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NUCLEAR
THE DOUBLE STANDARD IN WHO GETS NUKES
U.S. nuke facilities fail security tests - report
US probes South Africa nuclear black market link
Malaysia defies Bush over nuclear arrest
Sellafield: The fight continues
Dubai Company Denies Tie to Nuclear Spread
US military are perfectly aware of DU risks
Nano particles from high DU Temp. cause of cancers
France chooses non-nuclear option for new aircraft carrier
Odds of France, Britain jointly building aircraft carriers rise
Pakistan had case against scientist
Iran Admits That It Has Plans for a Newer Centrifuge
U.S. May Give Iran More Time on Nukes
Iranian Nuclear Plans Found
Iraq arms hunt in doubt in '02
Rumsfeld on Israel
Generous subsidies eyed for pluthermal power
U.S. Says N. Korea Atomic Program More Advanced
House Panel Visits Libya to Check U.S. Intelligence
Bush Calls for De-atomization of Russia
Report: Al Qaida boats to attack British targets
Bush's Bluster on Proliferation
Getting international help on WMD
ElBaradei echoes Bush on nuke curbs
Nuclear waste freeze
Double Standard
A nuclear credibility problem
President Bush's New Plan to Stop Proliferation
Getting international help on WMD
Budget Faces a Fight, Pentagon Is Warned
President Bush's New Iraq Commission
GOP Legislator Warns of Pressure to Cut Military Budget
Kay: Bush Should Admit Error on Iraq WMD
Bush Orders the Release of His National Guard Records
MILITARY
In Uganda, terror forces children's nightly flight
US warns Libya over 'destabilising' Africa
Ex-Worker to Say Firm Abused Defense Contract
The Vice-President and the Contractor
Feb. 13, 1945 - Dresden firebombing
New Targets: Attackers Shift Their Sights to the Iraqis
U.S. Helicopters in Iraq Face Threats
This mortal coil
World Court snubbed on barrier case
U.S. May Support Israeli Approach on Leaving Gaza
Israel police may use pig fat to stop attacks on buses
Israel Will Not Join in Hearing in Hague
Why Waziristan cannot be conquered
US may establish large military depot in Australia
Pakistan, a rogue state unpunished
Pakistan has apprehended 500 al-Qaeda terrorists: Powell
China hand ousted
Stung by Exiles' Role, C.I.A. Orders a Shift in Procedures
U.N. Envoy, Visiting Iraq, Backs Cleric on Elections
U.N. Envoy Backs Iraqi Vote
When the wheels fall off
Heard on the Hill
A (Terrorist's) Letter from Iraq
Both Parties AWOL
W's AWOL Spin Update!
Most Think Truth Was Stretched to Justify Iraq War
Aides Study President's Service Records
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Pact Gives U.S. Search Rights Over Ships
Bush Agrees to Meet With 9/11 Panel
Intelligence Panelists Set
Senate Panel Expands Probe of Iraq Data
Report Faults TSA on Privacy
Privacy Issue Delays Change in Airport Screening System
Cuba Detentions May Last Years
ENERGY
Scientists develop a prototype reactor to produce hydrogen efficiently
Scientists develop prototype reactor
Consumers Would Pay More to Avoid Blackouts, Study Shows
OTHER
Medical and Ethical Issues Cloud Plans to Clone for Therapy
S. Korean Scientists Describe Cloning
Split on Clones: Research vs. Reproduction
Nobel Laureates Ask World Bank to Curb Extractive Industries
ACTIVISTS
List of Nobel Peace Prize hopefuls is longest ever
Haitian Leader's Allies Block Opposition Demonstration
Aristide Supporters Halt Protest
NYC Heck, No? Antiwar Voices Persist, Softly
A father's vigil
Presidents' Day Nuclear Perspectives
'Bush Lie and Who Die?'
Los Alamos Study Group director to speak
-------- NUCLEAR
THE DOUBLE STANDARD IN WHO GETS NUKES
Fri Feb 13, 2004
By Richard Reeves
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/uclicktext/20040214/cm_ucrr/thedoublestandardinwhogetsnukes
WASHINGTON --- Twenty years ago, when my family was living and working in Pakistan, a friend took two of our sons on a tour of Islamabad, the new capital city of that old land where some think civilization began. They saw the new Saudi mosque, still under construction, the new library, the new stadium and the president's house designed by Edward Durrell Stone, which looks eerily like another Stone project, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts here on the Potomac River.
"The Chinese give us a stadium. You give us a library," said our friend. "We don't want stadiums and museums. We want the bomb!"
And they were getting the bomb. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who lived near us, drove out to a place called Kahuta and used stolen plans and material to slowly piece together the first "Islamic bomb," as our neighbors liked to call it. Everyone knew this, and most of those neighbors saw Khan as a national hero. They thought that, over the historical run, Pakistan would not survive without nuclear weapons to match the nuclear "device" India had tested in 1974.
After all, the two South Asian countries created by the breakup of British India had already fought three wars and seemed ever on the verge of another. The American government knew all this, but looked the other way in the 1980s because Pakistan's land and intelligence services were crucial to U.S. covert support for the mujaheddin, local fighters of holy war who were slowly driving Soviet occupiers from their country.
That was the way of the Cold War. After the Soviets collapsed, both in Afghanistan and at home, the United States did try to pressure Pakistan to give up its nuclear programs and sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. No chance, said Pakistan's leaders, unless India signed as well. Now, the pressure is off Pakistan again because we need it as an ally in the war against terror and terrorists, many of them trained in Pakistan during and after the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan.
The leaders of Pakistan, including Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his daughter Benazir, Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, Nawaz Sharif and now Pervez Musharraf, understood only too well that the Non-Proliferation Treaty was an attempt to maintain Western control of the bomb. Like others in Asia -- except nuclear-empowered China and the Soviets -- Pakistan's leaders understood that the bomb represented both deterrence against its enemies and protection against the West. Nuclear weapons represented modern maturity to Pakistan, which is estimated to have between 30 and 50 nukes. They could be delivered (India would be the target) by missiles obtained from North Korea in a sinister trade for shipping nuclear plans and parts from A.Q. Khan's operation.
The constant American ally in those parts, Israel, understands, too. Israel, another non-signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, began its bomb program as early as 1949. The first chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission said early on that the bomb was a guarantee that, "We shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter."
By 1974, the American Central Intelligence Agency estimated that the Israelis had the makings for 10 to 20 nuclear weapons. That figure now is estimated to be between 100 and 400. The United States, of course, turns away from any thoughts of Israeli weapons.
Along that line of see-no-evil, there was a funny bit on American television during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq and the frenzy over possible "Weapons of Mass Destruction." A Syrian diplomat was being questioned by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" about whether Iraq had shipped WMDs to his country for hiding. No, the Syrian said. But Russert pressed on and his guest said: "Yes, there are such weapons in the Middle East, and I can lead you to them."
"Where, where are they?" said Russert, who was gettting excited.
"They're in Israel!" said the Syrian.
Russert changed the subject. But all that is back in the news because of American and British charges of WMD in Iraq and the disclosure that Pakistan has been selling nuclear knowledge and components. And that story is bigger than American intelligence failures and Pakistani duplicity.
Old-style nonproliferation, which has worked reasonably well -- after all, no bombs have been used in 60 years -- may be coming to the end of its usefulness. President Bush seemed to recognize that last Wednesday when he said, in a speech to the National Defense University, that stopping the spread of nuclear weapons must move from watching and pressuring countries -- and ignoring the transgressions of our friends -- to watching and breaking up the new transnational black market in knowledge and components for sale around the world.
-------- accidents and safety
U.S. nuke facilities fail security tests - report
Reuters
Friday, 13th February, 2004
http://home.eircom.net/content/reuters/worldnews/2528601?view=Eircomnet
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=457413§ion=news
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Security at two U.S. nuclear weapons facilities has been breached at least three times in mock terrorist drills despite heightened concerns after the September 11 attacks, says CBS news show "60 Minutes."
Security measures failed at the Y-12 nuclear complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee -- America's primary source of weapons-grade plutonium -- and at Los Alamos National Laboratory near Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to the report to be aired on Sunday.
The scheduled tests showed long-standing security problems had not been adequately addressed despite the new terrorism risk, according to the man who conducted other mock drills for the Department of Energy leading up to the September 11, 2001, assault.
"People should know that the Department of Energy facilities cannot withstand a full terrorist attack ... a realistic attack, serious, state-sponsored," said Richard Levernier, a former senior DOE nuclear security specialist.
A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration said the news release for the segment was "misleading at best and irresponsible at worst."
"Our nuclear materials are secure and it's irresponsible to suggest otherwise," said spokesman Anson Franklin, adding: "These tests are designed to find vulnerabilities before someone else does ... it's wrong to suggest that terrorists could easily penetrate security at these sites."
Levernier said there was a 50 percent failure rate in the tests of factories and laboratories he conducted.
Chris Steele, the DOE's senior safety official at Los Alamos, said he was in the process of giving the laboratory an "F" grade because of "systematic nuclear safety violations."
The "60 Minutes" report cited other examples of lax security including the disappearance of hundreds of electronic key cards and master keys at nuclear facilities.
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory near San Francisco failed to immediately report its missing keys, while at Sandia National Laboratories near Albuquerque, locks to missing keys had just been replaced after three years, the report said.
"I find it inexplicable and unacceptable that people don't take (security concerns) seriously," NNSA chief Linton Brooks told "60 Minutes."
"And that's why we have been working to fix that problem."
Security at the facilities, however, was "perfectly acceptable," said Brooks. "Safe and no problem are not the same thing."
-------- africa
US probes South Africa nuclear black market link
13.02.2004
REUTERS
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?storyID=3549077&thesection=news&thesubsection=world
JOHANNESBURG - The United States has sent investigators to South Africa, a former atomic power, to probe a possible link to an illicit network in nuclear technology after the arrest of a Cape Town man in the US.
South African police said on Thursday the US had asked for their help in investigating possible associates of Asher Karni, a former Israeli army officer accused by the US government of conspiring to export 200 US-made nuclear weapons detonators to Pakistan via South Africa.
Confirmation of the probe came a day after US President George W Bush called for an intensive global effort to stop a nuclear black market and referred to "procurement agents" in Africa.
Diplomats have named South Africa, which voluntarily dismantled its nuclear weapons capability when white minority rule ended in 1994, as a possible link in a global "nuclear supermarket".
They say several South African scientists are believed to have provided their technical expertise without government knowledge.
US federal agents arrested Karni, 50, who has lived in South Africa for the last 18 years, when he arrived at Denver International Airport on January 1. He was released on bail last month but placed in home detention in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Prosecutors say Karni, using an American broker, acquired nuclear triggering devices from their manufacturer in the US after falsely representing they were destined for a South African hospital.
Agents from the FBI and the US Customs Service have since reinforced their offices in South Africa as they investigate a possible wider criminal web.
"The Americans have asked us to help them with investigations," South African police spokeswoman Mary Martins-Engelbrecht said, adding that police were ready to assist in raiding and searching suspected premises.
US Justice Department official Channing Phillips said US authorities had reason to believe Karni had other associates.
"If you look at the (charge) documents you will see the link between his domicile there with what he is alleged to have done and why we are really interested in his associations there in South Africa," he told Reuters from Washington.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has stepped up its investigation of the illicit procurement network since the father of Pakistan's atom bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, confessed this month to leaking nuclear secrets to other countries.
Karni's case has only added to South Africa's growing image as a magnet for international crime syndicates taking advantage of its world-class infrastructure and Third World law enforcement capabilities.
The activities of international syndicates from Israel, China, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Pakistan and India, dealing in everything from drugs and gold to human organs, are regularly headlined in South African newspapers.
"What you've got is a highly developed country -- infrastructure, banking, communications, transport. You can fly in and out on 50 plus different flights a day," said Keith Campbell of Pretoria-based Executive Research Associates.
"You've got all those positive things and then you've got... a weak state enforcement system...immigration controls are weak, law enforcement is overwhelmed, the justice system is overwhelmed," Campbell said.
-------- asia
Malaysia defies Bush over nuclear arrest
By John Burton in Singapore
Financial Times:
February 13 2004
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1075982531025&p=1012571727169
Abdullah Badawi, Malaysia's prime minister, has accused President George W. Bush of using unreliable US intelligence to implicate Malaysia in a global nuclear smuggling network - and said the Sri Lankan businessman linked to the affair would not be arrested just yet.
"There is no such thing as Malaysia's involvement," said Mr Abdullah. "We are not involved in any way. I don't know where Bush is getting his evidence from."
The case has caused political embarrassment for the new Malaysian leader since the company named as supplying centrifuge parts to the nuclear trafficking network is owned by his son.
The issue threatens to overshadow relations with the US in spite of their close co-operation in fighting terrorism. Kuala Lumpur was chosen last year as the site for a US-sponsored regional anti-terrorism centre.
The state-controlled New Straits Times newspaper on Friday accused Mr Bush of "double standards and hypocrisy" and compared his campaign against nuclear proliferation to "the sham of his weapons of mass destruction theory behind the invasion of Iraq", which Malaysia opposed.
Mr Abdullah said Malaysia was unprepared yet to arrest B.S.A. Tahir, the Sri Lankan businessman now in Malaysia, who Mr Bush described as the "chief financial officer and money launderer" for the smuggling network created by Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's leading nuclear scientist, which sold nuclear equipment to Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Mr Tahir, married to the daughter of a former Malaysian diplomat, allegedly arranged the order for the centrifuge parts made by the Scomi Group, which is controlled by Mr Abdullah's son. Although John Bolton, the US undersecretary of state for arms control, did not raise the issue when he visited Malaysia last month, the US has since given increased prominence to Malaysia's role in the nuclear network.
A week ago, George Tenet, the US CIA director, mentioned Malaysia in a speech on intelligence by commending authorities for "closing down" the Scomi plant that made the centrifuge parts, a reference that puzzled Malaysian officials since the facility is still open.
In his address on nuclear proliferation on Wednesday, Mr Bush devoted more attention to Malaysia and Mr Tahir, who used "his computer firm as cover for the movement of centrifuge parts to various clients".
Scomi said that it was unaware of the "end-use" of the centrifuge parts, which can be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
Mr Bush stopped short of criticising the Malaysian government over Scomi's involvement since the US has offered no evidence that it was complicit in Mr Khan's network. A preliminary police probe has also exonerated Scomi of wrongdoing.
-------- britain
Sellafield: The fight continues
New Bellona Report
Hanne Bakke,
2004-02-13
http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/nuclear/sellafield/32551.html
At a conference being held in London today, The Bellona Foundation is presenting a new and revealing report about Britain's notorious Sellafield plant. The report concludes that a new treatment process based on a chemical called tetraphenylphosphonium bromide, or TPP, could be the start of a new, Tc-99 discharge free era.
The extensive report was published in Norwegian in September 2003, and is being presented to the British public in English translation at a round table conference on Sellafield Tc-99 discharges in London, organized by The Bellona Foundation and "Lofoten mot Sellafield," another Norwegian NGO.
Discharges could stop in March
The report is being presented at the right place at the right time, said Bellona's Erik Martiniussen, author of the report. The TPP experiments have been carried out for the past four months, and if the results show that the Tc-99 discharges are effectively cleansed, it will mean a stop to the radioactive discharges in the North Sea, he said.
Enough plutonium for 4000 nukes
The new report documents how Sellafield has polluted the Irish Sea with nuclear discharges for fifty years. As a result, the Irish Sea is the world's most radioactively polluted ocean. The report reports extensively on how this radioactive waste has affected the marine environment.
The report also maps out the new challenges the Sellafield plant is faces for the future: Even if the Tc-99 discharges end as a result of the new cleansing method, there remains the massive job of cleaning up the plant site. Sellafield has always been a central part of the British nuclear programme, and as of today there are over 80 tonnes of pure plutonium stored on the facilities grounds. This amount is enough to produce 4000 atomic bombs, and is one of the largest plutonium storage facilities in the world.
Plutonium unsafely stored Bellona considers the plutonium storage not to be adequately secured. In the report, Bellona urges that the plutonium be transferred to a lasting and stable form that is not suited for making weapons. One option is to immobilize the plutonium, meaning to mix it with other highly-radioactive material and mold it in ceramic structures for decades of storage in an appropriate facility.
The report also focuses on other legacies the last decades of the British nuclear program has left behind.
http://www.bellona.no/data/f/0/32/48/5_9811_0/Program_London.PDF
Promising results Bellona and "Lofoten mot Sellafield," hope to put further pressure on British authorities with the London conference.
Norwegian minister of the environment, Børge Brende, who has promoted the TPP cleansing method to his British counterpart is attending today's conference. He will present the Norwegian government's view on the Tc-99 discharges. Others in attendance are Members of Parliament from Norway and Ireland, members of the Nordic Council, and representatives from the Norwegian Radiation Protection Agency. Andrew Mayall, Sellafield Team Coordinator at the British Environmental Agency, will speak on the Environmental Agency's regulation of Tc-99 at Sellafield and present an update on the TPP trial.
We are hoping for good news from the EA, Martiniussen says. Mayall has previously described the TPP tests as "promising."
Conference program Download the conference program (.pdf-format 33,1 KB) http://www.bellona.no/data/f/0/32/48/5_9811_0/Program_London.PDF
Sellafield's Tc-99 discharges to possibly end by March The British Environmental Agency has confirmed that a special new technology for treating waste at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant that began last June is working and is retaining discharges of radioactive Technetium-99, or Tc-99, from the plant's regular releases of liquid radioactive refuse into the Irish Sea.
Read on http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/nuclear/sellafield/32173.html
Bellona report Nr 8-2003 Sellafield Bellona's new report on Sellafield and its comprehensive illustration of the plant presents new information about the dumping and spreading of radioactive waste.
The 82 page, colorprint report can be ordered in printed version by e-mailing info@bellona.no
Download free .pdf version (3,10 Mb) http://www.bellona.no/data/f/0/32/55/0_9811_1/sellaengweb.pdf
-------- business
Dubai Company Denies Tie to Nuclear Spread
February 13, 2004
New York Times
By RAYMOND BONNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/international/middleeast/13DUBA.html?pagewanted=all
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Feb. 12 - Computer salesmen and technicians wandered around in shock, and the receptionist could not handle the number of calls that were coming in from around the world on Thursday to the sleek headquarters of SMB Group, an information technology company.
The cause of the disruption was President Bush's speech to the National Defense University on Wednesday, in which he described the nuclear black market network created by the Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Mr. Bush said that Dr. Khan's deputy was B. S. A. Tahir, who "ran SMB Computer, a business in Dubai," which was a "front for the proliferation activities of the A.Q. Khan network."
Puzzled employees said they had more questions than answers and declined to comment. In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Seyed Ibrahim Bukhary, the owner and manager of SMB Group, said it dealt only in legal computer sales. He said the man Mr. Bush mentioned, Bukhary Sayed Abu Tahir, has no ownership in the group, and is not involved in the management at any level. Mr. Bukhary is Mr. Tahir's younger brother.
In the trading network that Dr. Khan spawned to sell nuclear equipment and designs, some companies involved were doing legitimate business in finely tooled parts without knowing where the components would end up. Others were agents for Dr. Khan, forwarding secret shipments to Libya, Iran and other countries, knowing these countries were working on secret nuclear programs.
Like the SMB Group, another company that said it did not intentionally take part in Dr. Khan's network was Scomi Precision Engineering, a manufacturing firm in Malaysia. It produced centrifuge parts that were intercepted last year on the BBC China, a ship bound for Libya.
A Scomi corporate executive said Thursday that the company had negotiated the contract for the parts with Mr. Tahir, but he had never mentioned SMB Computer.
"I have never heard of it," the executive, Meena Kanthaswamy, said in a telephone interview, referring to SMB Computer. "None of us have."
Scomi executives said that Mr. Tahir said he was representing Gulf Technical Industries, a Dubai trading firm that, according to American and British investigators, put the shipment of centrifuge parts aboard the Libya-bound ship.
Gulf Technical was founded and is partly owned by Peter Griffin, who supplied material to Dr. Khan when he first developed Pakistan's nuclear capabilites, according to Mr. Griffin.
According to government records in Dubai, Mr. Tahir, a resident, established SMB Computer, a limited liability company, in 1981. At the outset he owned 49 percent. As required by law, 51 percent belonged to a citizen of the United Arab Emirates.
In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi expressed displeasure with Presdent Bush's speech. "We are not involved in such activity," he said, referring to allegations that Malaysia had been a key link in Dr. Khan's nuclear network. He did say that the Malaysian authorities were questioning Mr. Tahir.
After the company expanded, SMB Group was formed, with SMB Computer as one division.
-------- depleted uranium
US military are perfectly aware of DU risks
Depleted Uranium (DU) Munitions
COL J. Edgar Wakayama OSD/DOT&E/CS August, 2002
February 13, 2004
by Charlie Jenks
http://www.traprockpeace.org/du_dtic_wakayama_Aug2002.html Read this report for the military's own view on risks to health and the environment.
Download PDF version of PowerPoint Presentation
Traprock site ( 2.6 mg) - http://www.traprockpeace.org/wakayama2.pdf Traprock has a copy on its site in the event that it 'disappears' from DTIC site. Remember the Futures Market program that DOD pulled from its site?
People with low bandwidth may prefer the RTF file (easy down load - test only) http://www.traprockpeace.org/wakayama2.rtf
Official download - Defense Technical Information Center - http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2002training/wakayama2.pdf
Presented at the The 5th Annual Testing and Training Symposium & Exhibition 19 - 22 August 2002 (table of contents) http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2002training/
Overview
Among its warnings, the report recognizes that it is not safe to leave shell fragments in the body as per US military policy; warns that uranium would be solubilized and redistribute to various tissues as early as one day after implantation; highlights the special risks faced by children in the battle area, with risks to water and food supplies; recognizes risks of cancer, lung fibrosis, and DNA damage from DU deposited in bones.
The report recommends health monitoring of children, soldiers and civilians; epidemiological monitoring of cancer incidents of soldiers (what about civilians and soldiers' children?), including urine uranium testing, kidney function tests and neurological evaluations; removal of heavily contaminated soil in areas populated with civilians; and long term water and milk sampling in imact site.
One Recommendation is missing. Stop the production, stockpiling and use of 'depleted' uranium munitions.
Select Sections (see links above for entire report)
Emerging Medical Management Issues:
-During the Persian Gulf War, a number of allied military personnel internalized DU fragments as a result of several friendly fire incidents (only the allied forces possessed DU munitions).
-The three major routes of human exposure to DU are:
a. Wounding by shrapnel,
b. Inhalation (lungs and thoracic lymph nodes),
c. Ingestion (most among children playing and eating contaminated soil and contaminated drinking water and food in the community).
1. At that time, existing DoD fragments removal guidelines indicated that shrapnel be remained in place unless they cause future health threat.
2. Because DU is still radioactive, studies were performed in rats with embedded DU fragments.
3. Indicated that uranium would be solubilized and redistribute to various tissues as early as one day after implantation.
4. As expected, the highest uranium concentrations were in kidneys and bone.
5. Other tissues also showed significantly higher levels.
6. Urine samples containing uranium showed mutagenic as determined by the Ames test.
7. The cultured human stem bone cell line with DU also transformed the cells to become carcinogenic.
8. Because of these findings, there are proposed changes in the DU shrapnel removal policy. For example, it is now advised that DU fragments greater than 1 cm be removed unless the medical risk is determined to be too grave.
9. The other significant changes include a procedure to detect the presence of DU in the metal fragments and treatment guidelines.
Emerging Environmental Concerns Include:
- A significant exposure to DU among children playing in the impact sites by ingesting heavily-contaminated soil,
- Slow leaching of DU in local water supplies over years,
- Consuming DU contaminated food sources (animals and plants). Radiation Health Effects:
- Inhalation exposure (major effect): Lungs and thoracic lymph nodes;
- The lifetime risk of lung cancer in general population: 1:250 for non-smoker, and 1:6 for cigarette smokers;
- Soldiers on battlefield: Estimated lung cancer: <1:40,000 (The Royal Society Report, March 2002)
- The most heavily exposed soldier: Estimated lung cancer for the most worst-case to be about 1:15, but more likely 1:1,000 surviving in a struck tank (The Royal Society Report, March 2002);
- DU can be deposited in bone causing DNA damage by the effects of the alpha particles;
- A large inhalation of dust (without radiations): Long-term respiratory effects (Lung fibrosis, in addition to risk of lung cancer).
- Immune deficiency: Negligible effect (The Royal Society Report, March 2002);
- An extra risk of death from leukemia and other cancers: Insignificant and much lower than that of lung cancer (The Royal Society Report, March 2002).
Future Studies/Recommendations:
a. Monitoring of kidney function and urine uranium levels among children, peacekeepers, and inhabitants.
b. Epidemiological monitoring of cancer incidents among soldiers surviving during friendly fire and soldiers working for protracted periods in heavily contaminated vehicles, including urine uranium testing, kidney function tests, and neurological evaluations.
c. Heavily contaminated soil should be removed if the area is to be populated with civilians.
d. Long-term annual water and milk sampling for DU levels in the impact site.
Traprock Peace Center 103A Keets Road, Woolman Hill Deerfield, MA 01342 Phone: (413) 773-7427; Fax:(413)773-7507; contact by email
----
Nano particles from high DU Temp. cause of cancers and birth defects etc.
Dr Stefano Montanari,
13.02.2004
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/02/285283.html
Cancers among veterans and birth defects of their offspring and other "War" diseases are understood now as resulting from nanoparticles produced by high temperatures produced by DU use.
Antonietta Morena Gatti is a physicist and bioengineer, and is the founder and the director of the Laboratory of Biomaterials of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy). She is the discoverer of the presence of micro- and nano-particles in biological tissues and of their pathological effects. The European Community appointed her Coordinator of the international group in charge of the nanopathology study.
Stefano Montanari is a pharmacist and a scientific consultant. He has collaborated with Dr Gatti for about 25 years.
THE SO-CALLED "BALKAN-SYNDROME": A BIO- ENGINEERING APPROACH
Dr Antonietta M. Gatti - Dr Stefano Montanari
It is a well-known fact, widely reported by media, that a non- negligible number of veterans of the Gulf War (1990-91) showed what according to medicine are mutually unrelated symptoms. Some of those can be attributed to stress: headache, for example, or sleep disturbance, or forgetfulness, or an impaired concentration. Other symptoms like fatigue, muscle and joint pain, and shortness of breath are somewhat harder to classify, but cancers, various and, in some cases, extremely unusual diseases of the genitourinary system, an increased incidence of birth defects among veterans' children and disorders of the blood and the haemopoietic organs must be due to causes that cannot be legitimately ascribed to stress. Other pathologies Gulf War veterans are suffering from, like sudden death and Lou Gehrig's disease are under investigation as to their meaningfulness.
But the problem is unfortunately wider and not limited to that group of military population.
Very similar symptoms are being displayed by soldiers who served in the former Yugoslavian territory during the so-called Balkan War, made worse by an unusually high incidence of Hodgkin's and non- Hodgkin's lymphomas. Staffers of humanitarian missions and Yugoslavian residents as well are suffering from the same diseases. Professor Edo Hasanbegovic, chief of the Paediatric Clinic of Sarajevo, denounced how leukaemia is on the increase in children throughout the Yugoslavian Federation, but mainly in children coming from Velika, Kladusa and Buzim, towns located close to the Croatian borderline.
An explanation to all that was offered when in March 2000 NATO revealed that Depleted Uranium (DU) shells had been employed in the Balkans and in 2001 traces of radioactivity were detected by the United Nations Environment Protection agency not far from Sarajevo, in a barracks at Han Pijesak and in two places inside a factory in Hadzici.
It is a frequently observed fact that radioactivity is a triggering factor to cancer, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki tought a painful lesson about that. So, uranium was immediately seen as the obvious scapegoat to blame.
For a better understanding, it is necessary to know that DU was used to make a component of some shells used in that war, but radioactivity played no role in that choice. High density and hardness are the features that made those projectiles, called kinetic penetrators, particularly fit for piercing even very thick armours. DU is what is left over when most of the highly radioactive isotopes of uranium are removed for use as nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons. The DU used in armour-piercing munitions is also used in civilian industry, primarily as ballast, for stabilizers in airplanes and boats. As a matter of fact, uranium is a mixture of three isotopes: U235, U234, and U238. When the content of U235 is below 0.711%, uranium is classified as "depleted", and the blend used in the Balkans contained less than 0.2% of that isotope.
DU is approximately 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium and emits alpha and beta particles, and gamma rays. Alpha particles can hardly pass through the skin, while beta particles are blocked by most garments, and the amount of gamma rays, a form of highly penetrating energy, emitted by DU is very low.
The radioactivity produced by those weapons is certainly not healthy, but its full responsibility for such an unusual health situation looks at least doubtful if observed from a scientific standpoint. In addition to that, another piece of evidence is raising a further doubt about the radioactive origin of the pathologies: A higher-than- expected quantity of lymphomas and symptoms identical to those suffered from by the Balkan War's veterans was observed in Italian soldiers who had never served in any theatre of war nor had ever come near to radioactive weapons. The condition all those soldiers shared was serving in firing grounds.
In the meantime, someone tried to blame the multiple vaccinations soldiers underwent during the so-called Operation Desert Storm, but without being able to give any scientific demonstration to that thesis. As a matter of fact, in addition to the usual vaccines against tetanus- diphtheria, hepatitis B, poliovirus, meningococcal, typhoid and yellow fever, the American troops were treated with Botulinum Pentavalent, unlicensed in the United States, intended to counteract botulism.
Then they were treated with a vaccine against anthrax, a drug proven to be teratogenic. In fact, women receiving it are warned not to have children for at least three years.
Finally troops received Pyridostigmine bromide, not a vaccine, but a pre-treatment against nerve agents. That drug, normally used for myasthenia gravis, is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a nerve gas antidote and its side effects are potentially very dangerous.
But those medicines were administered to US troops only, while the Gulf War Syndrome affected also civilians and soldiers of other nationalities.
Thus, no answer was given to the question: why do people living in theatres of war and soldiers working under particular conditions contract those diseases with such an alarming frequency? Our Laboratory of Biomaterials of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) is engaged in checking bioptic and autoptic samples coming from patients belonging in the classes described above. It is an indisputable fact that all samples contain inorganic micro- and nano-particles, while it may be interesting to observe that none of them show any trace of uranium.
From the technical point of view, those very small fragments can be detected by using an innovative technique of electronic microscopy we developed and that has been already described in literature. What we found were very small bits, sometimes agglomerated, of simple or combined metals: Fe-Si, Cu-Cl-Zn, Si-Ti-Fe-Al, Si-Bi, Si- Pb, Fe-Cu-Zn, Cr-Fe-Ni, Fe-Mn and, but just once, Zr alone. The spherical shape, hollow in the larger sizes, of many particles proves their formation under a very high temperature, a condition compatible with that of the explosion of a DU shell.
DU projectiles hit very different targets, but specially buildings and armaments like, for example, tanks, and when they do, the temperature in the core of the explosion exceeds 3,000°C, which is more than enough to have all solid matter sublime and, in some cases, form new metal alloys. That gas expands over a large volume of atmosphere, then, rapidly, the matter becomes solid again taking the shape of very small spheres (down to 10-8 m diameter), stays suspended in the air and is carried away over distances depending on atmospheric conditions like wind, rain, snow and pressure. This phenomenon was studied in 1977-78 at the US Air Force base of Leglin (Fla).
After some time, all the air-borne particles fall slowly down and settle on grass, vegetables, fruit or expanses of water where they become inevitably a guest of food and drink to animals and men alike. Even if that unwanted presence is known in advance - but very often it is utterly ignored - getting rid completely of inorganic particles can be very difficult. A good wash eliminates a great quantity of debris from fruit or vegetables, but cauliflowers, for example, cannot be cleaned thoroughly because of their rough surface, while those particles that settle in the tissues of animals that ate contaminated grass and men eat as meat can't be taken away at all.
Keeping in mind the well-known, even if never widely publicized, phenomenon studied at Leglin and the new science of nano- pathology, an explanation to the unanswered question becomes easy. People present in firing grounds and in the theatres of war, and being a soldier or a civilian makes no difference, breathe in micro- and nano-particles while they are suspended in the air as an aerosol, then eat and drink them along with vegetables and water.
We have amply demonstrated with our researches that once debris that size (10-9 - 10-5 m) enter the body, be it via the digestive or the respiratory system, they can easily negotiate the luminal tissues and either be captured by the tissue itself which acts the way a filter does, or be transported by the blood or the lymph until they end their travel in some organ (for instance the kidneys and the liver). Lymph nodes, for example, are the organs where lymphomas start and develop and where, in all pathological cases checked, we found the presence of inorganic particles. But also all the other pathologic specimens we had the possibility to observe show clearly and without any single exception the presence of debris.
It is important to underline that none of the particles we found is biodegradable.
Just to give a further confirmation about the applicability of the theory according to which the so-called Balkan Syndrome has an environmental, nanopathological origin, particles found in the diseased tissues of soldiers and civilians, and particles found in the ground of the territories where the pathologies were contracted are mutually compatible.
If no uranium was ever detected, that does not necessarily mean there is none somewhere in the tissues of the patients. The fact is likely to be due to its quantity, which is extremely scarce when compared with the huge masses of the targets that sublime and that contain no such element. It is also possible that uranium particles had been captured by tissues but, probably because they did not reach a critical threshold, did not trigger any disease and, as a consequence, we did not have the chance to receive and study the samples.
In conclusion, DU's responsibility is only indirect, and it is not its radioactivity to blame, but the very high temperature that uranium produces once the shells of which it is a component hit the mark. It is then possible that the Balkan Syndrome has a multi-factorial origin including radioactivity and vaccinations, but the main cause is without any doubt a nanopathological one.
For further information about nanopathology http://www.biomat.unimo.it/eng/nanopat.htm
The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium, Bridge 5 Mill, 22a Beswick Street, Ancoats, Manchester, M4 7HR Tel./Fax.: +44 (0)161 273 8293 E-Mail info@c... Website: http://www.cadu.org.uk
-------- europe
France chooses non-nuclear option for new aircraft carrier
PARIS (AFP)
Feb 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040213123145.9rvfihz0.html
France has opted to equip a planned new aircraft carrier with conventional rather than nuclear propulsion, opening the way for cooperation in the project with Britain, President Jacques Chirac's office said Friday.
"Following a proposal from the prime minister, the president of the republic has chosen classic propulsion for the second aircraft carrier which France is due to acquire," the Elysee palace said in a statement.
"The choice brings a response that is perfectly adapted to the operational needs of the decades to come and opens better perspectives of cooperation with the United Kingdom," it said.
Under its latest military programme France has undertaken to construct a second aircraft-carrier to complement the nuclear-powered Charles De Gaulle.
By choosing conventional power, the government retains the option of cost-sharing with the British navy, which plans to build two aircraft carriers by 2015.
----
Odds of France, Britain jointly building aircraft carriers rise
PARIS (AFP)
Feb 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040213131728.llcf6k84.html
France and Britain appeared headed towards jointly building new-generation aircraft carriers after Paris announced Friday that it would not use nuclear propulsion in its next flagship vessel.
"The choice brings a response that is perfectly adapted to the operational needs of the decades to come and opens better perspectives of cooperation with the United Kingdom," President Jacques Chirac's office said in a statement.
The announcement confirmed long-standing speculation that France would opt for conventional power on its next aircraft carrier -- instead of the nuclear propulsion in its current sole carrier, the Charles de Gaulle -- in order to fall into line with plans for the renewal of the British navy.
It also underscored an ever-closer military cooperation between Britain, France and Germany that the United States fears could sideline NATO in the European theatre.
Chirac's office said that, "following a proposal from the prime minister, the president of the republic has chosen classic propulsion for the second aircraft carrier which France is due to acquire."
Under its latest military programme, France has undertaken to construct a second aircraft-carrier to complement the Charles De Gaulle.
The decision to make the vessel diesel-powered comes as Britain is seeking ways to keep costs down on its three-billion-pound (4.4-billion-euro, 5.7-billion-dollar) project two build two new aircraft carriers by 2015.
The shared ambitions of the EU partners has pushed them to consider jointly building the three carriers in a move that would benefit major defence contractors in each country, notably France's Thales and Britain's BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.
One idea reportedly discussed between the French and British defence ministers, Michele Alliot-Marie and Geoff Hoon, was to build two-thirds of the British carriers in Britain, and the remainder in France's Saint-Nazaire shipyard, which built the Queen Mary 2 commercial cruise ship.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan had case against scientist
By Farah Stockman,
Boston Globe Staff,
2/13/2004
http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2004/02/13/pakistan_had_case_against_scientist/
WASHINGTON -- More than three years ago, Pakistani intelligence agents built a corruption case against Abdul Qadeer Khan, the country's most famous nuclear scientist, but officials under President Pervez Musharraf decided not to pursue it because Khan was a national hero, according to a former Pakistani official.
The former official, who was a case manager at the National Accountability Bureau, the country's leading anticorruption agency, said the dossier prepared by the intelligence officers spanned some 120 pages. It detailed how he reaped massive profits from kickbacks in the procurement of nuclear equipment and amassed seven houses in the wealthiest areas of Islamabad.
Last week, Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, confessed in a dramatic, televised statement to selling nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran, and Libya in one of the largest cases of nuclear proliferation in history. He was swiftly pardoned by Musharraf after telling the nation that he acted alone and that the government had no knowledge of his dealings over two decades.
Musharraf has said he suspected Khan had been sharing nuclear secrets for three years but did not have evidence.
But the former case manager said investigators in 2000 believed there was sufficient evidence to bring corruption charges against Khan, and there was additional evidence that Khan was making unauthorized deals in the international nuclear black market.
The decision not to bring charges allowed Khan to continue his alleged black-market activities for two and a half more years. Musharraf quietly forced Khan to retire in 2001, but did not curtail his international travel or make public the corruption file against him.
"We said that somehow he is a national hero, the National Accountability Bureau is new, [and] we cannot afford to take on someone of his stature," said the former official. He said he agreed with the determination that Khan was too popular to face national prosecution at that time and had recommended waiting a year.
In Pakistan's five-decade standoff with India, Khan played a vital role in building a nuclear weapon to match that of India. He is so revered in Pakistan that his picture appears in school textbooks along with the nation's founder. His fame extends beyond Pakistan to the rest of the Muslim world.
But the dossier prepared in 2000 told a different story, the official said. It reported Khan held $8 million in several bank accounts and had given a house to General Mirza Aslam Beg, the former commander of Pakistan's army, who supported sharing nuclear technology with other Muslim countries. Beg has told reporters he did not authorize Khan to give nuclear secrets to anyone.
The dossier showed that some in Pakistan's government were worried in 2000 about the lack of oversight over Khan's activities in the underground world of nuclear procurement, including clues that he was buying more materials than were necessary for Pakistan's program alone, the official said. For example, it showed how Khan had acquired a high-tech wiring system at an extremely high price -- buying far more wire from Indonesia than the nuclear program could have used, according to the official -- "enough for 100 years."
The dossier also detailed Khan's close ties with Haji Abdul Razzak, a Dubai-based Pakistani businessman who is wanted on corruption charges in Pakistan, stating that Khan owned stock in one of Razzak's companies. The document indicated that Khan paid "stipends" to about a dozen journalists who wrote flattering articles about him and financed the Pakistan Observer, a newspaper headed by Zahid Malik, Khan's biographer, according to the official.
The dossier also said that Khan owned a hotel worth about $10 million in Timbuktu, Mali, named after his wife Hendrina and that a Pakistani Air Force C-130 aircraft was used to bring antique Pakistani furniture to the hotel, the official said.
On Monday, Musharraf told The New York Times that he had been suspicious of Khan for at least three years and believed him to be operating with "illegal contacts, maybe suspicions of contacts." Musharraf acknowledged that he was wary about pursuing Khan because of a fear of popular backlash.
Musharraf also said in that interview that he had not been given enough evidence about Khan's proliferation activities to move forward with a case until the fall of 2002.
For decades, specialists in international proliferation have warned that Pakistan's military was not only building a bomb, but assisting other countries to do so.
"They were clearly proliferating," said Larry Pressler, a former US senator who urged that sanctions be imposed on Pakistan in the early 1990s. "The generals were traveling. They were talking to everyone in the region." According to a special report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based human rights organization, Khan secretly visited Busheir, Iran's nuclear facility, in 1986 and 1987 and was retained as a consultant by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to study whether the reactor there could produce plutonium.
In the 1992 report, the Wiesenthal Center, better known for its work hunting Nazi war criminals, said that Pakistan signed a secret nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran in 1987 that involved training Iranian nuclear scientists in Islamabad.
Libya is also believed to have signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Pakistan and funded part of their program, according to the Wiesenthal report and other nuclear nonproliferation specialists. In the early 1990s, Pakistan's government also bought missile designs from North Korea, but for cash, not in a nuclear barter, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto told the Globe this week.
But the dossier is evidence that beyond whatever trading Khan was authorized to do on behalf of Pakistan's nuclear program, he was also making deals on his own.
"There was no check on him," said the official. The dossier "said that Khan was the only guy who had links with the black market and there was no check" on his international nuclear trading.
The Khan file, which was prepared by an outside intelligence agency and handed to the National Accountability Bureau, was considered so sensitive that officials had to come to the office to read it, and could not make copies, he said. The official studied the file in 2000 and took notes, which he showed to a reporter.
Reached by telephone in Islamabad, the former head of the National Accountability Bureau, Lieutenant General Syed Mohammad Amjad, confirmed that the official was a longtime employee of the bureau and said he had a reputation for honesty.
But Amjad said he could not confirm the existence of a dossier on Khan because he left the bureau before the end of 2000.
Pakistan's secretary of information, Syed Anwar Mahmood, also said he had no personal knowledge of the dossier.
Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com.
-------- iran
Iran Admits That It Has Plans for a Newer Centrifuge
February 13, 2004
By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13NUKE.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - The Iranian government, confronted with new evidence obtained from the secret network of nuclear suppliers surrounding Abdul Qadeer Khan, has acknowledged that it possesses a design for a far more advanced high-speed centrifuge to enrich uranium than it previously revealed to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The centrifuge, called a "Pak-2" because it represents Pakistan's second-generation design, would allow Iran to produce nuclear fuel far more quickly than the equipment that it reluctantly revealed to the agency last year. But it is unclear that Iran succeeded in building the new equipment, which is the type that the Khan network sold to Libya in recent years.
Some details of Iran's shift were reported in The Financial Times on Thursday. Iran's new statements to the agency, which last year compelled the country to open to fuller inspections, are important for two reasons. They provide the first evidence that Iran did not tell the full truth when it turned over to the agency documents that it said described all the important elements of its program to enrich uranium. The enrichment program, Iran admitted at the time, had been conducted in secret and out of the view of international inspectors for 18 years.
The revelation has also touched off a debate within the American and European intelligence communities over whether the Khan network also sold a full weapon design to Iran, similar to the one found in Libya.
"It's natural to question whether the Iranians got everything the Libyans did," one senior administration official said. "Why wouldn't they?"
But on Thursday in Rome, Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, denied that the country is pursuing a nuclear weapon and said that the uranium enrichment was intended solely for fueling nuclear power plants.
"Basically, we do not think that a nuclear weapon is going to bring us more security," Mr. Kharrazi said. "It is not part of our doctrine."
He later added, "We do not have anything to hide, and we are ready to be inspected more seriously by I.A.E.A. inspectors."
Diplomats in Vienna said that the agency compiled a stack of evidence suggesting that Iran already had more sophisticated uranium enrichment designs than it had admitted.
"Partly the evidence came from Libya, and partly from the network of suppliers and from member states" of the inspection agency, one senior European diplomat said.
Another official said the agency had privately charged Tehran with hiding that fact from the inspectors. The Iranians strongly denied any effort to deceive, the official said, and some Western experts familiar with the debate and the evidence said Iran's stance had some merit.
"The truth is somewhere in the middle," one official said, adding that the degree to which Iran disclosed details of its technology last year was at the heart of the dispute.
The diplomat added that the Iranians had actually tried to build some prototype P-2 centrifuges but found the steel-rotor devices so difficult to manufacture that they chose instead the easier P-1 variety, which uses aluminum rotors spinning about half as fast.
He added that Tehran, if it decided in the future to try making the more advanced centrifuges, could probably not do so itself but would have to rely heavily on imported steel parts.
Given the new disclosures about the Iranian plans and work on advanced centrifuges, he said, the next logical question for the agency is whether Iran, like Libya, also got from the Pakistani black market plans for an atom bomb.
"They're asking that," he said. But American officials say that so far they have received no convincing answers.
In recent days, the Bush administration has taken an increasingly hard line against Iran, openly questioning why it is continuing to build parts for its centrifuges. (Iran responded that it is simply fulfilling previously signed contracts for domestically produced equipment.)
President Bush, speaking on Wednesday at the National Defense University, said that the government of Iran "is unwilling to abandon a uranium enrichment program capable of producing material for nuclear weapons."
He proposed new rules in that speech that would effectively outlaw any effort by Iran or countries like it to produce nuclear fuel of any kind.
In an interview on "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer" on PBS on Wednesday evening, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said that Iran has refused to "give up their enrichment and reprocessing activities, and they need to do that because if they want civilian nuclear power they don't need to reprocess and enrich uranium."
David E. Sanger reported from Washington for this article and William J. Broad from New York.
----
U.S. May Give Iran More Time on Nukes
GEORGE GEDDA
Associated Press
Fri, Feb. 13, 2004
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/breaking_news/7949904.htm
WASHINGTON - Despite serious misgivings about Iran's nuclear activities, the State Department said Friday it is prepared to give the country more time to meet its commitments to end these programs.
Spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States is giving Iran until a March 8-10 meeting of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency to comply with promises made late last year. If Iran is found not in compliance, the United States could urge that the IAEA board refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions or other options.
"The major emphasis is on encouraging Iran to live up to its obligations so that when the director general of the agency reports to the board in March, we can see whether or not Iran has lived up to its obligations and commitments," Boucher said.
At the March meeting IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei will report to the board on Iran's compliance record.
Boucher said he was skeptical about Iranian willingness to fulfill its commitments.
"We do not believe that Iran has made a strategic decision to abandon its efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability," Boucher said.
On Thursday, diplomats in Vienna, where IAEA is headquartered, U.N. inspectors looking at Iran's nuclear files reported finding drawings of high-tech equipment that could be used to make weapons-grade uranium.
Boucher said Iran has failed to suspend enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, both crucial steps toward nuclear weapons development. He called this omission particularly troubling.
Despite promises to the contrary, Boucher said, Iran has continued to hide information related to weapons from the IAEA.
----
Iranian Nuclear Plans Found
U.N. Team's Discovery Raises Doubts About Tehran's Vow of Candor
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37806-2004Feb12.html
U.N. inspectors have discovered blueprints for a previously unknown Iranian program to enrich uranium, a finding that they said calls into question Iran's promise three months ago to fully disclose its nuclear activities, diplomatic sources familiar with the investigation said yesterday.
The documents -- designs for a highly sophisticated machine used in uranium enrichment -- were not declared by Iran in October when it suspended enrichment and promised full transparency for its nuclear program in the face of threatened international sanctions, the sources said. Iran acknowledged the documents only when confronted with what one official described as "unassailable" evidence by investigators of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
The blueprints contain instructions for building a type of gas centrifuge known as the P2, a super-efficient machine used in producing enriched uranium, the fuel used in nuclear power plants and a key ingredient in atomic bombs. Iran has acknowledged possessing hundreds of less efficient P1 machines at a formerly secret nuclear facility near the central town of Natanz.
Although some U.S. officials suspect Iran of operating secret enrichment facilities elsewhere in the country, IAEA investigators have found no evidence that Iran currently is using the advanced machines to enrich uranium. Iran has consistently maintained that its nuclear program is intended only for energy production.
"This is not an indication of a significant new capability, but it is something that will cause people to question Iran's good faith," said one Europe-based diplomat, who, like the others, spoke on the condition that he not be identified by name. "Iran, on the other hand, will contend that their failure to declare was just an oversight."
The finding appeared to set the stage for a new confrontation between Iran and the United States and its European allies. The Bush administration, which has long accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, has been pushing for international sanctions against the Islamic republic. Member nations of the IAEA's board of governors could consider referring Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions at a meeting next month.
"There is no doubt in our mind that Iran continues to pursue a nuclear weapons program," said Deputy of Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, reacting to the discovery of the documents in an interview yesterday with radio broadcasters. "They have not been fully forthcoming."
News of the IAEA's finding came within 24 hours of President Bush's announcement of an initiative aimed at tightening international laws governing the spread of nuclear technology. Bush cited both Iran and North Korea as having exploited a "loophole" in the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Bush said the treaty flaw allows aspiring nuclear states to "acquire the material and infrastructure necessary for manufacturing illegal weapons."
The discovery of the blueprints was an unexpected result of the larger investigation into a nuclear trading network led by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the metallurgist credited with creating Pakistan's nuclear weapon. IAEA officials since November have been investigating a web of businesses and middlemen who worked with Khan in supplying nuclear technology and parts to others. Khan's known clients included both Libya and Iran. The United States carried out a parallel investigation of the network and last year presented the details to Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
After determining that Libya had received designs for the P2 machine, the investigators learned that the same suppliers had also provided the designs to Iran, according to diplomats familiar with the investigation. IAEA officials at the agency's Vienna headquarters would not comment on the finding.
In Rome, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi denied Tehran had any nuclear weapons ambitions, the Associated Press reported. "We do not have anything to hide and we are ready to be inspected more [seriously] by IAEA inspectors," Kharrazi was quoted as telling reporters outside a meeting to mark 50 years of Vatican-Iran relations.
"There may be questions by IAEA inspectors, but we are ready to verify those, and what has been achieved altogether up until now is out of our cooperation with IAEA," Kharrazi said in English when asked about the drawings. "As long as we are ready to continue our cooperation, all outstanding questions will be verified."
The IAEA's year-long investigation of Iran's nuclear program had already documented numerous violations of Tehran's nuclear safeguards agreements, including the import of uranium from China in the early 1990s and the undeclared production of enriched uranium and plutonium. Those discoveries helped pressure Iran into signing the Oct. 21 agreement -- brokered by France, Britain and Germany -- to suspend uranium enrichment and open its nuclear facilities to more intrusive international inspections.
Since then, Iran has appeared to waffle on its pledges, and last month the Tehran government acknowledged that it was continuing to assemble additional centrifuges.
Before yesterday's disclosure, Bush administration officials had begun to signal a tougher line against Iran, hinting of new intelligence findings that strongly suggested that Iran was harboring nuclear secrets. "Some of these things the IAEA does not yet know," said one administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Former U.S. government officials and nonproliferation experts viewed the discovery of the centrifuge designs as a serious development that could result in diplomatic action against Iran. Some said they expect that nuclear weapons designs may also be found in Iran, citing recent discoveries of bomb blueprints in Libya.
"It seems the Iranians have not been telling the whole story," said Rose Gottemoeller, a top nonproliferation official during the Clinton administration. "We've seen all along that they dribbled out information only when confronted, and that they reluctantly acquiesced to certain steps. It is clear at this point that the Iranians must be told to step up to the bar, because this situation is extremely dangerous."
George Perkovich, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the disclosure could be beneficial if it increases pressure on Iran to disclose and renounce nuclear activities that could be used in a weapons program.
"It's bad news, but in a way it helps because it gives us leverage," said Perkovich, the endowment's vice president for studies. "Now we can go the Iranians and say, 'Why should we trust you?' "
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraq arms hunt in doubt in '02
Fri Feb 13, 2004
By John Diamond,
USA TODAY
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=676&e=12&u=/usatoday/20040213/ts_usatoday/iraqarmshuntindoubtin02
A classified U.S. intelligence study done three months before the war in Iraq predicted a problem now confronting the Bush administration: the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction might never be found.
The study by a team of U.S. intelligence analysts, military officers and civilian Pentagon officials warned that U.S. military tactics, guerrilla warfare, looting and lying by Iraqi officials would undermine the search for banned Iraqi weapons. Portions of the study were made available to USA TODAY. Three high-ranking U.S. intelligence officials described its purpose and conclusions.
"Locating a program that ... has been driven by denial and deception imperatives is no small task," the December 2002 report said. "Prolonged insecurity with factional violence and guerrilla forces still at large would be the worst outcome for finding Saddam's WMD arsenal."
The report went to the National Security Council but was not specifically shown to President Bush, the officials said.
The study findings diverge from statements by U.S. officials that caches of banned weapons would be found.
In February 2003, two months after completion of the study, CIA Director George Tenet told lawmakers, "I think we will find caches of weapons of mass destruction, absolutely." Tenet was aware of the internal study, said a CIA official who advises him. But Tenet, who declined to comment, viewed its warnings as just one possible scenario among many.
Tenet's view has changed. "Finding things in Iraq is always very tough," he said last week at Georgetown University.
The study, which is still classified, and comments by David Kay, the former chief of the U.S. arms search in Iraq, call into question the president's remark Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that "we'll find out" what happened to Iraq's weapons. Kay told lawmakers last month, "There will always be unresolved ambiguity" about the fate of the Iraqi arsenal.
Kay said he now believes that Iraq did not have banned weapons before the war and had probably destroyed them more than a decade ago.
The study looked at scenarios including Iraqi use of chemical or biological weapons and the possibility that no weapons would be found. The study considered but rejected the possibility that Iraq had no banned weapons.
The study said arms searchers would be "trying to find multiple needles in a haystack ... against the background of not knowing how many needles have been hidden."
Some of the obstacles outlined by the study included the expected rapid movement of U.S. ground forces over wide areas, leaving critical sites vulnerable to looting. Guerrilla warfare, the report predicted, also would make the weapons search difficult.
-------- israel
Rumsfeld on Israel
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 13, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fielded questions during his recent visit to Munich where he took part in an annual European security conference.
He was asked about the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israel's nuclear weapons. One man identified as a Palestinian noted Israel's nuclear weapons and suggested the United States is worried about Iran and North Korea but is not doing anything about Israel's arsenal.
"You know the answer before I give it, I'm sure," Mr. Rumsfeld replied. "The world knows the answer. We take the world like you find it; and Israel is a small state with a small population. It's a democracy and it exists in a neighborhood. Many, over a period of time, [have] opined from time to time that they'd prefer it not be there and they'd like it to be put in the sea. And Israel has opined that it would prefer not to get put in the sea, and as a result, over a period of decades, it has arranged itself so it hasn't been put in the sea."
-------- japan
Generous subsidies eyed for pluthermal power
The Asahi Shimbun,
February 13, 2004
http://www.asahi.com/english/politics/TKY200402130155.html
Figuring that if you throw enough money at a problem it will go away, the central government is trying to get municipalities around the country to allow plutonium thermal (pluthermal) reactors to operate in their backyards. The payoff: guaranteed fat subsidies.
Sizeable amounts are being bandied about to woo communities already spooked by nuclear accidents and a series of scandals involving cover-ups at reactors operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). The incidents derailed government plans to power homes and industry in the future with pluthermal technology.
This involves the use of plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel rods, which theoretically would allow Japan to reprocess all spent nuclear fuel and extract the plutonium needed to produce the MOX fuel rods.
The government wants to have pluthermal power generation at 16 to 18 reactors by fiscal 2010.
The subsidy program, drawn up by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, would take effect from fiscal 2004. Municipalities and prefectural governments that agree to a request from power companies for reactors to be reconfigurated to pluthermal use would each receive an additional 20 million yen annually for five years.
Once pluthermal power generation begins, using MOX fuel rods, the generated electric power used to calculate subsidies paid out to host municipalities would be increased threefold.
Municipalities would also receive additional funds for storing spent fuel. Currently, they get 400,000 yen for every ton of spent nuclear fuel stored at a nuclear reactor in their jurisdiction. The new subsidy plan would double that amount.
The new subsidies represent substantial additional income. If pluthermal power generation starts at four nuclear reactors at Kansai Electric Power Co.'s Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture, which is capable of generating 3.392 million kilowatts of electricity, additional subsidies of about 200 million yen a year would be paid out.
Kansai Electric Power Co. plans to commission a European company to start producing MOX fuel rods this fiscal year for use in nuclear reactors at Takahama and Oi in Fukui Prefecture.
Because of cover-ups of reactor problems at nuclear facilities operated by TEPCO in 2002, Niigata and Fukushima prefectures retracted previous commitments to push ahead with pluthermal generation.
The scandals involving TEPCO unquestionably pushed back overall progress on the pluthermal front.
Subsidies to municipalities and prefectures that come under the new subsidies will be paid out under three separate programs. Revenues for the subsidies are collected from taxes on electricity bills.
In fiscal 2003, about 170 billion yen was set aside for subsidies.(IHT/Asahi: February 13,2004) (02/13)
-------- korea
U.S. Says N. Korea Atomic Program More Advanced
February 13, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-usa-north.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key covert North Korean nuclear program may be more advanced than the United States had believed, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly said on Friday, citing a recent confession by a Pakistani scientist that he sold nuclear technology to Pyongyang.
``... the recent confession of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan suggests that if anything, the North Korean HEU (highly enriched uranium) program is of longer duration and more advanced than we had assessed,'' Kelly said.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear arms program, said this month he had sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran.
North Korea dismissed the confession as a lie cooked up by Washington to justify an invasion of the communist state.
``We are confident that our intelligence in this matter is well-founded,'' Kelly said in a speech two weeks before the start of a new round of six-party talks to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.
He did not elaborate on this charge in his prepared remarks at a conference hosted by the Korea Economic Institute and other groups and later refused to answer questions.
But he said Washington now believes Pyongyang is more wedded than ever to its nuclear ambitions.
``As we now see it, maintaining a nuclear arsenal apparently has become a core, not peripheral, element of North Korea's national defense strategy,'' he said.
This is likely to trigger reaction from administration critics who have complained that President Bush delayed too long in launching serious negotiations, allowing Pyongyang to continue work on its various nuclear programs.
SECRET PROGRAM
The current crisis was triggered in October 2002 when the United States confronted the North about a secret program for enriching uranium, which can produce fuel for nuclear bombs.
This was in addition to a separate program for producing plutonium, the other type of nuclear fuel, that was frozen under a 1994 U.S.-North Korea accord but has since been resumed.
North Korea acknowledged the highly enriched uranium program during that October 2002 meeting, according to U.S. officials, but now denies its existence.
Kelly said the change of heart resulted when the North realized the admission was ``a major tactical error that was resulting in massive international criticism.''
After months of maneuvering, talks on the crisis hosted by China and involving the United States, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the North, start in Beijing on Feb. 25.
Kelly reiterated Washington's insistence that Pyongyang end its nuclear programs.
``North Korea needs to make a strategic choice -- and make it clear to the world as Libya has done -- that it will abandon its nuclear weapons and programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner,'' Kelly said.
Libya in recent weeks agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Kelly's speech was not without comments designed to encourage Pyongyang.
He said Libya's case proves the North can dismantle its nuclear programs ``as a sovereign country'' and gave assurances that this will not be a hard task once the North has made the fundamental decision to do so.
Kelly reiterated a U.S. commitment to a diplomatic solution and said the negotiating team he leads at the Beijing talks will ``listen carefully and respond to all positions.''
``We and other the other parties realize that moving away from isolation and estrangement toward openness and engagement will be a major undertaking and we are willing to help ... There is a chance for redemption,'' he said.
-------- mideast
House Panel Visits Libya to Check U.S. Intelligence
February 13, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13LIBY.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - Six members of the House Intelligence Committee are scheduled to meet in Libya on Friday with Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and other top Libyan officials, a senior lawmaker said on Thursday.
The meeting with Colonel Qaddafi will be the second between an American Congressional delegation and the Libyan leader since Libya agreed to work with British and American officials to dismantle its once-secret chemical and biological weapons program. The members of the House panel are hoping to use that opening to gauge the accuracy of earlier American intelligence about Libya.
"We now have a way to compare what we thought we knew with what we will learn on the ground," Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the panel, said in a telephone interview before the bipartisan group left Washington on Thursday. The trip had not been announced in advance at the request of the Libyan government, and Ms. Harman spoke on the condition that it not be disclosed until the delegation arrived in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, on Friday.
Representative Sherwood L. Boehlert of New York was the top Republican in the group, which was scheduled to spend just seven hours in Libya.
The State Department gave its approval to the trip, Ms. Harman said. An earlier delegation headed by Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, met with Colonel Qaddafi in Libya last month.
The Bush administration has cited Libya's decision to disband its illicit weapons program as a direct result of the invasion of Iraq. But some Democrats, including Ms. Harman, have said the invasion was just one of many factors that put pressure on Libya, and that equally important factors were patient diplomacy and the two decades of economic sanctions the United States imposed on the Libyan government.
-------- russia
Bush Calls for De-atomization of Russia
America anxious about better protection of Russia's nuclear reserves
02/13/2004
Pravda
http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/12052_nuclear.html
The official website of the Russian Federation Nuclear Power Ministry reported the other day that in the framework of de-atomization of Russia within the next ten years the US on the one part, the European Union, Canada and Japan on the other part would appropriate $10 billion each. The money will be appropriated as assistance to Russia in ensuring nuclear security and for liquidation of weapons of mass destruction. In the fiscal year of 2005, the Bush Administration wants to keep the same level of spending on assistance to Russia and former Soviet Union republics in the sphere of nuclear security and non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. In general, the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Defense, the State Department of America plan to appropriate about $900 million for this purpose. Budgetary spending of the US Department of Energy on cooperation with the RF Nuclear Power>
Ministry will make up about $470 million, almost the same amount that is scheduled for this year.
This finance is to be spent on strengthening the protection of depots with nuclear warheads and fissionable materials, on decommissioning of nuclear submarines (including those in the Russian city of Severodvinsk), reduction of weapons plutonium reserves, remaking of enriched uranium into fuel for nuclear power plants, on conversion of some reactors and introduction of tougher control over radiation sources. At the same time, the Bush Administration plans to reduce the Pentagon spending on the Nunn-Lugar program by about 10 per cent to $409.2 million. This is a cooperation program meant for reduction of the threat emanating from weapons of mass destruction. In the framework of the program, the US assists Russia in liquidation of its reserves of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems falling under international agreements.
www.minatom.ru Andrey Mikhailov
Read the original in Russian: http://science.pravda.ru/science/2004/6/20/57/16039_.html (Translated by: Maria Gousseva)
-------- terrorism
Report: Al Qaida boats to attack British targets
By Jerusalem Post
Feb. 13, 2004
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1076654396478&p=1008596981749
Al Qaida has allegedly acquired 15 vessels it plans to send into British ports laden with lethal chemical and 'dirty bomb' containing depleted uranium, reports the London-based newspaper The Mirror.
Targets may include the British Parliament, cruise liners, oil rigs, the UK's Met's marine unit and other sensitive targets, the media report said.
A memo published by the paper states that financial services major Lloyd's have been mobilized to assist MI6 and the CIA trace vessels bought by Al-Qaida from a Greek shipping magnate having links to Osama bin Laden.
"Al-Qaida has reportedly taken possession of 15 ships, forming what could be described as the first terrorist navy. The ships fly the flags of Yemen and Somalia where they are registered - and are capable of carrying lethal cargoes of chemicals or a dirty bomb," the memo said.
Alarmed by the report British government is reportedly checking vessels with flags of Senegal, Liberia and the Caribbean island of St Vincent in the Indian or Pacific oceans and routinely patrolling the Thames to protect Parliament, MI6, and other possible targets.
The Royal Navy, Special Forces and the Yard's anti-terrorism squad are looking for "unusual" shipping movements near Britain's oilfields and oil refineries, the newspaper said.
US intelligence experts believe an al-Qaida ship carried explosives used to bomb two US embassies in Africa in 1998, as was the case in the Bali bombing.
-------- treaties
Bush's Bluster on Proliferation
The Progressive,
February 13, 2004,
by Matthew Rothschild
http://www.progressive.org/webex04/wx021304.html
In his big speech on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush proposed some useful steps to stop the spread of loose nukes.
But he failed to own up to America's own part of this problem.
Bush said he wants to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but one of the main reasons other nations want to acquire nuclear weapons is because the United States has not lived up to its obligations under that treaty.
This treaty requires the United States--and every other nuclear power that signed it--to eliminate its nuclear weapons.
But Bush is not honoring that.
In fact, he is moving toward making new nuclear weapons: the so-called bunker busters and mini-nukes.
"On the one hand, the U.S. says that the proliferation of nuclear weapons must be fought," said Mohammed El Baradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "On the other, it perfects its own arsenal. This is not acceptable. . . . If we do not give up such double standards, we will have even more nuclear powers."
Nor is the United States putting teeth in the chemical weapons treaty. Two years ago, Bush blocked an international effort to strengthen that treaty to allow member nations to inspect each other for compliance, according to the Guardian. And the Bush Administration has also been developing its own chemical and biological weapons, which may violate international treaties, the paper said.
On top of that, the United States has done nothing to discipline Israel for its nuclear stockpile or Pakistan for allowing such a hefty trade in nuclear material and know-how.
Nor is Bush ponying up the necessary money to round up any loose nuclear material, even though he wants to extend the current effort beyond Russia (where most of it is) to include Libya and Iraq.
Nor did Bush propose eliminating the trade in fissionable material. Instead, all he called for were some limits on it.
This failure exposes a fundamental flaw in the five-decade strategy of the United States to limit nuclear proliferation: the "friendly atom." One Administration after another, dating back to the Eisenhower days, has promised to give "peaceful" nuclear technology to countries in exchange for the promise that they would not develop nuclear weaponry.
"You can't have nuclear power without the specter of nuclear weapons," says Michele Boyd, legislative representative for Public Citizen. "Just having nuclear power means there's always a possibility that you are nuclear weapons capable because you're creating the plutonium that's required for making a nuclear weapon."
Boyd's answer: "We need to phase out nuclear power and relinquish our nuclear weapons."
That's the nonproliferation speech I wait for a President of the United States to deliver, not the usual bluster from Bush.
----
Getting international help on WMD
White House faces challenges in creating global effort to curb WMD
By Jim Bencivenga
Christian Science Monitor.
February 13, 2004
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0213/dailyUpdate.html?s=entt
President Bush's call this week for an expanded international initiative to curb the trade in nuclear weapons technology was an important step in the battle to keep these weapons of mass destruction (WMD) out of the hands of terrorists, say nuclear proliferation experts.
He received high marks for raising the issue.
But in urging the UN Security Council to approve a resolution that requires all states to criminalize proliferation, and enact strict export controls on nuclear materials and byproducts, it is the next step that will prove far more difficult.
The President's proposals are likely to "run into some international opposition because they do not require the United States and allied nations with nuclear weapons to reciprocate for the restrictions that Bush wants to impose on states that seek such weapons," reports the Washington Post.
It is one thing to want countries to secure all sensitive materials within their borders, as the President called for (e.g., lower-grade isotopes, like those used in medicine or research). But "as long as other countries think the United States is just trying to preserve its nuclear hegemony, there are going to be some nations that challenge that," Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington told the Post.
The immediate set of events that sparked Bush's new initiative is the case of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, the leader of what Bush called a highly lucrative international proliferation network.
In his speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., Bush zeroed in on a new kind of nuclear threat confronting the United States and other nations since the end of the Cold War, during which large stockpiles of nuclear weapons created a deterrent, or mutally assured destruction (MAD).
It is the specter that "small groups of fanatics or failing states could gain the power to threaten great nations," with nuclear materials that must be addressed, he said.
The gorilla under the bed feared by intelligence agencies is what is referred to as a "dirty bomb" (cnews at canoe.com) which unlike a nuclear weapon, would not ignite an atomic chain reaction and would not require highly enriched uranium or plutonium which is hard to obtain. The materials could be a lower-grade isotope, like those used in medicine or research. Conventional explosives could be used to disperse a plume of radioactive dust over a city.
The United States is "determined to confront [such] threats at the source," said Bush as he called on the world to "confront these dangers and to end them." The need for such broad international cooperation calls for expanding the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) that he announced in May 2003, he said.
He outlined how US and British intelligence agents unraveled the network and helped stop the shipment of advanced centrifuge parts bound for Libya from an illicit factory in Malaysia via Dubai in the Persian Gulf. Before the German-owned ship carrying the parts could reach Libya, Bush said, it was intercepted by German and Italian authorities.
As originally conceived, PSI is an international program dedicated to interdicting weapons of mass destruction and related materials in transit. But that is no longer, if it ever was, enough. The President wants participants in the PSI as well as other "willing nations" to expand their focus and use Interpol and other mechanisms for law enforcement cooperation to take additional actions to pursue proliferators and end their operations.
He cited the need for greater cooperation in international law enforcement to arrest weapons traffickers, shut down their laboratories and seize their materials at sea, in the air, or on land. Bush also offered several controls to stop nuclear proliferation, including the overhaul of the United Nations watch dog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA.
Yet, here again, says Gregory Pemberton, Convenor of International Relations at Macquarie University in Australia in an interview with RSI, Radio Singapore International, Bush will face hurdles in getting the full extent of international cooperation he wants.
The Bush Administration has a distrust of multilateral organizations like the United Nations [that includes the International Atomic Energy Agency] because of the involvement of countries the US considers hostile or part of the axis of evil. As he actually states that countries which are in breach of the rules should not be given the responsibility to enforce the rules.
On the one hand, continues Dr. Pemberton, Bush wants to work around multilateral framework, but, on the other and at the same time, he calls for them to be improved.
What needs to be realized before the kind of "expanded cooperation" can occur is that there is a deeply held concern that nations have about US intentions and it is a hurdle that must be overcome, Pemberton says. "The Bush Administration did damage their reputation because of the unilateral action they took in the war against Iraq."
This will make it more difficult for Bush to mobilize support. ... Bush is saying, look, we are prepared to work multilaterally, are you prepared to do it with us? So Bush is putting a challenge to states to cooperate. The US has also drafted a Proliferation Security Initiative, which deals in air and sea security, and weapons of mass destruction. This shows what Bush has in mind, which is not so much of a United Nations, but more of a US led multilateral organization that consists of many states that support the US in law enforcement or conventions against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
----
ElBaradei echoes Bush on nuke curbs
February 13, 2004
Washington Times
From combined dispatches
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20040212-093052-1900r.htm
VIENNA, Austria - The head of the United Nations nuclear agency as well as China and India yesterday supported President Bush's call to tighten controls on nuclear materials and stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
"I have the same concern and sense of urgency expressed by President Bush to shore up the nonproliferation regime and global security system," Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a brief statement released by his headquarters in Vienna.
Mr. Bush argued in a speech Wednesday that international efforts to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction have been neither broad nor effective enough and require tougher action from all nations.
"The greatest threat before humanity today is the possibility of secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological or radiological or nuclear weapons," Mr. Bush said.
His remarks came after reports surfaced of a black market apparently organized by Abdul Qadeer Khan, who once led the nuclear program in Pakistan.
Mr. Bush singled out the IAEA for criticism, calling for the creation of an agency committee to focus on safeguards and verification and to ensure that nations comply with international obligations. He also complained that nations such as Iran, which has been under investigation for proliferation, have been allowed to sit on the IAEA board of governors.
The agency refused to comment directly on Mr. Bush's criticism and referred instead to an article by Mr. ElBaradei in the New York Times yesterday.
In the article, Mr. ElBaradei called on the United States and the other declared nuclear powers to relinquish their nuclear weapons as part of a global effort to make it impossible for such weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists.
"If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction," he wrote.
China said yesterday that it has a "common interest" with Washington in fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction and promised to take "effective measures" to enforce recently issued rules against exports of arms technology by Chinese companies.
Beijing is under pressure to stop what U.S. officials say is the transfer of missile and weapons technology by Chinese companies to Iran, Pakistan and other countries. The United States has sanctioned several Chinese companies accused of spreading weapons technology, including a major state-owned conglomerate.
India hailed Mr. Bush's call for tighter curbs and said its own nuclear arsenal should not raise concerns.
"We welcome his emphasis on the imperative of collective action to check proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It is clear that the existing nonproliferation order is inadequate," a Foreign Ministry statement said.
Japan said Mr. Bush's call was a step in the "right direction."
Mr. Bush's speech, however, drew criticism in Kuala Lumpur, where Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi denied that his country played any role in the nuclear-trafficking network.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- utah
Nuclear waste freeze
FRIDAY February 13, 2004
Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Feb/02132004/opinion/138400.asp
Utahns got a nasty surprise last October. They learned that trainloads of uranium mill tailings contaminated by highly concentrated radium from a federal Superfund cleanup site in Ohio might be headed here for disposal within a couple of years.
Envirocare of Utah, which disposes of low-level nuclear and hazardous wastes, eventually withdrew from the project because of the controversy. But the affair exposed anomalies in the federal classification system for nuclear wastes and how congressional skulduggery in the way certain wastes are labeled could result in radioactive materials being shipped to Utah that otherwise would be banned as too hot under state law.
To prevent a similar occurrence, a bill now under consideration would require the Legislature and the governor to approve any disposal facility's receiving of waste with a higher concentration limit for radioactive atoms than is allowed under an existing approved license for the specific type of waste.
The Legislature should pass House Bill 145. But on Tuesday, a House committee took no action on it. If that decision stands, the Legislature will have dodged its responsibility to protect the health and safety of Utahns.
Opponents of HB145, including Rep. David Ure, R-Kamas, argue that the members of the Legislature do not have the technical expertise to evaluate radiation licensing issues and that the state should rely, instead, on its regulators who oversee radiation control. The Legislature should set the standards and the regulators should carry them out.
In theory, that is reasonable. But the October surprise from Fernald, Ohio, showed that untoward problems may arise if certain wastes are reclassified and the state has no method in place to stop them.
Besides, Envirocare's steady efforts over the years to accept hotter wastes and the revolving door between the company and regulators both argue for heightened vigilance by elected officials.
A state legislative task force currently is studying issues of radioactive and hazardous waste. Its report is due in another year. HB145 is an outgrowth of concern within the task force over the Fernald affair. The bill's sponsor is the co-chairman of the task force, Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George. Advertisement
Envirocare currently has two license amendments pending. In one, the company seeks to accept greater volumes of Special Nuclear Material (plutonium and enriched uranium) than it already accepts, but not in higher concentrations than it already takes. In another, it seeks to receive mixed wastes containing both hazardous and low-level Class A radioactive waste. While the amendment for mixed wastes would push nearer the legal ceiling, the company says both amendments fall within the Class A concentration limits currently allowed by Utah law.
The bill essentially would freeze limits on concentrations of radioactive materials at current licensed levels unless the Legislature and governor specifically approve a change. That is a prudent move until the task force's work is done.
-------- us politics
Double Standard
February 13, 2004
Mother Jones Magazine
http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2004/02/02_719.html
"If the world does not change course, we risk self-destruction." So said Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in a New York Times op-ed on Thursday.
President Bush seems to be of the same mind. He took steps on Wednesday to lessen the risks of nuclear proliferation, when he proposed plans that would revamp the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The catalyst for increased panic over nukes was the recent revelation that a leading Pakistani scientist, A.Q. Khan, was at the center of a black market for nuclear know-how and technology involving Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
Bush spent the early part of his administration eviscerating international arms treaties, so his late conversion comes as a welcome change. But there is still skepticism over a glaring double-standard in U.S. policy, whereby the United States continues to expand its own nuclear arsenal by developing smaller weapons that could penetrate underground targets, while insisting that "rogue states" with nuclear ambitions are the key problem.
Bush called for a ban on all sales of civilian nuclear enrichment and reprocessing technologies to countries that do not already possess them, and proposed that nuclear fuel be provided only to countries that renounce nuclear enrichment and reprocessing. Under the NPT countries are allowed to import these technologies, a fact that North Korea and Iran have exploited.
Bush said:
"This step will prevent new states from developing the means to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs. Proliferators must not be allowed to cynically manipulate the NPT to acquire the material and infrastructure necessary for manufacturing illegal weapons."
An alternative view was provided to the Washington Post by an unnamed diplomat: "I can envision a response from the nonnuclear states: What have you done for us in the last 34 years in terms of nuclear disarmament?"
The NPT hasn't been very successfully enforced. Iran brokered a deal late last year under which it agreed to stop seeking nuclear weapons capability, but yesterday the country owned up to having plans for a much more advanced centrifuge (to enrich uranium) than it had disclosed to the IAEA.
Some think Bush is on the right track. The Wall Street Journal gives Bush a top rating on his handling of nuclear proliferation in an op-ed on Feb. 6:
"Pardon us for interrupting the Beltway brawl over Iraq intelligence, but has anyone else noticed the recent landmark progress against nuclear proliferation? The latest breakthrough came this week in Pakistan, where a scientist confessed on television to his nuclear weapons deals during the 1990s. And in any case, let's recall why everyone cared about Iraq's WMD in the first place. The nightmare scenario, all too plausible after September 11, is that a dictator who trucks with terrorists will give them a nuclear weapon to explode on American soil."
Critics say that the "nightmare scenario" the WSJ referred to certainly hasn't been headed off; rather, it became all too real with the Pakistani scientist's confession. A major concern is that the U.S. plays favorites when it comes to laying down the law on nuclear weapons. The Bush administration labels certain countries as rogue states, and tends to allow allies more nuclear room. The Sydney Morning Herald contends that it's rather inconsistent of the U.S. not to characterize Pakistan as a "rogue," or punish it in any way:
"In American usage, the problematic term "rogue state" usually means a nation which puts a high priority on subverting other nations by violence, including terrorism in all its forms.
Pakistan's marketing of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea surely makes it a rogue state in US eyes. Yet Washington's response to Pakistan's utter disregard for the wider concerns shared by many countries, including Australia about nuclear weapons proliferation has been extraordinarily mild. No sanctions of any kind are proposed. Instead, Mr Bush has side-stepped the issue and called for a new commitment by the 40-nation "Nuclear Suppliers Group" to refuse to sell nuclear equipment to any country that does not have fully operating facilities to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel into plutonium. That face-saving gesture leaves the US open to accusations of double standards. For example, the US condemns North Korea for exporting Scud missile technology, but forgives Pakistan for exporting nuclear weapons technology. Washington overthrew Saddam Hussein on suspicion of his capacity and intentions with regard to weapons of mass destruction, but lets pass Pakistan's blatant breaches of nuclear non-proliferation protocols."
Bush stopped short of calling for an end to all trade in fissionable material, saying his plan would only limit such shipments "to any state that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment and reprocessing plants."
This, of course, allows the U.S. to avoid further restrictions. ElBaradei commended Bush on his proposal as a good start, but warned that the U.S. (and other countries with nukes) should not exclude itself from tighter restrictions:
"Of course, a fundamental part of the nonproliferation bargain is the commitment of the five nuclear states recognized under the nonproliferation treaty - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - to move toward disarmament. Recent agreements between Russia and the United States are commendable, but they should be verifiable and irreversible. A clear road map for nuclear disarmament should be established - starting with a major reduction in the 30,000 nuclear warheads still in existence, and bringing into force the long-awaited Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty."
----
A nuclear credibility problem
Fri, Feb. 13, 2004
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/7946201.htm
President Bush's call for a crackdown on nuclear proliferation is the right message from a flawed messenger. The first step for the president in achieving his goals is conducting a fundamental reassessment of his own excessively confrontational foreign policy.
The speech Bush delivered Wednesday at Washington's National Defense University was welcome but years late. The threat of nuclear proliferation has grown more dire since he took office, and much of the problem can be traced to the leader of the world's premier nuclear power.
Bush made it clear that he blames other nations, the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the worldwide failure to contain the spread of nuclear weapons. But those he criticized are far from the only culprits. The president conveniently refused to address international complaints about the indifference, bordering sometimes on contempt, that the United States has shown for diplomatic attempts to stop nuclear proliferation.
In the last three years, Bush has appeared to be seeking one standard for the rest of the world and another for the United States with this following record:
Money for a 1992 program created to destroy Russian nuclear weapons before terrorists can steal them was cut by almost $42 million under Bush's 2005 budget. The co-author of the program, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., has called on the administration to appoint someone to oversee all non-proliferation efforts.
While cutting money for Lugar's program, the administration is seeking $500 million over the next five years for research on new nuclear weapons intended to break up underground bunkers. The goal is to produce smaller-scale weapons easier for use in war, thereby risking escalation.
Another $10.7 billion for the Star Wars missile defense system, a project that risks encouraging China and other nations to build more nuclear weapons.
A refusal to revive the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed by President Clinton and rejected by the Senate.
Bush's belated appreciation for the seriousness of the nuclear proliferation threat may quicken the search for answers at home and overseas. He can help the process by turning away from a militarized foreign policy and matching his words with deeds that gain respect from other nations.
----
President Bush's New Plan to Stop Proliferation
Will his unilateral approach and the budget shortfall make it all bark and no bite?
Joseph Cirincione YaleGlobal,
13 February 2004
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=3332
Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran: The Bush administration wants to stop Iran and other nations from making fuel for such reactors. (Photo)
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu//display.image?id=3333
WASHINGTON: Like an investor watching his returns plummet, President Bush is rebalancing his proliferation portfolio. The huge cost of the Iraq war and his sinking poll ratings seem to have convinced the president that he has invested too heavily in military operations and unilateral initiatives and that it is time to move some political capital to international organizations and cooperative ventures.
President Bush's February 11 speech was a step in the right direction. The measures he announced would, overall, help forge a stronger, more effective, and more international non-proliferation policy. Many of the initiatives, if implemented, would increase the ability of the United States and the international community to stem the spread of nuclear weapons. It remains to be seen, however, if the President will put his money where his mouth is.
The key initiatives announced by the President include:
• Making all exports from the 40-member Nuclear Suppliers' Group conditional on recipients adopting new, tougher inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
• A ban on exports of technology that could help states produce enriched uranium or plutonium (key elements in nuclear weapons)
• Expanding the Nunn-Lugar programs (initiated with broad bi-partisan support in 1991) that finance the elimination of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the former Soviet Union
• Enhancing the IAEA's capabilities to detect cheating and respond to treaty violations
• Expanding efforts to interdict illegal shipments of weapon-related technology.
But will the President's policy pronouncements translate into government action? The record on that score, and the budget projections, are not encouraging. The administration's budget for the coming fiscal year actually cuts funding for Nunn-Lugar programs by ten percent. Nor is there any increase in the US contribution to the IAEA.
This is not surprising. The administration is still dominated by officials who have long hated the non-proliferation regime that their Republican and Democratic predecessors struggled over fifty years to create. Several key officials, such as Undersecretary of State John Bolton, reject the entire concept of non-proliferation treaties and most of the multilateral system, including the United Nations. In the wake of the September 11 attacks these officials successfully revived and implemented several previously proposed but controversial policies.
All previous presidents, including George H.W. Bush, had treated the weapons themselves as the problem. This administration shifted the focus from eliminating weapons to eliminating regimes. Whereas then-President Clinton warned of threats "posed by the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and the means of delivering such weapons," President Bush framed the issue this way in 2003: "The gravest dangers facing America and the world is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons" (italics added). In effect, the administration moved from "what" to "who" the threat is. The country possessing the weapons was a more serious threat than the weapons themselves. This change in strategic vision led directly to the Iraq War.
Even though the strategy claims it has "three pillars" (counter-proliferation, non-proliferation, and consequence management), counter-proliferation by far has captured the lion's share of the Bush administration's attention and funding.
The FY 2002 budget gave counter-proliferation, mostly in the form of missile defense, approximately $8.5 billion, compared to about $1.5 billion for non-proliferation efforts and $13 billion for homeland security programs.
In FY 2004, however, the war in Iraq and $10 billion for missile defense boosted counter-proliferation budgets to $81 billion and homeland security grew to $41 billion, while non-proliferation increased modestly to $2 billion. These figures underscore the dramatic imbalance in the attention, emphasis, and roles assigned to the three pillars.
The President has now made a verbal corrective, but, as noted, has yet to match his words with dollars. Moreover, the imperious way the new policies are announced will certainly feed into the belief in many nations that the United States seeks to lead by fiat, not example.
The president is absolutely right that we must find a way to stop countries from building factories that can produce nuclear fuel one day and nuclear bombs the next. But it will be difficult for the United States to persuade others to go along with new restrictions on nuclear fuel technology that appear to establish a new double standard. In addition to the existing standard where some nations are allowed to have nuclear weapons and some not, now the president proposes that some nations are allowed to manufacture the fuel for nuclear reactors and some are not. The president would freeze the current situation in place: allowing those with existing full-scale plants to continue to make nuclear fuel, those without such plants would be barred forever from building them. The ban would be enforced by agreement of those nations in the Nuclear Suppliers Group not to sell the necessary technology to non-compliant states.
This approach is doomed to failure. The only way this will work is if it applied universally, so that, for example, no nation has independent national nuclear fuel facilities. All existing plants could be put under international control, as the director of the IAEA has suggested, or international consortia could be created to sell the fuel to all customers at prices cheaper than any nation could produce on their own.
The United States could also signal its willingness to give up its own nuclear ambitions, such as the program now underway to develop new nuclear weapons for battlefield use. As long as other countries think the United States is just trying to preserve its nuclear hegemony, some nations will rise to challenge that arrangement. We all have to be moving away from nuclear weapons. It cannot be just a US diktat that everyone else goes in one direction while we go in another.
The good news is that this could all be done cheaply. We are awash in bomb material - the plutonium and highly-enriched uranium left over from the Cold War nuclear weapons binge. We are not producing any more of this fissile material now and have no need to in the future. We could work towards a global agreement to end the production of these materials as part of a new, global, nuclear deal. The Nunn-Lugar programs to secure and eliminate nuclear stockpiles are cheap compared to other defense programs. The United States now provides $1 billion a year to these efforts, but many proliferation experts believe the United States should triple that spending. For the price of three weeks of operations in Iraq, we could make tremendous progress on removing exactly the weapons and materials lying in often poorly-guarded facilities that terrorists are most likely to seek.
If President Bush backs up his speech with just a fraction of the funds spent on other defense programs we would make some real progress. But if he matches the demands he makes of other nations with new commitments to cut US weapons stockpiles and stores of bomb material, he could have a program that many would beat a path to his door to buy. Joseph Cirincione is Director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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Getting international help on WMD
White House faces challenges in creating global effort to curb WMD
By Jim Bencivenga
Christian Science Monitor
February 13, 2004
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0213/dailyUpdate.html?s=entt
President Bush's call this week for an expanded international initiative to curb the trade in nuclear weapons technology was an important step in the battle to keep these weapons of mass destruction (WMD) out of the hands of terrorists, say nuclear proliferation experts.
He received high marks for raising the issue.
But in urging the UN Security Council to approve a resolution that requires all states to criminalize proliferation, and enact strict export controls on nuclear materials and byproducts, it is the next step that will prove far more difficult.
The President's proposals are likely to "run into some international opposition because they do not require the United States and allied nations with nuclear weapons to reciprocate for the restrictions that Bush wants to impose on states that seek such weapons," reports the Washington Post.
It is one thing to want countries to secure all sensitive materials within their borders, as the President called for (e.g., lower-grade isotopes, like those used in medicine or research). But "as long as other countries think the United States is just trying to preserve its nuclear hegemony, there are going to be some nations that challenge that," Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington told the Post.
Find out more.
The immediate set of events that sparked Bush's new initiative is the case of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, the leader of what Bush called a highly lucrative international proliferation network.
In his speech at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., Bush zeroed in on a new kind of nuclear threat confronting the United States and other nations since the end of the Cold War, during which large stockpiles of nuclear weapons created a deterrent, or mutally assured destruction (MAD).
It is the specter that "small groups of fanatics or failing states could gain the power to threaten great nations," with nuclear materials that must be addressed, he said.
The gorilla under the bed feared by intelligence agencies is what is referred to as a "dirty bomb" (cnews at canoe.com) which unlike a nuclear weapon,
would not ignite an atomic chain reaction and would not require highly enriched uranium or plutonium which is hard to obtain. The materials could be a lower-grade isotope, like those used in medicine or research. Conventional explosives could be used to disperse a plume of radioactive dust over a city.
The United States is "determined to confront [such] threats at the source," said Bush as he called on the world to "confront these dangers and to end them." The need for such broad international cooperation calls for expanding the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) that he announced in May 2003, he said.
He outlined how US and British intelligence agents unraveled the network and helped stop the shipment of advanced centrifuge parts bound for Libya from an illicit factory in Malaysia via Dubai in the Persian Gulf. Before the German-owned ship carrying the parts could reach Libya, Bush said, it was intercepted by German and Italian authorities.
As originally conceived, PSI is an international program dedicated to interdicting weapons of mass destruction and related materials in transit. But that is no longer, if it ever was, enough. The President wants participants in the PSI as well as other "willing nations" to expand their focus and use Interpol and other mechanisms for law enforcement cooperation to take additional actions to pursue proliferators and end their operations.
He cited the need for greater cooperation in international law enforcement to arrest weapons traffickers, shut down their laboratories and seize their materials at sea, in the air, or on land. Bush also offered several controls to stop nuclear proliferation, including the overhaul of the United Nations watch dog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. Yet, here again, says Gregory Pemberton, Convenor of International Relations at Macquarie University in Australia in an interview with RSI, Radio Singapore International, Bush will face hurdles in getting the full extent of international cooperation he wants.
The Bush Administration has a distrust of multilateral organizations like the United Nations [that includes the International Atomic Energy Agency] because of the involvement of countries the US considers hostile or part of the axis of evil. As he actually states that countries which are in breach of the rules should not be given the responsibility to enforce the rules.
On the one hand, continues Dr. Pemberton, Bush wants to work around multilateral framework, but, on the other and at the same time, he calls for them to be improved.
What needs to be realized before the kind of "expanded cooperation" can occur is that there is a deeply held concern that nations have about US intentions and it is a hurdle that must be overcome, Pemberton says. "The Bush Administration did damage their reputation because of the unilateral action they took in the war against Iraq."
This will make it more difficult for Bush to mobilize support. ... Bush is saying, look, we are prepared to work multilaterally, are you prepared to do it with us? So Bush is putting a challenge to states to cooperate. The US has also drafted a Proliferation Security Initiative, which deals in air and sea security, and weapons of mass destruction. This shows what Bush has in mind, which is not so much of a United Nations, but more of a US led multilateral organization that consists of many states that support the US in law enforcement or conventions against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
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Budget Faces a Fight, Pentagon Is Warned
February 13, 2004
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13MILI.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - A senior House Republican and several ranking House Democrats warned top Pentagon officials on Thursday that the military's proposed budget for next year faced a tough fight on Capitol Hill.
Representative Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who heads the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, said the growth in overall military spending made the Pentagon's $401.7 billion budget request for the 2005 fiscal year vulnerable to cutting in favor of domestic programs.
"People will be targeting our budget in a serious way," said Mr. Lewis, who generally supports increased military spending.
The Democrats complained that the likely costs of future operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were not being addressed in the proposed budget.
"We can argue all we want about policy," said David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the committee's senior Democrat, "but at least the basic thing government ought to be able to do is come up with a straightforward, honest set of numbers."
The administration has said it will make a supplementary request of up to $50 billion to pay for military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, but not until January, after this year's elections.
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President Bush's New Iraq Commission Won't Be Investigating the Key WMD Issue:
How the Executive Order Fatally Limits Their Agenda
By JOHN W. DEAN
Friday, Feb. 13, 2004
FindLaw
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20040213.html
George W. Bush has been nothing short of a magician when it comes to making unpleasant matters confronting his presidency disappear. And on February 6, Bush once again did a bit of conjuring. That day, he announced that he was creating an "independent commission, chaired by Governor and former [Virginia] Senator Chuck Robb, and Judge Laurence Silberman, to look at American intelligence capabilities, especially our intelligence about weapons of mass destruction." In doing so, Bush sought to head off what potentially could be an aggressive Congressional inquiry, or a Congressionally created independent commission, on the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) justification for the Iraq war.
Such an inquiry would doubtless focus on a set of questions that is bound to make Bush very uncomfortable: the central issue of whether Bush, and his Vice President Dick Cheney, accurately represented the pre-Iraq war intelligence (or lack thereof) when claiming that Saddam had WMD and that Iraqi had ties with al Qeada.
Bush's magic appears to have worked again. His commission is a sham, and simply ignores the very reason he was pressured to create it. Yet it seems no one is complaining -- or at least, no one who could force the commencement of an legitimate investigation.
Reacting to David Kay's Testimony: "We Got It Wrong"
Bush established this commission to quiet the public reaction to Congressional testimony by his weapons inspector David Kay. Kay reported his failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and flatly asserted that we got it wrong, and there were no stockpiles of WMD in Iraq. He also made clear that he does not think they will be found even given more time to search. Kay also recommended to Congress that an independent investigation be undertaken of this intelligence failure.
To get public attention off of Kay's report (and resignation), Bush has used his political skills to try to silence his former weapons inspector, and to preempt Kay's knowledge and suggestions by making it yesterday's news.
First, Bush invited Kay to the White House for lunch. Meanwhile, his aides advised the news media that the president was considering what he had earlier rejected -- an investigation of the intelligence failure. Using the "wow" of a private lunch with the president appears to have been unsuccessful in wooing Kay, however. The Los Angeles Times spoke with Kay after his lunch with the president. Kay told the Times that he and the president did not get into a discussion about the investigation. And when the Times asked Kay what he thought was an appropriate way to investigate these problems, it reported that "Kay said that his 'model' for the inquiry would be the special commission named by President Reagan to investigate the January 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger shortly after it was launched."
The Times further noted that White House aides were suggesting that the intelligence probe would be patterned, instead, after the Warren Commission (the panel created by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy).
The Country Deserves an Investigation, Not a Cover-up
Neither of these suggestion is what is truly needed here. Indeed, both the Challenger and Warren inquiries are excellent models not for how to conduct an investigation, rather for how to conduct a cover-up.
The Warren Commission's work and findings were so shrouded in secrecy that they have haunted history while creating a cottage industry of JFK assassination conspiracy theories.
The Challenger inquiry was so flawed, that following the recent Columbia disaster, NASA's administrator went out of his way to not repeat those mistakes. ''It is a hard, hard legacy of the lessons learned from the post-Challenger experience. We've learned a lot from that,'' Mr. O'Keefe was reported by the New York Times as saying, "mindful that the cover-up in the Challenger investigation ended many careers and soiled the agency's reputation."
In the end, however, Bush modeled his inquiry on a precedent with which Dick Cheney was most familiar. But first, a look at what he actually has initiated.
The Bush Commission's Stated Agenda Has Little, If Anything, to Do with the Missing WMDs
With a few strokes of his pen, Bush had an Executive Order that he can now use to remove the issue of his administration's distorting Saddam's pre-war WMD intelligence from the 2004 campaign. "The commission is studying the matter," they will say, when asked about the missing WMD in Iraq, and Saddam's ties to al Qeada.
Everyone understands that Bush has removed the issue from the 2004 campaign by not requiring his commission to report until March 31, 2005 -- long after the election. But in fact, he has done much more than this to assure that this commission causes him no political problems. One need only look at the president's statement announcing the commission to understand that Bush is not playing it straight.
For example, he succinctly stated the inquiry's purpose (when reading his prepared statement) as follows: "The commission I have appointed today will examine intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and related 21st century threats and issue specific recommendations to ensure our capabilities are strong. The commission will compare what the Iraq Survey Group learns with the information we had prior to our Operation Iraqi Freedom. It will review our intelligence on weapons programs in countries such as North Korea and Iran. It will examine our intelligence on the threats posed by Libya and Afghanistan before recent changes in those countries."
What does any of that have to do with whether or not the Bush administration misused, falsely reported, or concocted intelligence to take the nation to war? Nothing.
Bush's Executive Order Establishing the Commission.
What about the Executive Order itself? It shows either extreme haste (and carelessness) in drafting, or a blatant effort to pull the wool over the nation's eyes. The Commission's "mission" is set forth in three sections. The first of these contains the Commission's core assignment.
That assignment which is spelled out in three rather convoluted sentences, which I have summarized:
The first sentence states that the Commission's general purpose and mission is "advising the President" about "the most effective counter-proliferation capabilities" and "response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the ongoing threat of terrorist activity." In short, this commission is not reporting to Congress, or the American people; rather, it is only reporting to the president.
The second sentence instructs the Commission to "assess whether the Intelligence Community" has the necessary wherewithal to support the government's "efforts to respond to" the "proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction" in the future. A later section defines the "Intelligence Community" borrowing the definition set forth in the National Security Act.
It should be noted that this definition appears to exclude the Office of Special Planning (OSP). The OSP once resided in the Defense Department. It has been widely reported as a rogue intelligence group, which operated outside the Intelligence Community and provided the key information relied on by Bush and Cheney. Similarly, it excludes the Office of the Vice President, which is widely believed the source of much of the dubious intelligence. Plainly, the OSP and Cheney's operation should be at the top of the Commission's list of which agencies to investigate. Instead, it seems they have dropped off that list entirely.
The third mission sentence calls for the Commission to "examine the capabilities and challenges" of the Intelligence Community in collecting, processing, analyzing, producing, and disseminating WMD related information.
Note, this third section looks to the future, not the past. And while an effort to improve intelligence-gathering for the future is laudable, it is not the same as taking an honest look at intelligence deficits of the past, and why they occurred.
In short, nothing in the first section of the Commission's mission description looks to the very problem David Kay said should be examined. Kay, who gives the administration the benefit of the doubt, says "The charges are out there, and if there was misuse or distortion [of the Iraq intelligence], we need to know it."
The Commission Is Likely to Be Delayed Completing Its Task
Bush's Executive Order only pretends to look at the issue of pre-war Iraqi WMD intelligence. In fact, it does not look at what is really the issue: the use of that intelligence by policy makers. The questions of what the intelligence said, and how it was used -- specifically, was it exploited or distorted? -- are quite separate. Bush's Commission will answer only the first question. And it may not be able to answer even that in a prompt fashion.
Bush has directed the panel to "specifically examine the Intelligence Community's intelligence prior to [the Iraqi war] and compare it with the findings of the Iraq Survey Group [ISG]and other related agencies." That is it.
But this assignment virtually guarantees delay. The ISG has not yet completed its work. And it may not complete that work before the commission's report is due in March, 2005.
After all, the ISG appears to have no time limit on its own work: When David Kay stepped down as the top CIA coordinator of the Iraq Survey Group, he was replaced by Charles Duelfer, who said, "The goal here is to put together the most complete, credible and openly demonstrable picture of what Iraq had, what their programs were and where they were headed . . . . That's not going to be an easy task. The country has gone through a war. Documents, facilities, people have been scattered. But I think where the most sensitive judgment call will be called for is when do you think you have pursued all possible avenues to the extent that you can." In sum, Duelfer is not intending the rush the ISG; he is seeking a comprehensive report from them.
Accordingly, tying the Commission's report to the Survey Group's results means they have no control over when they can issue a comparative report, and a partial report is meaningless.
Bush's WMD Commission Is Reminiscent Of The Rockefeller Commission
Bush's Executive Order's with its limited scope invites a comparison not to the Warren Commission or Challenger inquiry, rather with the Rockefeller Commission. This advisory panel, named after the Vice President Nelson Rockefeller who chaired it, was very familiar to the current Vice President, which suggests Cheney's hidden hand in this inquiry.
In December 1974, during the Ford presidency, a four-column headline-grabbing story by Seymour Hersh appeared in the New York Times. The headline was as follows: "Huge CIA Operation Reported In U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents In Nixon Years." Hersh laid out a "massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation" by the CIA, which by its charter was restricted to foreign intelligence gathering.
Dick Cheney was well aware of the story. At the time, he was deputy chief of staff under Donald Rumsfeld at Gerald Ford's White House (and traveling with the President during the holiday). Cheney can't have forgotten the lessons that were garnered from President Ford's response, given his role in crafting it.
The story broke after Sy Hersh picked up a few trinkets from the CIA's later infamous "family jewels." In 1973, as Watergate was falling apart, CIA Director James Schlesinger had sent a memorandum throughout the agency requesting information about past "questionable activities." The responses were summarized in a seven-hundred page document that became known as the CIA's family jewels. More accurately, it was a time bomb.
President Ford's initial response to the Hersh story was to do nothing. But in Washington, Ford's CIA Director, William Colby, later wrote, Hersh's story "triggered a firestorm." Colby told Ford it was likely to get worse, for amongst the "jewels" were detailed reports of the assassination plots against foreign leaders (Castro in Cuba, Lumumba in the Congo, and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic).
Ford's staff recommended that the way to deal this information buried and away from Congress was for Ford to initiate his own investigation, and preempt the issue. In 1967, Lyndon Johnson had similarly used a commission to head off a Congressional investigation of the CIA. (Later, Ronald Reagan would, again quite similarly, use the Tower Commission to stall the Congress from looking into the Iran-Contra matter.)
Indeed, this stalling tactic, in fact, is as old as the Republic. George Washington used a presidential commission to deal with the Whiskey Rebellion.
Cheney's Advice to Ford Then, May Also Be His Advice to Bush Now
On December 26, 1974, Dick Cheney drafted a memo to President Ford in which he cautioned that when the commission was selected, it was important that it not appear to be "a 'kept' body designed to whitewash the problem."
On December 27, 1974, in another memo to President Ford, Cheney spelled out the goals for a proposed commission: it would prevent Ford from being put on the defensive; it could minimize damage to the CIA by heading off the "Congressional efforts to further encroach on the executive branch" (a refrain that Cheney repeats to this day three decades later); and it would show Ford's leadership.
Fortunately, the Rockefeller Commission did not prove to play quite the role Cheney had scripted for it -- but that was not for lack of trying
Kenneth Kitts, a political scientist who focuses on relationships between presidential power and national security decisionmaking, reported on Ford's "commission politics" in the Presidential Studies Quarterly (Fall, 1996). Kitts notes that Ford's Executive Order creating the commission limited the scope of the inquiry (seeking to prevent examination of the assassination plots). Cheney may have taken a page from the Ford Administration if he helped to draft Bush's very limited Iraq/WMD Executive Order this year.
Kitts also notes that while the members selected for the panel appeared "to be quite conventional," in truth, the commission had been stacked. Ford had personally called each appointee in order to brace each of them -- stressing "the need to protect the [CIA's] ability to operate" and advising them about "any public positions on CIA activities that might be troublesome."
Kitts also found that the Ford White House controlled the Commission's staff selection. Moreover, once the Commission was in operation, "[b]ehind-the-scenes maneuvering shaped the panel's activity throughout the investigation and even altered the content of the final report."
In the end, the Rockefeller Commission did not do what Ford and Cheney had hoped. For they did a good job, and when Ford tried to suppress their report, public and Congressional outrage forced its release. Rather than make the issues disappear, the entire drill only focused more attention on those issues.
Congress and the news media saw through the façade. As a result Congress launched two highly aggressive investigations: the Pike committee in the House of Representatives, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike (D. -TX), and the Church committee in the Senate, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D. - ID).
It's High Time For An Independent Commission to Investigate Iraq and WMD
The Bush Commission, too, may ultimately backfire. But it may have been stacked even more heavily and effectively than the Rockefeller Commission; Cheney appears to have learned from that mistake.
In any case, Bush and Cheney need only get beyond November 2, 2004. (If the Commission backfires in a later year, that will not be as important, especially as the nation may have moved on to other issues by then.) It appears they will succeed.
They have preempted the Congress successfully by appointing a commission with little expertise in intelligence matters that will not report until after the election. They have mandated the commission to do everything but what was being demanded -- namely, that it examine the role of the Bush administration in dealing with the intelligence that was collected, then exaggerated and manipulated.
They have loaded the commission with work unrelated to the reasons the public (and Congress) sought the inquiry. Finally, they have created a study that will be reported only to the president (and vice president), so unless Bush decides to disclose its work, no one will ever know what was, or was not, done by this commission.
Bush should be given an honorary membership in the International Brotherhood of Magicians for his latest political handiwork.
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GOP Legislator Warns of Pressure to Cut Military Budget
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37672-2004Feb12.html
An influential Republican subcommittee chairman predicted yesterday that pressure to cut defense spending will grow this year in the House, warning Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that "people will be targeting our budget in a serious way."
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calf.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, said House members are focusing on the 7 percent increase in the Bush administration's proposed $401.7 billion defense budget when domestic programs are being increased by only 1 percent.
"Outside of homeland defense, literally none of those other [programs] are receiving much of an adjustment," Lewis told Rumsfeld during a hearing on the fiscal 2005 budget. "And, because of that, we anticipate building pressures to find money for other programming."
Lewis's remarks represented the third time in a week that leading congressional Republicans have predicted that the administration could run into trouble this election year sustaining defense increases that have averaged more than 7 percent a year since President Bush took office in 2001.
Rumsfeld acknowledged that $401.7 billion is "an enormous amount of money." But he said in testimony that those funds "are needed because our nation is engaged in a struggle that could well go on for a number of years."
Far from calling for cuts in defense spending, two Democrats on the subcommittee, Norman D. Dicks (Wash.) and John P. Murtha (Pa.), criticized the Bush budget for not including even larger increases for weapons procurement. But the panel's minority members were united in continuing a Democratic assault on the administration's decision against funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the regular budget, waiting instead to request that money in a supplemental appropriation that won't be offered until next year, well after the November election.
"To wait until after the presidential election is blatantly playing politics in everyone's perspective," said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who also pressed Rumsfeld on why the budget contains a 3.5 percent pay increase for military personnel but only a 1.5 percent cost-of-living increase for 648,000 Defense Department civilian employees.
Rumsfeld responded that the decision limiting the cost-of-living increase for civilians was made by the Office of Management and Budget.
Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) noted that the budget does not include funds for ongoing combat operations, for 30,000 new Army troops approved by Rumsfeld on a temporary basis, or for all the armor needed to strengthen military vehicles in Iraq and better protect soldiers.
"This budget is no more a budget than a chorus of kazoos is the Marine Band," Obey said. "That totally corrupts the debate that takes place in the Congress about the nature of the budget and the shape of the budget. This budget, in my view, adds to the credibility problem of the administration."
Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon comptroller, who appeared with Rumsfeld, said that it is impossible to know in advance how much the war in Iraq will cost in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
"We simply cannot predict at this time what a supplemental would require and probably won't have good numbers until the November-December time frame," he said.
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Kay: Bush Should Admit Error on Iraq WMD
February 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Kay-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay is advising President Bush to acknowledge he was wrong about hidden storehouses of weapons in Iraq and move ahead with overhauling the intelligence process.
In an Associated Press interview, Kay said the ``serious burden of evidence'' suggests Saddam Hussein did not have caches of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons at the beginning of the Iraqi war, but was seriously engaged in developing missiles.
``You are better off if you acknowledge error and say we have learned from it and move ahead,'' Kay said in a 90-minute session Thursday with AP editors and reporters.
``I'm afraid if you don't acknowledge error, and everybody knows why you are afraid to acknowledge error, your political opponents will seize on it, the press will seize on it, and no one will give you credit,'' Kay said.
Since resigning last month, Kay has said repeatedly that U.S. intelligence was wrong in claiming that Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and advanced nuclear weapons programs. Those programs were the main justification for the Iraq war.
U.N. and U.S. searches have failed to find the weapons, and Bush has appointed a bipartisan commission to conduct an investigation. Democrats in the meantime are accusing the administration of misleading the American public.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan, asked about the suggestion that Bush acknowledge error, said Kay ``has said the regime was possibly more dangerous than we thought before the war. He has pointed out that, absolutely yes, he agrees that it was a gathering threat.''
He pointed out that Bush has said he had expected to find weapons in Iraq.
Bush and other officials insist weapons still could be discovered. In an interview on NBC-TV's ``Meet the Press'' program last weekend, Bush said, ``They could be hidden, they could have been transported to another country.'' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has also said he believes weapons could still be uncovered.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week he was surprised that the inspectors did not find the weapons in Iraq. ``We presented what we believed the truth to be at the time,'' he told the House International Relations Committee.
Kay said satellites have shown a lot of traffic going from Iraq to Syria, but that U.S. investigators could not figure out what was being transported and ``Syria wouldn't help.''
``My only serious regret about the continued holding on to these hopes that eventually we will find it (weapons) is it allows us to avoid the hard steps necessary to reform the process,'' the former U.N. and International Atomic Energy Agency inspector said.
Kay stepped down from his role as CIA adviser for the weapons search after the military diverted resources from the search to bolster security for troops and fight insurgents. He described a constant battle to keep his staff of 1,400, in which he initially prevailed but began to lose ground in the fall. He said he wasn't informed of the final changes until after the decision had been made.
Without flatly ruling out the weapons might turn up, Kay said his search was complicated by the fact that Iraqis quizzed about Saddam's weapons programs ``will lie to you without embarrassment.''
Despite the lack of weapons of mass destruction, Kay said, Iraq had an aggressive program to develop missiles assisted by foreign technology and scientists.
Some of the scientists eventually left the country but they still helped Saddam by transmitting information to Iraq electronically, he said.
``We have absolute evidence and proof,'' Kay said. But he declined to identify those who he said helped Iraq or their countries.
Kay also said ``the dominance of analytical opinion'' was that two trailers found in northern Iraq were meant to make hydrogen for balloons, not biological weapons. CIA Director George Tenet said last week that the issue was still under debate.
Part of the problem, Kay said, was that the trailers had never been used for anything and that their equipment was not well suited for either hydrogen or biological weapons production. Documents and testimony from Iraqis point strongly toward the hydrogen idea, he said.
Another issue was the discovery of thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes in Iraq. Before the war, Bush administration officials said those tubes were meant to be used in centrifuges to make nuclear bomb fuel out of uranium.
Although Tenet said the issue was still open, Kay said analysts have concluded Iraq had no active nuclear program.
``There's no substantial disagreement that there was no centrifuge program,'' Kay said.
The most likely explanation for the tubes, Kay said, is that they were to be used for artillery rockets.
Kay repeated statements that he did not believe analysts felt pressured to shape their reports to bolster the case for war, a claim made by some Democrats.
Asked whether analysts believed their findings had been distorted, Kay said: ``Were some people uncomfortable about some of the rhetoric? I think the fair answer to that is `yes.''' He stressed that analysts are generally uncomfortable with any change to their wording, but understand that is the nature of politics.
``Politicians choose the best possible argument that will support the course of action they've decided on regardless of whether it's foreign policy or not,'' he said. ``Is that cherry picking? That's the nature of the political process.''
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Bush Orders the Release of His National Guard Records
February 13, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Military-Records.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, trying to calm a political storm, released all his Vietnam-era military records Friday to counter Democrats' suggestions that he shirked his duty in the Texas Air National Guard.
Hundreds of pages of documents detailed Bush's service in the Guard in Texas and his temporary duty in Alabama while working on a political campaign there in the early 1970s. Democrats have questioned whether Bush ever showed up for duty in Alabama.
``The president felt everything should be made available to the public,'' White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. ``There were some who sought to leave a wrong impression that there was something to hide when there is not.''
Bush's medical records -- dozens of pages in all -- were opened for examination by reporters in the Roosevelt Room, but the material was not being distributed publicly.
The records documented that Bush, a pilot, was suspended from flying status beginning Aug. 1, 1972, because of his failure to have an annual medical examination. His last flight exam was on May 15, 1971.
His medical checks, from 1968 through 1971, show no signs of illness at the time except for a brief episode of hemorrhoid symptoms.
``Examinee denies loss of consciousness, motion sickness or other significant medical or surgical history,'' the examining physician concurred. All tests listed as performed, including an EKG, chest X-ray and ear test for altitude, came back normal; neurological, psychiatric and other checkoffs were normal; blood tests showed no signs of infection.
Asked to describe his own health, Bush said at the 1968 exam: ``I feel my health is in excellent condition.''
His flying exam expired on his birthday, July 6, 1972, said White House communications director Dan Bartlett.
He didn't take his next exam because ``he was in non-flying capacity in another state'' and knew he'd be there for months. ``There was no need or reason for him to take a flying exam.
Allegations that he ducked that physical are ``just outrageously false,'' Bartlett said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
In Uganda, terror forces children's nightly flight
Thousands in rural areas flee villages to avoid abduction by rebels
By Emily Wax
Feb. 13, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4260453/
GULU, Uganda - Night was falling quickly. In the faded red and orange light of Africa at dusk, two 15-year-old girls, Jennifer Adoch and Susan Oyella, arms linked, backs straight, hair tightly shaved, hiked dusty trails without shoes, their feet swollen and callused.
advertisement They walked with thousands of other children, all rushing away from the danger of nighttime rebel raids on their villages and toward the safety of the town center to sleep. Tiny boys in tattered clothing, girls with chubby cheeks clutching ragged dolls, others with foam mattresses balanced on their heads, others with nothing at all were walking.
Jennifer and Susan sang a marching song. "People in Gulu are suffering. Education is poor. Communication is poor. There are no more virgins in Gulu," the girls sang sweetly in English. "They were all raped. Hear us now: There are no more virgins in Gulu."
The children are called simply "the night commuters." About 15,000 young Ugandans trek every evening from more than 300 villages, some more than five miles away, into the safety of Gulu, about 175 miles north of the capital, Kampala. Other towns in northern Uganda, such as nearby Lira and Kitgum, also have their nightly flood of children.
• More stories from Africa
Rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, a guerrilla movement active in northern Uganda since 1987, raid villages at night, abducting boys and girls to fill the ranks of their army and to become sex slaves and porters. After the government launched an offensive two years ago, the kidnappings increased. Last year, an average of 30 children every day were snatched from boarding schools and homes, according to UNICEF.
----
US warns Libya over 'destabilising' Africa
Friday February 13, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2004-daily/13-02-2004/world/w10.htm
WASHINGTON: The United States warned Libya on Thursday that its climb down on weapons of mass destruction must be matched by a commitment to stop destabilising activities throughout Africa.
Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations committee that Libya's agreement to stand down in its quest for banned weapons was a 'real breakthrough.'
But he signalled that Libya could not expect a full relationship with Washington until it moderated its behaviour in other areas. "Libya, over the years, has shifted its attention and focus to different parts of Africa. When it sort of fails in one part of Africa, it sort of pops up elsewhere, fomenting difficulty. "We have made sure that what we discussed is their activities in Africa, which must cease to be destabilising, cease to fund (alleged) despotic regimes and cease to cause trouble," Powell said.
"We are not unmindful of the nature of that regime still, and we are not unmindful of some of the unhelpful activities they have participated in over the years, to include unhelpful activities in all parts of Africa," he added.
Powell did not elaborate on the Libyan activities to which he was referring, but in the past, the State Department has expressed concern at Libyan involvement in sub-Saharan Africa, and its role in disputes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Powell on Wednesday told the House International Relations committee that Libya was doing 'very, very well' in dismantling its weapons of mass destruction and has exceeded expectations.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary of State John Bolton said that the United States was considering lifting sanctions on Libya but the timing would depend on how fast Tripoli dismantled its arms programmes. "The precise way in which the various applicable American restrictions on dealings with Libya will be removed is a subject we've been considering internally. We've discussed it with the Libyans and I think you'll see it unfolding," Bolton said.
But he told journalists in Berlin: "There's no deadline or timetable that we're operating under."
-------- business
Ex-Worker to Say Firm Abused Defense Contract
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page E03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38253-2004Feb12.html
A former Halliburton Co. employee plans to tell a panel of Senate Democrats today that the company routinely bought overpriced goods and services under a broad contract with the Defense Department that reimbursed the company for its costs.
Henry Bunting, a former field buyer for Halliburton's KBR unit in Kuwait, said company managers encouraged employees not to worry about price, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said in a letter to Defense auditors, relaying conversations between the former employee and his staff.
Bunting, who left the company last August after working there a few months, said a Halliburton official guided him to use a specific local vendor for exercise equipment, though he could have saved $60,000 by using an American firm. KBR also paid $7.50 each for embroidered towels reading "MWR Baghdad," for Morale, Welfare and Recreation, Bunting said, while regular towels would have cost $2.50 to $3.
Halliburton spokeswoman Cathy Gist said the company found no record of Bunting or anyone making his allegations calling a 24-hour hotline for reporting concerns about business practices. "If he was so concerned about this information, we question why he did not raise this issue by means made available to him," she said in a statement.
Bunting is scheduled to tell his story to the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the Democratic leadership.
Halliburton and its KBR unit have been fighting allegations for months that it overcharged the government for gasoline imports into Iraq and dining hall meals that a subcontractor never served. Without admitting wrongdoing, the company has agreed to refund the government $33.4 million.
"What is most disturbing about these allegations from the whistleblowers is the regular and routine nature of the overcharging," Waxman said in the letter.
Separately, a group of 35 House Democrats wrote Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking that he appoint an independent counsel to investigate Halliburton's use of a Cayman Island subsidiary to do work in Iran. American companies are barred from doing business with state sponsors of terrorism, as the U.S. government has labeled Iran.
--------
The Vice-President and the Contractor
2004-02-13
New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?040216on_onlineonly02
In "Contract Sport," in this week's issue, Jane Mayer reports on how Halliburton, the company that Dick Cheney served as C.E.O. before running for Vice-President, became the single largest defense contractor in Iraq. Here, with The New Yorker's Amy Davidson, Mayer talks about Cheney's past, the privatization of the military, and Washington's revolving door.
AMY DAVIDSON: Vice-President Cheney insists that he's broken all ties to Halliburton, his old company. Has he?
JANE MAYER: To crib from the previous Presidency, the answer depends on what your definition of "ties" is. Is there any evidence that Vice-President Cheney personally directed the government to give contracts to Halliburton? No. Is there any evidence that he personally has been enriched by those contracts? Not directly. But Cheney's insistence that he has no ties to the company is rather legalistic, and misleading. He still earns approximately a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in deferred compensation from Halliburton. He also still holds some eighteen million dollars in stock options, although he has pledged this bounty to charity. But, beyond the immediate financial ties, there is the larger question of what, over time, he has done for the company, and what it has done for him. Cheney earned some forty-five million dollars from Halliburton during his five-year tenure there, from 1995 to 2000. And Cheney is, in many ways, the architect of the contract that gave the company its signal role with the U.S. military today.
When Cheney was Secretary of Defense, during the first Bush Administration, he oversaw a redesign of the way that corporate America services the military. Halliburton was paid $3.9 million to draw up a plan for the way a private company could provide military support to U.S. troops all over the world. Then, in the last months of that Administration, Halliburton was awarded the Army's contract to provide those very same services. The company's familiarity with the process, the experts I spoke to said, gave it the inside track on what has turned out to be billions of dollars of government business. Cheney is unlikely to have been involved in choosing Halliburton in any detailed way, but even his supporters acknowledge that he oversaw the shift to providing so much business to a single company. This ties him to the story today.
Halliburton won a no-bid contract to provide services in Iraq. Was there anything irregular about the process that led to the award?
A better adjective than "irregular" might be "unusual." The controversial no-bid contract was awarded to Halliburton under proper, but rare, "emergency" circumstances. When the Pentagon planned for the war in Iraq, it believed that Saddam's soldiers were likely to sabotage the country's oil wells. Halliburton, of course, had expertise in the extinction of oil-well fires. The company had already won the exclusive contract to support the U.S. troops, which was competitively bid, and so the Pentagon reasoned that they might as well extend the oil-well-fire contract to Halliburton, too. This decision, however, sidestepped the usual procurement process, since there was no competition. It also was odd in that there turned out to be very few oil-well fires, and so the original task was allowed to morph into a much larger one of restoring the oil industry to its prewar levels. As a result, the amount of business that was awarded to Halliburton under the no-bid contract ballooned to as much as seven billion dollars' worth.
Some of Halliburton's defenders have said that there aren't any other companies that are up to the job. Is that a fair point?
This is a fair point, but it raises other questions. The original reason for bringing private military contractors in to handle these jobs for the Pentagon-rather than having the government do them itself-was that the rigors of a competitive marketplace were supposed to drive down costs. But if there is virtually no competition then the situation is more monopolistic than competitive, and cost efficiencies are lost. So it's not much of a defense of the current system to say that no other companies can do what Halliburton can.
Cheney became very rich very fast at Halliburton. In the 2000 Vice-Presidential debate, he said that his success owed nothing to the government. Did it?
The government helped make Cheney rich. While Cheney was in the private sector, working as Halliburton's C.E.O., he spent a great deal of his time personally lobbying for government credit guarantees, and he increased the number of subsidies to the company hugely. So, after years of championing the private sector and opposing big government, Cheney's own business career was very much dependent upon the federal government.
How did his time in private industry shape the kind of Vice-President that Cheney became?
I found it particularly interesting that Cheney, according to several sources, came to distrust the C.I.A. because of an experience he had at Halliburton. Cheney felt that the C.I.A.had been duped into opposing a Russian oil deal that Halliburton wanted. The C.I.A.'s concerns, Cheney believed, were based largely on false accusations generated by rival companies. It seemed possible that the distrust Cheney exhibited toward the C.I.A. regarding Iraq may have stemmed in part from that incident.
You mention in your article that there is a long history of politically connected companies receiving contracts-one example is a Halliburton subsidiary, Brown & Root, which benefitted from its ties to Lyndon Johnson. Isn't this just how business is done in Washington?
The Halliburton story can be seen as the old Washington revolving-door story, but on steroids. The sums of money involved are gigantic compared with those of the past. What also gives the Halliburton story a new degree of significance is that it illustrates the consequences of years of government privatization. Military contractors such as Halliburton have become more and more important, while the bureaucrats who are supposed to oversee them have been diminished. The result is a shift of power, in which some experts fear that the companies are virtually unmanaged by the government. Cheney is a lifelong champion of privatization, so it's fair to see the current mess surrounding Halliburton's dealings in Iraq-for instance, that it overcharged the government for fuel-as an unintended consequence of his political approach.
One striking detail in your article is that, if not for private contractors, the U.S. might need to have more than twice as many troops in Iraq. Are we headed for a privatized military?
When private, for-profit companies become such a big part of America's military might, a growing portion of the U.S. budget falls outside the public scrutiny that would normally exist if the same functions were performed by civil servants. Private military contractors aren't necessarily subject to the Freedom of Information Act, nor are they governed by federal government-ethics rules. So there is less openness and accountability. One Democratic congresswoman told me she worries that this will lead to "secret wars."
You mention that a number of other Administration insiders and associates, like Joe Allbaugh, Bush's former campaign manager, are angling for a share of the money going into Iraq. Is there a feeding frenzy going on?
Given the billions and billions of U.S. government dollars up for grabs for contractors in Iraq, there is, unsurprisingly, a feeding frenzy. But the mood among U.S. investors has been dampened somewhat by the difficult security situation there. Investors want to know what will happen to their businesses when the U.S. pulls out of Iraq.
There was an outcry a few months ago when it was announced that companies based in nations that hadn't supported the war wouldn't be allowed to bid on contracts. The Administration argued that those who hadn't taken the risks of war shouldn't profit from it. Is it reasonable to use contracts as political rewards?
Reasonable or not, political patronage, in the form of giving out fat government contracts, is alive and well in Iraq. Critics, such as retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, told me that they see the Pentagon's move toward private contractors as a deliberate patronage system. Companies that support the Administration, Gardiner thinks, are rewarded with contracts. In turn, these companies contribute to the Administration's political campaigns.
Sovereignty is supposed to be restored to the Iraqis in July. Will that include sovereign control of the contract system?
This remains to be seen. It's unlikely that the U.S. would cede control of its own funds to the Iraqis. But there is a lot of confusion surrounding the process, according to those involved.
It's been a rough couple of weeks for Cheney. There have been questions about the propriety of a hunting trip he took with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, at a time when the Administration has a case before the Court. And a number of his staffers have been interviewed by the F.B.I. or have appeared before a grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, an undercover C.I.A. agent. Is Cheney in trouble?
It's hard to know what the real facts are in some of these cases, such as the C.I.A. leak. However, there is a lot of talk in Washington about whether Cheney's ties to Halliburton have made him a political liability. Some have even suggested that he might be booted off the 2004 ticket. At the moment, this seems close to unthinkable. But it's safe to say that all of these flaps have been problems for Cheney, because they call into question what was billed during the last election as his greatest asset: his judgment.
-------- europe
Feb. 13, 1945 - Dresden firebombing
Antiwar.com,
February 13, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P479
I am not linking to this horrific article to discuss the politics of the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, fifty-nine years years ago today. I am linking to it to illustrate that war is always the most terrible method nations can resort to in settling their differences. It doesn't matter which side you are on; death and suffering don't play favorites. As so many have repeated this past year: war is the ultimate failure of humanity.
Toward the end of World War II, as Allied planes rained death and destruction over Germany, the old Saxon city of Dresden lay like an island of tranquillity amid desolation. Famous as a cultural center and possessing no military value, Dresden had been spared the terror that descended from the skies over the rest of the country.
Dresden was a hospital city for wounded soldiers. Not one military unit, not one anti-aircraft battery was deployed in the city. Together with the 600,000 refugees from Breslau, Dresden was filled with nearly 1.2 million people...
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was in Dresden when it was bombed in 1945. Returning home to Indianapolis after the war, Vonnegut began writing short stories for magazines. Finally, in 1969, he tackled the subject of war, recounting his experiences as a POW in Dresden, forced to dig corpses from the rubble. The resulting novel was Slaughterhouse Five. "Yes, by your people, may I say," he insists. "You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
-------- iraq
NEWS ANALYSIS: VIOLENCE
New Targets: Attackers Shift Their Sights to the Iraqis
February 13, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/international/middleeast/13INSU.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 12 - The fourth deadly suicide bombing in Iraq in less than two weeks suggests that the insurgency that has bedeviled the Americans and Iraqis since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government is changing in important ways.
Since peaking in mid-November, attacks against American soldiers have dropped by more than half, and the gun battles between American soldiers and Iraqi insurgents that used to mark daily life in many cities and towns seem in many places to be on the wane.
At the same time, attacks have increasingly focused on Iraqi civilians, particularly those who are seen to be collaborating with the American-led occupation.
And the attacks are less likely to involve rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs from Baathist arsenals.
Instead, suicide bombings have aimed to inflict maximum damage on Iraqi institutions like the police and military that are central to the American effort to turn over the reins of government by June 30.
Some American and Iraqi officials call these changes evidence that the insurgency is being sustained by foreign fighters with links to international terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, as the ranks of Mr. Hussein's cadre are thinned by capture or death.
The suicide attacks in particular, many officials here say, imply a foreign hand. That idea was strengthened earlier this week when American officials reported that they had obtained a document written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian with well-established links to Al Qaeda, claiming credit for 25 suicide bombings in the country and making clear that it was difficult to recruit Iraqis.
"We do not believe these suicide bombings are being carried out by Iraqis," said Ibrahim al-Janabi, deputy chief of the Iraqi National Accord, a political party with historic ties to the C.I.A. "They have no history of this. Our evidence suggests that most of the recent attacks - Najaf, Nasiriya, the U.N. bombing - were being carried out by foreigners."
At a news conference this week, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military's deputy chief of operations, said preliminary evidence pointed to Al Qaeda's involvement in Tuesday's attack on a police station in Iskandariya, which killed 54 people.
An American military official said the bombing in November in Nasiriya, which killed 31, used a signature Qaeda method: a lead car crashed through the gates of the Italian military compound, clearing the way for a truck loaded with explosives.
Some American officials say foreign fighters, often driven by religious zeal, have formed "tactical alliances" with former Baath Party members to carry out attacks; others say foreigers are taking over as Iraqi militants fall away.
"There are no conclusions, but that looks like what we are seeing," one military official said.
Such conclusions are politically convenient. They echo the Bush administration's assertions, since before the war, that the invasion was a battle in a larger campaign against terrorism. Claiming that foreign fighters are taking over the insurgency also bolsters the administration's position that the Iraqis themselves have been largely won over.
Certainly, tensions between Iraqis and American troops have eased noticeably in many towns and cities in the area north and west of Baghdad where much of the insurgency has played out. In many places there, the Americans have pulled back substantially, turning over responsibility for keeping order to Iraqi forces.
In Baghdad, the Americans are far less visible than they once were, and are planning further pullbacks. In formerly chaotic towns like Ramadi and Falluja, the Americans have mostly shut down their posts and camped outside of town.
"The security situation has gotten much better," Sheik Majid Ali Suleiman, a powerful tribal leader in Ramadi, said in an interview this week. "You don't see the Americans in the city anymore. That's good. And they have arrested a lot of the big people who were making the attacks."
But tensions have only eased, not disappeared. Iraqis turn cold, hard glares at Americans in the area west of Baghdad, the so-called Sunni triangle; attacks continue. On Thursday, gunmen in Falluja fired at a convoy carrying Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander of American forces in the Middle East; the attackers seemed to have been tipped that someone important would be visiting.
And other than the captured document, little hard evidence of foreign involvement in the insurgency has surfaced.
Military commanders along Iraq's borders have said they saw little infiltration. American officials estimate that foreigners make up between 5 and 10 percent of perhaps 3,000 to 5,000 insurgents. But the layered estimates add up largely to guesswork.
Some American officials say they have about 300 foreign fighters in custody; others say the number is not that high.
The evidence can be murky or contradictory. On the same evening that General Kimmitt was saying the Iskandariya bombing appeared to be the work of Al Qaeda, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim of the Iraqi police said the engine number of the truck used in that attack indicated that it once belonged to one of Mr. Hussein's intelligence officers.
Part of the problem is that it is often difficult to identify a suicide bomber.
But not always: on Oct. 27, a suicide bomber who drove his truck into a Baghdad police station failed to detonate his bomb. He was shot instead, and the Iraqi police found a Syrian passport in his possession. Mr. Janabi, of the Iraqi National Accord, said the man turned out to be from Yemen.
--------
U.S. Helicopters in Iraq Face Threats
February 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Dangerous-Skies.html
KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) -- The Black Hawk helicopter lifted slightly to clear the power lines as it skimmed over the Iraqi countryside, its gunners scanning the ground for possible attackers taking aim with shoulder-fired missiles.
Pilot Maj. Michael Tetu was taking no chances flying in the dangerous skies north of Baghdad, where anti-U.S. insurgents have shot down half a dozen helicopters in recent months.
Like pilots elsewhere in Iraq who daily crisscross the country on routine missions, Tetu's chief defense against attack is a simple one: fly fast and fly low.
``Speed and altitude are our friends,'' Tetu said at an air base outside this northern Iraqi city after half a day of ferrying personnel and spare parts to army installations in and around Baghdad.
Despite the risks, helicopter units are in high demand because road travel in much of Iraq is even more dangerous, with insurgents launching near daily rocket attacks on convoys and detonating roadside bombs.
During most of Tuesday's mission, Tetu flew at less than 125 feet above the ground at speeds exceeding 120 mph.
Startled farmers tending crops looked up while the clatter and whine of the massive rotors sent chickens and goats scurrying.
Although close-to-the-earth flight does not eliminate risk, it reduces vulnerability by making the aircraft more difficult to spot from a distance.
A high-flying craft can be seen from far away, giving an attacker more time to target it. But a fast-moving plane skimming the terrain will typically pop up in front of an enemy only at the last moment, reducing the time available to aim and fire, even with a heat-seeking missile.
Since May, 12 U.S. choppers have been shot down or have crashed in Iraq, mostly within the so-called Sunni Triangle -- the area to the north and west of Baghdad where resistance to the occupation is stiffest. More than 50 soldiers have been killed.
``We have adjusted our tactics based on what the bad guys are doing,'' said Tetu, who hails from Washingtonville, N.Y. ``Every mission is taken very, very seriously. We don't treat them ... like walks in the park.''
Citing security reasons, Tetu declined to elaborate on what electronic measures the military is takes to protect its aircraft. But the precautions are believed to include enhanced decoys that attract the infrared seekers on Soviet-built missiles used by the guerrillas, as well as sophisticated electronic jammers designed to short-circuit the missiles' guidance systems.
Still, at least one shoulder-fired missile in the old Iraqi army's inventory, the advanced SA-18 Igla (Needle), is equipped with special filters to defeat flares and other countermeasures deployed by U.S. aircraft.
Helicopters also are at risk from small-arms fire from the ground, with gearboxes and rotating assemblies almost impossible to protect.
As further protection, helicopter often fly at night and without lights. Pilots also vary routes to prevent attackers from learning flight patterns. They also always fly in pairs, to make rescue easier.
The Black Hawks always fly with two gunners who hang from the side of the craft, armed with M-60 machine guns. They look for suspicious movements on the ground, and smoke trails from approaching missiles.
Flying over cities is the most dangerous.
``There is more place for them to hide,'' said Sgt. Michael ``Doc'' Holliday of Elk Grove, Calif.
-------- israel / palestine
This mortal coil
By Amira Hass,
February 13, 2004
Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/393822.html
The residents of the Ma'aniya quarter of Dir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip are entitled to leave and enter their neighborhood four times a day: between 6 and 7:30 A.M., between 10:30 and 11:30 A.M., between 1 and 2 P.M. and between 4 and 5 P.M. Three coils of barbed wire separate them from the exit from their little neighborhood, which is surrounded by barbed wire fencing, observation towers and IDF positions - and by the wall of concrete slabs that surrounds the Kfar Darom settlement, which borders their land. They are trapped between the Kfar Darom greenhouses to the east and the settlement's homes to the west.
"The enclave" - That's how the IDF soldiers refer to the neighborhood. Shortly before the scheduled opening, two military jeeps arrive, either from Kfar Darom to the west of the neighborhood or from the military post to the east of it. A soldier or two gets out and moves the three rows of barbed wire that block the road. Usually, especially in the morning, when the children are on their way to school, the people gather near the innermost coil of barbed wire before the appointed hour and wait for the soldier. Then, they walk in a column behind the jeep, which stops by the outermost coil and remains there for as long as the way is open.
Anyone coming into the neighborhood must present ID. The soldier checks to see if the name is on the list of 137 residents. Anyone who is not a neighborhood resident is not permitted to enter - including relatives who live on the other side of the fence. Cars are not permitted to enter. Ambulances are only permitted entrance if this is coordinated beforehand.
The Kfar Darom settlement, the army base guarding it and the settlement's hothouses are located on the eastern side of Saladin Street, the main artery connecting the northern and southern portions of the Gaza Strip. On the western side of the street is Midreshet Kfar Darom (Kfar Darom College). Surrounding the area of the settlement are the Palestinian neighborhoods of Dir al-Balah, and what were once the fields, groves and hothouses of a town that was known for its dates and its farmers.
In the wake of several suicide bombings around there and shooting incidents near Kfar Darom, the Palestinians were prohibited - as far back as the 1990s - from traveling on the section of Saladin Street running from the north to the south of Dir al-Balah. The defense of Kfar Darom residents from Palestinian shooting from surrounding buildings is evident in the fortifications that have been built around it: high guard towers and observation towers, military positions built of armored concrete, a concrete wall behind which several tiled roofs are visible, a barbed-wire fence, an iron gate.
Now it appears that the plan is to improve and fortify the defensive barrier surrounding the settlement. On January 14 and on February 3, Major General Dan Harel, commander of the IDF forces in the Gaza Strip, signed land confiscation orders affecting 18 Palestinian families. According to the orders, approximately 43 dunams will be needed to build a security fence around Kfar Darom and around Midreshet Kfar Darom. In fact, the area was taken over a long time ago. School principal Khalil Bashir says the orders were intended to impart an ostensibly legal dimension to the land grab.
He received one such order five days ago - just when the whole world was talking about an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. His three-story house sits about 30 or 40 meters west of Kfar Darom. In early 2001, it was converted into a military position. The family of eight refused to leave; they live on the first floor, where everyone must sleep in one room, which is relatively protected from the frequent gunfire from the military posts defending the settlement. A camouflage net, coils of barbed wire and cameras are kept on the roof. The family is only permitted to invite guests on rare occasions, and must request permission from the soldiers at the adjacent army post. They may not wander around near the house or in the area to the east, where their greenhouses once stood - before they were destroyed by IDF bulldozers. Of the 120 date palms they once had, only six were not uprooted. Two trees have been shot and are slowly dying.
Under fire
The signs of Israeli gunfire from the past three years are quite evident on the Palestinian houses to the north and west of Kfar Darom, no more than 100 meters away. The deserted UNRWA school opposite Kfar Darom to the west is perforated like a sieve. Bullet holes of all sizes adorn the houses - some are abandoned, while at others, laundry has been hung to dry, indicating that the occupants had nowhere else to go. The ground is littered with bullet casings (Palestinian, of course) and remnants of Israeli shells or rockets, some still stuck in a wall here and there.
What was once a Palestinian police position - a simple concrete building - has been reduced to rubble. What was once a main road is now a mix of cracked pieces of asphalt with grass coming up in between, twisted iron rails and shattered concrete blocks. The Ma'aniya enclave is on the eastern side, about 500 meters from what was once the main road. The enclave is hidden from view by a cluster of simple concrete structures, some full of holes, alongside huts and flocks of sheep and children playing among the sand dunes, the piles of garbage and the mounds of rubble.
Last Monday, at 6:30 in the morning, the Jeep did not show up and the soldiers did not move the three coils of barbed wire aside. "It was foggy, and that's dangerous," explained one of the soldiers who arrived later, at 10 A.M. (after prior coordination with the IDF spokesman) to move the barbed wire for some Israeli visitors. S., who arrived by bicycle from Dir al-Balah, was not permitted to enter. "We open at 10:30, and then he'll be able to enter," the soldier explained. S. works the night shift at a cookie factory in Gaza. He starts work at 11:30 P.M. and finishes at 3:30 A.M. In the morning, he has to wait three hours for the soldiers to open the barbed wire. On Monday, when he arrived at 6:30 A.M. to find the barbed wire still in place, four warning shots were fired in his direction from the army post that sits atop a sand dune.
About a week ago, a shepherd brought his sheep to graze on the grass outside the enclave. Shots were fired from the army post and several sheep were killed. The bodies of two still lay on the ground. Thus it is made clear to the Ma'aniya residents that they had better not think of moving the barbed wire themselves.
Before September 2000, they earned a living from agriculture and from working in Israel. Several hundred dunams around the area are owned by the five clans in the neighborhood. Three of the clans are refugee families from Be'er Sheva, who bought land right after the explusion in 1948, or as soon as they understood that they would not be returning to their land anytime soon. One refugee, 72, still remembers that land; the young people sitting in a circle on plastic chairs, behind the barbed wire that encloses their neighborhood, recall what used to lie beyond the fence: "It was a paradise here. They used to send people who were depressed here, to revive their spirits. There were date palms and olive trees, and other fruit trees, and we grew vegetables in the greenhouses. Before 1991, dealers from Israel used to come straight to us here to buy our farm produce."
Gradually, since the end of 2000, all their groves and greenhouses and agricultural equipment and irrigation pipes have been torn up and destroyed in the IDF's repeated "exposure" operations. A jointly owned American-Palestinian plant for manufacturing concrete slabs stands deserted amid their fields. They say that no one from the neighborhood has been involved in shootings against the soldiers or Kfar Darom. Nor has anyone here been killed or wounded by IDF fire. They don't mention the dead and wounded - both Palestinian and Israeli - that have fallen around them. "There hasn't been shooting from us, or toward us. When there was shooting, we didn't know what was happening, and we went into our houses and closed ourselves inside."
Some of them are wary of saying anything, and most are very cautious with what they say - a caution learned from living between settlers and soldiers, which stems from a desire not to be evicted from their homes. "They uprooted our trees and demolished our greenhouses for the sake of security, to give the soldiers who are guarding Kfar Darom a clear field of vision. Since all the vegetation has been gone, there hasn't been any shooting," says one of them. So does this mean they understand the army's actions? "Yes, we understand, but we want the State of Israel to compensate us, because what happened is not our fault."
Severed ties
Another one adds, perhaps in jest, perhaps not: "We want to be recognized as a neighborhood of Kfar Darom." And a third, speaking seriously, says: "We understand one thing: Security is important to Israel, and we can't do or say anything when they are acting in the name of security. Sometimes they would come and destroy our greenhouses here - you can see the plastic and iron remnants of them - and we'd be standing alongside them and chatting with the soldiers who were guarding things."
A smooth road connects Kfar Darom to its greenhouses, and Israeli farming vehicles travel back and forth on it. Some are driven by Thai workers. In the past, the people of Ma'aniya worked in the Kfar Darom greenhouses. They weigh their words: "We knew them by name and they knew us by name. Since September 2000, we haven't visited them or talked to each other at all. All the ties were severed." When asked what they think of Ariel Sharon's announcement that he will evacuate the settlements in Gaza, one hastens to say: "We welcome it, so we'll be able to live normally, like human beings." But the others quickly chime in, all saying in so many words: "We don't believe it. It's all a lie. We've stopped reading the newspapers. It's all just empty talk."
Now they are lowering their expectations: Those who work in Israel are waiting for the army to lower the minimum age for workers being permitted to enter Israel - 35 - before they reach that age. The limit was set following the suicide bombing at the entrance to the Erez industrial area about a month ago. In the past three years, they haven't been able to go to work in Israel (in places such as Tel Yitzhak and Rehovot) for more than three months.
And they're also praying that their neighborhood will be reconnected to the water system. In its efforts to expand and ensure an unobstructed field of vision around Kfar Darom, the IDF destroyed the water pipe that connected Ma'aniya with Dir al-Balah. For bathing, they use water from two agricultural wells on their land - but this is salty, non-potable water. Purified drinking water is transported in jerrycans from the neighboring city, on a donkey cart, and they pay NIS 16 per liter for it. Some here dream that maybe they will be connected to the Kfar Darom water system. They also long for the gate to be opened more than four times a day, and for their relatives to be able to enter.
The current arrangement is relatively good, they say in the neighborhood. It was introduced a month ago, "after an IDF commander came and talked with us about our problems." Eight months earlier, after a youth from El Bureij blew himself up next to a military jeep, access from the north was completely blocked; they were permitted to leave the fenced-off neighborhood at all hours of the day, but only via the roundabout route to the east, which is eight kilometers long. The destination: Dir al-Balah, which is just across the road to the west. A five-minute walk. A taxi cost two shekels in each direction, 15 shekels if ordered in advance. These are not sums that the 26 families in Ma'yaniya can afford. "We live on tomatoes and eggplant in the summer and on lentils and hubeiza [an edible wild plant]". Every few months, they receive a 30-kilo package of basic food products from UNRWA.
"The dream of every one of us is to remain in our homes," one of the young people says. Then, they are asked, do you understand the settlers who do not want to leave their homes? The caution that prevailed before vanishes. "If Israel wants peace, the settlers must leave here. Look at how the settler lives, and look at how I live. The government pays him and will pay him compensation for all damages. No one paid us anything when we lost our land there (in Be'er Sheva) and here. They must leave here, because they belong to the State of Israel. Let them go back to their state."
Before 1967, recalls the old man in the group, he and his neighbors and relatives worked the lands where the Kfar Darom greenhouses now stand. They leased the land from the Egyptian Custodian of Enemy Property, because the area was under private Jewish ownership. Kfar Darom, so they say in Gaza, is the only settlement that is "registered in the Tabu." This means it was built not on lands confiscated from the Palestinians, or on "state" lands, but on land purchased by Jews before 1948. "But we also had lands registered in the Tabu, where Israel is today," someone hastens to mention. "So they should let us go back to them, too."
`A big bluff'
The Palestinian "enclave" next to Kfar Darom, with its special entry and exit arrangements, is not the only one of its kind in the Gaza Strip. Even more serious mobility restrictions apply to other Palestinian communities on whose territory settlements have been built. This is the case in the Siafa area in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and in the large Muasi region, which stretches along the coast from Dir al-Balah to Rafah. The Katif Bloc settlements are built within this area, and within it and alongside it are dozens of military outposts and guard towers and observation towers overlooking the Palestinian towns to the east. About 8,000 Palestinians live here.
Anyone who does not have a special magnetic card issued by the IDF, attesting that he or she is a resident of Muasi, is not entitled to enter or exit this area and its beach. Muasi residents between the ages of 15 and 24 can only enter and exit with prior coordination. Sometimes the age threshold is raised to 35 or 40.
Special permission must also be arranged (a lengthy process) to bring in family members for events such as weddings or funerals. Controlled entry to the Muasi area is only permitted to pedestrians in groups of five, at certain hours. The area is entered via the Tufah checkpoint, to the west of the Khan Yunis refugee camp, very close to the Neve Dekalim settlement. Cars are not permitted to enter or exit. Produce is transferred from the back of one truck to another at the checkpoint. Over the past three years, these restrictions have impoverished most of the Muasi area residents, who earn their living raising guavas and vegetables.
Last Tuesday, taxi drivers waiting for pedestrians coming from Muasi, and several Muasi residents, were asked what they thought of Sharon's announcement about an evacuation of the Gaza settlements. "Who ever asks what we think?," says one old man, who then turns to leave. "How are we supposed to believe that they're going to dismantle, when construction on the settlements is always continuing?," said one of the drivers, who has not been into Muasi, where his relatives live, for three years.
"A few weeks ago," said H., a Muasi resident who works in Gaza City and was now waiting for his turn to return home, "the military commander - they call him `Pinky' - came to the area. Yaniv and Fadi came with him to translate, and some captain named Sami. Pinky said he wanted to do something to ease conditions here, to hear our complaints. He was told that people can't go out, they can't bring in anything, that families can't visit.
"I told him that we lack a soccer coach - as a joke. And he replied that he watches soccer games on television at night. `Give me the name of a coach and let me know where there's a field and I want you to have a team that I'll be proud of,' he said to me. They gave a name to Abu Hassan from the Palestinian liaison office, and since then, nothing has happened. Pure blather. Like Mr. Sharon and his announcements. It's just hot air. He says one thing and then orders the defense minister to make the ground here burn. Mr. Sharon speaks with weapons. When I heard that he was talking about evacuating the settlements, I said it was a big bluff. He has a big problem with his sons, he has to go to America to talk with Bush. When he comes back, it will all be forgotten."
In the shadow of the wall around Neve Dekalim, at the entrance to the fortified Tufah checkpoint, which is surrounded by concrete slabs, the group of people discussing Sharon's announcement has grown. Some say they know settlers "who came here for the money and will go if they get money, and have essentially already left and are living in Israel, but their greenhouses are here." Some know settlers "who won't want to budge from here, either because they are devoutly religious or because they get a tax exemption." And they all say: "If they mean to evacuate the settlements in Gaza only to get the world's permission to take over the West Bank, we don't accept it. We are one people."
H. mentions that the Koran says the Jews will build settlements and fight from within them. "Bring a Koran," he says, when his citation is met with skepticism. Someone brings a little Koran and he leafs through the pages and starts to read from Surat al-Hashr (59), verse 14: "They [the Jews] will not fight you except in fortified villages or from behind walls." Asked whether the Koran says anything about Sharon evacuating settlements, he says, "No it doesn't."
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World Court snubbed on barrier case
World Scene - ISRAEL
February 13, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
JERUSALEM - Israel won't attend World Court hearings on the West Bank security barrier, saying yesterday that the judges don't have the authority to rule on the case.
Israel, however, won't remain entirely on the sidelines in the closely watched case, which begins Feb. 23 in The Hague. The Foreign Ministry is dispatching representatives, hundreds of Israeli demonstrators plan to fly in, and an Israeli rescue service is sending the skeleton of a Jerusalem bus mangled in a Palestinian suicide bombing.
Israel says it needs the barrier to keep out Palestinian attackers. ~
'Excessive' force by Israel criticized
LONDON - British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told visiting Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz yesterday that he was concerned about Israel's "excessive use of force" in the occupied territories.
Mr. Straw "raised concerns about the issue of the Israeli defense force's tactics in the occupied territories," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.
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U.S. May Support Israeli Approach on Leaving Gaza
February 13, 2004
New York Times
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13DIPL.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - The Bush administration, signaling a major shift of policy on the Middle East, has indicated that it may support Israel's new proposal for a unilateral withdrawal from parts of Gaza and the West Bank, according to administration and Israeli officials.
A senior American official said that the administration is "taking a close look" at the policy, and that the president would send three senior aides to Israel next week to get questions answered before the proposal was endorsed. But administration and Israeli officials say they expect a favorable American response.
In the past, the administration has maintained that peace can be achieved in the Middle East only by reciprocal concessions agreed upon in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Embracing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan would depart from that principle by accepting the idea that such negotiations are not possible, at least for now.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said Thursday that a pullout from Gaza would be "a step in the right direction." Another official said the withdrawal plan, if implemented properly, "could reduce friction between Israelis and Palestinians and improve Palestinian freedom of movement."
The Israeli policy, outlined in recent weeks by Mr. Sharon, proposed withdrawing Israeli troops and dismantling settlements in parts of Gaza and smaller parts of the West Bank. American officials have expressed concern that it would in effect abandon the idea of negotiating with the Palestinians to achieve final statehood.
Mr. Sharon has repeatedly said he would turn to unilateral withdrawal only if he concluded that the approach backed by President Bush, known as the road map, had failed.
Mr. Bush has come under criticism from Democratic candidates for what they characterize as his failure to press for peace in the Middle East. Many of Mr. Bush's supporters, particularly evangelical Christians, are staunchly pro-Israel. If Israel takes unilateral actions with American blessings, Mr. Bush could campaign by citing progress in Israel and his own hard line against Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
Under the road map, drawn up by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, each side would offer simultaneous negotiated concessions to move along the road to peace. Now, in a gesture to American concerns, Israeli officials are maintaining that Mr. Sharon's approach does not abandon the road map, but would break an impasse in Israeli-Palestinian relations and improve the prospects for peace.
"Our assessment is that the administration is very receptive to the plan of Prime Minister Sharon, on the basis that it is within the context of the vision of President Bush and also within the road map," said Ambassador Daniel Ayalon of Israel.
While they are in Israel, the American officials will seek assurances that a unilateral withdrawal does not rule out negotiations with the Palestinians in the future.
They will also ask for changes in the barrier Israel is constructing in parts of the West Bank, which has walled off many Palestinians from their farms, schools and homes.
Israeli officials say Mr. Sharon and his aides will make those assurances next week to Elliott Abrams, director of Middle East affairs at the National Security Council; Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser; and William J. Burns, head of the Middle East bureau at the State Department.
American officials say they are extremely concerned that they are not seen as walking away from the idea of a negotiated settlement or from pressure on the Palestinians to take charge of security in Gaza and the West Bank.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that in the last day he had talked with several foreign ministers to get the Palestinians "to come forward with a security plan to start taking action against terrorists in a very significant and decisive way."
In private, however, American officials - and indeed European and United Nations diplomats - say the Palestinian Authority is, more than ever, riven by factions and in the full grip of Mr. Arafat, whom the Bush administration refuses to deal with.
Palestinian spokesmen maintain that this state of affairs is the result of Israel's harsh crackdown in Gaza and the West Bank and the failure to make concessions that might give moderate leadership an opportunity to emerge.
"Sharon has done everything he can to destroy the Palestinian Authority and the moderate Palestinian leadership," said Edward Abington, a former State Department official who now consults with the Palestinians and who just returned from a weeklong visit during which he met with Mr. Arafat and others.
For the administration, endorsing a unilateral withdrawal is likely to be seen by Palestinians and some others as a retreat from its insistence on negotiations as the only solution. But increasingly, administration officials have said negotiations were impossible because of Palestinian recalcitrance.
In January, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney told the Los Angeles World Affairs Council that progress was "virtually impossible" as long as Mr. Arafat was in charge. Since then, his control has become even more undisputed than before.
When Mr. Sharon first broached his withdrawal plan in a speech in December, it was greeted with considerable skepticism in the Bush administration. A senior official told reporters not to pay attention to such a plan because it was only hypothetical and to pay more attention to Mr. Sharon's promises to ease harsh conditions in the West Bank.
Now administration officials say that the withdrawal plan might accomplish the objective of easing such conditions, if it leads to removal of scores of checkpoints and closures in the West Bank area.
Administration officials are also concerned about turning Gaza and parts of the West Bank over to Palestinians, if that means effective control by Hamas or other militant groups that have considerable support in those areas.
In addition, it is not clear what Israel would do to curb rocket attacks or other anti-Israel actions from Palestinian areas placed under Palestinian control.
But many Middle East experts, including veterans of the Clinton administration, said Mr. Bush had little choice but to endorse the Sharon plan.
"How can the United States say it is against withdrawal of Israelis from Palestinian areas?" said Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration's Middle East negotiator. "The administration sees this as a tremendous development because if you don't have diplomacy going on, at least you have something that creates space for future diplomacy."
Martin S. Indyk, ambassador to Israel under President Clinton, said the Bush administration's challenge was "to get behind this plan and shape it to make it work to the benefit of an ultimate settlement." Israelis, he said, had given up on the Palestinian Authority because it had failed to stop terrorism.
"The Sharon plan's advantage is to keep it consistent with the road map but not to generate a road map negotiation with the Palestinians," said Mr. Indyk, who is director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
The road map calls for negotiations to create a Palestinian state over three years' time. It has been frozen because Israel has not stopped military operations in Palestinian territories and Palestinians have not halted attacks on Israelis by militant groups.
By contrast, Mr. Sharon's plan would create a Palestinian unit that might be able to control its affairs, even if it constitutes perhaps half of the territory the Palestinians want for their state. Israel would not necessarily declare the entity a state.
Even the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has spoken positively of Israel's taking unilateral actions, as long as a negotiating process with the Palestinians is kept alive. Last week he said that a Gaza pullout was "a positive development" and "a first essential step" leading to "a new dynamic" in the peace process.
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Israel police may use pig fat to stop attacks on buses
February 13, 2004
AFP
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/12/1076548157145.html
Israeli police have come up with plans to put bags of pig lard on buses in a bid to deter Palestinian militants from carrying out suicide attacks.
Rabbinical authorities have given their approval to the idea on the grounds that it could be a life-saving measure, even though pigs are considered impure by Jews as well as Muslims.
Authorities believe the plan could discourage Palestinians from carrying out attacks as pieces of their exploded body could come into contact with the pig fat, prejudicing their chances of entering paradise.
The Ma'ariv daily says the rabbinical dispensation could mean that security forces also hang bags of lard in shopping malls and schools.
Public buses have been a favourite target for Palestinian suicide bombers since the start of the intifada in September 2000.
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Israel Will Not Join in Hearing in Hague
February 13, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/international/middleeast/13MIDE.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, Feb. 12 - Israel said Thursday that it would not take part in a hearing this month at the International Court of Justice on the legality of the contentious separation barrier that is under construction in the West Bank.
The court is to hear oral arguments at The Hague beginning Feb. 23 and is to issue a nonbinding ruling on the legality of the barrier, which faces fierce opposition.
The office of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said in a statement that the court "has no authority to discuss the terrorism prevention fence since it concerns Israel's basic right of self-defense."
Israel has built about one-quarter of the barrier, which is expected to stretch for more than 400 miles when completed. Under the route approved by Mr. Sharon's government, about 15 percent of West Bank land would be on the western, or Israeli side of the barrier, according to United Nations calculations.
Israel says the barrier is essential to preventing Palestinian suicide bombings, and that it cuts into the West Bank in order to incorporate Jewish settlements. Palestinians argue that the barrier's route takes large chunks of land that they are claiming for a future state.
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Why Waziristan cannot be conquered
by A. H. Amin
Friday 13 February 2004
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/4872/?PHPSESSID=8cbe1162b9965a9c87b7adba15e14c1f
"Beware of despising the tribals. They brought both Muslim and non Muslim Emperors to grief whether it was Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, Ranjit Singh or the British king."
Those who know the Pathans and their history will know exactly what is happening is Waziristan today and which Lashkar is doing what and for what reason. The tribal Pathans have traditionally been supreme fighters who defied the Mughal occupiers, the Sikh occupiers, the British occupiers and now the latest occupiers, i.e. the US coalition chasing the Pathans and Muslims of various castes and creeds motivated by sheer ideology.
While the tribesmen know the art of resistance they also know the art of extortion from occupiers who try to buy them. Thus while the tribal Pathans killed many thousand occupiers in the British era they also managed to extort many subsidy payments from the British. Thus the same tribesmen who worked as contract laborers making roads for the British during day time, enjoyed sniping and shooting many British officers after sunset or during daytime when not on duty.
Thus when a lashkar of tribesmen appears to be on the payroll of political agents fed by US CIA dollars, all is not what it seems. In this case the tribals are performing an overt function of collaboration and a covert function of increasing their financial muscle which may be subsequently channelised into gun running, drugs or Jihad.
The tribesmen were not loyal subjects of the British. They spent their lives in sniping and ambushing the British and their mercenary Indian troops. Their life script was not to get a BA degree and become a minor civil servant or an ICS officer more loyal than the King. Nor did they get barristers degree and conduct profitable law practices in the courts of the British occupiers.
These men defied the British, killing over 10,000 British or Indian troops from 1849 to 1947, bleeding the British Empire white, forcing the British to maintain a division plus force in the Trans Indus tribal tract. These tribesmen gave sanctuary to Mughal Prince Ferozshah and to the followers of Syed Ahmad Shaheed of Rai Barelly at Malka and Ambela. These tribesmen greeted the British Indian army with fire while many today are famous as great Muslim leaders accepted knighthood and were ridiculed for doing so by Maulana Zafar Ali Khan of "Zamindar" fame.
The tribesmen acceded to Pakistan out of their free will. They were not conquered by the Pakistan Army. As a matter of fact no army including the Mughal, Sikh or British ever succeeded in conquering them. The tribal areas were occupied, overrun but never conquered. Their mosques were never used as stables and powder magazines as many in the tract East of Indus including the Badshahi Mosque of Lahore.
The tribesmen were not saved by the army of the English East India Company unlike the Muslims of Delhi or UP or the Muslims of Punjab and settled Pathan areas were from Hindu Marathas and Sikhs in 1803 and 1849. The tribesmen's mosques were not restored after humble petitioning to the English East India Company as was the case with Badshahi Mosque of Lahore in 1856.
The tribesmen were not willing mercenaries of the British and many Mehsuds, Wazirs and Afridis defected to the German lines in WW-I and returned to Tirah and Waziristan to wage Jihad against the British. The tribesmen cannot be compared with mercenary Muslim troops who opened fire on the Holy Ka'aba on British orders or who gunned down freedom fighters like an FF unit did at Jallianwalla Bagh in 1919.
The tribesmen acceded to Pakistan on the solemn assurance by Mr Jinnah that their customs and their Pathan way of life would not be interfered with. The tribesmen waged Pakistan's first successful Jihad in Kashmir in 1947-48. The tribesmen were used as cannon fodder during the Afghan War of 1979-89 when many generals became rich overnight and won cheap glory without exposing themselves to within 300 miles of hostile fire. The tribals braved salvoes of Soviet Katushkas and shrapnel of Hind Gun ships while sons of ex military tailors became billionaires.
The tribals were more Pan Islamist than Jamaluddin Afghani, more martial than any so called martial race of Indo Pak. More resolute than any general from Cape Komorin to Khunjerab Pass. The tribals are raised as snipers, not as sycophants, their life script is not to please 15 different seniors and get a good ACR, practicing sycophancy with civilian prime ministers and launching coups without a shot being fired against unarmed civilian heads of state.
What is happening in the tribal areas is not in Pakistan's national interests. The venom which has been forced into the tribal Pathan's soul is counterproductive for Pakistan in the long run.
The tribal areas has seen many occupiers. They are classic practitioners of Liddell Harts strategy of indirect approach. Their guerrilla tactics are far more subtle than that of Mao, Ho Chi Minh or Che Guevara. They apply Mao without knowing what he had written. They apply Sandino's Nicaraguan tactics which brought US Marines to grief without ever having heard of him. They are warriors par excellence.
For each militant handed over the tribals gain goodwill from greedy political agents who they deceive and thus succeed in sheltering 50 militants. There is a method in the apparent outward collaboration of the tribals. They cannot be overawed by a telephone call or bought by a million dollar retainer.
No cadet school or college can tame the tribals for whom music is the whistling bullet and its ricochet in the rocky gorges of Waziristan. The tribals don't need a federal government to make money. Their very location is an asset.
Beware of despising the tribals. They brought both Muslim and non Muslim Emperors to grief whether it was Jahangir, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb, Ranjit Singh or the British king.
These are not the men who would sell their mother for a thousand dollars as some US senator said about some Pakistani leaders. These leaders may be found in Dera Ghazi Khan or somewhere East of the tribal areas. The tribals are sons of their fathers and there is no confusion about their paternity.
A man who does not know the tribal Pathan way of life is not competent to judge the subtleties of their character. It appears that the same mistake is being made today in the highest echelons of Pakistan's present military usurpers.
-------- pacific
US may establish large military depot in Australia
Friday February 13, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2004-daily/13-02-2004/world/w13.htm
CANBERRA: The United States is considering developing a joint training facility in Australia capable of storing large amounts of military hardware, a senior Pentagon official said here on Thursday.
US Under Secretary of Defence Policy Douglas Feith insisted Washington was not pushing for a permanent military base, saying the US military would rather develop relationships as it realigned its global defence posture.
"One of the best ways to operate together effectively is to train together," Feith said after talks with Defence Minister Robert Hill. "So we looked at the possibility that we can work on additional combined training and Australia may have some capabilities that can be developed here that can be used to promote combined training," Feith said.
Feith said talks on a military storage depot -tipped for Australia's remote Northern Territory, were at a pretty broad level of generality. The idea of a military depot was first floated four months ago, with reports saying it would contain large amounts of tanks, artillery and supplies.
"Our newer thinking is not about creating new bases, it's about creating capabilities that we can move forward and do a better job of fulfilling the commitments that we have to allies and friends," Feith said. "That involves being able to operate where we need to around the world as circumstances require," he added.
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Pakistan, a rogue state unpunished
February 13, 2004
Sydney Morning Herald
http://smh.com.au/editorial/index.html
In American usage, the problematic term "rogue state" usually means a nation which puts a high priority on subverting other nations by violence, including terrorism in all its forms. Since September 11, 2001, the declared mission of the United States President, George Bush, is to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists and regimes that sponsor them. His decision to make war on Iraq was based on the threat he said it posed with its weapons of mass destruction.
Pakistan's marketing of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea surely makes it a rogue state in US eyes. Yet Washington's response to Pakistan's utter disregard for the wider concerns - shared by many countries, including Australia - about nuclear weapons proliferation has been extraordinarily mild. No sanctions of any kind are proposed. Instead, Mr Bush has side-stepped the issue and called for a new commitment by the 40-nation "Nuclear Suppliers Group" to refuse to sell nuclear equipment to any country that does not have fully operating facilities to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel into plutonium.
That face-saving gesture leaves the US open to accusations of double standards. For example, the US condemns North Korea for exporting Scud missile technology, but forgives Pakistan for exporting nuclear weapons technology. Washington overthrew Saddam Hussein on suspicion of his capacity and intentions with regard to weapons of mass destruction, but lets pass Pakistan's blatant breaches of nuclear non-proliferation protocols.
The contradictions are not confined to the US. Much of the abundant evidence of systematic transfer of Pakistani nuclear weapons technology - not just blueprints but also equipment such as centrifuge components and other materials - centres on Abdul Qadeer Khan, the chief designer of Pakistan's atomic weapons.
In December, before Dr Khan was exposed as having personally enriched himself by selling his country's nuclear know-how, Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, said anyone who passed on the country's nuclear secrets would be punished. But Dr Khan is a popular hero for Pakistanis who see him as having given them the bomb, to match India's. General Musharraf has not only pardoned Dr Khan. Against the evidence of the Pakistan military's role - such as by airlifting centrifuge tubes to North Korea - General Musharraf continues to insist any transfer of Pakistani nuclear secrets has been Dr Khan's work.
General Musharraf escapes rebuke from Washington because the US needs his co-operation in its continuing fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban networks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. US fears of precipitating General Musharraf's overthrow are greater than its concern to punish Pakistan's blatant nuclear weapons marketing.
The positive aspect of this sorry tale is the intelligence triumph represented by the comprehensive evidence amassed against Dr Khan. That, and the detailed knowledge now available of the network of nuclear equipment suppliers in numerous countries, from Malaysia to Germany, shows the extent of the nuclear proliferation problem. It also shows that Mr Bush's call for stronger measures to counter that problem will work only through continuing and sustained intelligence-gathering efforts and, ultimately, greatly improved international co-operation.
Howard's jolt on MPs' super
The Prime Minister, John Howard, has acted with commendable speed to replace the superannuation scheme for federal MPs with one more in line with "community standards". His decision, endorsed by cabinet yesterday, will avoid a fight with the Opposition Leader, Mark Latham, on the issue.
Mr Latham's promise to give up his superannuation entitlements if elected smacked of gimmickry. But it was very effective in thrusting the question of reform to the centre of political debate. It hit a nerve of resentment in the community, to which Mr Howard has felt compelled to respond. Mr Howard says it is the superannuation component of MPs' remuneration package, not the overall package, that is "generous". That is putting it mildly, though his point that overall politicians are not overpaid is fair.
Not that politicians deserve sympathy. The problem which Mr Howard is now suddenly proposing to deal with is old, and entirely of the politicians' making. Scared that voters would punish them if they voted themselves salary increases or took the rises offered by remuneration tribunals, MPs have a history of amazing bipartisanship in finding gains elsewhere. This is most obvious with electoral allowances - dressed up as funds for electorate expenses but in reality, vehicles for salary rises. But it applies also to pensions. An audacious attempt six years ago by the NSW Parliament to sneak a superannuation windfall through is just one example. Arguments that seek to justify pension generosity in terms of MP vulnerability to election losses or difficulties in finding paid work after politics are as tired as they are irrelevant in the modern world.
MPs are underpaid but the deficiency should be addressed in salary, as suggested by the NSW Liberal leader, John Brogden, not anachronisms like guaranteed pension schemes. The federal and NSW parliaments have closed off one of the more gnawing excesses, stopping recently elected MPs receiving pension benefits before the age of 55. They need to get a lot bolder. They should deal with their grievances about salary disparity with the private sector and with their own senior subordinates. But they should do it openly so that their employers - the public - get a precise measure of their cost. If Mr Howard's proposal meets that test of balance and openness, it will show the way for similar reform in NSW, as agreed by the Premier last night.
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Pakistan has apprehended 500 al-Qaeda terrorists: Powell
Friday February 13, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/feb2004-daily/13-02-2004/main/main9.htm
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said Pakistan has apprehended more than 500 al-Qaeda terrorists and members of the Taliban through support from President Pervez Musharraf, stronger border security measures and law-enforcement cooperation throughout the country.
In a testimony before the House International Relations Committee, on President's Budget Request for 2005 on Wednesday, Powell referred to "many counter-terrorism successes in cooperating countries and international organisations."
He said as part of the war on terrorism, President Bush established a clear policy to work with other nations to meet the challenges of defeating terror networks with global reach. "This commitment extends to the front-line states that have joined us in the war on terrorism and to those nations that are key to successful transitions to democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan," he said, adding: "Our assistance enables countries cooperating closely with the United States to prevent future attacks, improve counter-terrorism capabilities and tighten border controls."
Powell said the international affairs budget provides more than $5.7 billion for assistance to the countries that have joined the US in the war on terrorism, including Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, Afghanistan, Indonesia and the Philippines. "US assistance has also resulted in unparalleled law enforcement and intelligence cooperation that has destroyed terrorist cells, disrupted terrorist operations and prevented attacks," he said.
Powell said winning on the battlefield with the superb military forces was just one step in defeating terrorism. To eradicate terrorism, he added, the United States must help create stable governments in nations that once supported terrorism, to go after terrorist support mechanisms as well as the terrorists themselves, and help alleviate conditions in the world that enable terrorists to bring in new recruits.
In Iraq, he said, the United States faces one of its greatest challenges in developing a secure, free and a prosperous Iraq. Afghanistan, he added, was another high priority for the US administration. "The US is committed to help build a stable and democratic Afghanistan that is free from terror and no longer harbours threats to our security," he said.
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China hand ousted
Inside the Ring
By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 13, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inring.htm
China specialist Ronald Montaperto, a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst once investigated on suspicion of being a spy for China, has been placed on leave from the Pacific Command's Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, we have learned.
Mr. Montaperto's departure from the Hawaii-based defense think tank was the result of a "personnel action," said a Pacific Command official, who declined to comment further, citing privacy concerns.
Another official said Mr. Montaperto's departure was the result of "security-related concerns."
No other details were available on the circumstances related to the departure. But defense officials tell us Mr. Montaperto recently tried unsuccessfully to regain a position at the National Defense University's Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs.
Mr. Montaperto came under suspicion of being a Chinese spy after a Chinese government official defected to the United States after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. The defector told U.S. intelligence that China had successfully developed five to 10 clandestine sources of information here.
FBI counterspies suspected Mr. Montaperto was one of them when he worked in the DIA's China section. He had developed a close personal friendship with a Chinese major general, Yu Zhenghe, an air attache at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
Mr. Montaperto was later cleared by investigators.
One official said Mr. Montaperto may have been dismissed from the Pentagon think tank in Hawaii as part of the expanding counterintelligence investigation of Katrina Leung, a Chinese-American socialite who worked as an FBI informant and who is accused of being a double agent who supplied secret documents to China.
Mr. Montaperto, who was dean of academics at the center, could not be reached for comment.
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INTELLIGENCE
Stung by Exiles' Role, C.I.A. Orders a Shift in Procedures
February 13, 2004
New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13INTE.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - American intelligence officials who before the war were sifting through claims that Iraq had illicit weapons were generally not told that much of the information came from defectors linked to exile organizations that were promoting an American invasion, according to senior United States intelligence officials.
The claims, which have largely proved to be unsubstantiated, included those from a defector who was identified as early as May 2002 as a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Nevertheless, reports based on his debriefings arranged by the Iraqi National Congress found their way into documents and speeches used by the Bush administration to justify the war.
The nondisclosure of the source's connection to an exile organization was "standard practice" under the procedures in place at the time, intelligence officials said on Thursday. But that episode and others have prompted the Central Intelligence Agency to order a major change in its procedures. Operations officers will now be required to tell analysts more about sources' identities and possible motivations.
"Barriers to sharing information must be removed," Jami Miscik, the C.I.A.'s deputy director for intelligence, said in an address to analysts on Wednesday. The change is the most significant to emerge from what the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, acknowledged last week to have been apparent misjudgments in prewar intelligence about Iraq.
The shift in policy and the content of Ms. Miscik's address were first reported Thursday by The Washington Post.
The fact that the undisclosed information about sources included not just names and titles, but even their links to exile organizations, was described on Thursday by senior intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Tenet has ordered his subordinates to put in place "a permanent and lasting solution" to the problem within 30 days, Ms. Miscik said in the address, the text of which was provided by intelligence officials.
Ms. Miscik also said that an internal review of the way the C.I.A. had handled prewar intelligence on Iraq had found "cases in which a single source has different source descriptions, increasing the potential for an analyst to believe they have a corroborating source." She said the review had also uncovered cases in which a source was identified as reliable when the information had in fact come from "a subsource about whom we know little." "Analysts can no longer be put in a position of making a judgment on a critical issue without making a full and comprehensive understanding of the source's access to the information on which they are reporting," Ms. Miscik said in the speech, a copy of which was provided by intelligence officials.
Ms. Miscik also said that the "single most important aspect of our tradecraft that needs to be examined" was whether the intelligence analysts were doing enough to question old assumptions. "Quite simply," she said, "we need to take a hard look at what we assume to be true."
So deeply held was the view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons - within the intelligence community and beyond - that it took American interrogators several months to concede that Iraqi prisoners who repeatedly said Iraq did not have such arsenals might be telling the truth, current and former intelligence officials said in recent interviews.
"They denied that there were weapons, and so we polygraphed them," a senior intelligence official said. "And even when they passed, our first response was to say, wow, they really are good at deception."
As early as May of last year, the month that major combat operations ceased, senior Iraqi officials and scientists in American custody were uniformly denying knowledge of any chemical or biological weapons production or reconstituted nuclear program, senior intelligence officials said. But the administration gave its first public hint that the suspected weapons stockpiles might not exist only in October, in an interim report by David A. Kay.
The burden of the C.I.A. plan to disclose more information about intelligence sources will fall on the agency's directorate of operations, which handles human intelligence, government officials said. The intelligence directorate, which is headed by Ms. Miscik, focuses on analysis, and has historically been prevented from learning much about the identity of intelligence sources.
"When it comes to foreign intelligence, there should be no such thing as D.I. and D.O. information; it is agency information," Ms. Miscik said. "We are not brushing aside the agency's duty to protect sources and methods, but barriers to sharing information must be removed."
A senior intelligence official said that the "whole intelligence community is undergoing a look" at how information about sources should be shared. But Mr. Tenet's decision affects only the C.I.A., not the 14 other intelligence agencies he oversees, government officials said.
That means it will not apply to the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose reports - based on the debriefing of the inadequately identified defector - the administration cited as evidence that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical weapons.
The episode was first described in general terms by Mr. Tenet in a speech last week.
In providing the most detailed account to date, senior intelligence officials said the defector, a military official, had been introduced to the Defense Intelligence Agency's human intelligence service in early 2002, as part of a standing arrangement with the Iraqi National Congress. That group, headed by Ahmad Chalabi, had built close ties to the Pentagon and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
The defector was debriefed in a "third country" - not Iraq or the United States - resulting in two intelligence reports in which the information he provided was described as credible, the officials said. In keeping with standard practice, they said, those reports and others involving defectors introduced by the Iraqi National Congress made no mention of links to the organization, even though it was openly promoting an American-led invasion of Iraq.
During follow-up interviews, however, the Defense Intelligence Agency officers detected inconsistencies in the defector's account and concluded that he had been "coached by the I.N.C." to provide information about Iraq's illicit weapons program, one official said. That prompted the intelligence agency to issue a "fabrication notification" in May of 2002, instructing other intelligence agencies to disregard the defector's information as unreliable.
But in what Mr. Tenet has described as a mistake, the warning was never linked electronically to the earlier reports. The defectors' claims were thus included in both the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 and the presentation last February to the United Nations Security Council by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
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U.N. Envoy, Visiting Iraq, Backs Cleric on Elections
February 13, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/international/middleeast/13IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 12 - A senior United Nations envoy said Thursday that he supported a powerful Shiite cleric's call for elections to install a new sovereign government, but did not offer a specific timetable.
"Elections are the only way to bring Iraq out of the tunnel," the envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, told reporters after meeting Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf.
Mr. Brahimi, who is leading a United Nations team that arrived this week to assess the possibility of holding direct elections, did not say whether he thought elections could be held by May 31. That is the date by which the Bush administration hopes to put a transitional national assembly in place to appoint the new government.
Though the Bush administration has yet to acknowledge that security also poses a problem for elections, many experts say the country is too unstable to stage a fully democratic process.
An explosion killed one American soldier and wounded two others in a Baghdad suburb late Thursday, The Associated Press reported Friday.
The blast occurred at 10:40 p.m. on Thursday in the Abu Ghraib part of the capital, striking a patrol by members of the 16th Military Police Brigade, said Cpl. Craig Stowell, an American military spokesman.
The American military said Thursday that two soldiers from the First Armored Division were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Baghdad during a patrol on Wednesday night.
Ayatollah Sistani has been insisting on elections to appoint members of the national assembly and strongly opposes the Bush administration's plan for a caucus-style selection process. The White House last month asked the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, to intervene because Ayatollah Sistani had said he would seriously weigh the opinion of the United Nations.
After meeting with the ayatollah, Mr. Brahimi said "we are with him on this 100 percent because elections are the best means to enable any people to set up a state that serves their interest." Mr. Brahimi added that "we also agree with his excellency that the elections must be well prepared and well arranged and must be done under the best possible circumstances to get the results that Ayatollah Sistani wants and the people of Iraq and the U.N. want."
Fred Eckhard, the United Nations spokesman, said the United Nations team had found a consensus among Iraqi leaders that elections were the best way to establish a "fully representative and legitimate government." But first, he said, the right "technical, security and political conditions" must be in place.
Mr. Brahimi's statements on Thursday morning make it increasingly apparent that the White House will have difficulty selling Iraqis on its plan for caucus-style balloting.
American officials have indicated they are willing to make adjustments to their plan, but want to stick to a deadline of June 30 to hand over sovereignty. Direct elections are not possible before then, they have argued, because proper voter rolls and laws cannot be set up in time.
Ayatollah Sistani has said he is willing to postpone direct elections if the United Nations team so recommends. What mechanism the United Nations might suggest is unclear.
Dan Senor, a spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said American administrators were still awaiting a report from the United Nations.
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U.N. Envoy Backs Iraqi Vote
In Meetings, Brahimi Says Elections Are Viable Before Date Set by U.S.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37688-2004Feb12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Feb. 12 -- A senior U.N. envoy has indicated to Iraqi leaders that he believes nationwide, direct elections could be held late this year or early next year, according to several Iraqis who met with the envoy this week.
The envoy, former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi, was dispatched to resolve disagreements among Iraqis over the formation of a transitional government. He has suggested through questions and responses to various proposals that he favors holding elections sooner than the United States has envisaged but not before a planned handover of sovereignty this summer, the Iraqis who met with him said Thursday.
Iraqi and U.S. officials with knowledge of Brahimi's meetings said his strategy could represent a fundamental breakthrough in the political impasse that has so far stalled U.S. efforts to transfer power to Iraqis. "He's attempting to move everyone to the middle ground," one member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council said after talking to Brahimi. "He's trying to get everyone to walk back from their corners."
The Bush administration and leaders of Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority oppose elections to select an interim government and instead favor carefully managed regional caucuses. Leaders of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority, most notably Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's top religious figure, have rejected the caucus process and insisted on direct elections to choose the interim government before the handover of sovereignty, scheduled for June 30.
At a meeting with a group of Iraqi political leaders this week, Brahimi remarked that "elections are clearly not possible now," according to a person in attendance. The attendee said Brahimi, who is leading a small delegation of U.N. elections specialists on a fact-finding mission in Iraq, then asked, "Could we have elections in eight months from now?"
"It is our sense Brahimi and the United Nations are moving toward elections after the transfer of sovereignty but before the end of the year," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite political party that has called for early elections.
Brahimi held a 21/2-hour meeting Thursday with Sistani in the holy city of Najaf in which the U.N. envoy outlined the challenges of holding elections before June 30, as the ayatollah has urged.
"He explained in great detail to Sistani and his aides the process that is required to organize elections," said Brahimi's spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, who attended the meeting. "You can't really start organizing them until you have a political consensus and the legal framework -- not to mention security."
Fawzi said that after Brahimi "enumerated the tasks that had to be accomplished. . . . It became very clear that it was unlikely that elections could be held before the 30th of June."
Sistani "acknowledged that he had understood the information" but did not indicate whether he would change his position, Fawzi said.
Mowaffak Rubaie, a Governing Council member who is close to Sistani, said the grand ayatollah likely would not object to elections for an interim government later in the year, so long as the caucuses were not held. "I think he will keep quiet about it," Rubaie said of Sistani.
At the United Nations, a spokesman for Secretary General Kofi Annan said the U.N. leader "understands there is a consensus emerging" for Brahimi's talks. The spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said Annan believes "there is wide agreement that elections must be carefully prepared, and that they must be organized in technical, security and political conditions that give the best chance of producing a result that reflects the wishes of the Iraqi electorate."
Shiite leaders, many of whom were persecuted by former president Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government, fear the caucus system will deprive them of control of the interim government. Because Shiites constitute a majority of Iraqis, they contend elections are the best way to ensure they will have influence over the political transition.
Arab and Kurdish Sunni leaders have generally opposed the idea of early elections out of concern that a popularly elected Shiite government would be dominated by conservatives endorsed by religious leaders. Moderate Sunnis, and even some liberal Shiites, worry that such a government might impose sharia, or Islamic law, and roll back women's rights. Sunni leaders say the caucus system would ensure fair representation in the interim government and provide more time for them to organize political parties.
The Bush administration has opposed early elections for many of the same reasons. U.S. officials also contend that it would be impossible to hold elections before June because Iraq lacks adequate security, an election law, voter rolls and polling equipment.
Shiite leaders maintain that those problems are easily surmountable. They say a nationwide database of 27 million names used to distribute monthly food rations could serve as a voter roll. Polling places, they said, will only require guards and locked ballot boxes.
"We don't need elections to be up to European standards," said Abdel-Mehdi, the Shiite political party official. "You have to adjust to the time and place -- and to the demands of the people. The people want elections, and we need respond to that."
The Bush administration's transition plan calls for regional caucuses to be held during the spring to select an interim government that would assume sovereignty by June 30. Elections would be held in March 2005 to select delegates to draft a constitution. Another round of elections would be held in December 2005 to elect a government as outlined in the constitution.
Although Iraqi political leaders agreed to that plan on Nov. 15, Sistani raised objections a few weeks later. By January, most Shiite members on the Governing Council began to insist the American plan would have to be revised.
After Thursday's meeting in Najaf, Brahimi told reporters he supported the ayatollah's demands for elections. But the envoy did not address the issue of when those elections should be held.
Sistani "is insistent on holding the elections, and we are with him on this 100 percent because elections are the best means to enable any people to set up a state that serves their interests," Brahimi said.
Referring to Sistani by an honorific reserved for descendants of the prophet Muhammad, Brahimi said he was "in agreement with the sayyid that these elections should be prepared well and should take place in the best possible conditions so that it would bring the results which the sayyid wants and the people of Iraq and the U.N. want."
Some Sunni leaders who have spoken to Brahimi said they regarded elections at the end of the year to be a workable compromise. "It's not ideal, but it is much better than having them right away," said Hoshyar Zubari, Iraq's foreign minister and a senior leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party.
Brahimi is leading a six-person delegation that includes three elections specialists. The group, which arrived in Baghdad on Saturday, has spent its time in almost non-stop meetings with political, religious and social leaders. The team plans to return to New York early next week. It will then write a report for Annan suggesting alternatives to the Bush administration's transition plan.
Although Brahimi's apparent strategy to accelerate elections may gain approval from Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis, it also poses a new challenge for the Bush administration: How would Iraq be governed between the handover and the election?
Among the ideas under consideration by U.S. and Iraqi officials is a plan to hand sovereignty to the Governing Council, either in its present 25-member form or with additional members. Another option would be to hold a series of modified caucuses or town meetings to select an interim council of 200 to 300 members.
American and Iraqi officials have effectively ruled out delaying the handover of sovereignty, reasoning that it would be politically explosive both in Baghdad and Washington.
U.S. officials in Baghdad are keen to stick with some form of the caucus system to create an interim administration, even if it will be in power for only six months. The officials contend such a process will create a ruling body far more representative than the Governing Council, which they fear could use its powers to aid its own members in the election process. Holding onto caucuses also would allow the Bush administration to "save face by sticking to at least part of the November 15 agreement," an American involved in the political transition said.
But Shiite leaders said any U.S. effort to impose caucuses would be rejected by Sistani and other religious figures. "Instead of wasting time with caucuses, we should focus now on doing what we need to do to hold elections as soon as possible," Rubaie said.
Rubaie said Sistani "would be fine" with having the Governing Council assume sovereignty for a few months until elections are held. "As long," Rubaie said, "as it's not going to be permanent."
With Brahimi's report expected before the end of the month, Bush administration officials in Washington and Baghdad are working on contingency plans to bridge any gap between the handover of sovereignty and an election. Robert Blackwill, a top aide to the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is in Baghdad this week holding meetings with Iraqi leaders about transition strategies.
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When the wheels fall off
By Keith Andrew Bettinger
Friday, February 13, 2004
WASHINGTON - The United States' two forays against Iraq have served as showcases for the US military's constantly evolving tactics and technology. Operation Desert Storm of early 1991 illustrated battlefield revolutions: for the first time spectators could witness bombs dropping into chimneys and precision-guided missiles exacting a terrible toll on the hapless Iraqi military, keeping civilian deaths low - relative to previous conflicts. Then again in 2003 the world watched while the US Army rolled over its Iraqi opposition.
The results of both conflicts were all but preordained. Thanks to superior training and resources and an overwhelming technological advantage, the broad US-led coalition in 1991 and the much narrower "coalition of the willing" in 2003 were able to make short work of an adversary that was formidable on paper. However, these stunning military triumphs obscure the parts of the story that are less interesting to the prime-time crowd.
The rest of the story lies in what happens after the major shooting stops, and in behind-the-scenes evaluations of military performance used to assess the effectiveness of the billions of dollars the US spends on defense and the future direction of its military. There is serious debate within the Pentagon over two major issues: what physical assets should comprise the US military for the new millennium, and how the armed forces will adapt to the challenges presented by the non-traditional types of conflict they are increasingly being called on to participate in.
A soon-to-be-published official history by the army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (a "quick history", in the words of one Fort Leavenworth official), and obtained by The New York Times sheds some light on Operation Iraqi Freedom and some of its unpublicized flaws. The Times offered a tantalizing peek at the report's findings: "Tank engines sat on warehouse shelves in Kuwait with no truck drivers to take them north. Broken-down trucks were scavenged for usable parts. Artillery units cannibalized parts from captured Iraqi guns to keep their howitzers operating. Army medics foraged medical supplies from combat hospitals. In most cases, soldiers improvised solutions to keep the offensive rolling."
The article goes on to describe logistical failures that threatened to cripple an entire armored division and communications blackouts that forced soldiers to communicate with cellular phones and e-mails. These anecdotes might seem more appropriate in describing the Iraqi army, but they are indicative of greater problems and deeper faults within the Pentagon.
The Combined Arms Center report is based on interviews with nearly 3,000 personnel and on more than 100,000 documents. A buzz already surrounds the history, and it is sure to create waves in the Pentagon that will ripple throughout the army and trigger questions from Congress. The report was ordered last year by former army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki, who retired in June. Shinseki frequently butted heads with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in arguments that represented the growing gulf between the civilian leadership of the armed forces, appointed by President George W Bush in 2001, and the career officers who worked their way up the chain of command. Although initially compatible, Rumsfeld's plan for a mobile, scaled-down military was so radically different from Shinseki's vision of an army to meet the needs of the 21st century that the two drifted apart.
The new report is bound to be controversial because it provides support for many of the positions held by Shinseki before he retired in ignominy. All branches of the service had been preparing for war in Iraq since the 1990s; the war games were part of routine contingency planning, and didn't indicate an imminent invasion. According to army procedure, they developed a Time-Phased Force and Deployment Data (TPFDD) plan, an extremely intricate master plan detailing the movements of each and every unit and the "logistics tail" (the supply of fuel, spare parts, food, etc) needed to keep that unit operational. This plan initially called for an invasion force of about 400,000, including support personnel. The original plan also envisioned the US leading a broad coalition, much like Operation Desert Storm.
However, Secretary Rumsfeld began reviewing the TPFDD in November 2002, trimming the number of personnel to about 75,000. These modifications were part of a new kind of operational thinking by Rumsfeld, who reportedly views the army planning process as cumbersome and inefficient, hobbled by bureaucracy and mired in old-style management. The army, on the other hand, views the planning as necessary to prepare for any contingency and essential to ensuring victory. James Fallows, in a lengthy Atlantic Monthly article describing the process, wrote that "making detailed, last-minute adjustments to the TPFDD was, in the Army's view, like pulling cogs at random out of a machine". He quoted one inside source thusly: "The generals would say, 'Sir, these changes will ripple back to every railhead and every company.'"
The new army report as well as reports from other service branches (still in the pipeline) could severely damage Rumsfeld's influence and standing among members of Congress and the military intelligentsia. Fallows describes a process in which Rumsfeld haggled with generals over the TPFDD like an accountant examining a company's books, scrutinizing every deployment. Critics of Rumsfeld are sure to seize upon the report as an example of reckless leadership and a shallow understanding of how the military works. It will be easy game to point to a causal link between Rumsfeld's line-item vetoing of units and the myriad failures and difficulties faced during the war (which are detailed in the army's history) and subsequent occupation.
The army's history could be referred to as the Revenge of Shinseki. Though commentators initially predicted a compatibility between the two leaders, the relationship between Rumsfeld and Shinseki deteriorated rapidly over modernizations and weapons programs such as the Crusader artillery unit and the Stryker combat vehicle. Rumsfeld's strategic vision for the military also won him no friends among Shinseki and other reform-minded generals. In addition, Rumsfeld and his deputies made no real attempt to hide their disdain for Shinseki and his ilk. Rumsfeld engaged in tactics that observers called "dirty"; he announced Shinseki's replacement more than a year before the general's retirement, for example.
The acrimony between the two and the attitude Rumsfeld brought to the department led to some uniformed men referring to him as "the enemy". US News and World Report described the relationship at Shinseki's retirement: "Rumsfeld's in-your-face approach rankled Shinseki, a quiet general who tried not to make waves. The general was even publicly rebuked by Rumsfeld's staff for telling Congress it might take hundreds of thousands of troops to secure post-Saddam [Hussein] Iraq, a prediction that looks even more correct." The day after Shinseki's remarks to Congress, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz issued a statement that Shinseki's estimates were "wildly off the mark".
Shinseki drew fire from conservatives as being a holdover of the multilateralism of the [former President Bill] Clinton years, an approach to international conflict that, according to them, was failed and flawed. Shinseki, who was appointed by president Clinton in 1999 to a four-year term, argued that the army should be reconfigured to be more effective at peacekeeping operations and to be more flexible and versatile for the various types of collective actions facing an active and relevant United Nations. His outlook and vision reflected the belief that nation-building would become a core component of the army's mission.
While both leaders agree that the old Cold War-style army is obsolete, Rumsfeld has described his focus more as "winning the peace", rather than keeping it. Rumsfeld's vision for the future is a sweeping one: he sees a smaller, more mobile army used in conjunction with a greater reliance on "smart-weapons" technology and precision strikes from afar. His backers refute as expensive and inefficient the overwhelming-force doctrines advocated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former chairman of the joint chiefs, and Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of US forces during Desert Storm. They pointed to the US victory in Afghanistan as support for their views; the National Review reported that Shinseki insisted that 50,000 troops would be needed to destroy the terrorists and the Taliban, whereas Operation Anaconda and subsequent undertakings have employed far fewer men. The unstable and violent state of Afghanistan in the aftermath of major hostilities, however, raises serious questions about the long-term effectiveness of the Rumsfeld approach.
One conspicuous flaw, exemplified in different ways in both Iraq and Afghanistan, is how the armed forces function as part of a coalition. Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan was able to use fewer US personnel because it relied on allies in the Afghan anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and counted on them to establish an orderly, centralized government to fill the vacuum left by the vanquished Taliban. Now those allies have become regional warlords whose vision for Afghanistan differs starkly from that of the US. In Iraq, the imperative for invasion argued by the president and his aides alienated nations the army would have liked to count on for support, thus the scaled-down force arrived at by the bargaining in the Pentagon was confronted with tasks that taxed its resources. Rumsfeld's new armed forces would specialize in winning the peace, but other nations are needed to assist with tasks associated with peacekeeping and nation building. Although the pledges of assistance from other nations in Afghanistan provided hope for this approach, the aftermath of Iraqi Freedom has revealed its weaknesses.
How will the report be used by the factions within the Pentagon? Shinseki's defenders will likely point to it as a justification and an indictment of the civilian leadership. Rumsfeld, on the other hand, might use it in his case for further reform in the army, beating the drum for radical changes. He may suggest that the history is merely a product of the old army - a result of the moribund culture that now more than ever needs a reorientation for today's missions. In an interview with Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith explained that Rumsfeld's "big strategic theme is uncertainty. The need to deal strategically with uncertainty. The inability to predict the future. The limits on our knowledge and the limits on our intelligence".
This chaos theory of management probably holds some promise for a directional orientation for the army. However, Rumsfeld's interference in the planning process seems to cripple the army as it functions now. Fallows concludes in his article that Rumsfeld's "embrace of 'uncertainty' became a reckless evasion of responsibility ... he was not careful about remembering his practical obligations. Precisely because he could not foresee all hazards, he should have been more zealous about avoiding the ones that were evident - the big and obvious ones the rest of the government tried to point out to him."
It is clear that the new army history of the Iraq war presents no surprises: all of the difficulties and problems depicted in it were brought up in the planning stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom. A report prepared before the commencement of hostilities by Conrad Crane and Andrew Terrill for the Army War College drew on historical examples to provide guidance for war in Iraq. In the introduction, the report advises that "to be successful, an occupation such as that contemplated after any hostilities in Iraq requires much detailed interagency planning, many forces, multi-year military commitment, and a national commitment to nation-building".
The report points to recent post-conflict scenarios the US has been involved in and claims they are all characterized by poor planning. The past problem scenarios also anticipate specific areas that will tax the military - policing, civil affairs, transportation - and the report asserts that an exit strategy must include political stability, which in itself is a daunting challenge. The report pointed to Desert Storm for lessons and predicted that Ahmad Chalabi, now part of the US-installed Iraqi leadership, and the exiled Iraqi National Congress leaders would encounter a great deal of resistance in Iraq. The report also cautions military leaders to plan for the long haul and not to overestimate support from civilian agencies.
The rosy scenario that the civilian leaders depicted before the war was not justified by the expectations of military leaders. The history will show that the many of the assumptions on which Operation Iraqi Freedom was predicated were inaccurate. While not mentioning Rumsfeld explicitly, it will be a short logical leap to link the failures of the operation to the defense secretary. In an election year for a president who sees many of the assumptions upon which his decisions have been made crumbling, these revelations may have serious implications not only within the Pentagon, but also on the election.
-------- propaganda wars
Heard on the Hill
FRIDAY February 13, 2004
Salt Lake Tribune
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Feb/02132004/utah/138499.asp
Rep. Ralph Becker noted the other day that some subjects are uncomfortable in polite company. The Salt Lake City Democrat was querying witnesses on "Special Nuclear Materials," a type of plutonium and uranium waste.
"People call it SNM," he said, "and I have a difficult time with that."
The giggling that erupted from throughout the hearing room suggested others agreed.
----
A (Terrorist's) Letter from Iraq
The so-called Zarqawi Memo may or may not be genuine, but it's a revealing picture of Iraq right now
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Feb. 13, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4253025/
Feb. 12 - It's springtime already in Baghdad. Traffic is thick on the streets and people fill the sidewalks in the early evening, strolling through the shopping districts. The suicide bomb that took out 47 young men lining up for jobs with the new U.S.-trained military yesterday-a day after another bomb killed 53 Iraqis outside the capital-was seen as a tragedy, of course, but not much of a disruption. Iraqis have learned, after 35 years of totalitarian tyranny, genocidal wars and, now, U.S. occupation to accept the facts of life and death and move on. The Americans may have a harder time of it, though. For us, the facts on the ground are pretty stark: an attack on U.S. forces every hour, at least one of our soldiers dying every day, and more than $1 billion of taxpayer money spent on this enterprise every week.
So the spokesmen for the U.S. military and the Coalition Provisional Authority are always looking for good news. They tout the election of an Olympic Committee (elections being alright for athletes, in the Coalition's view, but not so good for constitutional conventions) or the installation at long last of a cell-phone network in the Iraqi capital. When asked why, despite such happy events, the number of attacks on Americans and suicide bombings aimed at Iraqis working with them has increased, the answer is always pretty much the same: the resistance is getting desperate, so the more things improve, the more murderous it will become. With such bulletproof logic, the occupation spokesmen can pretend that the policy, at least, is invulnerable.
Now we discover that one infamous terrorist may actually agree with the American spin. Amid great fanfare, the Coalition has released a letter ostensibly found on a CD-ROM sent by one Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi to his betters in Al Qaeda, wherever they may be. The tone of the English-language "highlights" provided to the press is so self-serving it's almost embarrassing. As Coalition spokesman Dan Senor summed it up yesterday: "Mr. Zarqawi says in the memo that if the Iraqis assume effective control of their own government, the terrorists, the Al Qaeda elements, will lose their quote-unquote 'pretext' to wage terror in this country-and he says they will literally have to pack up and go somewhere else, find another battle. We hope he's right, because that's the path we're on; we are on the path toward handing over sovereignty, and we are on the path toward defeating these terrorists. The two are inextricably linked."
But it gets better. Zarqawi, you'll recall, was the gimpy Palestinian-Jordanian figure cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell last year as a vital link (sort of, maybe) between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. So the mere mention of his name allows those who conjured up the Iraq invasion in the first place to bring out their old smoke-and-mirror routine implying that Saddam was behind September 11.
Given the Bush administration's record peddling bad intelligence and worse innuendo, you've got to wonder if this letter is a total fake. How do we know the text is genuine? How was it obtained? By whom? And when? How do we know it's from Zarqawi?
We don't. We're expected to take the administration's word for it. "How it was found is not as important as the fact that we have it, we've reviewed it, we understand what it is saying, and we can use it ... to understand the thought process behind the terrorists," explains Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military briefer at the five-o'clock follies in Baghdad.
You're forgiven if you have your doubts. I certainly have mine. But after going over a translation of the complete document by NEWSWEEK's staff, I'm inclined to agree with the general. Unlike the politically correct excerpts, which left out the first nine of 17 pages, the unsanitized Arabic text rings true to the tone of many Al Qaeda manifestoes:
"I say, and may Allah help me, that the Americans entered Iraq aiming at establishing the state of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates, and that this American Zionist administration believes that by speeding up the establishment of [this] state of Israel it will itself speed up the return of Christ."
Most of the document is actually a screed against Shiites, who make up the majority of Iraq's Arabs but are regarded by bin Laden's crowd as traitorous heretics and a fifth column in the ancient struggle against the West. Fomenting sectarian war with these apostates is not just a tactic, but a strategy and, indeed, a righteous cause as the letter-writer sees it. The author brags of organizing some 25 "martyrdom operations," meaning suicide bombings, many of them targeting Shiites as well as Americans, police and other Coalition forces. All that's true to form. Maybe this is Zarqawi, maybe not, but whoever is writing has an accurate sense of Al Qaeda's thinking and a feel for the situation on the ground here.
Woven through this diatribe is a cold-eyed appraisal of other major players in Iraq today, their weaknesses and the possibilities they offer for the Islamic revolutionaries' strategy. Such frank analysis is also typical of Al Qaeda-ish ideologues.
The majority of Sunni Iraqis, says the letter-writer, "dislike the Americans and wish for their withdrawal, yet they look for a bright shining future and they are very easy prey for the cunning media and deceptive politics." Their tribal leaders and religious scholars are not interested in holy war, preferring instead "to dance [ceremonial dances] and finish with a big meal." The Muslim Brothers, who belong to one of the oldest international Islamist political movements, now "bargain with the martyrs' blood and build their fake glory over the skulls of the faithful." They compromise with the Americans, seeking seats in the new government, while trying to control the jihad by pulling the purse strings.
As for the Americans themselves, "the Crusaders," they're easy targets because they're spread so thin and don't understand anything about the country. The writer proposes not only to kill them when possible, but to abduct them "so that we can exchange them for our arrested sheikhs and brothers." Not a happy thought.
The strategic challenge for the letter's author is what to do when the American troops have pulled back to the relative safety of their garrisons and handed off most of the fighting to Iraqi police and soldiers who actually know the terrain, the language, the people, and in many cases have deep family ties in the community.
On the one hand, that will make it a lot harder to fight "the foreign occupation," especially if you're a foreigner yourself. But the challenge the author sees is not the power of some new "democracy" (which is mentioned ironically), it's the bastardized security apparatus drawn from the old ranks of the dictator's forces: "an army and police force that will bring back the time of Saddam Hussein and his cohorts." When Saddam actually was in power, contrary to the Bush administration's spin, there was no place in his Iraq for Islamic revolutionaries.
----
Both Parties AWOL
Forget Bush's National Guard records and Kerry's carnal adventures: the real scandal is how we were lied into war
by Justin Raimondo,
February 13, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=1972
The limitless capacity of both major parties to distract us from what's really important may be their true and only function. That thesis, at any rate, is certainly on display this election season. The Democrats are now howling that President Bush has no right to call himself a "war president" because he supposedly evaded actually showing up for National Guard duty back in the early 1970s. Coming from the other side of the partisan divide is the latest sex scandal bombshell to somehow mysteriously fall into Matt Drudge's lap: the news that Democratic presidential frontrunner John Kerry may have had an affair with an intern who used to work for Associated Press has all the earmarks of yet another Republican slather-fest.
And the presidential election season has hardly begun! Apparently, we are to be spared nothing, this time around. But what I don't get is how they expect us to endure this endless blather - while the death toll in Iraq keeps rising, along with the horrendous cost in treasure as well as troops.
Who cares if George W. Bush managed to evade the worst possible consequences of being drafted during the Vietnam era, i.e. getting shipped to that jungle hell? Since most of the President's critics are of the opinion that the Vietnam war was immoral and not in our interests anyway - and rightly so - why-oh-why are they making such a big fuss about this? The answer, of course, is pure partisanship.
As for Kerry's alleged carrying on - gee, aren't heterosexuals allowed to have any fun? No wonder their numbers, and influence, seem to be diminishing!
I expect this kind of thing from Republicans. After all, that's what the neocons specialize in: digging up dirt with which to smear their opponents. Smear and fear - that's the methodology of the neoconized GOP, in toto.
On the other hand, the Democrats and their liberal-left amen corner are supposed to be more thoughtful types. They are the ones who are so angry about Bushian policies, particularly when it comes to the Iraq war and the assault on our civil liberties - so where do they get off criticizing the President because he wasn't enthusiastic about being drafted and sent off to fight an immoral and utterly disastrous conflict that should never have been fought in the first place?
Oh sure, he's a hypocrite, and a liar, and whatever - but, again, so what? Does the President have to qualify for sainthood? If so, then Kerry's apparently knocked out of the running, too.
It's a shame that the public may be distracted away from the real scandals currently unfolding in Washington. Two grand juries are now hearing evidence in parallel investigations that implicate high-ranking administration officials in a conspiracy that involves not only the exposure of an undercover CIA officer but also possible espionage.
Some people, however, are definitely not distracted by all this partisan palaver, and chief among them are those now being hauled up before a Washington, D.C. grand jury, and others who live in fear that they will be called to testify. The New York Times headlined: "Anxiety Takes Hold of Presidential Aides Caught Up in Leak Inquiry," to which one can only add: it's about time!
These pots have been simmering on the backburner since last summer, when Bob Novak, relying on information passed to him by top White House officials, "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent working undercover on nonproliferation issues. The leakers' goal was to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a prominent critic of the Iraq war. Instead, these officials will be the ones who wind up discredited, having ensnared themselves in a legal net from which there is little hope of extrication. The penalty for exposing the identity of a CIA officer working undercover is 10 years in jail and a $50,000 fine. But at least some of them could be looking at a lot more than a paltry 10 years....
The really volatile charge possibly arising out of these two parallel investigations goes to the very heart of the President's war policy and involves the forgery of a document that purported to show Saddam's efforts to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger. This rationale for targeting Iraq was raised, you'll remember, in the infamous "16 words" of Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. But when the "evidence" for Bush's statement was finally examined - by the CIA as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency - it was found to be completely and embarrassingly bogus: crude forgeries that could have been debunked in five minutes by anyone with access to the internet and a passing acquaintance with Google. The Bushies, for their part, now lamely point to the Brits, claiming they got it from them: Tony Blair, for his part, still stubbornly insists that every word of his Iraq "dossier" is true, including the African uranium gambit.
Who forged those documents - and how did they get into our stream of intelligence, and on up to the White House, passing untouched and unchallenged through the President's army of speechwriters, fact-checkers, and advisors?
The Republic can survive the hole in George W. Bush's military resume, and Kerry's carnality is a threat only to himself: it cannot, however, long endure in these dangerous times as long as our intelligence capability is being subverted from within. The gang that lied us into war - and even put words in the mouth of the President which they knew to be false - is now being called to account. But they aren't going to go down passively: they are fighting every inch of the way, and they mean to take a few of their enemies down with them.
The Times reports that some of those White House officials being questioned have defied the President and refused to sign waivers releasing reporters from a pledge of confidentiality: they are also refusing to agree not to discuss their encounters with law enforcement. The battle lines are being drawn rather quickly, and it isn't so much a partisan issue as a conflict that increasingly pits the President and his interests against the neoconservative faction in his administration.
Howard Fineman, like myself, is "waiting for the heads to roll." Think of Madame DeFarge calmly knitting while the guillotine is readied for its next victims. MSNBC's political correspondent writes:
"I keep waiting for the bloodletting to begin, the ritual slaughter of careers that comes with controversy in the capital. George W. Bush is a loyal man - and loyalty is a good thing - but I don't see how he can survive the searing politics of Iraq (if, indeed, survival is possible at all) without the dramatic departure of some people, maybe even Vice President Dick Cheney."
Speaking of Cheney, and MSNBC, the other day a New York Daily News intern was surfing the Internet for newsworthy items and came upon the following interesting little tidbit on MSNBC's website:
"Cheney dead at age 62
"Dick Cheney, the stalwart conservative and unflappable Washington insider picked by George W. Bush to be his vice president, died DAY TK in PLACE TK." ('TK' is journalistic shorthand for 'to come.')
My source told me: 'This obit ... was uploaded May 23, 2003 ... When I clicked on the headline [and summary], it said 'article not found.' Still, kind of a dopey thing to have your obit file anywhere near the live Web site.'"
Talk about a preemptive strike!
An adviser to Cheney, the Daily News writer avers, "declined my invitation to make light of MSNBC.com's boo-boo: 'You're asking me to say something witty and memorable about a false obituary? Okay then, I have three words for you: Wouldn't be prudent.'" Especially since, in a political sense, it may be about to become true.
Forget the tedious details of Bush's National Guard service thirty years ago: How long can he claim to be a "war president" in the mold of Franklin Roosevelt when White House officials - very possibly including his Vice President's chief of staff - are charged with undermining U.S. national security?
Top leaders of the neoconservative clique that dragged us into the Middle Eastern quagmire are about to find themselves in the dock, on trial for what arguably amounts to treason. With the casualty count in this war, both Iraqi and American, rising exponentially, their criminal campaign of deception certainly amounts to murder.
The American justice system routinely hands out death sentences to retarded killers - as long as they're black, or poor, preferably both - about whom it is impossible to know whether they even vaguely apprehended the moral import of their acts. So what will they do to fully conscious and self-aware mass murderers, whose lies led us into a war that continues to kill?
Let there be no mistake about who or what is on trial here. Julian Borger, in the Guardian, reports that members of that neocon redoubt, the Defense Policy Board, are also targets of the ongoing investigation. If it turns out that Richard Perle, former head of that quasi-official Pentagon body, is now in federal prosecutors' sights, remember, you read it here first (scroll down). Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff, is reportedly a central figure in all this: and, if you'll recall, you read that here first, too.
Aw heck, let's go for a triple-play, now that we're at it: our prediction that Bob Novak would become a major target in all this, as he's been a major target of the neocons all along, has come true: typically, they used a lefty outlet, The American Prospect, to do it.
Via anonymous sources, we are told that Novak was instructed by his informants not to name Plame. This article is the voice of the defendants in this case, rehearsing their lines to be uttered later in court. Under that kind of assault, would anybody blame Novak if he revealed his sources? He, unfortunately, is above that.
The War Party, headed for a fall, is determined to take down with them a great journalist who opposed their grandiose schemes to "democratize" the Middle East and called them out on their fealty to Israeli over American interests. The Left, which hates Novak on principle (the feeling is no doubt mutual), is glad to pile on.
Without Novak, however, a serious security breach would never have come to light, and the War Party would not now be battening down the hatches and preparing for a long siege. He is rather like that nervy guy who smuggled box-cutters on an airplane in an effort to show how baseless are the government's claims that they're beefing up airport security. They threw the book at him, when, instead, he should've gotten a medal for exposing the soft underbelly of the security apparatus.
For being the instrument of the War Party's downfall, Novak, too, deserves a medal. One can only hope that when the neocons grab his ankle and try to drag him down along with them, he garners the support of all those who stand for the freedom of the press. Let's see all those sincere liberals out there - and I know you're out there! - come forward to demand: Hands off Bob Novak!
- Justin Raimondo
----
W's AWOL Spin Update!
02/13/2004
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1257
[UPDATE: On February 13, the White House released what it said were Bush's full military records. Reporters were handed two-inch stacks of papers and allowed to examine--but not take--pages of his medicalrecords. The Associated Press reported, "the records provided no evidence Bush served in Alabama." The Washington Post noted that these records contain "numerous gaps in the last two years" of his Guard service--that is, the time period in question. Will this release end the controversy? Look for more here soon....And for complete coverage of the Bush AWOL scandal scroll down for reports filed earlier this week.]
It seems the Bush White House cannot mount its defense of George W. Bush's Air National Guard service without raising more questions.
On February 12, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said that the White House had received about 30 pages of medical records from Bush's Guard file. He said they contain "nothing unusual." Then why won't the administration release them--especially after Bush promised on Meet the Press to make his entire file available? Bartlett also acknowledged that the administration has obtained Bush's complete military record from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver. That, too, is not being made public (at least, not yet).
Retired National Guard officials say that these records should include material detailing what Bush did in Alabama. These documents could be the final word--if they indicate that Bush did appear at Alabama and perform the duty he was obligated to do and if they document that he reported back to his Houston base once he returned from Alabama after the November 1972 election (remember, Bush's file includes an annual performance review dated May 2, 1973, that says he had not been seen at the Houston base for a year) and if they explain why Bush, who had trained as a fighter pilot, failed to take a flight physical exam and was removed from flight status.
Then there's the this-just-in account from John "Bill" Calhoun, a Republican businessman in Atlanta. The Washington Post reported that "a Republican close to Bush" supplied the newspaper the phone number of Calhoun, who was an officer with the Alabama Air National Guard in 1972. Calhoun told the Post that he saw Bush sign in eight to ten times for duty at the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group at Dannelly Field in Montgomery from May to October 1972. Calhoun said, "He'd sit on my couch and read training manuals and accident reports and stuff like that."
Four years ago, when the where-was-W story broke (thanks to a piece by The Boston Globe's Walter Robinson), the Bush campaign promised it would release names of individuals who had served with Bush in Alabama. It never did. The campaign did provide the name of a former girlfriend, but she only said that Bush had told her that he had to report for duty in Alabama; she could not attest that he actually did. Finally, Bush has one witness--out of the 600 to 700 people who served at the Alabama base in 1972.
But Calhoun's account is contradicted by other information--including the few pages of records that the White House released earlier this week. Calhoun says that Bush showed up for duty several times from May to October 1972. But the payment and retirement records the White House handed out three days earlier show that Bush received no pay or attendance credits from April until the end of October 1972. Why, then, is Calhoun's account not in sync with the documents that, according to the White House, settles the matter?
Moreover, the paper trail to date indicates that Bush was not supposed to report to this Montgomery base until October 1972. This is the chronology.
- In May of 1972, Bush moved to Alabama to work on the Senate campaign of a family friend. He asked the Guard to do "equivalent training" at a unit there, and he won approval to join a unit temporarily at Maxwell Air Force Base. But that unit had no airplane or pilots, and the Air Reserve Personnel Center ultimately disallowed this transfer, as an investigation published by TomPaine.com first noted in 2000.
- In September 1972, Bush asked to do duty at Dannelly Field in Montgomery and permission was granted.
The commander of that base and his deputy have said they do not recall Bush reporting for duty. The White House has produced pay sheet summaries that show Bush was paid for duty performed on October 28 and 29 and November 11 through 14 in 1972. These records do not state what duty was performed or where. But if they are indeed accurate (as the White House claims), they indicate Bush performed no other duty from May to December 1972. The question is, how could Calhoun have seen Bush eight to ten times from May to October at Dannelly Field if the available record states that Bush was not told to report to Dannelly Field until September and that Bush did not receive any payment or attendance credits in that May-to-October period other than for two days at the end of October?
Three decades is a long time, and perhaps Calhoun's memory is off on the dates. But Bush's inability to produce a witness prior until now and his unwillingness to provide any recollections of what he did when he served in Alabama (or what he did regarding the Guard when he returned to Houston) are reasons to be wary of late-in-the-game eyewitness testimony that is facilitated by an unnamed "Republican close to Bush." Would GOPers--or a single GOPer--concoct a fake alibi for Bush? Perhaps. As noted below, one former National Guard official charges that a Bush aide cleaned out portions of Bush's military records in 1997--an allegation denied by the White House.
There may be a legitimate explanation for the contradictions between Calhoun's recollections and the documents. Could Bush have been showing up "unofficially" at Dannelly Field? Was there a record-keeping screw-up regarding his request to do his time at that base? But given the dishonest spin the White House has resorted to in trying to defuse the AWOL controversy--and given Bush's broken promise--there is reason to be suspicious of any information that is selective, unconfirmed or contradicted. That is why that at this point Bush has only one honorable option: release the records.
-
This week's initial "Capital Games" report on Bush's AWOL controversy and two updates
George W. Bush is lucky that Scott McClellan is not his lawyer and that the White House press briefing room is not a courtroom.
On February 10, the Bush White House tried to rid itself of the allegation that Bush ducked out of his Air National Guard Service from May 1972 to May 1973. Two days earlier on Meet the Press, Bush maintained, "I did report, otherwise I wouldn't have been honorably discharged." But he offered no details. He did not describe what drills he did; he did not mention anyone with whom he served during the time in question. When host Tim Russert asked if he would open up his "entire" file and release "everything to settle this," Bush said, "Yeah. Absolutely."
And two days later, McClellan was in the briefing room holding up new documents that he claimed proved Bush had "fulfilled his duties." The key material, which the White House had managed to obtain PDQ from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver--were several pages of microfiche payment sheet summaries that apparently showed Bush was paid several times in the months of October and November 1972 and January and April 1973. McClellan also cited two retirement records that showed Bush had amassed attendance points for these days.
This new material did bolster Bush's defense. But it hardly resolved the issue. Nor did it address the most damning elements of the case against Bush. Most notable of these is the May 2, 1973, annual performance review--signed by two superior officers, who were friends of Bush--that noted, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at" his home base unit in Houston for the past year. Bush has said he spent about half of that period reporting to a Guard base in Alabama, while he was temporarily living there. The new records do not explain why the commander of that unit and his administrative officer say they never saw Bush. Nor do they explain why the Bush campaign in 2000 failed to keep its promise to produce the names of people who had served with Bush in Alabama. Nor do these records explain why Bush, who had been trained as fighter pilot, failed to take a flight physical during the year in question and was grounded. Nor do they back up the 2000 Bush campaign's explanation that Bush did not take a flight physical because he was living in Alabama and his personal doctor was in Houston. (Flight physicals are administered by military physicians, and there were flight physicians at the base in Alabama where Bush says he served.)
The records hailed by the White House only demonstrate that Bush received payments and credit for a modest amount of days. They do not show what he did and where he did it. Those sorts of records detailing Bush's service should exist, according to military experts. But that is not what the White House handed out. Is it possible Bush received payment and credit for days of service that did not happen? Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who served in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, recently wrote that he was routinely paid for Guard duty he never did. Given the other evidence, these pay records are not end-of-story proof.
But what makes the White House case particularly unconvincing is McClellan's performance at the press briefing. It was a remarkable exhibition of dissimulation that deserves to be studied by students of political spin. He avoided remaining questions. He kept insisting that these records meant there was nothing else to discuss. He denied reality and refused to acknowledge there was documentary evidence contradicting Bush's account. He was an automaton: these records showed that he served, these records showed that he served, these records showed that he served.
The first question was a tough one for McClellan. A reporter asked:
The records that you handed out today, and other records that exist, indicate that the President did not perform any Guard duty during the months of December 1972, February or March of 1973. I'm wondering if you can tell us where he was during that period. And also, how is it that he managed to not make the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?
The exchange that followed was not edifying.
A: These records verify that he met the requirements necessary to fulfill his duties. These records --
Q: That wasn't my question, Scott.
A: These payroll records --
Q: Scott, that wasn't my question, and you know it wasn't my question. Where was he in December of '72, February and March of '73? And why did he not fulfill the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?
A: These records -- these records I'm holding here clearly document the President fulfilling his duties in the National Guard. The president was proud of his service. The president --
Q: I asked a simple question; how about a simple answer?
A: John, if you'll let me address the question, I'm coming to your answer.
But McClellan never got there. He did not reveal where Bush had been during those months. And he said nothing about Bush's failure to take a flight physical.
Another reporter, citing the promise made by the Bush campaign in 2000, asked whether the White House had been able to find anyone who could verify Bush's service in Alabama. McClellan replied: "All the information that we have we shared with you in 2000, that was relevant to this issue....[T]here are some out there that were making outrageous, baseless accusations. It was a shame that they brought it up four years ago. It was a shame that they brought it up again this year. And I think that the facts are very clear from these documents. These documents -- the payroll records and the [attendance] point summaries verify that he was paid for serving and that he met his requirements." In other words, the Bush White House had found no one.
Then came this follow-up from a reporter: "I do think this is important. You know, it might strike some as odd that there isn't anyone who can stand up and say, I served with George W. Bush in Alabama....Particularly because there are people, his superiors who have stepped forward...who have said in the past several years that they have no recollection of him being there and serving. So isn't that odd that nobody -- you can't produce anyone to corroborate what these records purport to show?" McClellan answered, "We're talking about some 30 years ago." But there were 600 to 700 people who served at the Alabama base at that time. Surely, if the White House had to find someone who went to grade school with Bush 45 years ago--and class sizes were not that big back then--they could.
McClellan's most unbelievable statements came after a reporter asked him about the annual performance review that indicated Bush had not reported for duty at his home base in Houston for a year. Let's go to the videotape:
Q: The President's officer effectiveness report, filed by his commanders, Lieutenants Colonel Killean and Harris, both now deceased, for the period 01 May '72 to 30 April, '73, says he has not been observed at this unit, where he was supposed to show up and earning these points on these days....The president said he returned to Texas in November of '72. So some of these dates of service, which are in these [payment] records, ought to have been noted by his commanding officers, who, nevertheless, said, twice, he has not been observed here. Can you explain that?
A: I'm not sure about these specific documents. I'll be glad to take a look at them. But these [newly released] documents show the days on which he was paid for his service.....
Q: So he served, but his commanding officers didn't know it?
A: Again, I don't know the specific documents you're referring to. If you want to bring those to me, I'll be glad to take a look at them and get you the answers to your questions.
McClellan didn't know about this specific document? That would be like Martha Stewart's attorney saying he was not familiar with her stockbroker's assistant's contention that she had sold stock on inside information. This document--first brought to public attention in May 2000 by Walter Robinson of The Boston Globe--is at the core of the case against Bush. If McClellan does not know about it, Bush ought to fire him immediately (or name him head of the CIA).
Later in the press briefing, another reporter took a stab at forcing McClellan to deal with Exhibit A.
Q: After all of the things you repeated here, you cannot explain this contradiction, the fact that his payroll records indicate he was paid for a period of time for fulfilling service, and yet his commanding officers at that time wrote that he was not observed. Can you or can you not explain that contradiction?
A:....I said I would glad to go back and look at the document that he's referencing. I have not --
Q: You know the document he's referencing. Everybody does. His commanders --
A: No, I have not -- I have not seen the document he's referencing.
Q: -- are quoted repeatedly for years --
A: You're talking about quotes -- you're talking about quotes from individuals. And we said for years, going back four years ago, that the president recalls serving and performing his duties.
Q: I understand that, but his commanders do not recall it. And, in fact, they say, that he was not observed. So can you explain the contradiction, or can't you?
A: I've seen some different comments he's -- no, I've seen some different comments made over the recent time period.
Q: I haven't seen any different -- different comments...from his [Houston base] commanders, who said he was not observed. Can you explain the contradiction?
A: Look, I can't speak for those individuals. I can speak for the president of the United States. And I can speak --
Q: -- the documents --
A: And I can speak for the fact that the documents that -- as far as we know, all the documents that are available relevant to this issue demonstrate that the president fulfilled his duties. Are you suggesting these documents do not reflect that?
That's the whole issue. A critical document says Bush was gone for a year. It was signed by two superior officers who were also his buddies. As for the documents McClellan held in his hand, reporters asked him if the White House was maintaining that they proved Bush had actually reported for duty in Alabama.
Q: It's your position that these documents specifically show that he served in Alabama during the period 1972, when he was supposed to be there. Do they specifically show that?
A: No, I think if you look at the documents, what they show are the days on which he was paid, the payroll records. And we previously said that the president recalls serving both in Alabama and in Texas.
Q: I'm not interested in what he recalls. I'm interested in whether these documents specifically show that he was in Alabama and served on the days during the latter part of 1972 --
A: And I just answered that question.
Q: You have not answered that question. You --
A: No, I said -- no, I said, no, in response to your question, Keith.
Q: No, so the answer is, "no"?
A: I said these documents show the days on which he was paid. That's what they show. So they show -- they show that he was paid on these days....It just kind of amazes me that some will now say they want more information, after the payroll records and the [attendance] point summaries have all been released to show that he met his requirements and to show that he fulfilled his duties.
Can you believe it? Reporters wanted definitive information stating that Bush had truly been at the Alabama base? That apparently was too much for the press secretary. And when one of the media hounds asked exactly what Bush had done while supposedly serving in Alabama, McClellan countered, "You're asking me to kind of break down hour-by-hour what he was doing during 1972 and 1973. What these documents show is that he was serving in the National Guard and he was paid for that service." No one was requesting an hour-by-hour itemization. But McClellan would only say that Bush "remembers serving during that period and performing his duties." Bush, it seems, has no recollection of what that service entailed. Instructing pilots? Filing papers? Hanging out at the officers' lounge? He won't say.
A reporter asked, "You can't even tell us what kind of drills or what-have-you?" And McClellan resorted to an old dodge: "We addressed all those questions back during the 2000 campaign fully." That was an untrue statement. In 2000, the Bush campaign left much of this unaddressed. Bush did not state then what he had done in Alabama. This reporter noted that most people can "detail" what they did when they worked. But McClellan kept fibbing: "And we did. During the 2000 campaign, we talked about this issue fully."
The Bush gang did not talk about the issues fully then--and it is not doing so now. The currently available records support conflicting accounts. Bush's unwillingness (or inability) to provide any specific recollections is certainly suspicious, as is his refusal to answer questions about his failure to take a flight physical. By releasing the pay sheet summaries and retirement records, Bush has not made good on his pledge to Russert. There likely are other records in his military files that could be of use in settling this dispute--medical records, perhaps. Are there disciplinary records? When Bob Fertik of Democrats.com filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2000 requesting portions of Bush's military records, he asked for pay stubs. He was turned down by the military, which cited Bush's privacy rights. If Bush and McClellan really want to address this issue "fully," Bush should waive his privacy rights and release all the papers that remain. He did promise to disclose "everything."
Despite McClellan's repeated assertion, the pay sheet summaries and retirement records are not enough. That's especially true when they are waved about by a defender who spins, trims, and ducks and who at key moments is AWOL from the truth.
UPDATE NO. 1
On February 11, the White House released a one-page record of a dental exam that Bush received at the Alabama Air National Guard base on January 6, 1973. This is the first documentary indication that Bush was ever present at this base. This document does strengthen Bush's case. But assuming it is legitimate--and I'm not suggesting it is not--it does not seal the deal. Bush has said he returned to Houston from Alabama after the November 1972 election. (He had been working in Alabama on the Senate campaign of a Republican friend of his family, who ended up losing the race.) It certainly is possible that he stayed in Alabama for several months after the election--though he was in Washington, DC, with his family during the Christmas holidays. Still, there are no records covering the time he returned to Houston and the May 2, 1973, annual review that noted he had not been seen at the base.
And as the White House released this document, it declared that it had no intention of opening Bush's entire Guard files. On Meet the Press, Bush had been asked if he would make his whole file available (as had Senator John McCain and retired General Wesley Clark). Bush replied, "Yeah. Absolutely." But now the White House position is less absolute.
Meanwhile, Bill Burkett, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard told various newspapers this week that in 1997 he was in a National Guard office and overheard Joseph Allbaugh, who was then chief of staff for Governor George W. Bush, tell an officer he needed to make sure there was nothing embarrassing in Bush's Guard file. Burkett recalled he later spotted items from Bush's file in the trash. Allbaugh and the White House denied these allegations.
Partial releases. Allegations of file-fixing. No explanations for remaining questions. The best way for Bush to reach a final resolution on this controversy would be to release everything in his file--that is, to keep his promise.
UPDATE NO. 2
At the daily press briefing on February 11, McClellan continued to trample the truth. When a reporter noted that Bush had agreed on Meet the Press to open up his entire military file, McClellan replied, "the specific question was about service, whether or not he had served in the military, if you go back to look at the context of the discussion." Translation: no friggin' way. But Bush had said he would "absolutely" release his full file. Call it, Promise Abandoned.
In another exchange, a reporter asked why the White House would not address questions regarding Bush's failure to take a flight physical in 1972. McClellan replied, "I think this was all addressed previously. I think that, again, this goes to show that some are not interested in the facts of whether or not he served; they're interested in trolling for trash and using this issue for political partisan gain."
Wrong again. The White House had not addressed this previously. And the explanation the Bush campaign offered in 2000 turned out to be phony. Moreover, why is seeking an answer to this question "trolling for trash"? The reporter pressed McClellan and asked "what was the answer previous to this?" Rather than provide that "answer," McClellan said, "I'm not going to engage in gutter politics." But he did not say why it would be "gutter politics" to restate what the Bush folks had said about this matter earlier. Still, he insisted "we went through this in 1994, I believe again in '98, 2000. Now some are trying to bring it up again in 2004." He just wouldn't repeat what had been said in those earlier instances.
At the press briefing the next day, McClellan once more was asked, "Why won't you talk about why he didn't show up for his physical, which is a question that still persists?" His initial response was predictable: "We answered that question four years ago." But then he added, "The reason--well, he was on--first of all, you're saying he didn't show up. He was on--he moved to Alabama for a civilian job and he was on non-flying status while in Alabama. There was no need for a flight exam."
But this was not what the Bush campaign had said in 2000. It had claimed that Bush did not take a flight physical because he was in Alabama and his personal physician was in Houston--even though personal physicians do not adminster flight physicals; Air Force doctors do. Moreover, Bush returned to Houston after November 1972, and he remained in the Guard until the end of July 1973. Why did he not take a flight physical then. Was it because he remained on non-flight status? If so, why? Perhaps his full records would resolve this mystery. But when it comes to releasing the complete file, McClellan has turned Bush's "absolutely" into an "absolutely not."
DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S NEW BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." For more information and a sample, check out the book's official website: www.bushlies.com<
OLDER W as in AWOL: Case Not Closed
http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=1254
----
Most Think Truth Was Stretched to Justify Iraq War
By Richard Morin and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37340-2004Feb12.html
A majority of Americans believe President Bush either lied or deliberately exaggerated evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify war, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey results, which also show declining support for the war in Iraq and for Bush's leadership in general, indicate the public is increasingly questioning the president's truthfulness -- a concern for Bush's political advisers as his reelection bid gets underway.
Barely half -- 52 percent -- now believe Bush is "honest and trustworthy," down 7 percentage points since late October and his worst showing since the question was first asked, in March 1999. At his best, in the summer of 2002, Bush was viewed as honest by 71 percent. The survey found that nearly seven in 10 think Bush "honestly believed" Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Even so, 54 percent thought Bush exaggerated or lied about prewar intelligence.
Honesty and credibility have been central to Bush's appeal since the 2000 campaign, when he benefited from disgust over President Bill Clinton's lies about the Monica S. Lewinsky affair and when Bush's campaign accused then-Vice President Al Gore of "saying one thing and doing another." But a number of factors, including the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq and the administration's underestimating of its Medicare prescription drug plan's costs, appear to have undermined perceptions of his credibility.
Bush's possible Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), has begun to talk about a "credibility gap." Even some Bush allies say they have been misled about Iraq's weapons, and the current Time magazine cover story asks: "Believe him or not -- does Bush have a credibility gap?"
Questions about Bush's use of prewar intelligence, in addition to feeding doubts about his honesty, have sent his performance rating plummeting. Fifty percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing, the lowest level of his presidency in Post-ABC polling and down 8 percentage points from January. The survey found that, for the first time since the war ended, less than half of Americans -- 48 percent -- believe the war was worth fighting, down 8 points from last month. Fifty percent said the war was not worth it.
These doubts have affected Bush's reelection prospects. In a head-to-head matchup, Kerry beat Bush, 52 percent to 43, percent among registered voters. Bush had more passionate support -- 83 percent of his backers said their support was strong, while 59 percent of Kerry supporters said so -- and retains an advantage over Kerry in dealing with Iraq and the war on terrorism. But the Democrat was seen as better able to handle the economy and jobs, education, and health care -- all top issues with voters this year.
The survey found a steep drop in public perceptions of Bush as a president and as an individual. In a sign that Bush has been set back by recent controversies over Iraqi weapons, his National Guard record and the federal budget, the number of Americans viewing him as a "strong leader" has slipped to 61 percent, down 6 points from December and the lowest level since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Bush's rating on handling the economy stood at 44 percent, down 7 percentage points, with nearly half of the public saying they are worse off now than they were when Bush became president three years ago. Six in 10 disapprove of the job Bush is doing creating jobs. On education, 47 percent said they approve of the job Bush is doing, down 8 points from January. And his rating on health care has also fallen.
But the president's declining ratings related to Iraq were the most striking. Approval of his handling of the situation there has fallen to 47 percent, down 8 percentage points in the past three weeks. About half of Americans -- 51 percent -- said they would prefer a report evaluating the accuracy and use of prewar intelligence before the election, while 35 percent favor what Bush has ordered: a broader study of the overall accuracy of U.S. intelligence-gathering operations that will report its findings after the election.
While 21 percent said they believe that Bush lied about the threat posed by Iraq, a larger number -- 31 percent -- thought he exaggerated but did not lie. Indeed, six in 10 Americans believed, as Bush did, that Iraq had such weapons.
Three in four Democrats said Bush either lied or exaggerated about what was known about Iraq's weapons, while an equally large majority of Republicans said the president did neither. Slightly more than half of all independents believed Bush had misled the public about Iraq's weapons cache.
"I think he was believing what he wanted to believe," said one respondent, Ron Perholtz, an accountant from Jupiter, Fla. "I can't say he's dishonest. He heard what he wanted to hear. He's manipulatable by [Vice President] Cheney and others."
Many respondents expressed regrets about the Iraq war. For example, Mike Richcreek, 52, of Warner Robbins, Ga., said he believes Bush neither exaggerated nor lied. "He went by what the intelligence given to him showed," Richcreek said. But, at the same time, Richcreek said he has begun to doubt the merits of the war.
"I'm not sure now we should have gone to war in the first place," he said. "You think of all of our young kids getting killed. That's a problem. I'm glad I didn't have to make the decision."
A total of 1,003 randomly selected adults were interviewed Feb. 10 to 11. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Assistant polling director Claudia Deane contributed to this report.
--------
Aides Study President's Service Records
White House Won't Release More Documents Now but Is Awaiting Another Batch
By Mike Allen and Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37904-2004Feb12?language=printer
President Bush's aides said last night that they have finished reviewing an inch-thick file of his Texas Air National Guard records and do not plan to make any more of them public, but they will consider possible releases from a new set that is to arrive at the White House this week.
Bush has been under fire from critics who contend he shirked his duty in the National Guard, and Republican lawmakers have begun to complain privately that the controversy is hurting the party.
The White House used fanfare to release 13 pages of records this week to rebut Bush's critics, but those same records did not provide details about Bush's service. The president's aides have said they would release only those documents "relevant" to his service.
Bush's staff on Wednesday released a one-page record of a dental exam -- culled from medical records the White House received this week -- to establish his presence at a base in Montgomery, Ala., during a period in 1972 and 1973 when the nature and extent of his service had been undocumented.
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said the 30 or so pages of medical records contain "nothing unusual."
"It is a standard medical file with standard medical examinations and evaluations that took place during his flying career with the National Guard," Bartlett said. "People who suggest there are problems in the medical files are flat wrong."
Bartlett also said the White House does not have any records that document disciplinary action.
The Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver sent Bush's complete military record to the administration by Federal Express early this week, an official said. A Bush aide said the documents apparently went to the Pentagon but added that the White House expects to receive them soon. The aide said they are likely to be duplicates of records -- which Bush's aides thought was his entire file -- compiled five years ago in preparation for his run for president.
Retired personnel officers in the National Guard -- including the one the White House offered this week as an expert on Bush's file -- said in interviews that the records should contain a form or a letter detailing exactly what Bush did in Alabama and for how many hours. His file would also contain his detailed medical record, as well any disciplinary actions, the officer said.
Bush said on NBC's "Meet the Press" last weekend that he would release his entire file, but his aides have since backed off that pledge.
The White House and journalists have been attempting to find contemporaries of Bush's who could corroborate his claims about serving in Alabama while working on a U.S. Senate campaign in 1972.
A Republican close to Bush supplied phone numbers yesterday for the owner of an insulated-coating business in the Atlanta area, John B. "Bill" Calhoun, 69, who was an officer with the Alabama Air National Guard. Calhoun said in a telephone interview that Bush used to sit in his office and read magazines and flight manuals as he performed weekend duty at Dannelly Field in Montgomery during 1972.
Calhoun estimated that he saw Bush sign in at the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group eight to 10 times for about eight hours each from May to October 1972. He said the two occasionally grabbed a sandwich in the snack bar.
"He'd sit on my couch and read training manuals and accident reports and stuff like that," Calhoun said. "The pilots would read those so they would see what other guys did wrong. . . . He never complained about coming."
Calhoun, a retired lieutenant colonel who said he was the group's flying safety officer and later its plans officer, described Bush as "a typical fighter pilot -- he was aggressive with his talk."
"He said he wanted a career in politics," Calhoun recalled. He said Bush used to talk about how hard he worked on the Senate campaign. "He'd come in on a Saturday morning and say, 'Man, I've been going like crazy,' " Calhoun said.
Calhoun said he is a Republican but has not talked to Bush since 1972. Calhoun faxed The Washington Post military records that show he worked at Dannelly Field when he said he saw Bush. One of the sheets is signed by William R. Turnipseed, a retired brigadier general who was an officer in the Montgomery unit. Bush was supposed to report to him, but Turnipseed has said he does not recall seeing Bush.
Asked about Calhoun's description of Bush's duty, a White House official replied that Bush "was pulling duty in a nonflying status. He recalls doing general administrative work."
Calhoun's claim was a rare respite for a White House that has had a difficult time locating anyone who served with Bush. A variety of veterans have said they do not recall his presence at the base.
Republican lawmakers have been growing increasingly concerned about the fallout from the dispute over Bush's Guard service. GOP aides on Capitol Hill, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the White House had put the party on the defensive on an issue related to national security, which is traditionally a GOP strength, as Bush prepares to face the Democratic presidential front-runner, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).
"We will never win the debate over who was the better soldier," said a Republican leadership aide. "This has to be about who would be a better commander in chief, and we let the Democrats shift the terms of the debate. Who would have thought Bush would get caught in the quagmire of Vietnam?"
Kerry has declined to comment on Bush's military record in recent days. But one of his remaining rivals, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who did not serve in the military, told reporters yesterday that he considers Bush's military record to be "a legitimate area of inquiry."
Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie used a speech last night in Reno, Nev., to declare that the dental record and other documentation released by the White House should settle the matter. "I am sure the media will follow up with 'Well, that only proves his teeth were there, but do you have any proof of the rest of his body being there?' " Gillespie said.
Albert Lloyd Jr., the retired Texas National Guard personnel officer who reviewed Bush's records in 1999 and again this week for the White House, said yesterday that records of Bush's Alabama duties would be archived with the pay records. Lloyd added that he thinks the Guard was not required to maintain those records indefinitely.
Staff writer James V. Grimaldi and researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Pact Gives U.S. Search Rights Over Ships
Fri Feb 13, 2004
By EDWARD HARRIS,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040213/ap_on_re_af/liberia_ship_searches
DAKAR, Senegal - U.S. Navy sailors may board thousands of commercial ships in international waters to search for weapons of mass destruction under a landmark pact between the United States and Liberia, the world's No. 2 shipping registry.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed Friday that the United States is seeking similar deals with other nations, but he declined to identify them.
Wednesday's accord - the first of its kind, Boucher said - comes amid fears that terror networks would use ships for attacks, taking advantage of comparatively lax security on the waters after crackdowns in the skies.
Liberia, an American-founded West African nation emerging from nearly 15 years of civil war, has held a U.S.-based shipping registry since 1949 and now hosts more than 2,000 foreign vessels.
It ranks second only to Panama in total shipping tonnage in U.S. ports, under so-called flags of convenience that offer cheap fees and easy rules. One-third of America's imported oil arrives in the United States on Liberian-flagged tankers.
With the pact, American forces may board and search any Liberian-registered foreign ship they suspect of carrying weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, or related material, Boucher said in Washington.
"It's based on the need to stop the proliferation in weapons of mass destruction and means to deliver them," Boucher said.
With commercial ships transporting 80 percent of the world's traded goods, security experts worry that vessels, ports and other links in the maritime economic chain might make tempting targets. A terrorist attack could sink a ship, cripple a port, panic markets and disrupt trade.
Suicide attacks killed 17 sailors on the American destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 and a crewman on the French oil tanker Limburger off Yemen's coast in October 2002. Terrorists tried and failed to attack another U.S. destroyer before succeeding against the Cole, and authorities in Singapore and Morocco have recently foiled similar plots.
Ships can also be used to transport weapons or nuclear components for use on land.
Explosives used to blow up two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and nightclubs in Bali in 2002 allegedly were brought in by ships. And in October, British and American authorities intercepted a shipment of nuclear components bound for Libya on a German freighter, helping prod Libya to reveal - and renounce - its nuclear weapons program in December.
Without the U.S.-Liberia pact, Liberian-flagged ships carrying suspect materials had to be shown to be breaking international law, or enter U.S. waters, before the United States could act unilaterally, experts say.
If the U.S. Navy wanted to interdict a ship flying a foreign flag, it had to work through diplomatic channels with the government where the ship is registered - a time-consuming process, they said.
"With this accord, the U.S. and its allies can feel more secure, and our ships can feel more secure under the U.S. security umbrella," Yoram Cohen, head of Liberia's shipping registry, said in a statement.
The registry said U.S. authorities still must contact it before boarding any vessel.
But shipping industry analysts said the United States was already frequently stopping and searching vessels on the high seas at will.
"It puts existing practice on a friendlier footing," said David Osler of the respected Lloyd's List shipping daily.
"The U.S. Navy will continue to board vessels when they want to," Osler said. "But at least in the case of Liberia, they'll be able to do it legally."
The United States says the accord is based on similar pacts to block narcotics trafficking.
"I think it's likely to be replicated with other flags," said Chris Austen, CEO of London-based Maritime and Underwater Security Consultants.
"It's following the path that the U.S. has been following for a while of setting up bilateral agreements rather than going through the painful process of reaching a multilateral agreement," Austen said.
Panama, the top country for flags of convenience, has no such agreement and isn't currently negotiating one, Deputy Foreign Minister Nivia Rossana Castrellon said in Panama City.
Even with the deal, the U.S. military doesn't have the manpower to guard all the world's waters, shipping experts said.
"If they want to be the policeman of the high seas, they can be," Osler said of the United States. "But even they haven't got the reach."
----
Bush Agrees to Meet With 9/11 Panel
February 13, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13WIRE-PANEL.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The White House said Friday that President Bush had agreed to meet privately with members of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to answer their questions but declined to give public testimony.
The commission chairman, Thomas Kean, and the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, had pressed the White House for a public discussion of intelligence he received prior to the attacks.
The White House said it did not feel public testimony would be needed.
"While the (commission) chair and vice chair have suggested the possibility of a public session at a later time, we believe the president can provide all the requested information in the private meeting, and there is no need for any additional testimony," the White House said in a statement.
-------
Intelligence Panelists Set
February 13, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13WEAP.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - President Bush on Thursday named two academic figures as the final members of a commission to investigate the quality of the intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.
Mr. Bush announced the commission last week and gave it until March 2005 to submit its conclusions.
The two appointees are Charles M. Vest, who has served as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1990, and Henry S. Rowen, a professor emeritus of public policy and management at Stanford, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Pentagon official.
Last week, Mr. Bush picked Charles S. Robb, the former Democratic senator and governor of Virginia, and Laurence H. Silberman, a Republican appeals court judge, as the commission's chairmen.
--------
Senate Panel Expands Probe of Iraq Data
Inquiry to Determine Whether Information Was Exaggerated to Make Case for War
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37872-2004Feb12.html
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted last night to expand its investigation into the prewar intelligence on Iraq by probing whether President Bush and other top administration officials exaggerated intelligence information to make a case for war, a move Republicans on the panel had resisted for months.
The decision "illustrates the commitment of all members to a thorough review, to learning the necessary lessons from our experience with Iraq, and to ensuring that our armed forces and policymakers benefit from the best and most reliable intelligence that can be collected," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the committee, said in a statement.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the vice chairman, said in the statement that the "agreement reflects a difficult and lengthy process, but in the end, we were able to reach consensus on the need to expand the investigation into several key areas." He was referring to the closed-door struggle between Republicans, who sought to keep the focus of the panel's inquiry on the CIA and other intelligence agencies, and Democrats, who wanted to add a thorough probe into administration actions leading up to the war.
The decision, said members of both parties, represents half a loaf for each side. Republicans succeeded in limiting the probe of the administration to a review of public statements, reports and testimony given by administration officials.
The committee's decision follows three weeks of dramatic disclosures by U.S. officials indicating lapses by the U.S. intelligence community, which concluded before the war that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, as well as an advanced nuclear program. None of those conclusions has been substantiated since the war.
Democrats and others also accuse top administration officials of exaggerating the Iraqi threat and of dropping the qualifiers and caveats included in intelligence reports.
Last month, former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told a Senate panel that the intelligence estimates on Iraq were "almost all wrong." Last week, CIA Director George J. Tenet took responsibility for some of the intelligence failures.
President Bush last week reversed his opposition to an independent inquiry into prewar intelligence and named a commission to review U.S. intelligence on weapons proliferation involving Iraq and other countries. Yesterday, Bush named the final two members of the nine-member commission: Charles M. Vest, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1990, and Henry S. Rowen, who chaired the Department of Energy Task Force on the Future of Science Programs, from 2002 to 2003.
The Senate committee's vote will allow the panel to review two Pentagon offices, the Office of Special Plans and the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group.
Defense officials have said that the OSP was a policy office and that the evaluation group was a two-man intelligence cell that analyzed only existing intelligence community information. Democrats say they were set up to circumvent the CIA and to influence decision-makers on Iraq.
The new mandate limits the inquiry into the Office of Special Plans to "any intelligence activities" it conducted; it does not permit an investigation into whether the OSP influenced top policymakers' judgments on Iraq.
Yesterday's vote does not authorize the committee to use its subpoena power to probe whether Bush and his top officials relied on other, as yet undisclosed, intelligence when they made statements about Iraq's weapons -- a line of inquiry that Democrats had sought.
"It's progress, but there's no reason why we shouldn't have a full inquiry," said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).
For the past eight months, the committee has been investigating the underlying judgments that went into the intelligence assessments on Iraq. That part of the probe is to be completed by the end of March. The new findings will be contained in a second report to be released months later.
-------- homeland security
Report Faults TSA on Privacy
New Computer Screening System Could Be Delayed Again
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37761-2004Feb12.html
The Transportation Security Administration's plan for a vast computer system to screen airline passengers contains inadequate measures to guard against identity theft and protect consumer privacy, according to a report issued yesterday by government investigators.
The General Accounting Office report found that the government's much-delayed program known as CAPPS 2 faces major hurdles, such as getting international cooperation to use passenger data from foreign carriers and establishing ways to address claims by passengers who might be falsely identified as suspected terrorists.
The findings cast doubt on whether the TSA will be able to begin screening passengers with the system by this summer as planned. U.S. airlines and the European Union have been reluctant to share data, citing concerns about privacy. The program's opponents are pressuring Congress for further investigations of the system in light of disclosures in the past six months that JetBlue and Northwest airlines secretly handed over private passenger information to two other government air security projects.
The TSA "has not completely addressed seven of the eight issues identified by the Congress as key areas of interest related to the development, operation and public acceptance" of CAPPS 2, the report stated. The report acknowledged that the program is still in its infancy because of repeated delays.
Under federal law, the TSA cannot implement CAPPS 2 until it has met all eight of the issues identified by Congress, although it can test the system using passenger data. The second version of the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System intends to score every passenger as red, yellow or green, based on the threat that person poses to the aircraft. The government plans to use terrorist and criminal databases and consumer records to come up with the score.
The TSA is developing CAPPS 2 because the current computer screening system relies on outdated formulas -- such as whether a passenger paid for a ticket with cash or bought a one-way ticket -- to trigger additional security screening.
In response to the report, the Department of Homeland Security announced yesterday that it will establish an external review board made up of privacy, consumer and airline industry representatives to review CAPPS 2 policies and identify issues of importance to the consumer. Few details were released.
The board will ensure that passenger information is adequately protected and "will be helpful in giving us additional guidance, comment and feedback," said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security, the Homeland Security unit that oversees the TSA. Hutchinson said he did not view the report "as really shedding any unusual light" on CAPPS 2 and promised that the program would not officially begin until it has been rigorously tested.
Groups ranging from civil libertarians to conservatives who favor limited government yesterday claimed that the report was a victory in their long-standing battle against the program.
The TSA "simply has not made the case that this system is capable of identifying the threats, the terrorists," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program. Steinhardt and other opponents say the TSA should focus on identifying and hunting terrorists.
One opposing group, the Business Travel Coalition, organized a petition of more than 100 businesses and organizations that calls upon Congress to hold additional hearings on the program.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure's aviation subcommittee had already planned to hold hearings on CAPPS 2 on March 11, aides said.
--------
Privacy Issue Delays Change in Airport Screening System
February 13, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13SECU.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - A privacy dispute with airlines has derailed the government's effort to modernize the system used to pick out suspicious passengers at airports, and officials of the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that they would not say when it would be running.
Congressional auditors reported Thursday that the plan faces unanswered questions about preventing abuse of the data, guarding privacy and coping with inaccuracies.
The report, by the General Accounting Office, was issued as British Airways acknowledged that it had canceled a London-to-Washington flight for the fifth time this year, because of intelligence information about possible terrorist threats. It also canceled a flight from London to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Responding to the report on the delay, officials of the Department of Homeland Security said that the auditors were largely correct, and that they had been stymied in testing the system because the airlines were afraid to volunteer sample data on passengers for fear of offending their customers. But the officials said parts of the program could be in place by the end of the year.
"They are right to point out there are a number of unanswered questions," said Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the department's chief privacy officer. "But that is not to say that they are unanswerable questions."
The government has already issued two sets of draft rules, and will issue a third set, officials said. The changes included cutting the length of time that the government would retain the records, to a few days after the last flight of an itinerary is completed; the first proposal was up to 50 years.
But privacy advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said the report was a sign that the concept was fatally flawed.
The system determines who will be pulled aside for "secondary screening" at airport checkpoints. The program now in use, the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, was developed in the late 1990's by Northwest Airlines at the behest of the Federal Aviation Administration, which was then in charge of aviation security. The system is operated by the airlines based on their computer records about passengers, and some computers are so old that they cannot store all the letters in a passenger's name.
The replacement system, known as CAPPS II, was mandated by Congress, and would be operated by the Department of Homeland Security. Airlines would submit the name, address, telephone number and birth date of each passenger. The department would turn that information over to a commercial database company, which would try to learn whether the name represented a real identity. The company would report back with a numerical score akin to a credit rating but not with any other data on the passenger.
The government's aim is to cut the number of people who are now diverted for "secondary screening" to about 4 percent from 14 percent now. Secondary screening generally refers to close use of a metal-detecting wand and a hand search of carry-on bags.
Asa Hutchinson, the under secretary for border and transportation security, said Thursday in a news briefing, "Our system right now is not effective."
Mr. Hutchinson would not say what intelligence led to the cancellation of the British Airways flights on Thursday, but he said it had been a decision of the British government, based on intelligence that was shared and jointly analyzed.
Federal law enforcement and intelligence officials said the intelligence had been similar to information that led to cancellations in early January and early February.
The intelligence, they said, included information obtained in interrogations of captured terrorists from Al Qaeda, as well as information from electronic intercepts of communications among Qaeda suspects, and other information that they would not describe.
At least some of the information, the officials said, referred to specific threats on specific days against British Airways flights, including direct references to threats against British Airways Flight 223, a midday flight from Heathrow Airport near London to Dulles International Airport near Washington.
In a meeting with reporters last week, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the threats of terrorist attacks in December and January had been the most compelling and credible he had seen since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Ridge said he believed that government actions during the last three months, including the request for the cancellation of several international flights, had probably prevented a catastrophic terrorist attack.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Cuba Detentions May Last Years
February 13, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/politics/13GITM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 - Senior Defense Department officials said Thursday that they were planning to keep a large portion of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, there for many years, perhaps indefinitely.
The officials said they would soon set up a panel to review those long-term prisoners' cases annually to determine whether the men remained a threat to the United States or could be released.
The officials described the panel as a "quasi-parole board" that would comprise three members before whom prisoners could personally plead their case for release. At the same time, the officials said, in the coming months they will continue to release to the home governments many other prisoners deemed not to be a continuing danger.
The officials spoke as part of a Pentagon effort to counter sharp criticism by members of human rights groups and foreign governments about the situation at Guantánamo, where some 650 people, most of them captured in Afghanistan, are being held under maximum security, some as long as two years without being charged with any offense. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is scheduled to discuss the matter in a speech Friday in Miami.
One senior Defense Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said critics in the United States and abroad had greatly misunderstood the situation at Guantánamo and the need to detain so many people without charging them.
"We feel very much like we are in an active war," said the official, asserting that the civilian law enforcement model in which people are prosecuted for crimes or set free did not apply. "What we're doing at Guantánamo is more understandable in the war context," the official said.
The official said that while some critics worried about the rights of the detainees, the Pentagon was more concerned with "the rights of the soldiers having these people not going back to the battlefield" and the rights of the soldiers' families not to have their relatives face the same men in combat.
Many of the prisoners, a senior military official said, remain committed to indiscriminately killing American civilians and soldiers and would be too dangerous to release.
The argument that the detentions should be seen in a wartime context is, however, unlikely to satisfy many critics. Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that "the idea that you could theoretically keep someone locked up forever under these circumstances is reprehensible." Mr. Ratner, whose New York-based organization has challenged the Guantánamo detentions, said he was taken aback by what he called the administration's brazenness.
"It's nothing to do with law as any person should understand it, at least since the Magna Carta," he said. "How do you know without a trial that these people are even dangerous? It all depends on the military's word."
But the United States officials insisted many prisoners at Guantánamo were "the worst of the worst." They said that over the course of many months of interrogation and intelligence work, they had come to believe that many of the people being held were senior operatives of Al Qaeda who had been involved in active plots against Americans.
Although they are impossible to verify independently, one defense official described several individual cases including one man described as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, another who had been involved in planning attacks on tankers in the Persian Gulf, another who officials said was involved in attacks against United States embassies in Africa in 1998 and two others who were involved in financing Qaeda operations.
The intelligence effort was painstaking, defense officials said, noting that one prisoner had 13 aliases.
Those believed to be involved with Al Qaeda, the officials said, could be brought before military tribunals for which elaborate rules have been established but which have not yet been put into effect.
"But whether a person is to be charged before a military commission is not the reason we're holding them," said the senior defense official. The official said it was possible that an individual could be convicted by a tribunal and serve a five-year sentence and then not be released if he were judged to remain a danger.
The panel that would evaluate long-term prisoners' fitness to be released could hear not only from the detainee, but also from the prisoner's home government, the officials said. The panel's decisions would eventually be reviewed by the secretary of defense.
The officials said there was no decision yet on who would serve on the panel or whether they would be in the military or civilians.
One administration official described the plan for dealing with Guantánamo as having increasingly large transfers of less dangerous prisoners to their home governments for possible prosecution, thus winnowing down the population to a hard-core group.
The senior defense official who spoke Thursday said the category of those who could eventually be repatriated could include anywhere from 100 to 300 prisoners.
The military has released more than 80 Guantánamo prisoners to their home governments so far, saying they were deemed not to be a threat or of further intelligence use. The administration official said that scores more would be transferred in the next few months.
The administration has been in intense negotiations with several governments who might agree to accept the return of their citizens.
Military authorities are building a hard-walled traditional prison alongside the corrugated metal units that have housed detainees for nearly two years at the Guantánamo naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. The prison, which is expected to be ready this summer, will be able to house about 100 people, military officials have said.
Although the rules for military tribunals include the possibility of capital punishment, officials said there were no plans to build an execution chamber in the new prison.
The government has argued that the detainees are not entitled to American constitutional protections because the Guantánamo base is outside United States territory. Two courts have supported that view and the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in April.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Scientists develop a prototype reactor to produce hydrogen efficiently and cheaply
Friday, February 13, 2004
By Gregg Aamot,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-02-13/s_13123.asp
MINNEAPOLIS - Researchers said Thursday that for the first time, they have produced hydrogen from ethanol in a prototype reactor small enough and efficient enough to heat small homes and power cars. The development could help open the way for cleaner-burning technology at home and on the road.
Current methods of producing hydrogen from ethanol require large refineries and copious amounts of fossil fuels, the University of Minnesota researchers said.
The reactor is a relatively tiny 2-foot-high apparatus of tubes and wires that creates hydrogen from corn-based ethanol. A fuel cell, which acts like a battery, then generates power.
"This points to a way to make renewable hydrogen that may be economical and available," said Lanny Schmidt, a chemical engineer who led the study. The work was outlined in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
Hydrogen power itself is hardly a new idea. Hydrogen fuel cells already propel experimental vehicles and supply power for some buildings. NASA has used them on spacecraft for decades.
But hydrogen is expensive to make and uses fossil fuels. The researchers say their reactor will produce hydrogen exclusively from ethanol and do it cheaply enough so people can buy hydrogen fuel cells for personal use.
They also believe their technology could be used to convert ethanol to hydrogen at fuel stations when cars that run solely on hydrogen enter the mass market.
Hydrogen does not emit any pollution or greenhouse gases. But unlike oil or coal, hydrogen must be produced; there are no natural stores of it waiting to be pumped or dug out of the ground.
The new technology holds economic potential for Midwest farmers, who are leaders in the production of corn-based ethanol.
George Sverdrup, a technology manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said he was encouraged by the research.
"When hydrogen takes a foothold and penetrates the marketplace, it will probably come from a variety of sources and be produced by a variety of techniques," he said. "So this particular advance and technology that Minnesota is reporting on would be one component in a big system."
The Minnesota researchers envision people buying ethanol to power the small fuel cells in their basements. The cell could produce 1 kilowatt of power, nearly enough for an average home.
----
MINNESOTA
Scientists develop prototype reactor
February 13, 2004
Washington Times
Around The Nation
http://www.washtimes.com/national/aroundnation.htm
MINNEAPOLIS - Researchers said yesterday that, for the first time, they have produced hydrogen from ethanol in a prototype reactor small enough and efficient enough to heat small homes and power cars.
The development could help open the way for cleaner-burning technology at home and on the road.
Current methods of producing hydrogen from ethanol require large refineries and copious amounts of fossil fuels, the University of Minnesota researchers said.
The reactor is a relatively tiny 2-foot-high apparatus of tubes and wires that creates hydrogen from corn-based ethanol. A fuel cell, which acts like a battery, then generates power.
"This points to a way to make renewable hydrogen that may be economical and available," said Lanny Schmidt, a chemical engineer who led the study.
-------- energy
Consumers Would Pay More to Avoid Blackouts, Study Shows
REUTERS USA:
February 13, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23806/story.htm
HOUSTON - Most consumers hit by the massive blackout that swept across the United States and Canada last year said they would be willing to pay higher utility bills to safeguard their electricity supplies, a study released on Thursday showed.
The survey, conducted by consultancy Accenture Ltd., showed 55 percent of consumers in both countries would accept rate hikes of up to 15 percent to prevent future blackouts like the one that cut power to some 50 million people on Aug. 14.
About 44 percent of the respondents said they would not be willing to pay for an increase, according to the survey of 416 households in the blackout-affected areas.
The power outage is believed to have started with a power line failure in the Midwest that caused an imbalance on the electricity grid that swept eastward, knocking out power across wide areas of the Northeast and Ontario.
Critics have blamed poor coordination between neighboring power grids for failing to limit the blackout, as well as lack of maintenance and electronic control of the system by the Ohio company, FirstEnergy Corp., on whose grid the outage began.
Nearly 10 percent of those surveyed said they incurred between $300 and $500 in expenses related to the blackout, Accenture said, while 24 percent said their costs were between $100 and $300 and 38 percent reported costs of less than $100.
The blackout also hurt consumers' confidence in power reliability, with 50 percent saying they expected another blackout in the next six months or were unsure if their power would be interrupted.
Most consumers also said their local utility and the government had not done enough to inform them of the causes of the blackout, and 85 percent said utilities should provide more information about the electrical system and supply.
-------- genetics
Medical and Ethical Issues Cloud Plans to Clone for Therapy
February 13, 2004
By ANDREW POLLACK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/science/13NEXT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
In cloning human embryos and extracting universal stem cells, scientists in South Korea have taken a big step toward a tantalizing goal: growing tailor-made replacement tissues for people who are sick or injured. Imagine new cardiac muscles to restore a heart after a heart attack, insulin-producing cells for diabetics or neurons to stave off Parkinson's disease.
But significant scientific barriers lie between this accomplishment and any actual therapy, experts said. Moreover, ethical objections have put such research off-limits to some scientists - including the many in the United States who rely on federal money - and lack of investment has felled many companies trying to develop cell-replacement therapies.
The South Korean work is a step toward what is called "therapeutic cloning." The work so far is "proof of concept of cloning but it's not therapeutic yet," said Dr. Steven A. Goldman, chief of the division of cell and gene therapy at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
It is likely to be several years before tissues derived this way could even be tested in patients, he and other experts said. The South Korean scientists have produced only the raw material, the stem cells, which must be turned into more specific cells like heart cells or brain cells.
Some researchers hope that new work will galvanize support for similar research in the United States, by showing that therapeutic cloning is not merely a pipe dream. They argue that the fact that this work was done in South Korea shows that the United States is in danger of falling behind other countries in what could become a major new medical field.
"We will be sitting here with the best scientists in the world watching things on television," said Dr. Jose B. Cibelli, professor of animal biotechnology at Michigan State University. Dr. Cibelli collaborated with the South Korean scientists and is an author of their paper, which is being published by the journal Science.
Donald Kennedy, editor in chief of Science, agreed, saying yesterday at a news conference in Seattle, "I think there is no question that the degree of restriction imposed now on stem cell research in the U.S. has in fact given other nations some significant advantages."
Indeed, the lead South Korean researchers, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang and Dr. Shin Yong Moon of Seoul National University, said that Americans came to their laboratory for training.
"Already many biologists not only from America but the Asian countries have made a visit to his lab," Dr. Moon said of Dr. Hwang's lab at the news conference. "He says they call it `fantastic,' `unbelievable,' `a cloning academy.' "
The idea behind therapeutic cloning is to create tissues or cells that are genetically identical to those of a patient. That way, when the cells are implanted into a patient they will not be rejected like many transplants are. The term "therapeutic cloning" is also used to distinguish it from reproductive cloning, in which the goal is to make a baby that is identical to the parent.
The South Korean scientists created embryos that were genetic copies of women who donated cells. After a few days, some of the embryos had grown to a stage when embryonic stem cells could be extracted, and the scientists created one culture of such stem cells. The stem cells have the ability to turn into any other kind of cell in the body.
Dr. Hwang and Dr. Moon said their research team and the university were seeking to patent the techniques and the stem cells produced from the cloned embryos. They said they would be happy to share the cells with other researchers, but probably on condition that the patent holders would share in any profits.
To make those embryonic stem cells useful for therapy, scientists would then have to turn them into particular types of cells like heart cells or neurons that could be injected into people. Scientists have already learned how to do that for some cells, but not all.
But the cell populations to be implanted must be pure, said Dr. Goldman of Rochester, who is also a professor of neurology. It is essential, he said, that the cells contain no residual embryonic stem cells, because when implanted in the body they tend to form tumors called teratomas that consist of a mix of tissue types including hair, skin and teeth.
Moreover, Dr. Goldman said, for certain applications, like treating neurologic diseases, implanting the wrong type of nerve cell could cause side effects like seizures.
But the work is advancing. "With adequate funding, there's no question we could be in clinical trials in two or three years," said Robert P. Lanza, medical director of Advanced Cell Technology Inc., a Worcester, Mass., company that has been pursuing therapeutic cloning but now has only a handful of scientists. "The question is are we going to be around to be doing this work."
Dr. Thomas B. Okarma, president and chief executive of the Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, Calif., a leader in embryonic stem cells, said his company hoped to ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve a clinical trial in 2005, using cells derived from embryonic stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries. Such treatment has restored mobility in some paralyzed rats, he said.
"We've gone way beyond the academic world and where most of the pundits think the field is," Dr. Okarma said.
Geron does not do therapeutic cloning but uses human embryonic stem cells derived from embryos left over from fertility clinics, created by the fertilization of egg by sperm.
Dr. Goldman, who once collaborated with the Geron Corporation, said he doubted that a trial could begin that soon, saying it would be "irresponsible" to try.
There are ethical objections to work with human embryonic stem cells, because it involves the destruction of embryos, which some people view as human life. Therapeutic cloning is also controversial because, critics say, it involves creation of life solely for research or treatment. Supporters argue that therapeutic cloning is distinct from reproductive cloning, which even many of them find objectionable.
The ethical question, scientists say, has slowed progress. Some scientists stay away from such research to avoid the debate. Federal money for research on human embryonic stem cells is limited, they say, and scientists who receive such financing are allowed to work with only a small number of cell lines.
Companies and venture capitalists have also been reluctant to invest in the field, partly because of the ethics debate, but also because investors perceive it will take a long time for such therapies to reach the market and provide a return. Moreover, injecting cells, particularly if they are customized to each patient, is perceived as a less attractive business proposition than mass-producing a pill that everyone can take.
Many companies pursuing cloning and cell replacement therapies, not all from embryonic stem cells, have gone out of business. PPL Therapeutics, the Scottish company that helped clone Dolly the sheep, is being dismantled. Infigen, a pioneering cloning company in Wisconsin, recently laid off all of its employees.
"The landscape is just littered with dead companies," said Linda Powers, managing director of the Toucan Capital Corporation, a venture capital firm in Bethesda, Md., that, she said, is one of the few investing actively in cell therapies.
"You can spend so much money so quickly and end up dead before you know it," she added. "I think that's been the story with so many companies in this space. That's had a chilling effect on investors."
Even among those pursuing cell replacement treatments, many say that therapeutic cloning would be too inefficient to be practical. The South Korean scientists, for instance, started with 242 human eggs donated for the cloning. They got about 20 embryos from which they tried to extract stem cells and managed to produce only one stem cell line.
Moreover, those scientists managed to produce embryos only when the person to be cloned was also the donor of the egg used. They could not clone men or women who were not egg donors. If that remained the case, it would mean that therapeutic cloning would not be of benefit to men, or to women past menopause.
Dr. Okarma of Geron said his company was using more generic stem cells that could make large amounts of tissues at a lower cost. There is no need to create tissue matched to each patient because there are other ways to fight rejection, he said.
Some scientists say it would be more practical to use stem cells from adults. While some experts say these cells cannot be grown outside the body as easily as embryonic stem cells and may not be as versatile, they are more predictable in what kind of cells they turn into. Use of adult stem cells is not ethically objectionable, avoiding "all the hand-wringing and explanations and gnashing of teeth," Ms. Powers of Toucan Capital said.
Cornelia Dean and Claudia Dreifus contributed reporting from Seattle for this article.
--------
S. Korean Scientists Describe Cloning
Others Worry Over Who Will Use Data
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37626-2004Feb12?language=printer
Scientists, ethicists and politicians scrambled yesterday to absorb the implications of the surprise revelation that South Korean researchers had made the world's first cloned human embryos -- and had isolated from one of them a colony of highly prized stem cells, which researchers believe have great potential to cure diseases.
On the scientific front, researchers debated whether yesterday's online publication of the experiments provided a "cookbook" for less scrupulous scientists who might use the data to make cloned babies. Some contended that the human cloning cat is now mostly out of the bag, while others said that cloning is still as much an art as a science and will not so easily be taken from the laboratory to the maternity ward.
Speaking at a scientific meeting in Seattle, the South Korean researchers also provided previously undisclosed details about their experiments, revealing that their technique had not worked when they tried to clone male cells -- a fact that calls into question its therapeutic potential for men.
In the ethics arena, some experts raised questions about the way female volunteers were recruited for the study, which carried modest medical risks and offered them no benefits.
And in political circles, members of Congress reiterated their deeply entrenched positions for and against producing cloned human embryos for research. With dueling statements spewing from lawmakers' fax machines all day, it appeared that Congress is still a long way from passing a law that seems to have almost unanimous support: a ban on the creation of cloned babies.
The whirlwind of conjecture and debate was triggered by a publication in yesterday's online edition of the journal Science, in which the scientists described the unprecedented production of scores of cloned human embryos, each a genetic replica of an adult woman. The goal was to retrieve from those embryos stem cells, which scientists believe have the capacity to regenerate failing organs. And from one of those embryos, they did so.
The work is controversial because it involves the destruction of human embryos, and because cloned embryos, if transferred to a woman's uterus, might be able to grow into cloned babies. Many experts would consider that step unethical, in part because of evidence from animals that many clones have serious biological abnormalities.
Perhaps the biggest question circulating after yesterday's announcement was whether publication of the team's detailed techniques might facilitate the creation of cloned babies by others. That put the editor in chief of Science, Donald Kennedy, in the awkward position of both extolling the novelty of the work that his journal had published -- novelty being a large measure of a journal's stature -- and at the same time playing down the work's value.
The work, Kennedy said yesterday, represents "an extraordinary series of technical accomplishments," showing in great detail what a combination of chemicals, doses and timing allowed the team to succeed where others had failed. At the same time, he insisted, publication would not speed the birth of a human clone. "It is a recipe only in the sense that 'catch a turtle' is the recipe for turtle soup," he said.
Other scientists said it is still unclear whether the South Koreans had really hit on the magic formula for generating cloned human embryos or whether they had simply succeeded because of the large number of human eggs they had at their disposal, which allowed them to overcome cloning's inherently long odds.
Eggs are difficult to obtain but are a crucial element of cloning, and the South Koreans got a whopping 242 of them free from volunteer donors, experts noted jealously.
"Our ethics board never would have allowed that," said Robert Lanza, a scientist at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass., a company that made early but unsuccessful stabs at making cloned human embryos.
"They told us if you don't pay them anything it's exploitation, and if you pay too much it's coercion."
In the end, the company paid thousands of dollars for a few dozen eggs -- not enough to beat the odds or to find the perfect recipe.
Some ethicists said they wanted to know more about how the South Korean team attracted the 16 volunteers, who took a month's worth of ovary-stimulating hormones and then underwent an egg-donation procedure.
At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science -- which publishes Science -- study leader Hwang Woo Suk explained that he did not need to recruit volunteers.
"Some young ladies have a lot of curiosity about reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning, and after searching the Web site they contacted us," he said.
Although some aspects of the consent process were described in the Science paper, ethicists said they were hungry for additional details. Kennedy said he was "enormously impressed" with the consent form, a translation of which he said he had seen. Nonetheless, he acknowledged, "you and I weren't there" when the researchers explained the risks and told the volunteers what they might gain from the work.
In a surprise revelation not mentioned in their published report, the researchers said yesterday that their methods had failed to produce cloned embryos when they combined eggs with cells from male donors -- or combined eggs with cells from women other than the egg donors. The system worked only when the cells and eggs came from the same volunteers. The reason remains unclear. But that means that for now, at least, if cloned embryos are to be used as sources of curative stem cells, only women of reproductive age stand to benefit.
Many scientists and some politicians took the opportunity yesterday to criticize U.S. rules precluding federally funded researchers from working with new lines of embryonic stem cells -- a policy enacted by President Bush in 2001 to discourage the destruction of human embryos.
"We can quickly become the world leader in the area and set ethical standards that the world will follow, but not if we abdicate our position at the vanguard of lifesaving medical research," said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah).
"Humans are not guinea pigs," countered Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), referring to human embryos. "Creating human beings solely for the purpose of destroying them in an experiment is sick in the extreme."
--------
Split on Clones: Research vs. Reproduction
February 13, 2004
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DENISE GRADY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/science/13CLON.html
The news that South Korean researchers have become the first to produce human embryos and stem cells through cloning has revived a complex debate about whether such research should be permitted in the United States.
Many, if not most, scientists support cloning to make embryonic stem cells. Those cells are prized for research because of their potential to become almost any type of tissue, perhaps one day to be used to treat illnesses or injuries.
At the same time, scientists are nearly unanimous in denouncing so-called reproductive cloning, to create babies.
Religious groups also oppose reproductive cloning. They divide over therapeutic or research cloning to make stem cells.
In reproductive cloning, which has been performed with animals but not people, the embryos are implanted in the womb and allowed to develop into a fetus. In therapeutic cloning, the embryos are never implanted, but are grown for a few days in the laboratory so that the stem cells can be extracted.
A scientific group, the International Society for Stem Cell Research of Northbrook, Ill., called yesterday for "a complete ban on using stem cell technology to clone humans," but strongly supported cloning experiments to derive stem cells.
Reproductive cloning would be unethical, the president of the group, Dr. Leonard I. Zon, a professor of pediatrics at Harvard, said, because too many cloned animals have been unhealthy with problems like arthritis and obesity.
Dr. Zon said he doubted that any serious researcher would even try to clone an entire human being.
"You never know about outliers," he said. "But all responsible scientists and doctors would not do this."
Dr. Lee M. Silver, a geneticist who is a professor of molecular biology at Princeton, agreed that few researchers would want to duplicate people.
"We know that the recipe for creating cloned embryos could in theory be used by somebody for reproductive purposes," Dr. Silver said. "I think it is going to happen. I'm not saying it's good, but I think it's going to happen."
Dr. Donald Kennedy, editor of Science, the journal that published the South Koreans' study, predicted that other scientists would not find it easy to reproduce the meticulous work.
"It is a recipe only in that catching a turtle is a recipe for turtle soup," Dr. Kennedy said.
The United States has no federal law against cloning. The House of Representatives voted last year to outlaw all forms of human cloning. Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, introduced a version of that bill in the Senate.
A rival bill that would have banned just reproductive cloning was also introduced. Neither went to a vote.
In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Mr. Brownback said his ban had "passed through the House, passed and has been enacted in law in a number of states, and it needs to pass through the Senate."
"What is this youngest of human beings?" Mr. Brownback asked. "Is it property or is it a person? We really have to get that debate out there and going."
Religious groups and individuals come down on both sides of the debate. Roman Catholics, evangelicals and many mainline Protestant churches oppose cloning for a variety of reasons. Ethicists note that some Christian churches and most Jewish groups support therapeutic cloning.
"This research is always going to raise a hue and cry for people who feel that the embryo is the moral equivalent of an adult human life," said Suzanne Holland, chairwoman of the religion department at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. "They did everything wonderfully right in terms of the protocols they used. They stopped short of implantation. They had no intention of using it as a reproductive technology. The women gave their informed consent and were told it was for research."
Carrie Gordon Earll, bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family, a conservative ministry in Colorado Springs, called the research "nothing short of cannibalism."
"We don't sacrifice one human life in order to possibly help another human life," Ms. Earll said. "This really is discrimination against the most vulnerable human being."
A Christian group in Chicago, the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, said the Koreans had produced "human embryos for the explicit purpose of fatally mining them."
Catholic officials also said the new study would intensify the church's efforts to press for a ban.
Cardinal William H. Keeler of Baltimore, chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "If scientists will not voluntarily turn away from this abuse of science, a national and worldwide effort to ban human cloning is more urgently needed than ever."
The United Methodist Church, a large mainline Protestant denominations, opposes any cloning of human embryos, said Jay Dee Hanson, bioethics consultant for the church. The church, Mr. Hanson added, would urge Congress and the United Nations to proceed with cloning bans.
Jewish bioethics experts said most Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis accepted cloning research for therapeutic purposes.
"This is an area in which there is surprising unanimity in the Jewish community, because of the strong moral imperative to heal," said Laurie Zoloth, a professor of medical ethics and religion at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.
The eerie possibilities of cloning have captured filmmakers' imaginations. "Godsend," to be released in April by Lions Gate Films, will feature Robert De Niro as a cloning expert who, for grief-stricken parents, recreates a child who has died. Things go well, up to a point.
"It's a Hollywood thriller and a bit of a horror story," Jeremy Walker, a publicity agent, said. "The science is a little fuzzy."
John Files contributed reporting from Washington for this article and Cornelia Dean from Seattle.
-------- imf / world bank / wto
Nobel Laureates Ask World Bank to Curb Extractive Industries
By Bob Burton,
February 13, 2004
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2004/2004-02-13-01.asp
CANBERRA, Australia - Five Nobel Peace Laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have urged World Bank President James Wolfensohn to endorse recommendations contained in a new review that proposes a dramatic overhaul of bank policies on lending for the oil, gas, and mining industries.
Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, author and Archibishop Emeritis of Cape Town (Photo courtesy USC) "War, poverty, climate change, greed, corruption, and ongoing violations of human rights - all of these scourges are all too often linked to the oil and mining industries," wrote Tutu, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for helping to resolve the problem of apartheid in South Africa, and the four other laureates.
Also signing the letter endorsing strict limits on lending to extractive industries are: Sir Joseph Rotblat, 1995 Peace Prize awardee for his work to diminish the threat of nuclear war; Jody Williams, 1997 Peace Prize winner for her leadership of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines; and Betty Williams and Mairead Maguire who jointly received the 1976 Peace Prize as founders of the Northern Ireland Peace Movement.
"Your efforts to create a world without poverty need not exacerbate these problems," they wrote. "The Review provides you an extraordinary opportunity to direct the resources of the World Bank Group in a way that is truly oriented towards a better future for all."
Dated February 9, the laureates' letter was presented to Wolfensohn late Thursday at a meeting with community development and environment groups in Melbourne. "We urge you in the strongest possible terms to embrace the spirit of the report and accept the recommendations in their entirety when devising a strategy for moving forward," they wrote.
The Extractive Industries Review (EIR) was initiated at the 2000 World Bank Annual Meeting in Prague by Wolfensohn, who appointed a team headed by former Indonesian Environment Minister Emil Salim.
Economist Dr. Emil Salim was Indonesian Minister for Population and Environment from 1978 to 1993, and chaired the preparatory committee for the World Summit on Sustainable Development. (Photo courtesy UNDP) On January 15, Salim submitted his final report. It embraces many of the concerns raised by environmental and community organizations, who have been critical of destructive lending practices of the World Bank.
Key recommendations include a phaseout of World Bank lending to oil and coal projects, and protection of biodiversity through the establishment of "no go" areas for internationally recognized critical habitats. The review also casts doubt on the practice of submarine mine tailings disposal.
The recommendations are bitterly opposed by the mining, oil and gas industries. If implemented, they mean a very limited role for World Bank financial support of extractive industries unless much stricter pre-conditions are met by companies and governments.
Kate Walsh, a campaigner with the Sydney based watchdog group Aidwatch who attended the Melbourne meeting, says Wolfensohn distanced himself from a leaked internal memo in which bank staff sought to dismiss Salim's proposals to overhaul bank support for the oil, gas and mining industries.
"He is clearly critical of the management report, which he said was poorly written and not very well researched," Walsh said.
World Bank President James Wolfensohn at the International Monetary Fund World Bank Group 2002 annual meeting (Photo courtesy IMF) A World Bank spokesman confirmed that Wolfensohn has given a commitment to further public consultation on the Extractive Industries Review and has dismissed an internal draft response to the review prepared by World Bank staff.
The staff review, which was leaked last week, revealed opposition to many of the key recommendations of the Extractive Industries Review and reflects the views of extractive industry executives.
The global mining industry lobby group, the International Council on Mines and Metals (ICMM), which represents companies including Alcoa, Placer Dome, Newmont, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, BHP-Billiton and Rio Tinto, in mid-December dispatched a submission to Salim in the vain hope of ensuring his final report was watered down.
In its submission ICMM opposed blanket bans on the practice of dumping tailings in the ocean or rivers, preferring that the World Bank negotiate conditions under which the practices may be acceptable.
"The WBG [World Bank Group] should encourage and play an active part in a process for developing a list of criteria for tailings placement for all mining projects," the mining companies wrote. "Site specific analysis of alternative technologies, benefits and impacts of the project should be undertaken, on a case by case basis, for all projects that would require riverine and submarine tailings disposal."
Mine tailings may contain mercury, cadmium, nickel, chromium and arsenic. During submarine tailings disposal, mines pipe their waste to the ocean, then run another pipe out into coastal waters, where the tailings spill out over the sea floor, and may disperse in coastal currents.
Cheaper than other tailings disposal methods, submarine disposal is used increasingly by mining companies from rich countries in their operations in developing countries, where they may be able to circumvent environmental restrictions and are not accountable to local communities. Off the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia, for instance, an enormous pipe releases 160,000 tons of tailings per day into coastal waters.
Submarine tailings disposal has been linked to toxic contamination in fish, and result in declining catches and local incomes. Toxics in the tailings wipe out bottom dwelling fish and poison coral reefs.
The $1.6 billion Camisea Gas Project in the remote Urubamba Valley in the southeast Peruvian Amazon includes two pipelines to the Peruvian coast cutting through a biodiversity hotspot. (Photo (c) Peter Kostishak, Amazon Alliance) In his review, Salim also advocated that the World Bank take a strong stand on excluding funding for projects in existing and potential future protected areas. "The WBG should not finance any oil, gas, or mining projects or activities that might affect current official protected areas or critical natural habitat or areas that officials plan to designate in the future as protected.:
"Clear "no-go" zones for oil, gas, and mining projects should be adopted on the basis of this policy," Salim's final report stated.
The EIR recommendations have drawn strong support from a coalition of 11 U.S. environmental groups - including the Friends of the Earth, the Mineral Policy Center, the National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club - who wrote to Wolfensohn in late January urging he adopt the recommendations as written.
"We urge you, therefore, to adopt the EIR report in its entirety. Endorsement of only some parts of the EIR report would fail to address important root causes of extractive industries' destructive effects on broad-based poverty alleviation and sustainable development. As such, it would not constitute a credible response to this significant work," the U.S. groups wrote.
"We support the recommendation to update and implement fully the World Bank's Natural Habitats Policy as a basis for designating "no go" areas where extractive industry projects are incompatible with vulnerable ecosystems and species," they wrote.
However, at the meeting in Melbourne Thursday Wolfensohn made it clear that the Salim's recommendations would be cherry-picked. "He said it would be virtually impossible to implement all the recommendations, and so we shouldn't be bothering to push that they should all be accepted," Walsh recounted.
While Salim recommended a phaseout of funding for coal and oil projects, Wolfensohn has rejected that proposal. "He was really opposed to the idea of a phaseout of coal and oil," according to Walsh. "He said that recommendation is going to be very contentious."
-------- ACTIVISTS
List of Nobel Peace Prize hopefuls is longest ever
OSLO (AFP)
Feb 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040213112035.d1s3zsip.html
The number of hopefuls for this year's Nobel Prize for Peace is the longest ever in the history of the prestigious award, the Nobel Institute said Friday.
By February 1, the deadline for nominations, the Institute had received the names of 173 individuals and organizations, believed to include French President Jacques Chirac, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and American President George W. Bush.
"This is the highest number ever," Geir Lundestad, head of the Nobel Institute told AFP.
And the list could become a little longer still: Nobel comittee members have until March 2 to put forward their own candidates, and there is the chance that some letters sent before February 1 could still be in the post.
No names have been officially divulged, but well-placed sources confirmed the presence of the French, British and American leaders on the list, as well as that of former Czech president Vaclav Havel and Pope John Paul II, who also lost out to Shirin Ebadi, a human rights lawyer from Iran, last year.
The list also includes the European Union (EU), former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad ElBaradei, Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, former Israeli nuclear scientist Mordehai Vanunu, as well as American senator Richard Lugar and his former colleague, Sam Nunn, the sources said.
The winner is usually picked by the end of September and announced in mid-October, with the prize awarded in a ceremony on December 10, the birthday of Nobel prize founder Alfred Nobel.
--------
Haitian Leader's Allies Block Opposition Demonstration
February 13, 2004
By LYDIA POLGREEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/international/americas/13HAIT.html?pagewanted=all
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 12 - Militant supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide blocked a demonstration planned by civic opposition groups in the capital on Thursday, erecting barricades of flaming tires and throwing rocks at anyone who tried to breach their blockade.
Militants loyal to Mr. Aristide and his Lavalas party started gathering in the square late Wednesday night, and Thursday morning hundreds of them threw rocks, taunted and shouted at opposition protesters.
"With everything I have got I will fight them," said Willy Dumeria, 30, an Aristide loyalist who spent the night in the square where the opposition protesters were to gather.
As he spoke he pulled a sharpened steel rod from his trousers and brandished it. In his other hand he held a picture of Mr. Aristide.
"They don't respect the government," he said of the protesters. "But we will take care of them and save our power. The opposition, they are terrorists."
Opposition groups said they saw the planned march as a crucial test of Mr. Aristide's intentions as the country convulses with armed uprisings in towns along the western Caribbean coast.
Mr. Aristide has said that those who oppose his government are free to demonstrate, but the police and pro-Aristide gangs have often blocked marches, firing tear gas and sometimes bullets into the crowds. The protest would have been the first since uprisings began sweeping the country a week ago, killing dozens of people and bringing Haiti to the brink of chaos.
Residents here said they heard gunfire in the capital, Port-au-Prince, early in the morning. Later, tensions were evident among people in the square.
Opposition members who showed up to march said they were beaten and robbed by furious mobs.
"I just wanted to be a member of the demonstration today because I am afraid of the bad things Aristide is doing," said one of the thwarted protesters, Emmanuel Jean François, 27, a university student.
He said that Aristide supporters had surrounded him but that he had managed to flee their blockade. "They took my wallet, they took my phone, they were going to kill me," he said. "We students have risen up because they tried to kill us every day. We have no freedom."
At a police station overlooking the square where the mob gathered, officers watched but did not interfere. Blockades put up to keep protesters from reaching the square smoldered, snarling traffic.
At a news conference later in the day, opposition leaders denounced Mr. Aristide and called on the United States and other nations to do the same, saying he had not lived up to his pledge to allow dissenters to march.
"We decided we needed to take to the streets to show we offer a nonviolent option," said Andy Apaid, a businessman who represents the Group 184, a prominent opposition group. "But armed thugs invaded where we were supposed to gather, under the nose of the police station.
Opposition leaders said the march was a chance to demonstrate their groups' strength and emphasize their nonviolent approach in the capital. They have struggled to distance themselves from the violent uprisings sweeping through cities and towns along the northern coast.
Mr. Aristide has labeled opposition groups "terrorists," and he has said that civic groups that espouse nonviolence are secretly supporting the armed militants.
Mr. Apaid said opposition groups planned to hold a march on Sunday, beginning at a church in Pétionville, a suburb perched high atop a hill above the capital.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Thursday that the administration was discussing the possibility of asking Canadian or Caribbean police forces to go to Haiti to help establish order.
He denied that the Bush administration was seeking to replace President Aristide. "The policy of the administration is not regime change," Mr. Powell said.
--------
Aristide Supporters Halt Protest
Haitian Leader Decries 'Terrorist Opposition'
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 13, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37675-2004Feb12.html
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 12 -- Militant supporters of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide blocked roads and threw rocks at anti-government demonstrators on Thursday, derailing a protest march. Opposition leaders warned that suppression of the event could give fresh momentum to a rebel insurrection in scattered areas of central and northern Haiti.
The violence poses the biggest threat yet to Aristide's three-year-old government. In an interview Thursday, the president condemned the movement to oust him as a "terrorist opposition."
The president's supporters used rusting refrigerators, burning tires, stones and tree stumps to block key roads leading from wealthy hillside neighborhoods into the city center, defying Aristide's call on Wednesday to reject violence. March leaders blamed the police force, which they say has become a political tool of the president, for failing to protect their peaceful demonstration.
The opposition, a coalition of business associations, civic groups and university students, had planned the march near the National Palace to press its demand that Aristide resign with two years remaining in his term. They said they would try to hold the march on Sunday.
"Aristide has confirmed he is a delinquent outlaw president," Evans Paul, a former Aristide ally and now opposition leader, said at a news conference. "We will not follow Aristide in using violence."
The opposition warned that their nonviolent approach was in danger of being overtaken by the brutal armed insurrection. About 50 people have died in violence since the insurrection began on Feb. 5 in Gonaives, 70 miles north of here, and fighting has since ebbed and flowed around towns along the country's northern and southern fingers.
In a 50-minute interview at the National Palace, Aristide said the opposition was to blame for the cancellation of the march. He said organizers did not inform the Port-au-Prince police chief of their intended route, as required by law, making their protection impossible. Such demonstrations have ended in violence recently, and Aristide suggested that opposition leaders sought a similar result to increase public outrage against his government at a vulnerable moment.
Aristide also charged that the civic opposition has links to the armed groups.
"It's not a democratic opposition, but a terrorist opposition," Aristide said. "We feel bad because we need a democratic opposition, but these people do not believe in one man, one vote."
The day's events were a sign of the political stalemate between Aristide and his opponents, led by Haiti's wealthy urban elite. The opponents stepped up their protests after talks broke down with the government on holding new parliamentary elections to replace legislators voted into office in flawed balloting in 2000.
But opposition leaders said the larger problem is Aristide's autocratic style of government. Aristide became Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990, but was ousted months later. A United States occupation force restored Aristide to power in 1994, and he was reelected in 2000. He has vowed to complete his five-year term.
Referring to recent suggestions by the Bush administration that he consider stepping down, Aristide said, "Everyone has the right to say what they want. I will leave office February 7, 2006" -- the next inauguration day. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Thursday in Washington that "regime change" was not U.S. policy in Haiti.
Opposition leaders say Aristide has not done enough to rein in militant members of his Lavalas party.
Asked about his control of the militants, Aristide said, "They listen to me, not always but often." He noted that a large pro-government march last weekend had been peaceful. "They heard my message, and they obeyed."
In the interview, Aristide also said Haiti's 3,000-member police force does not have the capacity to put down the armed insurgency that has controlled Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city, for a week. Members of the main armed group, whose leaders were once loyal to Lavalas, have said the party armed them to protect polling places before Aristide's 2000 election.
The president denied that claim. He said former members of Haiti's military -- which he disbanded in 1994 -- are involved in drug dealing.
--------
NYC Heck, No? Antiwar Voices Persist, Softly
February 13, 2004
By CLYDE HABERMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/nyregion/13nyc.html
THEY stood on Fifth Avenue across from Saks, three women who will probably not mind being described, however ungallantly, as no longer young. It was they, after all, who chose to call themselves "Grandmothers Against the War."
There they were as the sun faded on Wednesday, holding cardboard placards that described the human toll of the war in Iraq and demanded an immediate end to the American occupation. They have been there every Wednesday for the last five weeks, usually in somewhat larger numbers, said Joan Wile, a songwriter with four grandchildren.
Taking this genteel form of antiwar protest to the streets was Ms. Wile's idea. It made sense to her to settle on a part of Midtown heavily trafficked by office workers, shoppers and sightseers.
"I think it's good for them to see some opposition to Bush," she said. "Especially from old grandmas like us."
In truth, not many passers-by broke stride to react to Ms. Wile or her companions, Marjorie Perces and Judith Cartisano. Normally, they get more of a response, Ms. Wile said - most of it favorable, though there is no escaping the occasional raspberry.
The quiet street reaction was emblematic of the antiwar movement in general these days. It is quite a contrast from a year ago. You will recall that last Feb. 15, with the invasion of Iraq drawing near, many tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied near the United Nations, part of a worldwide day of protest. Nothing since has approached that mass action.
You'd think it might be otherwise, especially now that the original reason for going to war, Saddam Hussein's supposed arsenal of unconventional weapons, apparently holds as much water as a clenched fist. It could be that New Yorkers as a group stand solidly behind the president and his foreign policy. But somehow, given political realities, that seems unlikely. Even the hard-charging rightist Bill O'Reilly complained this week about being misled by the White House.
There has been some protest activity, by venerable groups like the War Resisters League and Internet-era upstarts like MoveOn.org.
"But obviously that's not as dramatic as putting tens or even hundreds of thousands of people in the streets," said Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of the antiwar coalition United for Peace and Justice. Then again, "we're not on the eve of war," Ms. Cagan said. There isn't the sense of urgency that prevailed a year ago.
Colleen Kelly, a leader of a group called Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, said that many protesters felt "deflated" once the war began. But the mood may be shifting again, said Ms. Kelly, whose brother, William H. Kelly Jr., died in the attack on the World Trade Center.
"It feels like Round 2," she said. "I think there's this new galvanizing for accountability, for holding them to their word. There's a lot of antiwar sentiment, but maybe just not the traditional protester who takes to the streets."
The streets may not be quiet much longer. A demonstration on the order of last February's is planned for March 20. That could be a prelude to a summer of protest as the Republicans hold their national convention here, starting in late August.
A lot could be on the line. Protest leaders will be tested on their ability to maintain order in the ranks. The Police Department will surely be tested, too.
MANY New Yorkers feel the police did not do themselves proud last February when they refused to let demonstrators march and kept thousands from reaching a rally on First Avenue.
Spirits were not lightened in April when dozens were arrested in another Midtown protest, on charges that went nowhere. Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights said it had sued the department in federal court, and called the arrests "part of a pattern of N.Y.P.D. harassment."
Nor do the police score high with civil libertarians for asserting a right to question arrested protesters about their politics, albeit anonymously. To Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, this policy is "intimidating and threatening."
Important issues, all. At least they were not of immediate concern at the grandmothers' protest on Fifth Avenue.
Thumbs up from passers-by definitely outnumbered thumbs down, Ms. Wile said. There was one fellow, though, who pointed a finger at the women and made motions as if he were firing a gun.
Ms. Cartisano was unfazed. "His aim was bad," she said.
----
A father's vigil
By Joseph Ryan
Daily Herald Staff Writer
2/13/04
http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intid=38030382
For Paul Vogel, seven months of worrying about his son in Iraq was enough.
So during one of the Iraq war's deadliest periods, he caught a plane from O'Hare to Jordan, and then hopped on a prop jet that rumbled right into the heart of Baghdad.
"It came to the point, you know, you start thinking -- I'd just as soon not see him when he comes home in a casket. I'd rather go there and see him while he's alive," he said.
Vogel's simplistic plan was uncharted. No military families were known to have traveled to Iraq, but several did follow Vogel's lead and make the trip later.
Vogel's love for his son and passionate objection to the war not only compelled him to take such a risk, they've also driven him to create a sea of red, white and blue at his office in Barrington.
Since the war began in March, Vogel has placed a small American flag in front of his temp service on Main Street to solemnly honor the death of each soldier in Iraq.
The number has swelled to 536. On Wednesday, he added two more flags for the soldiers who were killed in a roadside bombing in western Baghdad.
Despite knowing his trip to Iraq could cost him his life, Vogel felt himself helplessly drawn to the country. As he entered Iraq in October, he felt the danger right in his stomach.
"When the planes enter Baghdad airport, they have to do these maneuvers to avoid missile attacks. They start above the airport and spiral straight down before flaring out at the last second to land," Vogel said. "You feel helpless and terrified, yet the g-forces are pinning you back in your seat."
The fear didn't abate once he was on firm ground. On the chaotic streets of Baghdad, Vogel searched for a safe place to spend the night, following the recommendations of a pacifist group in Chicago.
Baghdad-stationed members of the American Friends Service Committee advised Vogel to stay in a low-key, family-run hotel.
"The high class hotels are the ones targeted most often," Vogel said.
During the week of Vogel's trip, the well-known Rashid Hotel was hit with several rocket grenades, killing one U.S. soldier.
But even the off-the-beaten-path hotel he found wasn't 100 percent safe.
"My hotel staff was nice, you know, they want to help but they don't want to get killed for you," he said.
Despite a quiet first night, Vogel couldn't sleep, partly because of his excitement, but mostly because the rotten smell emanating from backed-up sewers choked his tiny room.
He rose early in the morning and found a driver who for $40 would take him an hour northwest of Baghdad to his son -- 24-year-old Army Sgt. Aaron Vogel of the 652nd reservist engineering company out of Wisconsin.
He found the horseshoe-shaped compound and sat on a nearby cement barrier in the scorching sun to wait for what seemed like an eternity to see his son. But in a few short minutes, Vogel spotted his son walking toward him across a rubble-strewn lot.
"I had promised myself I wouldn't cry, but there was no way around it," he said. "You know, here is your son with an M-16 slung around his back, marching toward you with a flak jacket and helmet on. You just don't know if you should salute him or hug him."
As they embraced, Vogel felt a sense of relief thousands of families wish they could savor.
"You know that at any second he could die," Vogel said. "When something happens over there, you just sit and wait, wondering if the next noise outside is someone coming to tell you your son is dead."
Vogel made the same trip from Baghdad to his son in Baqubah every day for a week, even once getting to stay overnight at the compound.
In a desert, more than 6,000 miles from home, Vogel and Aaron were able to spend about four hours a day being father and son, not soldier and crusader.
They wandered the city's streets and gabbed about Aaron's girlfriend back home and his plans to study photography at Columbia College.
"We spent some real quality time together," Vogel said. "It was wonderful."
They visited a local school and handed out bags of crayons and paper to beaming, poverty stricken children.
Too soon, though, the reunion was over. Vogel returned to Barrington and his unwavering vigil, and his son stayed in the war zone.
When news broke on Christmas Eve that two soldiers were killed near his son's compound, Vogel, his wife, Patricia, and his daughter, Heidi, were in agony for 12 excruciating hours until Aaron called to say he was safe.
"You try to keep each other from falling to pieces," he said. "My wife and I have to take turns holding each other up."
The roller coaster of emotions will continue for the Vogels at least until March 17, when Aaron is scheduled to return after a year in the combat zone.
Paul Vogel plans to continue his anti-war advocacy. He has a sign ready to put up on his temp service business when his son returns.
It reads: "Proud of our son! Ashamed of our president!"
Vogel said he has had few complaints about his silent demonstrations. And his business, which relies on other businesses for contracts, has not suffered.
Though if it does, he won't stop.
"If a military family can't oppose the war who can?" he said.
Vigil: Father and son spent time talking about little things
----
Presidents' Day Nuclear Perspectives
Fri, 13 Feb 2004
From: David Krieger <dkrieger@napf.org>
This Presidents' Day weekend, the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation presents perspectives from past and present US presidents, as well as from candidates running in this year's election. Despite calls from past Presidents, nuclear weapons have assumed a far more central role in US security policy. As the past presidential statements make clear, it is patriotic to the country and the world to oppose policies of nuclear annihilation and to call for US leadership toward ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity and all life. In this election year, we encourage you to examine what candidates have to say about nuclear weapons policy. As a US citizen, you have the power to voice your concerns and challenge nuclear policy decisions.
Past Presidents
President Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Truly if the genius of mankind that has invented the weapons of death cannot discover the means of preserving peace, civilization as we know it lives in an evil day."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Let no one think that the expenditure of vast sums for weapons and systems of defense can guarantee absolute safety for the cities and citizens of any nation. The awful arithmetic of the atomic bomb does not permit any such easy solution."
President Harry S. Truman: "There is nothing more urgent confronting the people of all nations than the banning of all nuclear weapons under a foolproof system of international control."
President John F. Kennedy: "Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us .."
President Lyndon B. Johnson: "...uneasy is the peace that wears a nuclear crown. And we cannot be satisfied with a situation in which the world is capable of extinction in a moment of error, or madness, or anger. "
President Richard M. Nixon: "A direct clash between the superpowers would almost certainly escalate to nuclear weapons. Over 400 million people in the United States and the Soviet Union alone would be killed in an all-out exchange."
President Gerald R. Ford: "The world faces an unprecedented danger in the spread of nuclear weapons technology."
President James E. Carter: "In an all-out nuclear war, more destructive power than in all of World War II would be unleashed every second during the long afternoon it would take for all the missiles and bombs to fall. A World War II every second -- more people killed in the first few hours than all the wars of history put together. The survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide."
President Ronald W. Reagan: "Nuclear War cannot be won and must never be fought."
President George H.W. Bush: "School children once hid under their desks in drills to prepare for nuclear war. I saw the chance to rid our children's dreams of the nuclear nightmare, and I did."
President Bill Clinton: "I am very disappointed that the United States Senate voted not to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This agreement is critical to protecting the American people from the dangers of nuclear war. It is, therefore, well worth fighting for. And I assure you, the fight is far from over."
Current Presidential Candidates
President George W. Bush: The Bush 2001 Nuclear Posture Review called for the development of new, more "usable" nuclear weapons; for developing contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against nuclear and non-nuclear states; and for reducing the time required for the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing. Below are statements taken from the Review:
"Nuclear weapons play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States, its allies and friends. They provide credible military options to deter a wide range of threats, including WMD and large-scale conventional military force. These nuclear capabilities possess unique properties that give the United States options to hold at risk classes of targets [that are] important to achieve strategic and political objectives."
"Advances in defensive technologies will allow U.S. non-nuclear and nuclear capabilities to be coupled with active and passive defenses to help provide deterrence and protection against attack, preserve U.S. freedom of action, and strengthen the credibility of U.S. alliance commitments."
"Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack, (for example, deep underground bunkers or bio-weapon facilities)."
"The need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex that will: ...be able, if directed, to design, develop, manufacture, and certify new warheads in response to new national requirements; and maintain readiness to resume underground nuclear testing if required."
Howard Dean: "Because nuclear weapons are a fact of life, strategic deterrence will remain essential to the US's security strategy. However, it is equally critical to halt nuclear proliferation - for the spread of nuclear weapons will badly undercut our security, risking among other things that such weapons fall into the hands of terrorists."
John Edwards: "Making nuclear weapons more 'usable' will not make Americans more secure. Reversing the ban on developing these weapons is both unnecessary and irresponsible. This would send exactly the wrong message to the rest of the world."
John Kerry: "George Bush is taking the world in the wrong direction. He is poised to set off a new nuclear arms race by building bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons -- smaller and more usable nuclear bombs. I don't want a world with more useable nuclear bombs. I don't want America to turn its back on half a century of effort by every President to reduce the nuclear threat. I'm running to put America where we rightfully belong -- leading the way to a new international accord on nuclear proliferation to make the world itself safer for human survival."
Dennis Kucinich: "A Kucinich administration would work to end nuclear proliferation by actually setting an example for the rest of the world by turning away from the true weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear disarmament would be a priority and the madness of moving towards battlefield nuclear weapons would be reversed."
To find out more on presidential candidate's position on US nuclear weapons policy, go to http://www.wagingpeace.org/menu/action/urgent-actions/us-nuclear-weapons-policy/index.htm
----
'Bush Lie and Who Die?'
Milititary families react to the controversy over WMD intelligence
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Martha Brant
Newsweek
Feb. 13, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4265356/
Feb. 13 - Fernando Suarez del Solar has become something of a cause celebre in the antiwar movement. Although the Mexico native's English is spotty, he is still eloquent when he speaks of his son's death and the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. "Mr. Bush lie and who die?" Suarez asked this week. "My son."
advertisement Suarez's 20-year-old son, Jesus, had desperately wanted to be a Marine. So the family moved across the border from Tijuana to California so that he could fulfill his dream at Camp Pendleton. The senior Suarez had been something of an activist in his hometown, a city rife with drug crime, and Jesus wanted to fight narcotraffickers, maybe go into special forces or the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Instead Jesus landed in Iraq and died last March after stepping on a stray American cluster bomb, according to his father. After his son's death, he made a decision to speak out against the war. "They tell me I'm staining the memory of my son. But that's not true. He died for his own ideals," Suarez said in Spanish. "All the young people who have died are a symbol of peace, valor and courage. But they were tricked."
Suarez finds it a bit ironic that a humble man who has yet to master the language of his adopted country (he is an American citizen) has become such an in-demand voice for the antiwar movement. He has spoken at rallies in Washington and will be a featured speaker at a national protest planned for March. He has taken a fact-finding tour to Iraq and been invited to Spain, Italy and throughout the United States to speak. He has joined liberal activist groups like Global Exchange, Military Families Speak Out and MoveOn.org. "I'm tired," Suarez said Wednesday, after a MoveOn.org event for which he had taken a red-eye flight from San Diego. "Not just because I haven't slept."
No wonder Suarez is exhausted: he is one of only a small number of military-family members who are speaking out publicly against the war in Iraq. Unlike the Vietnam War, where veterans like John Kerry became high-profile protestors, this war has yet to see former soldiers and their loved ones protesting in large numbers. Is that because they mostly support the war or because military culture frowns upon public criticism?
Antiwar activists say it's too early for veterans in particular to protest. They say that as the death toll rises, more soldiers and their families will come forward. "That is the next phase," explains Nancy Lessin of Military Families Speak Out, which she says has a little more than 1,000 active members and is getting about a dozen new members a week-mostly families whose kids are about to be deployed. She says there are a couple of veterans of the war who are planning to speak out through her group at this point. This week, I received an e-mail from one soldier who promised to go public after he is out of the service in April.
MoveOn.org has tried to bring military voices like Suarez's into its anti-Bush campaign. Of the more than 500,000 people who joined an online petition to censure the president for "misinformation" on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, about 25,000 had military ties, according to the organization. The recent reports that Iraq probably did not stockpile WMD haven't seemed to spark a big protest within military homes. Many antiwar family members like Joe Werfelman, whose son is a reservist, were already dubious about finding WMD. "This is just another lie," he says.
But Kathleen Monagle of Texas, whose husband is a reservist in Iraq, thinks Suarez and Werfelman are "in the minority." While disappointed that WMDs were not found, she says, "There was definitely reason to be concerned about Iraq using WMD or sharing what they had. By the time the threat becomes 'imminent' it's too late." She heads up a family-support group for reservist families in Iowa and Texas and says the families she speaks with still support the war. She has a son who is about to graduate from Marine Corps boot camp. "Chances are he'll end up in Iraq. And guess what? I still support this war," Monagle says. Her son is about the same age as was Jesus Suarez.
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Los Alamos Study Group director to speak
Friday, February 13, 2004
Grand Island Independent (Nebraska)
http://www.theindependent.com/stories/021304/new_conference13.shtml
A number of state and national issues will be discussed Saturday at the 2004 Annual Peace Conference in Grand Island.
The conference will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Trinity United Methodist Church, 511 N. Elm St.
The keynote speaker at the conference will be Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a disarmament-oriented research and advocacy organization headquartered in Albuquerque, N.M. He will speak on the topic of "StratCom's New Mission: Full Global Strike."
Mello's study group has researched activities involving nuclear weapons, along with environmental review and analysis.
Along with Mello's address, topics at the conference will also cover Initiative 300, the Patriot Act, and repeal of LB755.
The conference is sponsored by Nebraskans for Peace and the UNO School of Social Work. There will be a $30 registration fee at the door for the full day's activities. A student and low-income rate of $10 is also available.
For more information, contact Tim Rinne at (402) 475-7616 or (402) 475-4620 or Carol McShane at 730-0262.
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