim.
In a prepared statement, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia condemned the suicide blast and the Israeli attacks in Gaza and called for an immediate cease-fire.
Israeli officials accused Qureia's government of not taking measures to strengthen Palestinian security forces and disarm and dismantle groups that have waged a deadly three-year campaign of violence against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"Palestinian terrorists continue to brutally target Israelis in the hearts of our own cities," said David Baker, an official in Sharon's office. "The Palestinian Authority is doing nothing to stop such terror."
[Before dawn Friday, Israeli armored vehicles entered Bethlehem and soldiers detained 12 Palestinians, news services reported.]
The violence derailed a renewed effort by U.S. envoys John Wolf and David F. Satterfield to coax senior Israeli and Palestinian officials back to the negotiating table and arrange a meeting between Sharon and Qureia. The two leaders have not met since Qureia became prime minister almost three months ago.
A meeting between the U.S. representatives and senior officials from both sides that was to have been held in Jerusalem on Thursday was postponed, an Israeli official said. "Today is not the appropriate day," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told reporters. Wolf and Satterfield, who met individually with Israeli and Palestinian leaders during their visit, are scheduled to leave the region soon and are not expected back for several weeks, Israeli officials said.
But the violence did not scuttle the prisoner swap between Israel and Hezbollah, which was mediated by Germany and took more than three years to negotiate. Israeli officials said they were committed to finalizing the deal, though many Israelis have voiced concern that the deal had given legitimacy to Hezbollah, which the U.S. and Israeli governments say is a terrorist organization, and could encourage the organization to commit more kidnappings.
"We are releasing 400 Palestinians with a very heavy heart, because we know these 400 Palestinians are going to return very quickly to the cycle of terrorism," said Jonathan Peled, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry. "Our objective was and still is to bring all our boys back home, even if the price we pay is very high."
Many of the 39 freed Lebanese prisoners raised their hands in a gesture of victory as they stepped off a plane in Beirut following their return from Germany, where they were exchanged for Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum and three Israeli soldiers ambushed along the northern border with Lebanon three years ago.
At a rally organized by Hezbollah to welcome the former captives, the group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said it was "foolish" for the Israeli government not to have released Samir Kantar, the Lebanese citizen held the longest in Israel. "Because they didn't do that, I assure you that they will regret it in the future."
In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, jubilant, flag-waving crowds lined the roads to greet the 400 Palestinian prisoners, who were released directly to the territories without being flown to Germany.
The scenes were in stark contrast to the somber ceremony outside Tel Aviv, where families of the three Israeli soldiers received their remains and Tannenbaum was privately reunited with his family. Tannenbaum, who was also held in Lebanon for three years, reportedly is under investigation by Israeli police for questionable business deals and likely will spend the coming weeks in police custody, Israeli officials said.
Haim Avraham, the father of one of the dead Israeli soldiers returned Thursday, Benny Avraham, said in an interview earlier this week that the family had never given up hope that their son was still alive, although they knew the chances were slim.
"We want to believe Benny is alive, and if so, we will hug him," Haim said. But if he's dead, we will take him to the cemetery and tell him, 'We salute you. You finished your duty from your patrol on October 7, 2000, and now that you've landed at Ben-Gurion Airport, your mission is over.' "
Benny Avraham and his two dead comrades, Adi Avitan and Omar Sawayid, are to be buried on Friday, according to an Israeli military spokesman.
In a second phase of the prisoner swap, Israel is to receive information about its most famous MIA, airman Ron Arad, who was shot down over Lebanon more than 17 years ago. Although Arad was captured alive, his fate remains a mystery, with Israeli officials claiming he was sold to Iranian intelligence officers and probably killed, and Iranian officials denying any knowledge of his whereabouts.
Staff researchers Samuel Sockol and Hillary Claussen in Jerusalem and Ian Dietch in Tel Aviv and special correspondent Nimer Awine in Bethlehem contributed to this report.
-------
Israel, Hezbollah Complete Prisoner Swap
By ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press Writers
Jan 30, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PRISONER_SWAP?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NAQOURA, Lebanon (AP) -- An army band played somber music and dignitaries stood in salute as the remains of 59 guerrillas were returned Friday to Lebanon at a crossing on the Israeli border, completing a prisoner swap involving hundreds of Arabs and four Israelis.
Red Cross trucks carried the bodies to the Lebanese side from a buffer zone along the border where they had been kept since the Israelis handed them over a day earlier.
The wooden caskets were wrapped in Lebanese flags and decorated with flower bouquets before being loaded on three flatbed trucks with glass covers.
The convoy, led by an escort of police motorcycles, then began the journey to Beirut, about 60 miles to the north, and was due to make stops along the way. In Beirut, the bodies will be examined and identified before families can claim them for burial.
Hezbollah and government officials attended the outdoor ceremony on the coastal road in this Lebanese border town on the Mediterranean. Also in attendance were some families of the dead.
An old woman wearing a white headscarf walked aimlessly in the small crowd, carrying a big framed portrait of a young man, apparently one of the guerrillas whose bodies were returned.
In Thursday's German-mediated swap, Israel freed 400 Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza and 30 other Arabs, including 23 Lebanese, most of them flown to Lebanon. Israel received in return a kidnapped businessman and the remains of three soldiers killed in a 2000 ambush along the border in southern Lebanon.
At the same time Thursday, Israel handed over the remains of the Arab guerrillas to the Red Cross.
The complex swap came amid new threats from guerrillas to capture more Israeli and warnings from Israel of dire consequences if its soldiers are targeted again.
The standing of Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terror group, in the region is expected to be boosted because of its success in freeing Palestinian prisoners and extracting concessions from Israel.
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned that his guerrillas could again try to capture Israelis to trade them for three Lebanese prisoners he said were held by Israel.
Nasrallah stood with prisoners at a mass homecoming rally near a huge poster celebrating the guerrilla ambush in 2000 in which the three Israeli soldiers were killed.
Nasrallah said that although Hezbollah and Israel are enemies, he respects Israel's efforts to gain the freedom of prisoners and recover the remains of its soldiers.
"I respect this enemy which cares for its prisoners and the bodies of its soldiers and works days and night for them," he said.
In Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke at a memorial service in front of three caskets, covered with Israeli flags, and a woman sang mournfully in Hebrew. But he had a stern warning to Hezbollah against trying to seize Israeli soldiers.
"Israel will not allow any enemy or terror group to turn kidnapping and ransom into a system. There are means we have not yet used. If, heaven forbid, the circumstances are changed, we will not hesitate to use them," he said. He did not elaborate on the means.
The prisoner swap was carried out in a German military airport after separate planes landed from Lebanon and Israel carrying the Israelis and the Lebanese prisoners. Israel released the Palestinians in the Palestinian territories.
The sides are to launch a second stage of the German-brokered deal, with Israel to receive concrete information within three months on missing airman Ron Arad, whose plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. In exchange, Israel would release Samir Kantar, a Lebanese militant who has been in an Israeli prison since 1979 for killing three Israelis.
Kantar's younger brother, Bassam Kantar, 26, said a Palestinian lawyer visited Samir in his Israeli prison on Wednesday and was impressed by his mood.
"He is aware of all the details (of the prisoner exchange)," Bassam said of his brother. "It is clear from what we were told that he is very optimistic. He is all smiles and said goodbye to five of his colleagues who were freed."
-------- nato
NATO chief sees possible wider role in Iraq, Afghanistan
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jan 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040130195121.t6c7brds.html
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Friday after his first meeting with US President George W. Bush that the alliance may take on wider roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, already supporting a multinational force in Iraq, "might take on a greater role when a sovereign Iraqi government would ask NATO to do that," he said during a joint Oval Office appearance.
The United States, scheduled to turn Iraq over to self-rule by late June, is pushing for NATO to assume a bigger role, possibly taking over command of the Polish-led international division.
Diplomats say a decision on a greater NATO role in Iraq could be taken at an Alliance summit in Istanbul in June -- just as the US-led coalition in the country is to hand sovereignty back.
The former Dutch foreign minister, praised for finely balancing US and European interests during last year's Iraq war, also predicted that "NATO is going to take a larger role in Afghanistan."
Bush said they had discussed NATO transformation, expansion, and modernization, as well as the alliance's tasks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and reiterated his support for "a strong and vibrant NATO."
The alliance, in its first mission outside Europe, took command last August of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which was set up in December 2001 weeks after the defeat of the hardline Taliban regime.
Its member states have agreed to expand the ISAF beyond the capital Kabul, notably by setting up provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs), one of which has just been established in the northern city of Kunduz.
"NATO is about values, NATO is defending values which might be normal for us but are in other parts of the world less normal. And that's why we are in Afghanistan fighting terrorism," said de Hoop Scheffer.
The new NATO chief also said that the alliance was steadily "transforming into an organization which can defend those values wherever there is a necessity in the world."
----
Powell asserts NATO 'priority'
January 30, 2004
By David R. Sands and Benjamin Hu
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040129-092304-7277r.htm
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said NATO's mission in Afghanistan must remain the alliance's "first priority," even as the Bush administration pushes for a NATO deployment to Iraq later this year.
Mr. Powell made his remarks after a meeting with new NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who faces the delicate task of mending fences within the alliance following the divisive war in Iraq.
The continuing danger in Afghanistan, the first "out-of-area" mission for NATO in its history, was underscored yesterday when at least seven American troops were killed while working near an ammunition dump in the southern province of Ghazni. Another soldier was missing and two persons were wounded in the blast.
A U.S. military statement did not indicate the cause of the blast, which occurred in a region where some 12,000 U.S. troops are battling al Qaeda terrorists and militants of the ousted fundamentalist Taliban regime.
A stepped-up campaign by the Taliban has been blamed for the deaths of more than 80 soldiers and civilians in the past month. This week has seen suicide bombs that killed two NATO peacekeepers - a Canadian and a Briton - in Kabul itself, the first fatalities of their kind in months.
U.S. officials would very much like to see NATO support for the peacekeeping effort in Iraq, where American forces still represent the overwhelming bulk of the foreign troop presence. But NATO officials have been skittish about committing to Iraq while Afghanistan remains so unsettled.
Afghanistan "should be the first priority," Mr. Powell said.
He said the Iraq mission remained an open question, and NATO could eventually "have some responsibilities" there.
Mr. de Hoop Scheffer, a veteran Dutch diplomat who took over the NATO post at the beginning of the year, has been prodding alliance skeptics to consider the U.S. request to take a major role in the Iraq peacekeeping mission.
In his first trip to Washington since assuming the NATO job, Mr. de Hoop Scheffer will meet with President Bush today in the Oval Office, as well as Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
NATO has about 6,000 troops in Afghanistan, but is largely confined to the area around the capital Kabul. The alliance is planning a major expansion of its mission to provinces around the country where the ousted Taliban regime and local warlords still hold great power.
Afghanistan's U.S. ambassador earlier this week implored the United States and other nations for new investment in his troubled nation, saying the heightened insurgency threatens to derail the country's planned June elections.
"We urgently need assistance from the international community, especially in army and police reconstruction," Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad told reporters.
He said disarming local militias and curbing the country's illegal drug trade are top priorities.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, warned earlier this week that the United States risked losing the gains made in the 2001-2002 victory over the Taliban if more attention and resources are not focused on Afghanistan.
-------- prisoners of war
Three teens freed from Guantanamo
January 30, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040129-112143-8725r.htm
Three teenage boys who had been accused of supporting the Taliban and were held for more than a year at the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists have been released, the Pentagon said yesterday.
The boys, believed to be ages 13 to 15, were held at a makeshift prison called the "Iguana House" outside the massive detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which holds some 660 adult suspects in the U.S.-led war on terror.
A Defense Department statement said U.S. officials determined the boys "no longer posed a threat to our nation, that they have no further intelligence value and that they are not going to be tried by the U.S. government for any crimes."
During their stay at Guantanamo, the boys were shielded from "the influences of the older detainees," the Pentagon said, adding that the boys were given the opportunity to learn math, as well as reading and writing in their native language.
Citing concerns that al Qaeda or Taliban sympathizers might threaten the safety of the juveniles, the Pentagon did not reveal the boys' names or any specific details regarding their release.
"With the assistance of nongovernment organizations, the juveniles will be resettled in their home country," the Pentagon said. One U.S. official told Reuters news agency that the boys were returned to Afghanistan.
To date, the United States has released 87 prisoners from Guantanamo, although to which countries and under what legal circumstances they were released is classified.
In addition to the 87 releases, the Pentagon said "four other detainees have been transferred to the Saudi Arabian government for continued detention."
Military officials have told reporters that all of the prisoners held at Guantanamo were arrested in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon yesterday said two of the teenage boys were "captured during U.S. and allied-forces raids on Taliban camps" and that one "was captured while trying to obtain weapons to fight American forces."
Military officials declined to comment on an earlier report that one of the boys had killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan.
In November, one official at Guantanamo said the boy had pretended he was dead or asleep when U.S. forces encountered him during a mop-up operation. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that when the boy was discovered, he quickly turned and shot the soldier in the temple.
However, that official said he did not know when or where in Afghanistan the incident had occurred and stressed that the account may have been hearsay.
Asked yesterday whether the story could be corroborated, a Pentagon spokeswoman said that "as a matter of policy, for security reasons we don't talk about specific detainees."
-------- space
Leading Space Organizations Announce Creation of the National Space & Satellite Alliance
Friday, January 30, 2004
Space Foundation
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=13538
Washington (January 30, 2004) Four leading space organizations - the National Space Society (NSS), Satellite Industry Association (SIA), Space Foundation, and Washington Space Business Roundtable (WSBR) - today announced the creation of the National Space and Satellite Alliance (NSSA).
NSSA members will coordinate their Washington operations, programs, and activities to provide more cohesive and unified advocacy of space policy issues in Washington and to more effectively serve their members' interests. The stated mission of the NSSA is "to marshal the resources of the space and satellite advocacy community to most effectively advance the exploration and development of space, and the utilization of space and satellite systems and technologies."
In addition to pursuing cooperative efforts in public awareness and education, the 2004 Alliance policy agenda will include:
- Building Congressional and public support for the new White House space exploration plan
- Working with Congress and the Administration to implement export control laws that protect our country's national security without unnecessarily burdening industry
- Educating policymakers and the public about the important role that satellite systems play in protecting our homeland security
"With so many critical public policy issues facing the space industry, this is an opportunity for the space community to work together like never before," said Brian Chase, vice president of Washington Operations for the Space Foundation, who was elected as the first chairman of the Alliance.
"The National Space Society has been the voice of the space public for 30 years," said Greg Allison, chairman of the NSS Executive Committee. "Now that we have a new national vision for space exploration, there is an urgent need for members of the space community to coordinate their efforts to educate the public about the enormous benefits that the implementation of this policy will bring to the United States and its partners in space."
SIA President Richard Dalbello said "The U.S. aerospace industry is one of the jewels of the American economy, driving innovation, creating good jobs, and contributing to the nation's national and homeland security. One of the principal goals of the Space Alliance will be to advance policies that will strengthen the space and satellite industries and to recognize the important role that they play in our daily lives."
"The Alliance is a remarkable combination of industry, grassroots, and professional organizations," said Space Foundation President & CEO Elliot Pulham. "This diversity gives us a stronger voice in the public policy process and a better understanding of ways our individual strengths can complement one another."
WSBR Board Chairman Mark Quinn, senior vice president of Willis Inspace, applauded the formation of the NSSA. "The Alliance bolsters our flagship speaker program, which features high level industry and government leaders at our monthly luncheons," said Quinn. "Furthermore, it will broaden the scope of WSBR's educational initiatives in space-related programs," he added.
The Alliance will be headquartered at 1620 I Street NW in downtown Washington and will soon have an online presence at www.spacealliance.org.
-------- spies
Tinker, Tailor, Jurist, Spy
When it came to acting on intelligence about Iraq, there were none so blind as those who would not see
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Jan. 30, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4113438/
Jan. 30 - So the spooks are supposed to fall on their swords. In Washington and London, it's the spies who are taking the heat for all that wildly misleading stuff shoveled out of the White House and Downing Street stables about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But, you know, it's not just bad intelligence that got us into Iraq, it's bad judgment about the consequences of invading and occupying such a place. And for that the Bush and Blair administrations have no excuses.
It was never a secret that Saddam was a genocidal megalomaniac who wanted WMD. The trick was always to balance the risks he posed against the risks of deposing him. Intelligence is supposed to help make those choices, but all the decisions are up to the politicians. After Saddam steamrollered Kuwait in 1990, the first Bush administration wanted him out, and the Clinton administration subsequently made "regime change" in Iraq its official goal. But when it came to the crunch, Daddy Bush and Slick Willie worried more, and wisely, about the uncertainties of the aftermath.
The current Bush administration simply, and willfully, ignored that aftermath problem, and that's the real reason for the mess we're in now. The relative costs and benefits weren't weighed. In the end, they weren't even put on the scale. And not for lack of information. Millions of dollars were spent by the State Department's Future of Iraq Project in 2002, laying out just about all the post-invasion needs and difficulties. But during its plunge into Iraq, the Bush administration not only tossed away those findings, it excluded from the upper levels of the first transition team just about anyone who'd taken part in the State Department's studies.
"It was ideological," says an administration official who watched this spectacle from up close. "These guys convinced themselves this would be a one-week war, we'd be out of there by August, democracy would be in full bloom, [the Pentagon's favored exile leader Ahmed] Chalabi would recognize Israel and they'd all live happily ever after." If you were off message you were on the outs. "Anyone who disagreed with them didn't just have a different opinion," says this official, "they were considered wrong to the point of being evil."
The administration's behavior in public bears this out and makes it easy to guess the kind of pressure put on men and women in the shadows. In 2002, when the president's chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey ventured an opinion that the Iraq operation might actually cost $100 billion to $200 billion-at a time when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was talking something under $50 billion-Lindsey was soon out of a job.
In February 2003, just one year ago, and weeks before the war, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric C. Shinseki was asked at a Senate hearing how many troops he thought would be necessary to pacify Iraq after the war.
"Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers," said Shinseki. "We're talking about posthostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant, with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so it takes a significant ground-force presence to maintain a safe and secure environment, to ensure that people are fed, that water is distributed, all the normal responsibilities that go along with administering a situation like this."
Perfectly reasonable, perfectly predictable, perfectly responsible-but not the kind of thing the Bush administration wanted to hear at all. General Shinseki, whose uniform, ribbons and stars testified to his expertise, was publicly rebuked by the Pentagon's civilian No. 2 , Paul Wolfowitz. The suit knew better. Such estimates, said Wolfowitz, were wildly "off the mark," and a figure of 100,000 was closer to the Pentagon's expectations.
Well, the number of U.S. troops has been kept fairly close to that promised level of 100,000. (Those Pentagon bureaucrats do have iron wills.) But there's no question that many more troops were needed, and badly. "A safe and secure environment" still doesn't exist in Iraq, and from the start "the normal responsibilities" of occupiers simply have not been met. The borders were not secured. The cities were abandoned to looters. (To this day, Baghdad is without electricity for hours at a time.) More than 500 Americans are dead, most of them killed during the occupation. The monetary costs are upward of $1 billion a week and the chances of Iraqi or foreign forces effectively easing that burden are distant and slight. Even if "sovereignty" is transferred back to Iraqis on July 1, U.S. forces are supposed to stay on and keep fighting.
Last November, the U.S. administration and the Iraqi Governing Council (which the American authorities appointed) agreed that Coalition forces would be given "wide latitude to provide for the safety and security of the Iraqi people." Even after July, it's going to be a long goodbye.
Of course the Bush administration didn't want to acknowledge the likely costs before it started shooting. That kind of intelligence-just straightforward information, really-might have scared off the public. Polls last February showed that most Americans supported a war to oust Saddam, if necessary, but they weren't in any rush. They wanted to see United Nations weapons inspectors have a chance to do their jobs. They wanted to see more allies get on board with us, to share the costs in blood and treasure, if war really was required. But that didn't satisfy the suits at the Pentagon, or Bush-or Tony Blair for that matter.
It's easy to imagine how angry, and even desperate, intelligence analysts become in a situation like this. John le Carre, the great master of espionage fiction (and a former spy who's presumably in touch with his old colleagues) gets the ferocious tone about right in his latest novel, "Absolute Friends": "The Iraq war was a criminal and immoral conspiracy. It was an old Colonial war dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty, and it was launched by a clique of war-hungry Judaeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post-Nine Eleven psychopathy."
As it happens, I finished reading Le Carre's novel this week, just about the same time as the release in Britain of the "Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr. David Kelly C.M.G." by Lord Hutton, and I couldn't help wondering what the spooks are thinking about that case. Arguably, Kelly was one of their own. He was one of Britain's most respected biological-weapons experts and a former U.N. inspector in Iraq.
In the old days, Kelly was a colleague of the American inspector David Kay, who went on to head up Washington's own postwar search for Saddam's WMD. It is Kay's high-profile resignation and his conclusion that WMDs probably don't exist-along with his finger-pointing at the intelligence agencies for getting the facts all wrong-that has created such a stir on Capitol Hill.
Kelly, though, was a quiet man. He worked on the fringes of the secret world at the Ministry of Defense, was decorated by the crown and even considered for a knighthood. Like most good scientists and intelligence analysts, he was strongly committed to objective truths. But last summer, after trying to explain the facts to a BBC reporter, Kelly was named by government officials as "the source" for a report that claimed Prime Minister Blair's aides had "sexed up" a September 2002 report about Iraq's WMD, adding intelligence they knew might be false to create a greater sense of urgency. As the BBC and the Blairites traded accusations, Kelly took an afternoon stroll deep into the Oxfordshire countryside and opened the vein of his left wrist with a knife he'd owned since boyhood.
Hutton's report finds no fault with the government in this case. Blair and his boys acted in good faith when they issued their WMD report, Hutton concludes. They couldn't know that all the pressure on Kelly last June and July might lead to his suicide, and he shouldn't have had unauthorized contacts with the press anyway. The BBC, for its part, is nailed for exaggerating and distorting Kelly's remarks, then defending indefensible reporting. Within hours after the Hutton findings were published, the chairman of the state-financed broadcast network resigned. Blair appeared in Parliament to crow that he and his aides were cleared.
But of what? Blair, acting as a shill for Bush, insisted even more vehemently than the Americans that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ready to use. That information, we now know, was totally bogus. Therefore the judgments based on it were false. Therefore uncounted thousands of lives in Iraq have been, and continue to be, lost. Hutton, the punctilious jurist, says he might have tried to find out just how so much "intelligence" could be so wildly wrong, but he conveniently declares in paragraph nine, page two, of his 328-page report that this question is outside the scope of his inquiry.
And in the end, we still don't know why David Kelly took his own life. Maybe he was depressed about events we've never heard about. Maybe he feared official retribution for talking to the press. Maybe he just couldn't bear the distortion of the truth as he saw it. Or maybe he thought he was protecting somebody, or his ideals or his country, like one of the quiet, conscientious spies in a Le Carre novel.
"Time, when you're stringing together the net that has snared you, doesn't count for much," says a once-heroic agent who knows his life is about to end in "Absolute Friends." "Thinking is far more important. Comfortable ignorance ... is no longer the acceptable solution, however hard it is to face reality." No wonder people of conscience feel abandoned and overwhelmed.
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U.S. Acknowledges Flaws in Iraq Intelligence
January 30, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's national security adviser acknowledged on Thursday there may have been flaws in prewar intelligence about Iraq but brushed aside calls for an independent investigation into the matter.
``I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground,'' Condoleezza Rice told CBS.
She added, ``That's not surprising in a country that was as closed and secretive as Iraq, a country that was doing everything that it could to deceive the United Nations, to deceive the world.''
Bush based his decision to invade Iraq last year on what he called a ``grave and gathering danger'' posed by Iraq's weapons. He acted without U.N. backing, cutting short efforts by U.N. inspectors to check out the weapons reports in Iraq.
In a series of television interviews, Rice defended Bush's decision and said the United States may never learn the whole truth about Iraq's arms capabilities because of looting, which U.S. forces failed to stop immediately after the invasion.
For months, administration officials had expressed confidence banned weapons would be found.
But after the top U.S. weapons hunter concluded Iraq had no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons, the White House said on Monday it would review prewar intelligence. On Tuesday, Bush tempered his prewar insistence that Iraq had an arsenal of banned weapons.
HOT POLITICAL ISSUE
The weapons issue is a hot topic in campaigning for the November presidential election, with Democrats saying Bush misled the country over the level of the Iraqi threat.
Bush's main international ally over Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has come under similar pressure from political opponents but Blair drew comfort on Wednesday from an independent report rejecting a BBC claim that Blair had hyped the threat from Baghdad.
The White House acknowledged last year that it had been a mistake to accuse Iraq of trying to buy African uranium. The allegation -- included in Bush's State of the Union address -- was found to have been based partly on forged documents.
``When you are dealing with secretive regimes that want to deceive, you're never going to be able to be positive'' about intelligence, Rice told NBC on Thursday.
She said the U.S. team hunting for Iraq's weapons would ``gather all of the facts that we possibly can,'' leaving open the possibility that its findings may be inconclusive.
She blamed gaps in data on looters who sacked government offices after the invasion and on ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who she said was so secretive that ``he allowed the world to continue to wonder'' what weapons he still had.
Critics say the administration did little to secure sensitive sites immediately after the invasion, undercutting efforts to find the evidence of weapons.
'UNRESOLVED AMBIGUITY'
David Kay, who had led the U.S. team hunting for Iraq's weapons, warned on Wednesday of an ``unresolved ambiguity'' about Saddam's weapons capabilities partly due to the looting of documents, laboratories and military bases.
He said he would support an independent investigation into the intelligence.
Rice said the Iraq Survey Group, which is continuing to search for weapons in Iraq, should complete its work and that the intelligence community had already launched its own investigation.
Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. military's Central Command, stressed the importance of pressing on with the weapons search.
``If we did get the WMD wrong, OK, I understand that. But I can tell you that there are certain things that we got extremely right which allowed us to conduct a campaign that was pretty quick and, you know, pretty decisive in a very short period of time,'' he told reporters.
Rice said the administration would not change its position that Saddam had to go. ``The judgment is going to be the same: This is a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world and it was time to do something about this threat,'' she said.
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Hill Probers Fault Iraq Intelligence
Panels' Early Findings Are Similar to Kay's
By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61648-2004Jan29?language=printer
The House and Senate intelligence committees have unearthed a series of failures in prewar intelligence on Iraq similar to those identified by former weapons inspector David Kay, leading them to believe that CIA analysts and their superiors did not seriously consider the possibility Saddam Hussein no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction, congressional officials said.
The committees, working separately for the past seven months, have determined that the CIA relied too heavily on circumstantial, outdated intelligence and became overly dependent on satellite and spy-plane imagery and communications intercepts.
Like Kay, the committees have found that CIA operatives and analysts failed to detect that the Iraqi chain of command for developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons had fallen apart, and that Iraqi scientists and others were engaged in their own campaign to deceive the Iraqi leader, telling him they had weapons that did not exist.
"It was like a runaway train," said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, referring to the CIA's assessment of Iraq's weapons program. "Once it left the station, it kept going faster and faster. Some analysts may have been trying to slow it down, but it just kept going."
The White House, meanwhile, edged closer to acknowledging flaws in the intelligence on Iraq but continued to say it is not yet possible to draw final conclusions about Hussein's weapons. On CBS's "Early Show," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said, "What we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground." But, she added, "that's not surprising in a country that was as closed and secretive as Iraq, a country that was doing everything that it could to deceive the United Nations, to deceive the world."
Asked whether the intelligence was wrong, Rice demurred: "I don't think . . . that we know the full story of what became of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." Hussein, she added, "concealed hundreds of weapons-related activities and programs from the United Nations."
In Senate testimony Wednesday, Kay said that his months of searching in Iraq had convinced him that Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction immediately before the war, and he called for an independent inquiry into why U.S. intelligence agencies were so far off the mark.
The statements reignited a fiercely partisan debate about the performance of the CIA, and over whether the Bush administration twisted the intelligence, as some Democrats contend, as it built a case for war. Administration officials said Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that posed a grave threat to the United States.
That deep partisan split has also riven the two intelligence committees, and members and staff members fear party-line battling will make it impossible for Congress to provide a cogent analysis of the issues and answers to the public. The committees, which have yet to finalize their reports, have drawn on more than 175 interviews and a document trail that rivals the congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, congressional officials familiar with the separate House and Senate inquiries said.
"Bipartisanship has become the hardest" to achieve "since I've been on the committee, and I'm very, very sad about it," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), ranking minority member of the House intelligence panel. "This is a serious change. If these intelligence committees can't do it, no one can do it."
A senior U.S. intelligence official declined to respond to the committee findings, which have not been shared with them. Besides, he said, any final judgment is premature. He said U.S. weapons hunters still have "millions of pages of documents to read, hundreds of sites" to explore and thousands of interviews to conduct before determining whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"We're not insisting in every case that what we said was right, but much of it is not yet knowable," he said.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher sounded a similar note yesterday on the performance of U.S. intelligence. "I don't think one can draw conclusions at this point. Certainly some of the elements we know are subject to debate, disagreement. But until we know what the real full extent of the program was, you don't have anything to compare what the intelligence was at the time to what the final answers are," Boucher said.
Roberts called the prewar estimates of Iraq's capabilities "a world intelligence failure" and said: "There wasn't any real attempt to follow up, . . . to do the kind of things you should do to determine if it was true. They took it on faith."
"They just kept turning the page," said Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee. "If it was true yesterday, it must be true today." Goss said the intelligence community provided enough caveats in its findings to signal the intelligence's murkiness to policymakers. "I don't fault the analysts. They tried to move the dots . . . in a way that made connections. Did the analysts fumble? I don't think so. They just didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle."
Roberts said he intends to put a 300-page draft report before the members on Thursday, give them one week to digest it, and then begin the process of finalizing and getting portions declassified for public hearings at the end of March.
According to Republicans and Democrats on both committees, there is a strong possibility that the Democrats on both panels will write a dissenting report that includes a Democrats-only analysis of how the Bush administration exaggerated claims about Iraq's weapons programs in the months leading to war.
Goss, a former CIA case officer, said he hopes to have a report finished by the end of the 108th Congress, which could last until the end of the year.
The new chief U.S. inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, Kay's successor, spoke recently to the chairmen and ranking Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees and on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Although he said he has not finalized his approach, Duelfer has told people he hopes to determine what Hussein's "game plan" was in the longer term, including whether he was trying to lull the U.N. Security Council into ending sanctions so he could resume the prohibited weapons programs.
Duelfer and Maj. Gen. Keith W. Dayton, commander of the Iraq Survey Group, are to present their findings in an interim report in late March, congressional sources said. Duelfer has told those he has briefed that he hopes to have a final, unclassified report after that to show the public that every possible step has been taken to find the truth.
As a former deputy head of the U.N. Special Commission that carried out inspections in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, Duelfer knows Iraqi scientists and is familiar with the weapons, stocks of agents and facilities Iraq admitted having in 1991, at least some of which were later destroyed.
He also knows the techniques Iraq used to hide weapons programs and those who ran them.
Staff writer Dana Milbank contributed to this report.
-------- us
Commander of US navy ship captured by N. Korea in 1960s dies
LOS ANGELES (AFP)
Jan 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040130014114.laz2ezr0.html
The commander of the US Navy ship USS Pueblo, which became a Cold War flashpoint when its crew was taken hostage by North Korea in 1968, has died, former shipmates said Thursday.
Pueblo skipper Lloyd "Pete" Bucher died in a nursing home near the California city of San Diego on Wednesday afternoon after a long battle with emphysema and asbestosis, former Pueblo sailor Stu Russell told AFP.
"He had been in declining health for some time and on oxygen for four years and I think he just wore out," said Russell, who is president of the USS Pueblo Veteran's Association.
Cold War tensions soared after four North Korean gunboats captured the spy ship after a shoot-out off the coast of the communist hermit state on January 23, 1968, prompting a massive US build-up in the area.
After the stunning first seizure by an enemy of a US military ship in nearly 150 years, 82 of its crew members were taken into captivity -- one was killed -- sparking a long stand-off with the United States.
The United States maintained that the ship was in international waters, while the North Koreans insisted on an admission that the vessel had intruded into its territory.
"(Bucher) was the victim of extremely poor planning, terrible execution and a horrible cover-up on the part of the (US) Navy and the National Security Agency," Russell said of the ship's abortive mission.
Bucher helped keep up the morale of his crew despite beatings and psychological torture during their 11 months in captivity in the Stalinist state, while working to deflect the propaganda impact of their capture.
"He went far beyond what was required of him provided amazing strength to the crew through his example of never yielding to the (North) Koreans and fighting them every inch of the way," Russell recalled.
"He would resist whatever they wanted to do -- one time they wanted him to say something and all of a sudden he would develop lock-jaw," Russell said adding that conditions in captivity were "brutal by (US) standards."
Bucher, who was wounded in the firefight that led to the ship's capture, was eventually coerced into signing a confession admitting to espionage, securing the crew's release.
"I will never again be a party to any disgraceful act of aggression of this type," he wrote. Later he said he had signed the confession to save his men.
A naval inquiry into the Pueblo incident called for a court martial of Bucher for having allowed the ship's capture led to no apparent action for Bucher or any of his men.
But he and his crew had to wait until 1989 to get prisoner of war medals from the United States.
----
Army Expansion Could Last 5 Years
Ranks Will Swell During Restructuring
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61583-2004Jan29.html
An additional 30,000 soldiers authorized this week by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on a temporary basis could swell the ranks of the Army for five years or longer, depending upon troop requirements in Iraq, Afghanistan and other potential conflicts, a senior Army official said yesterday.
Briefing reporters one day after Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, disclosed the increase in congressional testimony, the official said a wholesale restructuring of the nation's largest military service should produce efficiencies that would enable the Army eventually to return to its current authorized troop strength of about 480,000 troops.
But the official, who briefed on the condition that he would not be identified, said it is not certain the Army would be able to cut strength in four to five years from the 510,000-troop level authorized by Rumsfeld under emergency authority approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"It really depends on world situations," the official said. "We think, as we're restructuring, we may be able to come down off the 510,000 over time. . . . But I don't know yet."
On Wednesday, Schoomaker said the addition of 30,000 personnel would be needed for about four years so the service could sustain deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently more than 130,000 troops, as the Army restructures 10 active-duty divisions and much of its reserve and National Guard forces.
Elaborating on Schoomaker's remarks, the official called that restructuring "the most comprehensive change and most monumental change the Army has undertaken in 50 years."
The current plan for fulfilling both overseas commitments and restructuring calls for the use of "stop-loss" orders to keep all deployed units at or above 100 percent of authorized strength until new soldiers -- with a heavy emphasis on infantrymen -- can be recruited this year and next.
Currently, stop-loss orders, holding soldiers in the Army for between 120 and 180 days beyond their regular tours, have been used to increase overall troop strength to 493,000 personnel. Continued use of stop-loss will further increase troop strength to beyond 500,000 over the next five months, the official said.
But the Army plans to discontinue the use of stop-loss orders in 2005, with 10,000 recruits entering the service, the official said.
Schoomaker's restructuring plan calls for an increase in the active-duty combat brigades from 33 to 48, creating more versatile units available for rapid overseas deployment. Each new brigade will be more self-sustaining and have more combat power than current brigades, enabling the Defense Department to respond to smaller-scale contingencies by deploying a brigade of 5,000 soldiers, instead of a much larger division, with 20,000 soldiers.
There will be three types of brigades: heavy, with tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles; light, with motorized infantrymen; and airborne, with helicopters and paratroopers. Commanders then could deploy a headquarters structure from one division to command heavy, light and airborne brigades from three other divisions.
In assessing the current Army structure, still largely a Cold War force, Schoomaker and his staff decided the service had far too much artillery and air defense artillery, the official said. They now plan to convert 39 field artillery battalions and 10 air defense battalions to military police, civil affairs and light infantry units in greater demand for fighting the global war on terrorism.
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The mess on military bases
January 30, 2004
Tullahoma News
Reprinted from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1614&dept_id=161055&newsid=10892615&PAG=461&rfi=9
Last year, the Pentagon asked Congress for exemptions from some environmental regulations, including a few having to do with cleaning up the messes left behind at old military sites. Now we know why.
According to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, removing the hazardous waste and unexploded munitions at all of the sites still on the Department of Defense's cleanup list could take from 75 to 330 years. No doubt, loosening the standards and requiring less cleanup would shave some years off the estimate. But don't hold the military to that timeline. As it turns out, while 2,307 sites had been identified as of September 2002, Pentagon officials told auditors that additional sites continue to be identified, and a complete list probably won't be available for several years.
And there's more: Of the identified sites, 1,387 sites have yet to be fully assessed as to whether cleanup will be needed. In the 558 cases where assessment has been completed, 475 were determined to not require cleanup. Of the remaining 83 where some cleanup was necessary, the Pentagon has completed 23. This, since 1986, when the Defense Environmental Restoration Program was created.
And as one might suspect - after all, this is the Pentagon we're talking about - the cleanup won't come cheap. Officials estimate that cleaning up the 15 million acres suspected of or known to be contaminated with military munitions will cost from $8 billion to $35 billion.
Granted, the military has had other things on its mind of late, but that hardly accounts for the molasses-like movement on this issue over almost two decades. Nor is this just an issue that concerns the usual cast of environmentalists. Some of the sites contain unexploded ammunition - which has caused 65 deaths and 131 injuries over the last 83 years - and others contain toxic materials that pose long-term health threats.
The GAO recommendations are pretty simple: The Defense Department should develop a comprehensive approach by 1) establishing deadlines for completing its site inventory and initial evaluations, 2) reassessing the timetable proposed for completing its risk assessment re-evaluations and 3) establishing service-specific targets. The GAO also says the Pentagon should, after revising its plan, work with Congress to develop budget proposals that will allow timely completion of cleanup activities.
Good ideas all, and worthy of quick adoption by the Pentagon. Because at the current rate, the military will be building bases on Mars before it has cleaned up the mess it has left behind on Earth.
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Bipartisan Request Seeks Halt to Internet Voting
Groups Fear Citizens Abroad Will Be Compromised
By Dan Keating
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61273-2004Jan29.html
In a highly unusual pairing, the Republican and Democratic party organizations for citizens living abroad have banded together against the Pentagon's Internet voting program for the presidential election.
Concerns about the security of the online ballots could cast the entire election under a cloud of suspicion, they said in a joint letter urging a halt in the program. The letter released yesterday is being sent to several congressional committees.
"We do not want to undermine confidence in our system of voting by discovering some real or imagined fraud in the November balloting," wrote the leaders of Republicans Abroad and Democrats Abroad.
The partisan groups called their cooperation historic. They are joined in their opposition by the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, American Citizens Abroad and the Federation of American Women's Clubs Overseas, which are sending a separate appeal to Congress and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"We've heard so much about the doubtful security of online voting, so we're concerned that we're going too fast," said Lucy Laederich, U.S. liaison for the women's clubs. "One day this might be absolutely wonderful. In the meantime, we might find ourselves with a kind of a super-2000 disaster, and people will think online voting will never be possible." The opposition has prompted Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) to seek congressional allies to lobby Rumsfeld to stop the Internet vote for the presidential race.
The Pentagon's Federal Voting Assistance Program is sponsoring a $22 million Internet voting experiment. Fifty counties in seven states have signed up, and about 100,000 ballots are expected to be cast. The program is open to all military and civilian overseas residents from those counties.
The online experiment suffered a setback a week ago when four computer security specialists asked to review the program released a report saying that the Internet and personal computers running Microsoft Windows are so inherently insecure that online voting would be subject to hacking. They urged a halt in the program for fear that ballots collected online could undermine the integrity of the election. The four were part of a group of 10 academics and other experts involved in a $1.8 million review of the program under the leadership of R. Michael Alvarez, co-director of the CalTech-MIT/Voting Technology Project and co-author of the book "Point, Click & Vote: The Future of Internet Voting." Alvarez said he wants the full group to issue a report after the election to evaluate how the program performed.
The project will help voters who have a hard time getting and casting ballots and will provide guidance for developing a secure broader system, said Accenture eDemocracy Services, the consultant developing the Pentagon system.
"The group's decision is premature," spokesman James McAvoy said. "Up to 50 percent of all servicemen and women and citizens living abroad find it difficult if not impossible to have their vote counted each election year. This is a serious problem that deserves serious consideration."
Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said it will continue reviewing security concerns but intends to go forward with the program.
The Internet project has not received formal certification required for all voting equipment, so it is not being used for Tuesday's primary in South Carolina. Depending on when certification is completed, it could be used for subsequent primaries in Utah, Florida, North Carolina and Arkansas. It is expected to be used for the general election in all of those states, as well as in Washington and Hawaii.
The letters from the groups abroad emphasized that they are eager to facilitate overseas voting. In interviews, they praised the Federal Voting Assistance Program's Web site, which has information and a form to let them request paper absentee ballots.
"If the request for getting a ballot is expedited, that's great," said Ryan King, speaking for Republicans Abroad. "But the actual ballot, the actual voting, we have strong concerns about that. The security concerns outweigh any potential convenience."
Joseph Smallhoover, former chairman of Democrats Abroad, said there are about 6.5 million civilians overseas and 500,000 service members and their dependents.
"We would love to have a system that makes it easier for the people overseas to vote easily," he said, "but if it's going to raise serous questions about the validity of the election itself, we'd rather have a system with a paper trail and not subject to serious doubt. We doubt that the nation wants to go through the same sort of turmoil that we did in 2000."
Overseas ballots arriving after Election Day were a significant part of the Florida election debacle. That election led to national reforms for more reliable voting equipment as well as better ways for gathering votes from abroad.
-------- propaganda wars
Gilligan Resignation Statement in Full
The Scotsman,
Fri 30 Jan 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2473510
The following is the full text of Andrew Gilligan's resignation statement
"I am today resigning from the BBC. I and everyone else involved here have for five months admitted the mistakes we made. We deserved criticism. Some of my story was wrong, as I admitted at the inquiry, and I again apologise for it. My departure is at my own initiative. But the BBC collectively has been the victim of a grave injustice.
If Lord Hutton had fairly considered the evidence he heard, he would have concluded that most of my story was right. The Government did sex up the dossier, transforming possibilities and probabilities into certainties, removing vital caveats; the 45-minute claim was the 'classic example' of this; and many in the intelligence services, including the leading expert in WMD, were unhappy about it. Thanks to what David Kelly told me and other BBC journalists, in very similar terms, we know now what we did not know before. I pay tribute to David Kelly.
This report casts a chill over all journalism, not just the BBC's. It seeks to hold reporters, with all the difficulties they face, to a standard that it does not appear to demand of, for instance, Government dossiers. I am comforted by the fact that public opinion appears to disagree with Lord Hutton and I hope this will strengthen the resolve of the BBC.
The report has imposed on the BBC a punishment far out of proportion to its or my mistakes, which were honest ones. It is hard to believe now that this all stems from two flawed sentences in one unscripted early-morning interview, never repeated, when I said that the Government "probably knew" that the 45-minute figure was wrong.
I attributed this to David Kelly; it was in fact an inference of mine. It has been claimed that this was the charge which went round the world, but a cuttings check shows that it did not even get as far as a single Fleet Street newspaper. Nor did the Government mention it in its first three letters of complaint.
In my view, this helps explain why neither I nor the BBC focused on this phrase as we should have. I explicitly made clear, in my broadcasts, that the 45-minute point was based on real intelligence. I repeatedly said also that I did not accuse the Government of fabrication, but of exaggeration. I stand by that charge, and it will not go away.
In Greg Dyke the BBC has lost its finest director general for a generation. He should not have resigned, and I am extremely sorry to see him go.
I would like to thank the BBC for its support throughout the extraordinary and terrible ordeal that has been the last seven months. It has defended the right to investigate and report accurately on matters about which the public has a right to know. Save for the admissions I and the BBC have made, my reporting on the dossier's compilation fulfilled this purpose.
I love the BBC and I am resigning because I want to protect it. I accept my part in the crisis which has befallen the organisation. But a greater part has been played by the unbalanced judgments of Lord Hutton."
----
Inquiry Leaves BBC in Crisis
2nd Official Quits Over Iraq Findings; Journalists Walk Out
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61701-2004Jan29?language=printer
LONDON, Jan. 29 -- The British Broadcasting Corp., the world's largest broadcast news organization, faced one of the worst crises in its fabled 82-year history Thursday following the forced resignation of a second senior executive, an unreserved apology to its political overseers and a walkout by hundreds of staff members across Britain in protest.
Greg Dyke, the corporation's director general and editor in chief, stepped down, while the corporation apologized to Prime Minister Tony Blair and other government officials for reporting they had exaggerated prewar intelligence about Iraq's access to weapons of mass destruction.
Dyke's resignation came the day after a judicial inquiry concluded the BBC had broadcast "unfounded" allegations against Blair and his aides and then had failed to adequately investigate their complaints. The corporation's chairman, Gavyn Davies, resigned Wednesday after the inquiry's report was published.
Davies and Dyke had insisted that most of the BBC's reporting on the subject had been accurate and both raised questions about the inquiry's findings. But the new acting chairman, Richard Ryder, issued a statement acknowledging "serious defects in the corporation's processes and procedures" and promised major reforms.
"On behalf of the BBC, I have no hesitation in apologizing unreservedly for our errors and to the individuals whose reputations were affected by them," Ryder said.
Blair, who received full exoneration from the inquiry, welcomed Ryder's apology and said it signaled an end to the bitter eight-month dispute between his government and the BBC. The accusation, first made in a BBC radio report last May, that Blair and his aides had knowingly published intelligence data they knew were probably false "has now been withdrawn, and that's all I ever wanted," Blair told reporters.
"It allows us to draw a line and allows the BBC to get on with their job and for us to get on with ours," added Blair, whose aides and supporters had accused BBC journalists of adopting a relentlessly anti-government line during the war in Iraq.
But hundreds of BBC staff members walked off their jobs Thursday evening, calling for Dyke's reinstatement. Many said they feared the resignations and the subsequent climb-down would do serious damage to the state-funded corporation's journalistic autonomy and integrity.
"The atmosphere is bleak," said a member of the staff of "Today," the radio news program that first aired the intelligence allegations. "People inside the BBC are desperately anxious that this affair doesn't lead to the unraveling of our independence."
The two BBC leaders stepped down after a retired senior judge, Lord Brian Hutton, issued a report condemning Andrew Gilligan, the journalist at the center of the disputed broadcast, along with editors and senior managers. Hutton was especially critical of Dyke, who also served as the BBC's editor in chief, and of its board of governors for not thoroughly reviewing Gilligan's notes and reporting methods after Blair and his top aide, Alastair Campbell, heatedly denied the story and demanded a retraction.
Gilligan's May 29 report cited an unnamed source who contended that officials had "sexed up" an intelligence dossier on Iraq and had knowingly published a false claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order. In the ensuing dispute, a British weapons expert, David Kelly, admitted he had spoken to Gilligan but denied the reporter's main allegations. Kelly later committed suicide, triggering the judicial inquiry.
Critics lashed into Hutton's report. Rod Liddle, the "Today" program's former editor, said the judge had completely accepted the government's self-serving version of events for both the compilation of the dossier and the leaking of Kelly's name to the news media. The Independent's blank front page bore the word "Whitewash?" A poll in the Evening Standard newspaper reported that 56 percent of respondents said Hutton's criticism of the BBC was too harsh, while 36 percent said the findings were convincing.
At first, the BBC also challenged some of Hutton's findings in statements by both Davies and Dyke, though Dyke included a partial apology for those aspects of the story that were inaccurate. But the prime minister's official spokesman made clear Thursday morning that Blair was not satisfied. Shortly after noon, Dyke announced his resignation and Ryder issued a new statement with a full apology.
The BBC, which raises most of its funds through a compulsory licensing fee, is overseen by the government. While Ryder serves as temporary BBC chairman, the government will launch a search for a successor, over which Blair will have the final say. Richard Byford, 45, a veteran BBC news executive, will be acting director general until a new one is chosen.
The corporation has already announced new procedures for handling complaints and other changes. But observers expect the government to insist that the 12-member board of governors shed its dual role in which it both oversees the corporation and serves as government regulator, and turn over regulatory duties to another state-run body. The government has launched a detailed review of the BBC's charter, due for renewal in 2006. But government officials insisted they had no intention of damaging the BBC's journalistic independence or of humiliating the corporation.
"There's no sense of triumphalism about this," said James Purnell, a Blair loyalist and Labor Party member of Parliament. "The prime minister has always been one of the biggest supporters of the BBC's independence.
"There was just an incredible sense of frustration that they wouldn't take these complaints seriously."
BBC staffers are not allowed to speak publicly without authorization. Privately, however, several expressed deep dismay that the corporation's managers had allowed the Gilligan affair to spin out of control. "Frankly speaking, everybody's completely gobsmacked that one duff report by one weird reporter has caused the whole foundation to shake," a senior journalist said. "It's like the second-rate burglary that pulls the entire house down."
Other journalists warned that the corporation's integrity was at stake. "You have to fear for the BBC after this, because a kind of self-censorship could inevitably seep in," said Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper and frequent BBC program host. "My big worry is the pendulum will now swing to a new breed of editors and managers who will measure their success by the low number of complaints they get."
Many staff members were particularly distraught over the departure of Dyke, 56, a charismatic and affable figure who came to the BBC four years ago after a successful career in commercial television. Dyke had ruthlessly reduced the institution's vast corps of middle managers and bureaucrats. He labeled the corporation's managers "hideously white" and instituted new targets for racial and ethnic diversity in hiring and promotion. While some accused him of cutting back on highbrow arts and cultural programs that were the BBC's trademark, others said he was helping bring the corporation into the 21st century. He also encouraged more original news reporting and less reliance on official sources.
Making a last tour of BBC studios Thursday evening after he announced his resignation, Dyke told staff members he had not wanted to quit but felt he had no choice.
"If in the end you screw up, you have to go," he told them.
But he exhorted the corporation's journalists to carry on. "You must feel pretty shocked at the moment at both Hutton and what it's meant," he told them. "But what I want to tell you is: Don't lose your nerve. Just keep going, keep doing important pieces, important programs."
----
"Embedding" hampered Iraq media independence -book
By Kate Holton
30 Jan 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L30489450.htm
LONDON, Jan 30 - Large sections of the mainstream media became too close to the military in Iraq and as a result produced "cheerleading" coverage which lacked credibility, according to a book published this week.
"Tell Me Lies", which looked at coverage of the conflict and the impact of the over 500 "embedded" journalists, said the dependency that developed between the military and the media often resulted in one-sided reports.
"Dreamt up by the Pentagon and (Defense Secretary) Donald Rumsfeld, the "embeds"... were almost completely controlled by the military," the book's producer David Miller said.
"The aim... was to control what is reported by encouraging journalists to identify with their units. To eat and drink together, to risk danger and to share the same values."
Media analysts, while saying it was wrong to generalise on the standard of reporting, agreed that some sections of the media had become too close to their units. "Some of the stuff, particularly on television, was straight out of Hollywood," ex-war reporter and professor of Journalism Colin Bickler told Reuters. "It's always very difficult to be critical when you are with people."
But Bickler also defended the use of embedding, saying it regularly provided information that would have otherwise been missed.
The book, written by up to 40 journalists and commentators, said competition between the different media organisations resulted in journalists often reporting the military line before having time to question it.
Christopher Hill, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, told Reuters that over a long period of time, the slow drip of familiarity with soldiers and their way of looking at the world would inevitably breed a certain empathy.
"Whether this was an absolutely conscious and manipulative strategy on the part of the government or simply a highly intelligent way of handling the inevitable problem that journalists would want access is a matter of judgement," he said.
After tightly curbing media access to military operations in Grenada, the 1991 Gulf War and Afghanistan, the Pentagon agreed on an unprecedented scale to let journalists accompany front-line soldiers to get a clearer picture of the conflict.
It said both sides would benefit from the agreement, with journalists getting a much truer picture of the army and soldiers having a better idea of how they were perceived.
The move was also seen as a way of counteracting the coverage produced by satellite stations such as Qatar-based Al Jazeera which was expected to be critical of the United States and Britain.
David Kellner, writing in the book, said the U.S. networks tended to show highly sanitised clips of the war with few Iraqi casualties which resulted in a "view...totally different from that shown in other parts of the world".
Former British war reporter Martin Bell was quoted as saying the use of sanitised shots left viewers with a sense that the conflict was a relatively cost-free enterprise and an acceptable way of settling differences.
"People have to be left with some sense of what happened, if only through the inclusion of pictures sufficiently powerful at least to hint of the horror of those excluded," Bell said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Veto Threatened on Bill to Restrict Powers Under Terrorism Law
January 30, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/politics/30PATR.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 - The Bush administration, stepping up the debate over its antiterrorism policies, threatened on Thursday to veto a pending bill that would scale back the government's powers under the USA Patriot Act.
Attorney General John Ashcroft told reporters that the bill, sponsored by Senate Republicans and Democrats, "unilaterally disarms America's defenses" against terrorists and that President Bush intended to veto the measure if Congress passed it.
The threat of a veto represents an unusual pre-emptive strike by the administration. The bill has not even come up for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Supporters of the measure reacted angrily. Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Illinois Democrat who is a co-sponsor of the measure, called Mr. Ashcroft's comments "an unfortunate overreaction."
The measure, introduced in October, would restrict the broadened powers that the government was given in the antiterrorism law, approved by Congress weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The bill would limit the government's ability to use roving wiretaps against terrorist suspects, to execute search warrants against suspects without immediately notifying them and to obtain business records from libraries or bookstores in intelligence investigations, among other measures.
The legislation "would make it even more difficult to mount an effective antiterror campaign than it was before the Patriot Act was passed," Mr. Ashcroft wrote in a letter to Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Justice Department released the letter on Thursday.
Mr. Ashcroft sent his letter after Mr. Bush, in a rejoinder to critics of the antiterrorism law, urged Congress in his State of the Union address to renew those critical sections that expire at the end of next year.
A report this week by the inspector general of the Justice Department found no abuses by the department in its use of the new powers. But Mr. Durbin said that the antiterrorism law, while making many reasonable changes, nonetheless "goes too far" in some instances and that the pending legislation "would protect innocent Americans from unchecked government surveillance."
The bill is "designed to impose reasonable limits on law enforcement's authority without hampering their ability to investigate and prevent terrorism," Mr. Durbin said.
--------
White House Intensifies Efforts to Safeguard Patriot Act
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61577-2004Jan29.html
The Bush administration stepped up its fight to preserve the controversial USA Patriot Act yesterday, warning that proposed legislation to scale back the law would undermine national security and would face a presidential veto if approved.
In a letter to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft contended that a bipartisan proposal to undo parts of the Patriot Act "would make it even more difficult to mount an effective anti-terror campaign than it was before the Patriot Act was passed." In the letter and in comments to reporters yesterday, Ashcroft also warned that President Bush is prepared to veto the proposed legislation, the Security and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act, which is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho).
Ashcroft's letter and remarks are the latest salvo in the congressional battle over the Patriot Act, the broad anti-terrorism measure overwhelmingly approved by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In his State of the Union speech earlier this month, Bush called on Congress to make permanent the portions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire in 2005.
"When American lives are at stake, we need to have all the capacities to disrupt and to defeat terrorism that we've been successfully using over the last 28 months," Ashcroft said at a news conference yesterday.
But the law has come under fire as an infringement on civil liberties; more than 240 state and local governments have passed resolutions condemning the measure. The House surprised the Bush administration last summer when it approved an amendment to deny funding for "sneak-and-peek" warrants, which allow agents to conduct secret searches and delay notifying the targets that they have done so.
Durbin said in a statement that "Ashcroft's response is an unfortunate overreaction to a reasoned and measured effort to mend the Patriot Act," which "in some cases . . . goes too far."
Ashcroft said in his letter to Hatch that the SAFE Act "would hamper our ability to surveil sophisticated international terrorists" by eliminating some kinds of roving wiretaps, and "would run the risk of tipping off terrorists" by limiting the use of delayed-notice warrants.
--------
Senators to Request Extension for 9/11 Panel
January 30, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/politics/30TERR.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 - The two key Senate authors of the bill that created an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks said Thursday that they would introduce legislation next week to extend the panel's deadline by eight months, to next January.
The senators, John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said they were prepared to fight for the extension over the opposition of the White House and Congressional Republicans. Both want the 10-member commission to meet its original deadline of May 27.
"An extension until after the November elections is warranted to ensure a comprehensive and thorough investigation in a nonpartisan environment," Senator McCain said in a statement.
On Tuesday, the commission announced that it needed at least two more months to complete the inquiry, raising the prospect of a report delivered in July, in the heat of the presidential campaign.
Republican strategists have worried that the report may be critical of the Bush administration - specifically, of failures by the White House to act on intelligence before Sept. 11 suggesting that a catastrophic terrorist attack might be imminent - and that it could damage the president's re-election hopes if presented in the middle of the campaign.
Groups representing the families of victims of the attack have joined in calling for an extension, saying that it would be improper for the White House and Congressional Republicans to try to rush the commission into completing its work.
The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, has complained that some executive branch agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the Pentagon, were slow to meet its requests for documents and other evidence about the attacks.
-------- prisons / prisoners
3 Teenagers Are Released From Guantánamo and Sent Home
January 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/national/30GITM.html
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 - The United States military released its three youngest prisoners from the detention center at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba on Thursday, teenagers thought to be 13 to 15 years old.
The teenagers were returned to their home country, which the Pentagon did not identify. All three were captured in Afghanistan and taken to Guantánamo in February 2003, said Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, a military spokeswoman at Guantánamo.
Military officials said they had decided the teenagers no longer posed a threat to the United States and had no further value as interrogation subjects. They will not be tried by the United States government for any crimes, the military said.
Hundreds of people suspected of being fighters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been held at Guantánamo since the war in Afghanistan began in the fall of 2001.
Human rights groups have long criticized the detention of the three teenagers.
"The detention of children as 'enemy combatants' and their interrogation without even the basic safeguards to which they were entitled was a significant violation of human rights," William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A., said in a statement. "The release of these children is long overdue, but does not let the U.S. off the hook for continued violations of the rights of hundreds of other detainees."
In a statement, the Pentagon said the teenagers' identities were being kept secret for fear of reprisals against them.
Colonel Hart said one teenager had said he was conscripted into an anti-American militia. Another said he had been abducted by the Taliban and forced to train and fight, she said. Colonel Hart said the third teenager had been studying in an extremist mosque and captured while preparing to obtain weapons.
The Pentagon said it did not know the teenagers' birth dates, but medical tests had determined that all three were younger than 16. Aid groups will help resettle them in their home country, the Pentagon said.
In November, officials at Guantánamo said the three were kept apart from the other prisoners.
Their release means that 87 detainees have been released from the prison. Four others have been sent to Saudi Arabia for detention there.
About 650 prisoners, from about 40 countries, remain, military officials said Thursday.
--------
U.S. Releases 3 Teens From Guantanamo
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61647-2004Jan29?language=printer
The U.S. military has released three teenage Taliban conscripts from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and flown them to their Afghan homeland, where resettlement workers are trying to reunite them with relatives or family friends, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
The detention of the three youths had generated protests from international human rights activists, who contended that imprisoning children, especially for significant lengths of time, is inhumane. But Pentagon officials said the trio, who ranged in age from 13 to 15, were "juvenile enemy combatants" who posed a threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan before their capture.
The imprisonment of the young Taliban foot soldiers has been a particularly troublesome issue for the U.S. government, involving not just the controversy over the indefinite detention of about 675 terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay but also the delicate issue of their age.
Experts in unconventional warfare said the "child soldier" problem will haunt the U.S. war on terrorism for years to come, as more and more terrorist groups pressure teenagers to pick up rifles and strap on suicide belts to fight the United States and the West.
U.S. government officials released the three teenagers -- who lived in a seaside house enclosed by a chain-link fence, apart from the other inmates -- after determining that they "no longer posed a threat to our nation, that they have no further intelligence value and that they are not going to be tried by the U.S. government for any crimes," the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.
"Age is not a determining factor in detention," according to the statement. "We detain enemy combatants who engaged in armed conflict against our forces or provided support to those fighting against us."
A total of 87 detainees have been released from Guantanamo Bay so far, and four more have been transferred to the custody of Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. special ambassador for war crimes, said the United States is making arrangements to release as many as two dozen more who the government believes pose a small security threat.
Approximately seven other teenagers, ages 16 and 17, are still held at the Guantanamo Bay jail for alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, and they live with the general inmate population. Human rights organizations contend that they should be released and, in the meantime, should live separately from the adults.
Pentagon officials declined to specify the three released teenagers' nationalities, but sources said all are Afghan. The teenagers were captured by U.S. or allied forces in early 2003 in a Taliban camp during battles there, the officials said. In its statement yesterday, the Defense Department said one of the three was detained "while trying to obtain weapons to fight American forces."
After deciding to take them to Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military officials realized they were confronting a legal and logistical nightmare.
"As soon as these kids came in, we got to work" designing a plan to have them to live away from the adult detainees, said Mark Jacobson, who worked on the matter as a Pentagon official and is now a professor at Ohio State University. "The government recognized this is a problem."
Even now, officials are not certain of the precise ages of the youths in the prison. The use of standard pediatric bone measurements to estimate their ages was unsuccessful because most were poorly nourished during their years at war.
More than a year ago, the authorities at Guantanamo Bay set aside a small facility they called Iguana House for the three youngest detainees, where they were tutored in mathematics, as well as in reading and writing in their native language, by, among others, a former Afghan education minister. The reservist military police officers who guarded them taught school or worked with juvenile offenders in their home jobs.
The boys, who were illiterate when they arrived, learned to read at a fifth-grade level. They also played soccer and bocce in their compound overlooking the Caribbean and watched videos. Their guards told reporters that their favorites included National Geographic documentaries, cartoon shows and "Cast Away," the 2000 movie in which Tom Hanks is stranded alone on an island.
They were rewarded with extra snacks and extra time to play sports when they cooperated and were given more time indoors when uncooperative, officials said.
Like the other prisoners, they were interrogated. The boys revealed what they knew, officials said.
Officials decided months ago to release the three, but there were delays as U.N. officials sought to track down relatives in Afghanistan. One U.S. goal is to prevent Taliban or al Qaeda operatives from harassing them, now that they have been identified as having been "vetted" by U.S. authorities, officials said.
Human rights groups said they remain concerned about the fate of the teenagers still in captivity.
"The U.S. is doing the right thing by returning these former child soldiers to their home country for rehabilitation," said Jo Becker, a children's rights expert with the group Human Rights Watch. "But other child soldiers are still detained. . . . They are also entitled to rehabilitation and special protection but aren't getting it."
One of the teenagers still locked up in Cuba is Omar Khadr, a Canadian, now 16, who is accused of killing a member of the U.S. Green Berets in a 2001 grenade attack in Afghanistan. The son of a recently killed al Qaeda leader, he might be tried before a military tribunal when he turns 18, officials said.
Children serving as soldiers is a growing phenomenon. Peter Singer, an expert on child soldiers at the Brookings Institution who is writing a book on the subject, said there are 800,000 teenage fighters globally, some in active combat and others encamped. They make up about 10 percent of the world's combatants.
Terrorist groups are increasingly using children as well. Thirteen-year-old twin girls were arrested in Morocco last year as a terrorist group prepared to deploy them on a suicide bombing, Singer said. The Palestinian group Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as Hamas, has sent 13-year-olds to blow themselves up in attacks on Israelis, and al Qaeda videos have depicted children being trained to kill, he added. U.S. soldiers have uncovered child-size suicide-bomb vests in Iraq.
The U.S. military faces extremely difficult quandaries in responding to this threat, because international law says children must be given special treatment, said Singer, who consults for the government on the issue.
-------- terrorism
General Warns of Pakistani, Saudi Extremists
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 30, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61645-2004Jan29.html
While much of the U.S. military is currently focused on stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, extremists in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia pose a longer-term strategic challenge to American interests, the senior U.S. military commander in the region said yesterday.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, who heads U.S. Central Command, cited the extremist threat in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as the "two broadest strategic problems" confronting him, on top of what he called the "immediate problems" of Iraq and Afghanistan.
His reference to Pakistan was not surprising given two recent assassination attempts on the country's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has led a crackdown on Islamic militants. But for a high-ranking U.S. official to voice such worries about Saudi Arabia was unusual.
Abizaid's remarks reflect a quiet concern in the Bush administration about the strength of Saudi rule and the future stability of the desert kingdom. The country is battling a rise in deadly violence linked to al Qaeda, whose leader, Osama bin Laden, is a Saudi exile.
After a suicide bombing of a housing compound in Riyadh last May killed 35 people, Saudi authorities took a harder stance against Islamic militants and al Qaeda cells, arresting hundreds of suspects. Another suicide attack on a Riyadh housing compound last November killed 17 people. Yesterday, Saudi officials reported that suspected terrorists killed five Saudi policemen involved in a raid on a house in Riyadh.
Speaking to reporters at a breakfast meeting here, Abizaid, an expert in Arabic affairs, described the central struggle in the region as "one between moderation and extremism." Fighting al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, he said, had become as much a "battle of ideas" as a military battle, noting Musharraf's efforts in Pakistan to go after Islamic schools that foster terrorist activity.
He said U.S. military action is not the solution to the terrorist threat in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Instead, he stressed the need for "diplomatic, political and social" support for both countries.
"They're going to be tough fights in both places," the four-star officer said. "And it's not the kind of fight that will be won tomorrow."
Assessing U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, Abizaid cited "good progress" against insurgents over the past six months but cautioned against expecting an end soon to combat in either country.
He acknowledged that al Qaeda and at least two other terrorist groups believed to be operating in Iraq remain a concern "because they have professional capability to do a lot of damage." But he cited the capture last week in Iraq of a senior al Qaeda operative, Hassan Ghul, as evidence of effective U.S. efforts. And he dismissed reports of large numbers of Islamic militants flowing into Iraq from outside the country.
"The foreign fighter flow is almost always overestimated," he said, describing the number killed or captured in Iraq as "low -- it's in the hundreds." Many of the captives, he added, were taken during the U.S. invasion last spring.
He predicted "increased levels of violence" in Iraq by those opposed to establishment of a new Iraqi sovereign authority. But he said civil war among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions is unlikely.
"I believe that there will be more people fighting to keep Iraq together than to break it apart," he said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Energy Department Backs Away From Alternative Fuel Fleets
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
January 30, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2004/2004-01-30-09.asp#anchor3
The Department of Energy (DOE) Thursday declined to adopt a regulation requiring that owners and operators of certain private and local government fleets acquire alternative fueled vehicles.
The DOE said its decision is based on its findings that such a requirement "would not appreciably increase the percentage of alternative fuel and replacement fuel used by motor vehicles in the United States" and would make "no more than a negligible contribution" to the achievement of the replacement fuel goals set forth in a 1992 Clinton era law known as EPAct.
The Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct) was passed to reduce dependence on imported petroleum by requiring certain fleets to acquire alternative fuel vehicles, which are capable of operating on non-petroleum fuels.
Some state and federal fleets are already subject to a similar requirement as part of EPAct, but the Energy Department decided a rule that applies to private and local government fleets is "not necessary'' within the meaning of EPAct.
The private and local fleet requirement would have applied to certain fleets of 50 or more centrally fueled light duty vehicles.
Alternative or replacement fuels are defined as - methanol, ethanol, or other alcohols, ethers, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, hydrogen, coal derived liquid fuels, biodiesel, electricity and solar power, or any other fuel that the Energy Secretary determines "is substantially not petroleum and would yield substantial energy security benefits and substantial environmental benefits.''
The decision not to require alternative fuel vehicles for private and local fleets disappointed environmental groups and local government officials that have already made alternative fuel vehicle purchases. In some cases, local governments were hoping the requirement would help drive down prices for alternative fuels they now use to power their vehicles.
The Energy Department reasoned that EPAct imposes too many limitations on the department's authority to mandate alternative fuel vehicle acquisition in private and local government fleets.
Such a rule would apply only to vehicles under 8,500 pounds, in large fleets located in certain cities, and could not apply to rental vehicles, emergency vehicles, and vehicles garaged at residences overnight. The DOE also points to the "numerous exemptions" available to fleet owners under EPAct.
Each year, automakers are already manufacturing several times the number of alternative fuel vehicles that would be required under this program, the DOE said, and so a rule requiring private and local governments to acquire alternative fuel vehicles would not increase production or sales of the alternative vehicles at all, but would just change the identity of the buyers of the vehicles.
Nor is there any assurance that a requirement to purchase alternative fuel vehicles would mean they would actually run on replacement fuel instead of gasoline. "EPAct does not give DOE authority to require that vehicles acquired by private and local government fleets use any particular fuel," the department said.
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Firms Win Energy Grants for Idling Reduction Technologies
GOLDEN, Colorado, (ENS)
January 30, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2004/2004-01-30-09.asp#anchor5
Two private companies, Caterpillar Inc. and Schneider National Inc., have been awarded separate federal government grants to develop technologies that reduce truck idling. Truck idling consumes more than 800 million gallons of fuel each year, trucking industry experts estimate.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity will spend more than $550,000 on the grants, and the companies will contribute at least 50 percent of the cost of each project.
Caterpillar, located in Peoria, Illinois, a producer of diesel and natural gas engines, received a grant to develop its MorElectric System that allows a trucker to plug in to the power grid or use an auxiliary power unit to drive engine accessories such as air conditioning when the driver is asleep at a truck stop.
According to Caterpillar, the project will demonstrate the potential idle reduction benefits of the MorElectric technology for heating, ventilating, and cooling truck cabs in five test trucks.
Caterpillar conducted on-road performance testing of MorElectric in 2003, and is doing field testing in the first quarter of 2004 to accumulate several million test miles. The MorElectric system will be introduced to the market in January 2005, the company says.
The initial market entry product includes a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning module, an engine mounted belt driven 7 kW generator, and two idling reduction options: an auxiliary power unit and a shore power plug-in.
"This is not just an add-on hardware approach. We have developed a highly integrated system specifically designed to meet the needs of the truck industry while minimizing weight and costs," said Caterpillar's David Orr.
Although the MorElectric system is produced by Cat Electronics, it is being sold independent of Caterpillar engines and can be installed on any truck and any engine.
Schneider National, located in Green Bay, Wisconsin is North America's largest private truckload carrier. Founded in 1935, Schneider National currently operates 14,000 tractors, 40,000 trailers and has partnerships with over 6,000 carriers. Schneider covers more than five million loaded miles per day and is utilized by two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies.
Schneider says it received the Energy Department grant for a project to demonstrate cab heating and cooling and engine-off technologies. The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Lab will oversee the grant projects.
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Non-Stick Chemicals Poisoning Wildlife
REUTERS EU:
January 30, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23633/story.htm
BRUSSELS - Humans and wildlife are being contaminated by a host of commonly-used chemicals in food packaging and furniture, the WWF says, calling for a speedy adoption of new European Union safety rules.
The EU is currently discussing draft legislation to carry out checks on 30,000 industrial chemicals that have been on the market for over 25 years but exempt from monitoring.
The environmental group launched a report on Thursday on chemicals used to make non-stick frying pans and flame-resistant furniture which it said could cause cancer and mutations in humans and wildlife.
The chemical industry has known of the side effects but has been under no obligation to make the information public, a situation that would change under the new rules, WWF said.
"Future dangers will only be averted if the effects of chemicals are exposed and then the dangerous ones are never used," WWF toxics programme director Clifton Curtis said in a statement.
Chemicals used for jacket waterproofing, food packaging and non-stick coatings have been found in dolphins, whales, cormorants, seals, sea eagles and polar bears from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, WWF said.
The EU chemical industry lobby Cefic dismissed the WWF report. "There's nothing new in WWF's claims," said communications manager Annemaria Ojanpera, adding that dangerous chemicals were already banned in the EU.
The chemical industry has opposed the draft EU legislation as too costly, inefficient and bureaucratic.
But WWF said if industry could prove there was no safer alternative to a specific chemical, it could stay on the market provided there was strict monitoring.
WWF also said the EU proposal would encourage the chemical industry to invest in new products as all chemicals would be treated equally with no exceptions for substances developed before 1981, as is currently the case.
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Panel of Experts Finds That Anti-Pollution Laws Are Outdated
January 30, 2004
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/science/30POLL.html
Despite three decades of progress, existing air-quality laws are inadequate to prevent pollution from threatening the environment and human health, the nation's top scientific advisory group concluded yesterday.
The panel, the National Research Council of the National Academies, said it was particularly concerned about ozone, an ingredient of smog that has proved difficult to curtail, and fine soot, which has been shown to be especially harmful.
State and local authorities in many polluted regions are increasingly finding that even if they control local emissions, they can end up violating federal standards because of additional pollution drifting from sources outside their jurisdiction.
And even though individual smokestacks and tailpipes are generally getting cleaner as a result of clean-air laws, their numbers are growing rapidly because of economic and population growth.
"Even if you say, `Let's not get any better than today,' you're still going to have to do a lot more because the economy is going to grow and we'll have more emissions," said Dr. William L. Chameides, the chairman of the 25-member panel of experts in environmental science, law, engineering and public policy.
In some cases existing rules can be improved, the report went on, but Congress will also have to pass new legislation, including revisions to the 1970 Clean Air Act.
It noted that the Environmental Protection Agency has only limited authority under the act to deal with pollution in one state that blows into another, putting the downwind region in violation of federal laws.
Bush administration officials and lawmakers from both parties said it was a helpful technical guide, but some added that political fights were still likely to impede adoption of its recommendations.
The report avoided direct endorsements or criticisms of policies of the Bush administration or its critics, instead promoting general approaches that the experts said were necessary to make environmental progress in the long run.
For example, the panel strongly supported expanding "cap and trade" strategies for cutting pollution, in which a national or regional limit is set and companies that do better than the standard can sell credits to those that cannot.
Also, to ensure that the benefits of environmental laws continue to outweigh the costs, the panel said, wherever possible a single set of rules should control various emissions from particular sources, like power plants. In the past, most pollutants have been controlled in isolation.
These recommendations essentially constituted an endorsement of the mechanism at the heart of a variety of proposed laws for power plant cleanups. These include President Bush's plan to limit three kinds of emissions and those of several bipartisan groups of lawmakers seeking quicker cuts and limits on a fourth emission, carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is the main heat-trapping greenhouse gas linked by most scientists to global warming.
On the question of climate change, the panel came closest to choosing sides. "Multi-pollutant approaches that include reducing emissions contributing to climate warming as well as air pollution may prove to be desirable," it said.
The report also recommended that global warming be considered both when examining restrictions on various pollutants and assessing how bad various pollution problems may be in coming years.
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