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NUCLEAR
Congo Authorities Seize Radioactive Uranium Cases
How safe are we from nuclear threat?
Nuclear nightmares
Germany to stop sale of nuclear plant to China: report
Pak capable of producing plutonium for weapons use: US
Blix Blames Politicians, Not Intelligence, for Iraq
Crumpets, sir, or yellow-cake?
An eye-opener from Blix
Fukui gives go ahead to controversial nuclear project
KEPCO gets OK to pioneer MOX fuel use in Japan
Terrorists can go nuclear, warns ElBaradei
$27 Million Sought for Nuclear Arms Study
Pace of Flats cleanup questioned
Bush Asks Allies for Unity on Iraq
Eisenhower Planned Emergency Government
Details on Government Bunker
POST-9/11 New book says US targeted Iraq early
MILITARY
More Satellite Imaging Sought
With Taiwan in Mind, China Focuses Military Expansion on Navy
Taiwan's Leader and Deputy Are Shot on Election Eve
EU Taking Up Terrorism Issues
Violence in Iraq Marks War Anniversary
New Iraq? Hooded Protest And Masked Statistics
Clashes in Gaza Feed Doubt About Pullout
NATO to Increase Peacekeepers in Troubled Kosovo
Pakistani Forces Besiege Guerrillas
India warns ties with US could be harmed by military reward to Pakistan
Pakistan Encounters Resistance From Militants, Arrests 100
Security Officials Reject Idea of C.I.A. for European Union
Faulty intelligence continues to plague U.S. efforts in Iraq
Annan Calls for Probe into U.N.'s Iraqi Oil Program
A Look at U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq
Homeland Seeks 'Entertainment Liaison'
Kosovo triggers media war
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Lost Police Reports Hint at Problems
Prison of Abused 9/11 Detainees Alters Ways
Justice Dept. Urges Changes at Federal Jail
Army Drops Chaplain's Court-Martial
Charges Dropped Against Chaplain
Clinton Aides Plan to Tell Panel of Warning Bush Team on Qaeda
The Unmentionable Source of Terrorism
OTHER
Carbon Dioxide Reported at Record Levels
ACTIVISTS
Few Disruptions as Antiwar Protesters March in San Francisco
Police Release Ground Rules for Antiwar Demonstration
Peace protests follow the sun
Anti - War Protesters Climb London's Big Ben
Thousands Protest on Iraq War Anniversary
Protests Mark Iraq War Anniversary
Thousands march in Latin America against US-led Iraq occupation
Hundreds of Hondurans protest Iraq war
Chilean demonstrators take anti-war protests to the streets
Iraq Peace March held in Kyiv, Ukraine
Several hundred thousand march in Rome against Iraq war
Q&A: Protesters hold fast to belief U.S. wrong to go to war
GROUP PROTESTS WAR ONE YEAR LATER
Chomsky backs 'Bush-lite' Kerry
25,000 march in London on first anniversary of Iraq war
Chilean demonstrators take anti-war protests to the streets
Hundreds of Hondurans protest Iraq war
Thousands protest Iraq war in Cuba
Govt lauds war as Australians rally for peace
Two protestors scale Big Ben ahead of London rally against Iraq war
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Congo Authorities Seize Radioactive Uranium Cases
March 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-congo-democratic-uranium.html
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo seized two cases containing illegal radioactive uranium in the capital, Kinshasa, earlier this month, a senior atomic energy officer said on Saturday.
The two cases, weighing over 100 kilograms (220 lb), contained a mixture of stable uranium-238 and radioactive uranium-235, said Professor Fortunat Lumu, Congo's General Atomic Energy Officer and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
He told Reuters both cases had a relatively low level of radioactivity but it was ``still enough'' to cause radioactive contamination if detonated in a home-made bomb.
``We were alerted by state security who seized the cases, and we were able to confirm that they were radioactive,'' he said.
Some 50 cases of radioactive uranium and highly radioactive caesium have been seized by Congolese authorities in the central African country over the last four years, said Lumu.
Officials say cases carrying radioactive material are smuggled into the country, from where they are traded across sparsely guarded borders to several of Congo's nine neighbors.
They suspect the cases are brought in to Congo for industrial use in the region's oil and mining sectors, bypassing international conventions on shipping radioactive material.
``It is possible that some of the cases brought in for such use are then stolen or traded into the wrong hands, but we cannot say for sure how many times this has happened,'' Lumu said.
The two cases seized earlier this month were of a similar size to many others smuggled in and could also have been destined for industrial use.
State authority and border controls are often weak or non-existent in the former Zaire, recovering from over five years of a war that involved several of its neighbors.
Most of the illegal cases seized in the past have been discovered in Kinshasa, although identical cases have also been found in neighboring Uganda and Tanzania, said Lumu.
Oil rich Congo Republic is thought to be the most common destination for the nuclear material, with only the Congo river separating its capital, Brazzaville, from Kinshasa in the DRC.
Last week, police in neighboring Zambia arrested two men in possession of a suspected bomb-grade uranium cache, adding they suspected it came from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
----
NATIONAL SECURITY
How safe are we from nuclear threat?
BY SALLY ANN BAYNARD
Sat, Mar. 20, 2004
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8232936.htm
February brought news we should all pay attention to. The good news is that Libya spent 20 years and untold millions of dollars trying to develop a nuclear-weapons program but failed. Now Moammar Gadhafi is cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency to dismantle the program and disclose the sources of supply. The bad news is the existence of an international black-market network for supplying parts, machines, technology and even designs for manufacturing nuclear weapons.
Stretching from its roots in the company established by Pakistani nuclear-program guru Abdul Qadeer Khan, the covert system has operated through companies from Europe to Malaysia to South Africa, with a hub of operations in Dubai and links to China. Khan has admitted selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The network leading from Khan is so extensive an operation for one-stop nuclear shopping that International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed El Baradei called it an ``international Wal-Mart.''
What does this mean to us? Are we safer, or less safe than we thought?
Three kinds of threats
• With the Cold War over and China's nuclear program decades behind the United States', the most damaging nuclear threat, all-out nuclear war, has become extremely improbable -- although we should not forget the thousands of nuclear weapons still sitting atop intercontinental ballistic and cruise missiles in Russia and continued IBCM development in China.
• The second way nuclear bombs can threaten us is indirect. A regional rogue state, such as North Korea or Iran, might decide to use a nuclear weapon against an enemy in its region, for example Japan or Israel. Or one of the regular confrontations between such regional enemies as India and Pakistan could erupt into a nuclear exchange. The damage would severely affect the global economy and cause incalculable harm to the environment, not to mention the resulting worldwide instability, but its effect on the United States is no greater than on the rest of the world.
• The third way is probably the one that gives most of us the greatest anxiety these days: a nuclear weapon in the hands of an anti-American terrorist group. Is it plausible that such a terrorist group possesses such a weapon? Does the existence of the nuclear black market make this terrifying scenario more likely?
It is unlikely that a group possesses such a weapon now, or we probably would already have experienced this nightmare. It is remotely plausible that such a group could obtain one or more nuclear bombs, but the likelihood diminishes daily if the United States and international officials do their jobs right.
So the question is: Are they?
The wrong cut
The IAEA seems to be on the ball, but the Bush administration could do much better. The administration and Congress must more aggressively fund and implement the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, a 10-year program that has done much in areas of the former Soviet Union to guard and destroy nuclear materials, weapons and expertise that otherwise might become available on the black market.
President Bush has said that he supports this, but his 2005 budget request includes a cut, and the administration has not acted quickly in the past to remove bureaucratic barriers to this critical program.
Similarly, after the revelations in February of Pakistan's nuclear aid to Libya, Iran and North Korea and the links with China, Bush proposed new measures to restrict the trade in nuclear material. But his proposals and strategy are, in the words of one arms-control expert, ``too limited and contradictory to address current and future nuclear-weapons dangers adequately.''
Diminished risk
We are no more at risk than we were before this nuclear black market was exposed, and perhaps less so. We can take comfort in the failure of Libya to achieve its ends after two decades, even with plenty of oil money to spend. A full-fledged nuclear program turns out not to be so easy to set up.
If the IAEA continues its investigative work, if the Bush administration steps up to the plate in funding Nunn-Lugar and other programs to control the spread of nuclear weapons and if Bush has the courage to deal seriously with Pakistan over its behavior -- if all this happens -- then maybe we will be significantly less threatened in the future by nuclear weapons.
Sally Ann Baynard is a professorial lecturer in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
----
Nuclear nightmares
Texas Star-Telegram
Sat, Mar. 20, 2004
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/8231834.htm
Serious questions are being raised as to whether America's nuclear facilities have adequate security programs in place to thwart terrorist attacks.
Security operations are being weakened by deteriorating training programs, personnel shortages and employee fatigue resulting from excessive overtime work, according to federal inspectors and a public watchdog group.
Ten nuclear weapons facilities, including the Pantex site near Amarillo, have reduced or eliminated key elements of a training curriculum designed in part to fend off terrorists, the Department of Energy's inspector general reported Tuesday.
Pantex, the nation's only facility where nuclear weapons are assembled, drew dubious attention in January after disclosures that workers taped together broken pieces of a high explosive being removed from the plutonium trigger of an old warhead. A federal oversight agency said the incident risked a "violent reaction."
The Washington-based Project On Government Oversight, or POGO, charged last week that the nation's 65 nuclear power plants are "not even close" to being prepared against terrorist threats.
Most plants would have to quadruple their security to adequately deal with a terrorist strike, said POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian.
The admonitions should cause operators of nuclear facilities to at least re-examine their training programs and staffing levels to ensure that safeguards are adequate.
The closest nuclear facility to Tarrant County is the Comanche Peak power plant at Glen Rose, 45 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
Officials of Dallas-based TXU, owner and operator of Comanche Peak, previously have stressed that they significantly enhanced security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and have taken "appropriate measures" to guard against hostile actions.
Strong training programs and adequately staffed security teams are crucial to ensuring that terrorists will fail if they attack a nuclear facility.
Everyone must remember that complacency is among America's deadliest enemies in its effort to foil future terrorist acts on American soil.
-------- china
Germany to stop sale of nuclear plant to China: report
BERLIN (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320161709.4ut4ksbu.html
The German government is to stop the sale of a nuclear plant to China by the German giant Siemens even though the accord was approved by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a report said. According to a report to appear in Monday's weekly Der Speigel magazine, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who is the head of the Green Party in the ruling coalition, had warned Schroeder the Greens would not accept the sale.
Schroeder had announced the controversial deal between Beijing and electronics giant Siemens during a trip to China in December.
Beijing also offered guarantees that the facility would only be for civilian use, dismissing concerns the facility could be used to develop weapons.
Spiegel said the decision to reject the sale had been made internally to avoid a crisis within the coalition between Schroeder's Social Democrats and its junior partner, the Greens.
A German government spokesman however said "no decision has yet been taken" and that the government "was continuing to study the sale."
The plutonium plant at Hanau, western Germany, was built by Siemens in 1991 but never went into production, although the technical equipment remains on site.
It is estimated to be worth about 50 million euros today, although Siemens has never commented on the figure.
China's nuclear power industry, although only providing a small percentage of its overall energy, is expected to be one of the world's fastest growing in the coming years.
-------- india / pakistan
Pak capable of producing plutonium for weapons use: US
20th Mar 2004
By IndiaExpress Bureau
http://www.indiaexpress.com/news/world/20040320-5.html
http://www.deepikaglobal.com/ENG4_sub.asp?ccode=ENG4&newscode=47241
Pakistan, which already has uranium-based nuclear arms, has developed the capability to produce plutonium for potential weapons use, a senior US official said.
Pakistan's capability to produce plutonium for potential weapons use is a "recent" development, Director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Admiral Lowell E Jacoby, told Congress yesterday.
Earlier last month, Jacoby had told a Senate Committee that Pakistan and India are continuing to expand and modernize their nuclear programmes.
He had said that nuclear "weapons stockpiles in India and Pakistan are expected to grow" in coming years, an estimate confirmed by other government intelligence agencies.
The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington-based research group specializing in nuclear matters, announced as long as five years ago that Pakistan was "nearing fruition" in its efforts to produce plutonium, The Washington Post noted, but no US Government agency had confirmed publicly that Pakistan had done so.
Yesterday, other sources within the US intelligence community agreed with Admiral Jacoby that Pakistan has indeed achieved the plutonium capability.
David Albright, a nuclear physicist who is President of the ISIS, said: "It is a big concern that we never talk about Pakistan moving ahead producing both enriched uranium and plutonium bombs. The US is not protesting the idea that both Pakistan and India are modernizing their stockpiles to make them more deliverable and in the process increasing the risk of accidental war."
-------- iraq / inspections
BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'DISARMING IRAQ'
Blix Blames Politicians, Not Intelligence, for Iraq
March 20, 2004
By MICHAEL O'HANLON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/books/20OHAN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
According to the jacket flap of Hans Blix's new book, Mr. Blix is arguably the only key player to emerge from the Iraq crisis "with his integrity intact." Whether or not that is true, this is a good book and a useful memoir, clearly describing the process leading up to last March's invasion of Iraq from the perspective of the United Nations employee charged with trying to verifiably disarm Saddam Hussein's regime.
As is well known, Mr. Blix was not happy with the United States and Britain's decision to go to war, seeing the invasion as premature and perhaps unnecessary. Unlike his former colleague David Kay, he does not place primary blame for the rush to war on the world's intelligence services. Rather, he convincingly places the responsibility where it belongs, squarely on the backs of political leaders.
"I am not suggesting that Blair and Bush spoke in bad faith," he writes, "but I am suggesting that it would not have taken much critical thinking on their own part or the part of their close advisers to prevent statements that misled the public." Continuing his critique of Washington's and London's prewar diplomacy, he writes, "It is an interesting notion that when a small minority has been rebuffed by a strong majority, it is the majority that has failed the test."
Mr. Blix's main argument will not come as a surprise to those who followed last year's debate. He claims that the United Nations weapons inspections that resumed in November 2002 after a four-year hiatus were working reasonably well and certainly had not run their course when the United States and Britain decided to invade Iraq. While recognizing that the demise of Mr. Hussein's regime removed a monster from power, he also argues that the world could have lived with a defanged Baathist regime.
Mr. Blix may be too multilateralist and legalistic for many, including me. But his book makes clear that he is not simply naïve or categorically opposed to the use of force. He understands that the world could not inspect Iraq forever, and his thinking on what should have happened in 2002-03 is neatly summarized in the book's introductory chapter:
"Without a military buildup by the U.S. in the summer of 2002, Iraq would probably not have accepted a resumption of inspections. However, if we assume this buildup and the return of inspectors, it is conceivable that a moderate continued buildup, continued inspections with no denials of access, and a guarantee of large-scale interviews with technical people in Iraq could have shown in time that there were no weapons of mass destruction. It would surely have been difficult to persuade both inspectors and the world, let alone the U.S., but if there had not been hopeful results by, say July 2003, it seems likely that a majority in the Security Council might have been ready to authorize armed action, which could have started with U.N. legitimacy after the summer heat - and revealed that there were no weapons."
In reviewing what he and his colleagues were able to do in Iraq from November 2002 through March 2003, he generally gives the Iraqis high marks for allowing quick and unconditional access to all sites. He criticizes them for often failing to make weapons scientists available for interviews without minders present; for resisting inspectors' demands that reconnaissance planes like the U-2 be assured safe passage in Iraqi airspace; for failing to provide more documentation about what they had done with stocks of chemical and biological agents, which he himself thought might well still exist; and for possessing illegal stocks of Al Samoud 2 missiles.
But the United States and Britain receive ample criticism too: for exaggerating the dependability and accuracy of their intelligence, for insisting that Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons factories and nuclear weapons programs when in fact it did not, for trusting the reports of defectors too much and for disparaging the track record and the future potential of weapons inspections.
While his narrative is generally accurate, his analysis suffers from some problems. He gives too little weight to the fact that Mr. Hussein impeded inspections for more than a decade after the Persian Gulf war (to say nothing of Mr. Hussein's massacres of his own people, attempted assassination of former President George H. W. Bush and occasional aggressive moves toward Kuwait and Kurdistan). His suggestion that the United States never really worried about Iraq before 9/11, and that it might have been vigilant to a fault after, ignores the fact that the Clinton administration and many independent analysts were indeed seriously concerned about Mr. Hussein.
Mr. Blix's observation that inspections, which cost $80 million a year, should have been given more time to work before an $80 billion-a-year military solution was adopted ignores his own earlier observation that the inspections would never have had a chance without a large military buildup that was itself costing billions a month even before the invasion. And his depiction of the previous policy of containment as low cost ignores the harm it did to the Iraqi people as well as to the image of America in the Arab world. In fact, by keeping United States military forces in Saudi Arabia for so long, containment policy gave Al Qaeda a rallying cry.
Mr. Blix's confidence that the Security Council would eventually have done the right thing if only Washington and London had been more patient and reasonable is also overstated. He fails to acknowledge that France was visibly and vocally bent on constraining American power as much as it was on disarming Iraq. Not only that, Germany's Gerhard Schröder made strong, categorical opposition to a possible Iraq war the centerpiece of his re-election campaign in 2002.
But to understand how they are seen abroad Americans should read this book. Indeed, its critique of how Washington handled the Iraq crisis is genteel and fair compared with how most observers overseas have viewed the matter.
Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
--------
Crumpets, sir, or yellow-cake?
James Buchan on Hans Blix's Disarming Iraq, the UN chief weapons inspector's honest appraisal of the build-up to invasion
Saturday March 20, 2004
The Guardian
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,1173509,00.html
Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction by Hans Blix 289pp, Bloomsbury, £16.99
The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq a year ago risks turning into the catastrophe of our era, a sort of Suez, Algeria and Vietnam rolled into one. Sorting out the shambles in Iraq is of first importance, but how it became a shambles is of interest, if only to ensure such a thing never happens again.
How did the United States and Britain come to invade Iraq in search of stockpiles of lethal germs and gases that have so far proved to be mere phantoms? How were the Bush and Blair governments so misled? Or was the threat of chemical, biological and even nuclear attack simply conjured as justification for a war that both wanted to fight? How did Iraq fail to convince western opinion that it had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? And why did the institutions of world diplomacy, notably the United Nations, fail to prevent a war that, on its own terms, was quite futile?
These are the questions asked by Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, in the first of what is sure to be a flood of mém-oires justificatifs from the chief participants. Blix reveals nothing new about the tense few months between the Security Council Resolution 1441 of November 8 2002, giving Iraq one last chance to show itself clean of unconventional weapons, and the US ultimatum to Iraq of March 17 2003. He writes in sober and diplomatic language. For all that, Disarming Iraq is a fascinating tale of folly, pride, arrogance, intrigue and deceit. Nobody comes out of the story at all well and Blix honourably admits that he himself suspected Iraq was guilty as charged.
Blix, an elderly Swedish diplomat with great experience in disarmament and hawkish creden- tials, came out of retirement in January 2000 to head a new organisation to scour Iraq for illegal weapons, the UN monitoring, verification and inspection commission for Iraq (Unmovic). The Iraqi nuclear programme was almost certainly in ruins and inspectors had found little evidence of chemical or biological weaponry since the immediate aftermath of the Gulf war in 1991. Still, President Sad dam Hussein of Iraq had stopped cooperating with the weapons inspectors in 1998 and the western powers were convinced he was secretly back to his old ways. Blix's own "gut feelings, which I kept to myself, suggested to me that Iraq still engaged in prohibited activities and retained prohibited items".
The Iraqis stalled as they had done throughout the 1990s. Then came September 11 2001. It is Blix's contention that the aerial attacks on New York and Washington "changed the vision" of the Bush administration. Saddam's ruthless conduct, his use of chemical weapons in the war with Iran in the 80s, his nuclear ambitions, and the cat-and-mousing with the weapons inspectors were seen in a "more ominous and incriminating light".
Having declared war on terrorism, President Bush needed "to eliminate this perceived threat well before the next presidential election". The president, Blix feels, sincerely believed that Iraq was pursuing WMD but neither Dick Cheney, the vice-president, nor Donald Rumsfeld at the defence department had any commitment to inspections. Even before Unmovic carried out its first inspection on November 27 2002, Cheney was telling Blix that the "US was ready to discredit inspections in favour of dis armament", that is, invasion. Even Colin Powell, the secretary of state, who was quoted on February 24 2001 as saying Saddam did not have "any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction", had shifted.
It was not merely that US and British intelligence was poor. Blix argues that the certainties of the Bush and Blair circles influenced the spies rather as they influenced the media. As the US disarmament expert Greg Thielmann put it, it was as if the US administration was saying: "We know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers." Blix is quite withering about some of the intelligence passed by the US to Unmovic involving giant drones, mobile bio-laboratories, aluminium pipes supposedly for centrifuges, and uranium yellowcake from west Africa.
The immense US military build-up in Kuwait, though effective in pushing the Iraqis to concessions, had its own sinister momentum. As the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told Blix on February 28 2003, it was hard to keep an army sitting. The hot weather was coming on apace.
When, on March 7, Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency reported to the Security Council that Iraq had greatly improved its work with the inspectors, the Americans reacted by attempting to pressurise and undermine the two men and even, conceivably, to spy on them. "I could not exclude the possibility," he writes, "that the US had managed to crack our secure fax."
The British come out a little better. Blix says the British took no part in the bash-Blix-and-Baradei campaign of March 2003 at the UN, and credits Blair with sincerity and with attempting to find a peaceful solution right to the wire. (Blix seems to have been entranced by the crumpets at Chequers, which he describes, beautifully, as "like knighted muffins".) Yet both British and US governments were probably conscious that they were "exaggerating the risks they saw in order to get the political support they would not otherwise have had". That, presumably, is diplomatic language for what Spain's next prime minister calls lies.
Blix is inclined to believe Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, who briefly defected to Jordan in 1995 and told his interrogators that he had ordered all WMD destroyed in the summer of 1991. Why then had the Baathi regime in Iraq not presented categorical evidence to the inspectors? The answer, Blix surmises, is that Sad dam is a proud man. Also, badly weakened after his defeat in 1991, he may have needed the threat of unconventional weaponry to deter the Kurds, the Shia and his neighbours. To have bluffed when the stakes were so high was a misjudgment of heroic proportions.
By January, terrified of the US military build-up, Iraq was frantically agreeing to almost anything the inspectors demanded: interviews outside Iraq of key scientists, over-flights by U2 spy aircraft and the destruction of dozens of Al Samoud 2 missiles, which were its technical pride and joy. Yet if Hussein Kamel had truly destroyed the chemical and biological munitions in 1991, why did the Baath not put up witnesses for interview by Unmovic in November and December? Blix believes something like that might just have turned the tide.
One answer, which was a favourite Baathi argument in the 1990s, is that it is hard (some say impossible) to prove a negative: that is, I can easily prove that a wren is sitting outside my window now, but not that there are no starlings elsewhere in my garden. By January 2003, the Iraqis were in the contradictory position of needing to declare some WMD so as to be able to convince the US they had made a strategic change of heart. Or as Blix puts it, "It occurred to me [on March 7] that the Iraqis would be in greater difficulty if... there truly were no weapons of which they could 'yield possession'." In the absence of any trust, the UN inspection process and Unmovic were epistemological dead ends.
Blix concludes that the UN arms inspectorate in Iraq was a success: "The UN and the world had succeeded in disarming Iraq without knowing it." That is as may be. The agony of Iraq has proved what was suspected but never tested during the period of US-Soviet nuclear rivalry: that there is absolutely no point disarming unless your adversary knows you are disarming.
More to the point, Iraq is not disarmed. It is bristling with lethal weapons of every description. It may well be more dangerous than it was before the US and Britain took it on themselves to set the world to rights.
James Buchan reported from Iraq in the 1990s.
-----
An eye-opener from Blix
March 20, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040319-082104-9642r.htm
Hans Blix has pounded the final nail in the coffin of left-wing bilge that has despicably charged President Bush and his administration with lying about intelligence on WMD in Iraq. In fact, in his new book, "Disarming Iraq," Mr. Blix acknowledges that he also believed that Iraq had failed for years to comply with its post-Gulf War (1991) obligation to destroy its WMD.
Given Mr. Blix's long and varied experience as an international arms-control official, his endorsement of the integrity of Mr. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair needs to find its way to the Democratic congressional caucuses, the Democratic National Committee and the campaign office of Sen. John Kerry.
Since 2000, when the U.N. Security Council approved Mr. Blix's compromise appointment as head of UNMOVIC, the U.N. commission overseeing the disarmament of Iraq, Mr. Blix has never hidden the frequently contentious relationship he has had with American officials, especially those in the Bush administration. Indeed, the many public disagreements over policy have played out on center stage for all to see. In fact, on the day before hostilities commenced, after the United States rejected Iraq's last-minute invitation to Mr. Blix to discuss "means to speed up joint cooperation," Mr. Blix declared that it was "a pity" that "some people have given up patience a little earlier than others."
So, in the run-up to the first-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein by the U.S.-led military coalition, it was a newsworthy event when Mr. Blix asserted in an interview on National Public Radio that the Bush administration and the British government "were 100 percent convinced that there were weapons of mass destruction" before the invasion. Even UNMOVIC's failure to find WMD in places identified by U.S. and British intelligence did not dissuade coalition officials of their complete belief that Iraq possessed WMD. It is worth noting, as Mr. Blair reminded Mr. Blix, that French, German, Russian and Egyptian intelligence agencies believed the same.
Having served from 1981 through 1997 as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. watchdog group charged with preventing nuclear proliferation, Mr. Blix undoubtedly understands the shortcomings of intelligence and inspections, no matter how extensive the access. After all, both Iraq and North Korea managed to surreptitiously pursue advanced-nuclear-weapons development under the watchful eye of Mr. Blix's IAEA.
Although no WMD have been located in Iraq since the fall of Saddam, postwar interviews with many of his captured generals have revealed an interesting pattern: While their own Republican Guard units did not possess WMD, these generals uniformly believed that other units did. In other words, Messrs. Bush and Blair believed precisely what Saddam's generals believed. To wit: The Iraqi dictator, following 12 years of deceit, remained in violation of the numerous U.N. resolutions mandating his WMD disarmament.
-------- korea
Fukui gives go ahead to controversial nuclear project
Mainichi and wire stories, Japan,
March 20, 2004
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040320p2a00m0dm011000c.html
FUKUI -- The Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO) is set to begin a controversial project using recycled nuclear fuel after a local government gave its approval on Saturday.
The Fukui Prefectural Government first decided to introduce the "pluthermal" project, which uses plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel (MOX), at a KEPCO nuclear power plant in 1999.
But the local government scrapped the plan following a revelation in September 1999 that British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) falsified data on MOX supplies to the Osaka-based power company.
Some four years after the trouble, Fukui Gov. Kazumi Nishikawa told KEPCO President Yosaku Hara on Saturday that the prefecture would now approve the pluthermal project at the company's Takahama nuclear plant.
"We hope that the falsification of data will never take place again," Gov. Nishikawa told the KEPCO president.
Fukui officials said they decided to accept the project after KEPCO showed them detailed preventive measures to avoid any trouble.
KEPCO officials said that they would shortly make a contract with a European company for the purchase of MOX fuel in the hope that they will start using it at the Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture in fiscal 2007.
Anti-nuclear activist groups in Fukui and the Kansai area in western Japan immediately denounced the decision.
"We strongly protest against the decision that was made despite the opposition of many people," one of the statements said.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) had also planned to begin a pluthermal project at its plants in Fukushima and Niigata prefectures. But both Fukushima and Niigata prefectural governments withdrew their approval after the cover-up of cracks at TEPCO nuclear power plants came to light in August 2002.
----
KEPCO gets OK to pioneer MOX fuel use in Japan
Saturday, March 20, 2004
(Kyodo News)
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=4&id=292202
FUKUI - Kansai Electric Power Co (KEPCO) was formally given the final go-ahead Saturday for restarting a stalled program to use reprocessed spent nuclear fuel in nuclear power reactors. In a meeting with KEPCO President Yosaku Fuji, Fukui Gov Issei Nishikawa conveyed a decision to follow the state and the Takahama municipal government in allowing KEPCO to use mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel at its nuclear plant in Takahama.
-------- terrorism
Terrorists can go nuclear, warns ElBaradei
Saturday March 20, 2004
The News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2004-daily/20-03-2004/main/main4.htm
VIENNA: UN atomic energy agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Friday that successful terrorist attacks such as the train bombings in Spain heightened concerns that one-day terrorists could go nuclear.
"There's obviously a high level of sophistication in the terrorist community," ElBaradei told reporters while flying back to Vienna, where the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is based, from a trip to Washington.
"That heightens the sense of concern that they (terrorists) might get their hands on any nuclear device or nuclear material," ElBaradei said in answer to a question about the implications of the March 11 Madrid bombings that killed 202 people.
ElBaradei had Wednesday urged in a meeting with US President George W Bush for dangerous nuclear material such as highly enriched uranium used in civilian programs to be recycled or disposed of. "One of the first priorities that I put to President Bush and he fully agreed is that we need to clean up all the nuclear materials that lie around, either in highly enriched uranium in research reactors or in fabrication facilities," he said. "I would like to see a civilian cycle completely free from weapons-useable material if possible," he said.
ElBaradei said that he had found in his meetings in Washington, which also included national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, "a commitment in the United States at all levels to work in partnership with the agency (IAEA) to fight this new menace, which we are facing, which is (an international nuclear materials) black market and the interests of terrorists to get their hands on nuclear technology".
He said: "We have first to make an inventory (of the facilities and what is in them)." He said the US Department of Energy was already working on this and that the IAEA may take part. "Then we have to contact the countries (involved) in order to take this material and neutralise or dilute it," ElBaradei said.
ElBaradei said that he and Bush had also agreed the time had come to "change many of the rules" in order to strengthen the fight against nuclear proliferation that is the mission of the IAEA. One measure would be to improve export controls "as a result of AQ Khan associates and the lesson we have learned from that", he said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
$27 Million Sought for Nuclear Arms Study
Funding Contrary To Nonproliferation Stance, Critics Say
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9359-2004Mar19.html
At a time when President Bush has made nuclear nonproliferation a major goal, the administration is seeking $27.6 million to continue a study next year of a possible new nuclear weapon and projecting that it could cost $485 million over the next five years if it goes into development.
Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the nation's nuclear weapons program, told the strategic forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the smaller sum would fund ongoing studies of how to adapt a current nuclear warhead to the task of targeting an enemy's hardened and deeply buried bunker.
The larger figure, he said, represented tentative funding needs for the program through 2009 -- "out-year projections only to preserve the president's option" if a decision were made to go ahead with the new weapon.
"No decisions will be made until the study is completed," Brooks told the panel, adding that Congress would still have to approve any presidential decision to produce a new weapon.
Although requests to study the need for such a weapon were triggered by allegations, still unproved, that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had buried illegal weapons and communications centers in deep bunkers, Brooks said the weapon is still needed to target "facilities that may be important to a future adversary."
Brooks also said he is seeking $9 million, up from the current year's $6 million, for studying advanced concepts for potential ideas for new weapons, "such as the utility of nuclear weapons against chemical and biological agents."
Continued U.S. efforts to modernize thousands of warheads and develop new ones come not only as the Bush administration has made nonproliferation a goal, but also as international efforts are underway to get North Korea and Iran to back away from alleged new nuclear weapons programs.
The administration has said that its development of weapons does not affect what other nations do.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group promoting disarmament measures, said yesterday that the continuing U.S. programs "give strength to the hard-liners in North Korea and Iran who want to keep their nuclear programs open."
The Defense Intelligence Agency warned Congress last month that U.S. allies, such as Pakistan and India, are continuing to modernize and expand their nuclear programs. In a little-noted portion of his prepared remarks to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 26, the DIA's director, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, said, "Pakistan recently developed the capability to produce plutonium for potential weapons use." Pakistan's ability to produce weapons using enriched uranium has been well publicized.
Five years ago, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington-based research group specializing in nuclear matters, announced that Pakistan was "nearing fruition" in its efforts to produce plutonium, but no U.S. government agency had confirmed publicly that the nation had done so. Yesterday, other sources within the U.S. intelligence community agreed that Pakistan had achieved the plutonium capability.
Jacoby also told the Senate committee last month that nuclear "weapons stockpiles in India and Pakistan are expected to grow" in coming years, an estimate confirmed by other government intelligence agencies.
"It is a big concern that we never talk about Pakistan moving ahead producing both enriched-uranium and plutonium bombs," said David Albright, a nuclear physicist who is president of ISIS. "The U.S. is not protesting the idea that both Pakistan and India are modernizing their stockpiles to make them more deliverable and in the process increasing the risk of accidental nuclear war," he added.
In addition, Israel has reportedly test-launched a cruise missile, with an approximate range of 900 miles, that could be carried on its new German-built submarines. "It is believed that such a cruise missile . . . can carry a nuclear warhead," Anthony H. Cordesman, an intelligence expert and former Pentagon official now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a study of weapons in the Middle East released last week.
"There is no near- to mid-term prospect that Israel can give up nuclear weapons," Cordesman wrote, since the United States cannot "enforce restraint on friends without enforcing them on enemies."
Beyond the research programs, the nuclear security agency will next year continue programs to extend the lives of the W-87 warhead for intercontinental ballistic missiles, the W-76 Trident I submarine-launched missile, the B-61 tactical bomb and the W-80 submarine- and air-launched cruise missiles.
In the longer term, Brooks said, the administration is still discussing the future size of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Pace of Flats cleanup questioned
Half-million dollar fine has officials worried about safety
By Alisha Jeter,
Boulder Daily Camera Staff Writer
March 20, 2004
http://www.bouldernews.com/bdc/county_news/article/0,1713,BDC_2423_2745265,00.html
The Department of Energy has fined Rocky Flats clean-up contractor Kaiser-Hill Co. about $1 million for six safety violations since 1996.
But the latest fine - a $522,000 penalty stemming from a May 2003 fire and two radioactive contamination incidents - and a new fire in February have several local government officials worried the company is hurrying work at the former nuclear weapons plant to rack up performance bonuses.
In its most recent contract with the Department of Energy, Kaiser-Hill earns 30 cents on the dollar for cost savings and keeping on schedule. The company could earn up to $461 million in incentives and awards for accelerating the site's closure.
Kaiser-Hill contract manager Rob Nagel said the company hopes to earn $341 million for keeping the project on time and on budget. The company's most recent contract, signed in 2000, is for $3.973 billion. The total budget for cleanup is $7 billion.
"They have no motivation to have safety violations occur," said Broomfield City Councilman Gary Brosz, a member of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments. "That said, they have big incentives to close the plant early. They get very significant bonuses if they close ahead of schedule."
The latest safety incident occurred last month, just days after the $522,000 fine was levied for the three previous incidents.
Foam used to fill parts of a cleaned building, Building 991, ignited in February during work to prep the building for demolition. The foam, ordinarily used to fill small areas like pipes, was used to fill an approximately 500-square-foot room after workers sidestepped normal procedure.
Frank Gibbs, Kaiser-Hill deputy project manager for risk, said workers did not allow the foam time to harden between applications. The foam heats as it hardens and it began smoldering and producing acrid black smoke. Kaiser-Hill stopped work at the site for two days after the fire.
The use of foam is now being re-evaluated, Gibbs said.
Kaiser-Hill spokesman John Corsi said it was that fire, the fine and several subsequent safety breaches and near misses that moved managers to shut down work for two days. Supervisors admitted crews have ignored their own recommended procedures, as well as those of the foam's manufacturer.
"We screwed up, quite frankly. ... We got in too big a hurry," Gibbs told members of the Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments after the accident. "The last couple of months have not been our shining hour."
Renewing focus
The Department of Energy cited failures in work planning, attention to procedure and safety oversight in the May 6 fire that shot 15-foot flames into the air, as well as two radioactive contamination incidents in March 2003, when levying the latest fine.
Cleanup of the former nuclear weapons site is scheduled for completion in December 2006. The Department of Energy, which owns the site, plans to hand it over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a wildlife refuge.
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Board, an independent group of experts that studies safety incidents at the nation's nuclear sites, recommended Kaiser-Hill renew a focus on safety in a report issued in December.
The review concluded that although the Rocky Flats contractor has implemented a number of positive practices, its recent safety performance was unsatisfactory.
The review also found that the oversight capability of the energy department's Rocky Flats Field Office has degraded considerably in recent years.
Last month's work stoppage - called a safety pause - was at least the second of its kind since contractor Kaiser-Hill stepped in on the cleanup. The move called together workers, managers, safety experts and others to regroup and renew focus on safety at the site, Corsi said.
"Overall, we are very proud of our safety record. At the same time, we are held to a higher standard and we should be. It's a nuclear environment," Corsi said.
Initiatives include better work planning, an issue continually raised by regulators and the independent safety board experts.
Broomfield councilman Brosz said the accidents themselves would likely be par for the course in a non-nuclear industry. He said he worries that the incidents paint a larger picture of faltering discipline in work at the site. That was particularly evident in the foam fire, he said.
"That raises our concern about, well, are processes being followed in contaminated areas? Can we believe it's perfect in contaminated areas?" Brosz said.
The energy department has called notice to several safety violations, but only sought to impose penalties in the six cases.
In most cases, the department concluded Kaiser-Hill's corrective plans were sufficient without the added penalty, according to energy department notices.
The department often discounted the full allowable fines to recognize Kaiser-Hill for voluntarily reporting accidents. However, the department repeatedly indicated accidents were rooted in systematic problems with management practices like procuring proper safety equipment and adequately planning work conducted by the site's 3,200 workers.
"We were losing focus and we weren't meeting our own (procedures)," Corsi said.
Better communication
Possible contributing factors include workers doing a job that will mean they'll be unemployed when they're done, as well as the change in work from radioactive to industrial jobs, Corsi said. The latter might have created a complacency among workers, he said.
Tony DiMaiori, a 25-year veteran of the site and president of the United Steelworkers Union Local 8031, said he has mixed feelings about how Kaiser-Hill handled the recent events.
"We didn't feel they did enough after these incidents for awareness," DiMaiori said.
He said he didn't think there were enough safety pauses enacted last year and he'd like to see the contractor employ them more often.
DiMaiori said the safety pauses give the best opportunity to slow down and carefully ponder the safest way to proceed.
"We feel we're far enough ahead right now to continue at a slow, steady pace and still finish and make everyone happy," he said.
DiMaiori's union, which represents about a third of the site's workers, is always at the table when management discusses safety.
"We partner with Kaiser-Hill on safety," he said. "When they take a black eye, we take a black eye."
DiMaiori calls Kaiser-Hill the best employer he's worked for on the site in terms of safety.
"If there's any problem with the safety program, it's in communication to the community. That's where Kaiser-Hill is falling down. We feel we need to do more reporting to the community," he said.
The site's mission has changed. The last of the weapons-grade plutonium on the site was shipped away last year. Most of the work there now is heavy industrial jobs, including dismantling equipment and buildings, preparing the pieces for disposal.
Kaiser-Hill officials say there are adequate incentives in place to ensure safety is a top priority.
The 2000 contract includes penalties for significant safety problems, ranging from a possible $250,000 penalty for incidents like safety trend issues the contractor has paid for already to the most serious events such as a death or nuclear accident, which could cost the company up to about $9 million per incident.
"If I don't work safely, my ability to earn fee goes in the toilet," Nagel said.
Former Boulder City Councilwoman Lisa Morzel, another member of the local governments coalition, has asked for a comprehensive report on the incentives.
At least a few observers would also like to see a slower approach to the job.
"Nothing short of a safe cleanup is acceptable," said local governments coalition director David Abelson. "The data we've been provided with certainly suggests (that is occurring). But again, you can have the best statistics in the world - that doesn't mean anything to somebody who gets hurt."
-------- us politics
Bush Asks Allies for Unity on Iraq
No Nation Exempt From Terrorism, President Says on War Anniversary
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9281-2004Mar19.html
President Bush yesterday marked the anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq with an appeal for international unity after a year of division by warning that there can be "no separate peace" with the West's enemies.
Bush spoke to an audience of 83 diplomats, including those from such countries as France and Germany, which opposed the war. But his remarks seemed directed toward such countries as Spain and Poland, allies in Iraq that are now expressing misgivings, and, in Spain's case, rethinking their cooperation with the United States.
"No concession will appease their hatred. No accommodation will satisfy their endless demands," Bush said after deploring last week's Madrid bombings, which were followed by the election of a new prime minister eager to remove Spanish troops from Iraq. "There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence, and invites more violence for all nations."
The speech, which the White House billed as a major address, contained no new initiatives or changes in policy. It was, rather, a furthering of the administration's effort to place the Iraq war within the global war on terrorists that began with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"Whatever their past views, every nation now has an interest in a free, successful, stable Iraq," Bush said from the East Room, where he was framed by flags of U.S. allies against terrorists. "And the terrorists understand their own interest in the fate of that country. . . . They understand that a free Iraq will be a devastating setback to their ambitions of tyranny over the Middle East."
Disagreements over Iraq "among old and valued friends," Bush said, "belong to the past." He said that although "not every nation joins every mission," they remain unified in purpose. "There is no neutral ground -- no neutral ground -- in the fight between civilization and terror, because there is no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death," he said. Naming 15 targets of terrorist attacks in recent years, including three Arab states and four Muslim countries, Bush asserted: "No nation or region is exempt from the terrorists' campaign of violence."
Bush's hope for unity got a boost from the United Nations, where Secretary General Kofi Annan, a critic of the war, said he plans to send a team to Iraq "as soon as practicable." The Iraqi Governing Council on Wednesday asked for U.N. help in forming a government for Iraq to succeed U.S. authorities after June 30.
But others made clear that the divisions over Iraq continue to hamper international relations. A spokeswoman for the French Embassy said Bush's speech did not dissuade France from the view, expressed by Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin in an interview published Friday in the newspaper Le Monde, that the Iraq war made the world "more dangerous and unstable." Terrorism, de Villepin said, "didn't exist in Iraq before. Today, it is one of the world's principal sources of world terrorism."
The minister's view is widespread in Europe and the Middle East, where, according to a poll released this week by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, the people mostly believe the war in Iraq has weakened the war on terrorism. A report issued yesterday by the Council on Foreign Relations said that the relationship between the United States and Europe "is under greater strain today than at any point in at least a generation," and noted that the Iraq war "brought these strains to the point of crisis."
The diplomatic corps stood to applaud Bush as he entered and when he finished his 24-minute speech, but the foreign guests did not interrupt his speech with applause as domestic audiences often do. Saudi Arabia had no representative in the audience, but an embassy spokesman said the top two officials were out of the country and the White House would not have anyone below their level.
The president made no mention of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, saying only that Saddam Hussein's removal put an end to "years of illicit weapons development," and Bush dealt only in passing with the violence in Iraq that has bedeviled U.S. forces and their supporters. "There are still violent thugs and murderers in Iraq, and we're dealing with them," Bush said. "But no one can argue that the Iraqi people would be better off with the thugs and murderers back in the palaces."
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), emphasizing the absence of weapons of mass destruction and the costs of the war, marked the anniversary by criticizing Bush. "Simply put, this president didn't tell the truth about the war from the beginning. And our country is paying the price," Kerry said in a statement. "It's time to take the targets off the backs of U.S. soldiers, reduce the burden on America's taxpayers, and finish the job in Iraq."
The State Department underscored the threat of violence, renewing an advisory that said there may be suicide attacks, bombings, hijackings or kidnappings against U.S. interests in the Middle East. And Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, making a quick trip to Baghdad yesterday, got a firsthand view of tensions in Iraq when Arab journalists staged a moment of silence and walked out of his news conference to protest the shooting, allegedly by U.S. forces, of two Arab television journalists Thursday.
Bush, in his speech to the diplomats, offered little rebuttal to criticism of U.S. Iraq policy, instead speaking broadly of the virtues of Hussein's ouster. "All of us can now agree that the fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression and instability in the Middle East," he said, pointing to new foreign aid and freedoms in Iraq. "Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?" he asked. "Who would wish that more mass graves were still being filled? Who would begrudge the Iraqi people their long-awaited liberation?"
After his speech, Bush visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center to meet wounded soldiers, his fifth such trip. "Several soldiers told me today, badly injured soldiers said, 'I want to get well quickly' and get back on their duty stations in Iraq," Bush reported.
--------
Eisenhower Planned Emergency Government
March 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Secret-Government.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- CBS President Frank Stanton was one of six private citizens secretly recruited and granted authority by President Eisenhower to run major components of the government if a Soviet attack wiped out many American leaders.
No public announcement of the appointments was made. Their existence was confirmed by recently publicized Eisenhower administration letters.
A few weeks after the Soviets launched the first manmade satellite in 1957, shattering America's sense of security, Stanton was summoned to the White House to see Eisenhower.
Stanton knew his friend was agonizing over how to respond to Sputnik and the terrorizing thought that permeated America: Had the Soviets gained a huge first-strike advantage in the nuclear arms race?
But Stanton learned Eisenhower also was wrestling with how best to ensure the U.S. government could function in an emergency.
Stanton, who had no experience or ambitions in government, was taken aback when the president asked if he would be willing to oversee a federal communications agency after such an attack.
``I was surprised and startled by the breadth of the assignment,'' said the 96-year-old Stanton, who lives in Boston.
Nervous about the awesome task of keeping the nation's telephone, radio and television systems operating after an attack, Stanton said he nevertheless ``agreed to do my chore.''
``The president was planning for the unthinkable,'' said retired Army Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster, Eisenhower's staff secretary. ``He wanted to bring in the wisdom and competence to reinforce whatever elements of the government survived and provide some assurance that our government could not be decapitated.''
Presidents are granted vast powers under the Constitution to lead the nation in times of war or enemy attack.
Shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush created a shadow government of 75 to 150 officials who worked in mountainside bunkers outside Washington to ensure the government would function if the capital came under attack.
All those officials already were in government when they were given the assignment. Eisenhower is believed to be the first president to go outside government to look for leaders in a crisis.
``Eisenhower went beyond the normal lines of succession, which I think was a reflection of the widespread paralyzing fear that swept the country in the 1950s,'' said Peter Kuznick, a history professor and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.
Besides Stanton, the appointees included George Baker, a Harvard Business School professor who was tapped to oversee transportation; Harold Boeschenstein, president of Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp., in charge of manufacturing and production; Aksel Nielsen, president of the Title Guaranty Co., housing; J. Ed Warren, senior vice president of the First National City Bank of New York, energy; and Theodore Koop, vice president of CBS, to oversee an emergency censorship agency. Koop would have had 40 civilian staff members to monitor and control wartime information about the devastation.
Eisenhower also appointed two Cabinet secretaries and Federal Reserve Chairman William McChesney Martin to emergency posts for currency stabilization, food and labor.
``The people Eisenhower chose, while they were his friends, they were also the captains of industry of his day. People like Bill Gates today,'' said Bill Geerhart, editor of a Web site called Conelrad, or Control of Electromagnetic Radiation. That was the name of nation's first emergency broadcasting system, established by President Truman.
The site posted the Eisenhower documents after obtaining them from the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan.
The selections were based as much on the appointees' geographic location and personal relationships with Eisenhower as their expertise. Nielsen, for example, was Eisenhower's regular fishing buddy.
The presidential form letters dated March 6, 1958, provide for the appointees to immediately take office in the event of a national emergency. Until then, they were asked to keep their status secret. They were promised an undisclosed salary but there were few specifics about their jobs.
The documents show the secret group met in July 1960 with the now-defunct Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization to discuss staffing for their agencies. But work barely got started before the group was relieved of its duties by President Kennedy, who took office in 1961.
Still, subsequent administrations have made contingency plans for government continuity -- often involving citizens outside government -- in the event of a devastating attack. For example, Kennedy's director of emergency planning, Frank Ellis, said in 1961 that the president had emergency appointees for transportation, agriculture and communications.
During the Reagan administration, then-Rep. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who was chief executive of the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Co., were key players in a secret program to set aside the legal lines of succession and install a new president in a catastrophe, The Atlantic Monthly reported this month.
On the Net:
Conelrad: http://conelrad.com/atomicsecrets/secrets.php?secrets05
Dwight D. Eisenhower Library & Museum: http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/
--------
Details on Government Bunker
March 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Government-Bunker.html
For decades during the Cold War, residents in a small West Virginia town 250 miles southwest of the nation's capital did not say a word about the secret bunker tucked in the Appalachian Mountains.
The 112,544-square-foot, concrete-and-steel facility in White Sulphur Springs, built in 1958 at a cost of $14 million, was one of several initiatives by President Eisenhower to help keep the government operating in the event of a nuclear attack.
The facility, known as ``Project Greek Island,'' was next to the luxurious Greenbrier resort in the town of 3,300. One wing of the sprawling hotel was built with massive steel doors and large rooms where Congress could meet.
A secret hallway leads from the wing into the underground bunker, built into a hill. Inside is a dormitory with hundreds of bunk beds, a power plant and a dining room with false windows, apparently to relieve the sensation of entombment.
It also housed communications equipment, decontamination chambers, a medical clinic including an operating room, and a power plant, which was the source of emergency generators, water storage and air filtering systems.
An investigative reporter revealed the existence of the facility in 1992. It now it open to tourists. A 90-minute tour is $27 per adult and $10 per child. For more information, call 1-800-624-6070.
--------
POST-9/11 New book says US targeted Iraq early
By Ted Bridis
Associated Press,
3/20/2004
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/03/20/new_book_says_us_targeted_iraq_early/
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration considered bombing Iraq in retaliation almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks against New York and Washington, according to a new first-person account by a former senior counterterrorism adviser inside the White House.
Richard Clarke, the president's counterterrorism coordinator at the time of the attacks, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld complained on Sept. 12 -- after the administration was convinced with certainty that Al Qaeda was to blame -- that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq."
A spokesman for Rumsfeld said he couldn't comment immediately.
Clarke makes the assertion in a new book, "Against All Enemies," which goes on sale Monday morning. He told CBS News he believes the administration sought to link Iraq with the attacks because of longstanding interest in overthrowing Saddam Hussein; Clarke was scheduled to appear Sunday night on the network's "60 Minutes" news program.
"I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection" between Iraq and the Al Qaeda attacks in the United States, Clarke said in an interview segment CBS broadcast last evening. "There's just no connection. There's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting Al Qaeda."
Clarke retired early in 2003 after 30 years in government service. He was among the country's longest-serving White House staff members, hired in 1992 from the State Department to deal with terrorism and narcotics threats.
He had led the government's secretive Counterterrorism and Security Group, made up of senior officials from the FBI, CIA, Justice Department, and armed services, who met several times each week to discuss foreign threats.
-------- MILITARY
-------- business
More Satellite Imaging Sought
WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Washington Post From News Services
Saturday, March 20, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9703-2004Mar19.html
The Pentagon said yesterday it will seek commercial bids for a new contract worth about $500 million to supply spy-quality pictures from space.
Commercial satellite pictures played an important role in the invasion of Iraq a year ago. The U.S. government is keen to get priority access to the next generation of such commercial imaging capabilities and foster industry competition.
"We are going to solicit a follow-on competition," said David Burpee, a spokesman for the Pentagon's National Geospatial Imaging Agency. "We'd like it be sooner rather than later."
A buying strategy is still being worked out.
-------- china
With Taiwan in Mind, China Focuses Military Expansion on Navy
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9158-2004Mar19.html
SHANGHAI, March 19 -- The dull gray hulls of four sleek new fighting ships, bristling with cannons, radar antennas and bulbous electronic pods, bob beside the Huangpu River shipyards where they are in the final stages of construction for the Chinese navy.
Giant military transports float placidly nearby, getting fitted under the supervision of uniformed officers to boost the Chinese military's ability to move men and materiel across the sea. A submarine, its coal-black coating marred by rust, protrudes from muddy river waters just upstream in the shadow of Shanghai's busy skyscrapers.
Viewed from a commuter ferry, these are the outward signs of China's military modernization program, a campaign to improve what experts count as the world's largest fighting force, with more than 2 million members. The effort, widely hailed by Chinese leaders, has been underway for years. But it has accelerated markedly since the late 1990s, when then-President Jiang Zemin concluded that China needed a more potent and up-to-date military if it was to compete seriously in the world arena and back up its policy on reuniting Taiwan with the mainland.
For the past 18 months, foreign military experts have observed, the military has concentrated particularly on strengthening its sea power. The main reason, they say, is to provide the government in Beijing with a credible military option if Taiwan crosses Beijing's red line -- a formal declaration of independence -- and brings the long-simmering standoff to a boil.
"These people are building ships like nobody's business," a military attache in Beijing said. "It's mind-boggling."
Construction has begun on about 70 military ships over the last 12 months, including a number of landing craft, and China is considering acquisition of another two Soviet-designed Sovremenny-class destroyers to complement the three it already owns, he added. More Kilo-class submarines are the subject of negotiations or already purchased, adding to the four bought several years ago.
Although China has an estimated 500 missiles capable of hitting Taiwan, 100 miles off the mainland, foreign officials and military experts say they do not believe the Chinese military has the training to mount an invasion. The newly built or newly purchased ships and equipment have yet to be fitted and manned, a process that takes several years. The Pentagon estimates that China now has the ability to sealift only about one division, or 10,000 men.
But some of these observers have concluded that the rapid shipbuilding program, combined with other acquisitions and training, could provide China's leaders with a limited military option -- probably short of a full invasion -- within several years. That would greatly strengthen Beijing's hand when, in the eyes of Chinese leaders, the most dangerous period of the Taiwan crisis is likely to arise.
According to foreign experts and Chinese academics with access to Beijing's decision-makers, President Hu Jintao's government is unlikely to resort to an immediate military response no matter the outcome of Saturday's voting in Taiwan. Even if President Chen Shui-bian wins reelection and voters approve the referendums on whether Taiwan and China should talk on an equal footing and whether Taiwan should buy more advanced missile defense equipment, China could continue to deal with Taiwan peacefully under its present policy, said a Beijing-based scholar who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The real test would come in 2006 or later, he predicted. That is when China's leaders fear a second Taiwan referendum, this one more explicitly aimed at a formal declaration of independence.
Foreign military experts in contact with Chinese officers have concluded that the goal of the Taiwan-oriented military modernization is to provide the leadership with the ability to inflict some kind of attack should the need arise, while at the same time making any U.S. intervention to protect the self-governing island at least a little dangerous, forcing Washington to think twice.
Against this background, China's leadership has repeatedly urged the military to improve its electronic and information technology abilities. Both were found badly lacking when U.S. naval forces moved into the region as a protective gesture after China test-fired missiles near Taiwan in the lead-up to Chen's election in 2000.
Jiang, who still heads the Communist Party's Central Military Commission, emphasized information technology, mechanization and professional training for military personnel during a meeting with members of the national legislature during its annual session last week.
"It is a profound revolution in the development of our armed forces," said Jiang, seated next to President Hu. In a photo distributed by the official New China News Agency, both wore olive green military-style uniforms, without insignia, in a departure from their usual suit-and-tie orthodoxy. "We must seize the hard-to-get historical opportunities and bring the reform into depth."
Although the most immediate, the Taiwan standoff is far from being China's only military consideration. With ever-growing needs for imported oil, China has sea lanes from the Middle East to protect. And with its increasing role as an Asian power, it sees a need to project its strength along its borders and farther afield, with military as well as economic might.
Announced budget allocations for China's military have risen by double digits almost every year for more than a decade. Finance Minister Jin Renquing announced last week that the 2004 budget will be about $25 billion, up 11.6 percent from last year.
Ding Jiye, finance head of the People's Liberation Army General Logistics Department, pointed out to the New China News Agency that the military's spending still amounted to only 1.7 percent of China's gross domestic product, compared with what he said was an average of 3 percent worldwide. The Pentagon estimates, however, that if unannounced programs are taken into account, China's military spending is several times the announced sum.
Notoriously secretive, the Chinese military does not reveal specifics of its spending or its equipment acquisitions. But statements from the leadership, such as Jiang's last week, have led foreign experts to conclude that improving training in the use of high-tech equipment is a pressing goal.
The People's Liberation Army reduced its manpower by 500,000 in the late 1990s, chiefly by transferring men to the People's Armed Police. The leadership in Beijing has called for another 200,000 troops to be shed by 2005, seeking to save badly needed funds and concentrate on high tech instead.
--------
Taiwan's Leader and Deputy Are Shot on Election Eve
March 20, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN and KEITH BRADSHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/international/asia/20TAIW.html
AINAN, Taiwan, Saturday, March 20 - The president and vice president of Taiwan were shot Friday afternoon in this southern Taiwanese city, on the eve of bitterly contested national elections. Neither suffered life-threatening injuries, however, and the polls opened as scheduled on Saturday morning.
President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu were standing in the back of an open-roofed red Jeep driving slowly through streets crowded with supporters in Tainan, the president's hometown, when a bullet struck the president in the abdomen, police and government spokesmen said.
Supporters were discharging large numbers of firecrackers, and the president at first thought he had been hit by one, only to find his abdomen becoming wet with blood, Chiou I-Jen, the secretary general of the presidential office, said in a news briefing in Taipei.
The president and vice president were taken to the Chi Mei Medical Center in Tainan, where they were treated and released. They returned to Taipei on Friday night.
A bullet was found lodged between the skin of the president's abdomen and his undershirt, having apparently torn a wound four inches long, an inch wide and an inch deep, medical officials said in a televised briefing. He received stitches for the wound, they said.
Ms. Lu had a shallow flesh wound on her knee. The police said they suspected there were at least two gunmen and two bullets involved in the shooting.
In a brief late-night address to the nation, Mr. Chen said, "After careful treatment by doctors, A-Bian is fine," speaking about himself in the third person and using his nickname, as is his custom. "Please put your hearts at ease," he said. "We have activated the national security mechanism. The security of Taiwan has no problems."
Defense Minister Tang Yian-min said that the military had been placed on alert but that there had been no hint of any unusual activity across the Taiwan Strait in mainland China.
Chinese officials did not react to the incident on Friday. But early Saturday the New China News Agency issued a brief statement from the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, the cabinet, in Beijing, saying, "At present, the truth about the incident remains unclear, and we continue to pay attention to developments."
President Chen's Democratic Progressive Party, which has fanned the dangerous embers of Taiwanese nationalism in the election, and Lien Chan, the presidential candidate of the more moderate opposition Nationalist Party, each appealed for calm. Both canceled large campaign rallies scheduled for Friday evening and urged their supporters not to gather in public places.
Local and national police officials said they had no suspects in the shooting. They said that neither the president's bodyguards nor witnesses had heard shots fired or spotted anyone with a gun.
President Chen's Jeep was not equipped with bulletproof glass. Nor was Mr. Chen, who prides himself on his accessibility to the people, wearing a bulletproof vest, said Mr. Chiou of the president's office.
Ho Yuo-yi, chief of the Criminal Investigations Bureau of the National Police Agency, who spoke to reporters in Tainan late Friday night, presented a diagram of the motorcade route showing that the site where the president reported feeling pain was about one kilometer from where the police subsequently found spent cartridge shells.
Mr. Ho said the police had determined that two different types of bullets had been fired, one of lead and another of copper. They also said the trajectories of the bullets - one coming from the left side of the open vehicle and the other through the right side of the windshield - suggested that there were two or more gunmen.
He and other police officials said the bullets were of a type fired by a handgun and that the gun or guns involved appeared to be of low quality, possibly homemade. But they emphasized that any conclusions were premature.
The police offered a $90,000 reward for information leading to the capture of whoever fired the shots. The opposition Nationalists offered even more, pledging to pay $300,000.
Conflicting early reports about the shooting, its timing, and the light injuries suffered by Mr. Chen and Ms. Lu raised speculation around Taiwan that the incident might have been staged to increase support for Mr. Chen, who was widely considered to be trailing Mr. Lien slightly going into election day.
Mr. Lien and other top Nationalist Party officials repeatedly called for calm and emphasized that they were concerned mainly with the health of the president. But they also called for a full and prompt explanation of the shooting.
Some Nationalist supporters said the incident reminded them of a "ku rou ji," using an ancient Chinese term for a self-inflicted wound intended to trick a foe.
But Hsiao Bi-Khim, director of international affairs for the Democratic Progressive Party, castigated the opposition party for what she called an inhumane attempt to play politics with an assassination attempt.
-------- europe
EU Taking Up Terrorism Issues
Security Officials Try to Forge 'Europe-Wide Response' After Attacks
By John Burgess
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9307-2004Mar19.html
BRUSSELS, March 19 -- The top domestic security officials of the 15 European Union countries agreed Friday to fix faulty intelligence-sharing among their governments and to name a coordinator to bring better focus to the fight against terrorism, the EU said.
The goal is "an invigorated Europe-wide response against the cancer of terrorism," Michael McDowell, Ireland's justice minister, told reporters. He spoke after an emergency meeting of justice and home affairs ministers who were called to Brussels in response to the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 202 people.
The ministers also declared full support for Spain, which broke ranks last year with major EU countries, such as France and Germany, by sending troops to help with the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
Many Europeans believe the Madrid bombings were retaliation for that support and that countries that stayed out of Iraq are safer from attack. But Antonio Vitorino, the EU's commissioner for justice and home affairs, said at a news conference after the meeting that "we are all equally targeted by the terrorist threat. And we need to state clearly our political solidarity" in opposing it.
A formal declaration of support for Spain will be on the agenda at an EU summit next Thursday and Friday in Brussels, the organization's headquarters. The security steps agreed to on Friday are also expected to get final approval at that gathering.
While there have been occasional attacks in Europe by domestic groups that have killed small numbers of people, Europeans were stunned by the death toll and the images of devastation in the Madrid bombings. It was the largest loss of life in an attack on the continent since 1988, when a bomb destroyed Pan American Flight 103, killing 270 people onboard and in the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, where the wreckage came down.
The EU already conducts joint anti-terrorism programs aimed at freezing the finances of underground networks and exchanging information on those convicted of terror offenses.
But the programs garner varying degrees of enthusiasm among member countries with conflicting political systems and national interests. For example, five of the 15 current member states have not yet implemented a program for unified arrest warrants, approved by the EU shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
Many security experts said that the European countries must expand the sharing of data collected by individual national security agencies.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, such cooperation "was absolutely lousy," said Michael Clarke, director of the International Policy Institute at King's College London. "After 9/11 it improved greatly, which means it's now only mediocre," he said. "It's got to get a lot better."
French officials, for instance, have complained that Britain has been too tolerant of Islamic militants living on its soil. British officials contend that they pursue anyone who breaks the law or constitutes a threat.
EU officials acknowledged Friday that mistrust between intelligence agencies posed a serious challenge. "By their very nature, they're possessive of their own information," said McDowell, who as the representative from Ireland, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, chaired the meeting. "We have to build trust."
Intelligence-sharing, when it occurs, is often conducted outside the EU framework between countries with shared interests. France and Spain, for example, cooperate closely out of common concern over the Basque separatist group ETA, which operates along their border.
But under the current system, "if Britain and Belgium are sharing intelligence on a certain individual, they may not know that Portugal's got a file on him," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a research organization in London.
Proposals for a cross-border intelligence agency were not taken seriously because of the guarded nature of the national security agencies, officials said. But the ministers agreed to appoint a coordinator with the authority to oversee joint anti-terrorism efforts and work toward some sort of intelligence clearinghouse.
They pledged greater efforts to track terrorist financing and to strengthen security at airports, train stations and other transportation facilities. They said there was a need for European cell phone companies and Internet service providers to improve retention of technical data, calls and e-mail transmission information, all of which can be crucial to the investigation of underground groups. The ministers also called for adopting rules on compensating the victims of crime, including terrorism.
-------- iraq
Violence in Iraq Marks War Anniversary
March 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The first anniversary of the start of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein was a day like many others in Iraq: a mortar attack in a northern city, an attempt to kill a politician and news of a U.S. Marine cut down by rebel fire.
Overall, Saturday was average by recent Iraqi standards.
The millions of Iraqis who exulted in Saddam's downfall did not publicly celebrate the day, nor were there street protests from those who enjoyed his patronage -- partly because public gatherings are vulnerable to suicide attackers, car bombs, shootings and other violence.
Even those who opposed Saddam are uncomfortable with the invasion and extended occupation of Iraq by foreign armies.
Many Iraqis fear daily they will be caught in the crossfire of the conflict between U.S. forces and anti-American insurgents and other shadowy assailants, and said they felt more insecure now than they did before the United States launched military strikes.
Hours after U.S. Marines officially took control Saturday from the 82nd Airborne Division of a swath of territory west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said rebels had killed a U.S. Marine in the area, Anbar province, a day earlier. Two Marines also died in combat Wednesday in Anbar, which includes parts of the so-called Sunni Triangle where guerrilla attacks have been fierce.
At the handover ceremony at a U.S. base in Ramadi, Marine commander Maj. Gen. James Mattis issued a warning to insurgents.
``We expect to be the best friends to Iraqis who are trying to put their country back together. And for those who want to fight, for the foreign fighters and former regime people, they'll regret it. We're going to handle them very roughly,'' he said.
Also Saturday, the U.S. Army said a 1st Infantry Division soldier was fatally electrocuted while working on communication equipment at a military base in Baqouba, north of Baghdad. And near Taji, also north of the capital, one soldier died and two were wounded after their vehicle rolled over Thursday, the military said. A total of 568 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq, according to figures released Friday by the Department of Defense. Of those 385 died as a result of hostile action, and 183 died of non-hostile causes.
In other violence:
--A U.S. military helicopter was shot down Friday by rebels near the town of Amariya, west of Baghdad. The two crewmen escaped injury and the helicopter was recovered, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of U.S. military operations.
--Insurgents fired four mortar rounds at the offices of a Kurdish political party in the northern city of Mosul on Saturday but missed and killed a driver on a nearby street, Iraqi police said. Guards fired at the rebels; three party members and a passer-by were wounded in the shootout.
--In the northern city of Kirkuk, Iraqi police said Subhi Saber a Turkman politician, survived an assassination attempt Saturday. Assailants opened fire on Saber's car, injuring his driver, but the politician escaped.
--The U.S. military said it charged six U.S. military police officers Saturday over the alleged abuse in November and December of about 20 Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.
President Bush marked the anniversary of the beginning of the war in a speech Friday at the White House, declaring that the fall of Saddam removed a source of violence, aggression and instability in the Middle East.
But some Baghdad residents said Iraqis were less safe.
``The security situation is worse than one year ago. I cannot take my family outside at nights. When I walk in the street, I do not know when a bomb is going to explode and kill me,'' said Ammar Samir, 26, who works for a private trading company. ``The Americans have failed to provide security and prosperity to the Iraqi people.''
Bush made his decision to go to war despite widespread international opposition.
Thousands of war protesters marched in Asian, American and European cities on the first anniversary of the invasion, demanding the withdrawal of U.S.-led troops from Iraq.
The top administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, marked the anniversary by noting the ways the coalition had improved the lives of Iraqis over the past year: the electricity supply was back to prewar levels and climbing, unemployment was down and per capita income had risen by 33 percent this year.
He said the coalition had completed thousands of projects such as generator installations and school refurbishment but admitted that attacks were interfering with big, capital-intensive projects because firms have to spend more on security.
The political process has advanced, with the U.S.-appointed Governing Council signing an interim constitution ahead of the handover of power to Iraqis on June 30. But many details of Iraq's political transition have yet to be mapped out, and there are fears that sectarian divisions could disrupt the process.
--------
New Iraq? Hooded Protest And Masked Statistics
Robert Fisk in Terbil, Iraq
20 March 2004
(The Independent)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5902.htm
Exactly a year after the Anglo-American armies invaded Iraq, I found five young men yesterday busy smashing up what was left of a Saddam statue in this little dusty border village. The torso and head of the dictator had long disappeared from his plinth at the frontier station but his legs and one arm and a battery of monumental missiles still lay on the ground in gleaming steel. Two American attack helicopters were racing up the border - still trying to find Donald Rumsfeld's al-Qa'ida hordes as they supposedly swarm into Iraq - but what caught my eye were the heads of the five young men, so assiduously hammering and sawing and hacking at the remains of the statue. Four of them were wearing black face masks, the fifth had a black hood over his head. A year after the fall of Saddam, Iraqis have to hide their identity when they attack his image. What does that tell us about "new Iraq"?
If you are in Iraq, in Baghdad, driving its dangerous roads, the evidence of collapse and failure is everywhere. The few unarmed NGOs are marooned in the cities, unable to travel on the highways, which have become the domain of assassins and bandits. Now even the road south of Kerbala is the haunt of armed gangs. When I drive these highways, I now wear a keffiyeh and thobe on my head. My driver wears western trousers and shirt but I am in Arab clothes to avoid being attacked. Other westerners are doing the same thing. What does that tell us about Iraq a year after its "liberation"?
Many drivers now refuse to work for western reporters - and who can blame them? Yesterday, another journalist from the "Arabia" television station died of wounds after being shot by US troops - no wonder his colleagues walked out of Colin Powell's boastful Baghdad press conference yesterday. Three journalists working for the American- funded television station have been killed by insurgents. An old Iraqi friend of mine - one of Saddam's most trenchant critics - approached me this week. He had wanted to work for a "democratic" Iraq. Now he wanted my help in obtaining a second passport. Could I speak to the Australian embassy, he asked? He no longer believed that he would live in a stable country. What does this also tell us about "new Iraq"?
For those who spend time in Iraq, it is difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry when the pro-war chorus bangs its drums again. Richard Perle, one of the war's American neo-conservative Vulcans who did more than most to push the Bush administration into this invasion, was arguing with me on a radio show, praising the resumption of 24-hour electrical power in the Iraqi capital. Alas, I could hear little of what he was saying because of the roar of emergency generators around me in night-time Baghdad.
How do we explain now the armies of truculent, often ill-disciplined mercenaries now roaming Iraq on behalf of the Anglo-American occupation authorities. Many thousands of them British, some are well trained, many are not. In my own hotel, dozens of them swagger through the lobby with rifles and pistols, all talking "security", all working for private security firms hired by the occupation power or by private companies. They have no rules of engagement and many of them drink too much. When I pleaded with one British gunman in sunglasses last week to at least put a shirt over his gun to conceal it when walking in and out of our hotel, he pointed a finger at me. "Listen mate," he shouted. "If I see someone with a gun come to shoot you, I am going to walk right past and do nothing." But he is the risk to our security. The Iraqis, of course, watch the coming and going of these young men and draw their own conclusions. I fear I know what they are.
Attacks against US troops and western civilians are daily increasing in Mosul. Two days ago, three Iraqis were killed in Basra by a car bomb intended for a British military patrol. Western troops will now only drive at night north of Najaf in companies 200-strong. What happened to that nice little neatly defined "Sunni triangle"? No wonder Spanish troops are so keen to go home. Now that Poland's Prime Minister says he was "deceived" about weapons of mass destruction, how soon before the Polish contingent follow the Spanish? Never is it reported that Polish troops are attacked almost every night around the city of Hilla. David Kay's astonishing interview in yesterday's Le Figaro - "we must recognise our mistakes in order to restore our credibility" - is being widely broadcast in Baghdad. "I don't think there was any serious chance of proving the existence of weapons of mass destruction," he said. "Because the best evidence suggests they did not exist."
Still, the occupying power, the "Coalition Provisional Authority", refuses to keep statistics on the dozens of innocent Iraqis dying each week under their mandate, in massive car bombs and in roadside killings. The US military searches of Iraqi Sunni villages, the Israeli-style battering down of doors and houses, the constant American killing of innocents is embittering a new generation of Iraqis. And soon we will have "democracy" in Iraq.
-------- israel / palestine
Clashes in Gaza Feed Doubt About Pullout
Homes Razed After Attack on Israeli Tank
By John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9362-2004Mar19?language=printer
MUGHRAKA, Gaza Strip, March 19 -- Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished three houses belonging to Refaat Abu Kmail and his family in this small village on Friday, a few hours after Palestinian guerrillas blew up an Israeli tank about 100 yards away, injuring two soldiers. Standing amid the broken concrete, shattered mirrors and splintered furniture, the collapsed satellite dish, severed doll's head and crushed Legos, Kmail, 27, considered Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip. "It's all lies, all words," he said. "He will never withdraw."
Just over a sandy hillock, the Israeli military is leveling ground for the construction of a new security fence around the south side of Netzarim, a Jewish settlement with 400 residents about three miles south of Gaza City. Olga Ashhab, 30, whose in-laws live in a concrete house about 50 yards from the proposed fence line, said bulldozers were already working in the back yard, and the family expects the home to be razed.
"Why would the Israeli government put so much money into a project if they are going to leave Gaza?" she asked.
Three months after Sharon announced his intentions to withdraw settlers and soldiers from Gaza, Palestinians and Israelis alike are debating how far he will pursue that goal. Against a backdrop of increasing violence here and rising opposition within Sharon's cabinet, and with a presidential election looming in the United States, many question when -- or whether -- Israel could leave this impoverished strip of land where about 7,500 Jewish settlers in 21 communities are protected by thousands of Israeli troops, surrounded by about 1.2 million Palestinians.
At the same time that Sharon is publicly debating withdrawal, the Israeli army is cracking down in Gaza following a double suicide bombing March 14 at the Mediterranean port of Ashdod, 20 miles north of Gaza, in which two 18-year-old Palestinians from Gaza killed themselves and 10 Israelis. Since Tuesday, at least seven Palestinians have been killed and more than 30 injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said soldiers demolished two houses Friday, saying they belonged to members of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas. The spokeswoman said the two militants had been arrested but could not provide their names.
A Washington Post reporter saw three destroyed houses, however, and Kmail said no one had been arrested. In a statement issued Friday night, Hamas said the house of one of its members was destroyed near Netzarim Friday but that none of its members was arrested.
Some Gaza residents and militants said any Israeli withdrawal would be an important achievement for the 31/2-year-old uprising against Israel's continuing occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
"This is a great victory," said a street leader for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat's Fatah political movement. He would give his name only as Abu Jamil because of concern that Israeli soldiers might target him. "Our fighters pushed Sharon to this point because he's losing everything -- soldiers, guns, tanks. But before he leaves, there will be a lot of massacres, and we'll lose thousands of people."
Others expressed doubt that withdrawal would have much impact.
"This is for the media -- nothing else," said Ishaq Younis, 30, the owner of a computer accessory shop in the Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City. "Sharon will leave Gaza, but he will continue surrounding it and keep us under siege with forces on the border, controlling our economy, our health services, our security."
Israelis who oppose withdrawal from Gaza say they are loath to be seen as retreating under fire or rewarding terrorism with a unilateral pullout. Some Israeli officials and analysts say that helps explain the recent increase in Israeli military activity in Gaza.
In the 13 weeks since broaching the idea of withdrawal, Sharon has faced 23 no-confidence votes in Israel's parliament. Cabinet ministers from two elements of Sharon's governing coalition, the pro-settlement National Religious Party and the ultra-nationalist National Union, have threatened to resign and bring down the government if Sharon tries to quit Gaza.
The prime minister's public approval rating has plummeted to 33 percent, according to a survey last week by the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Maariv.
As he tries to build support at home, Sharon is also haggling over the proposal with the Bush administration and Israel's Arab neighbors, in an effort to present a plan palatable to each constituency while negotiating as many concessions as possible.
Sharon "leaves you with the impression that it's not clear if he's going to leave Gaza at all," said Nahum Barnea, an Israeli political analyst and newspaper columnist. "I don't think he's cheating. I don't think he's trying to remain in Gaza while talking about leaving. He's trying to check what kind of return he can get."
Jordan's King Abdullah flew by helicopter Thursday to Sharon's ranch in southern Israel for a secret meeting to discuss the proposed withdrawal from Gaza, as well as Israel's construction of a barrier around major portions of the West Bank.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia has argued that Sharon should be devoting his time and effort to hammering out the details of his Gaza plan in negotiations with the Palestinian government. When Sharon bargains directly with foreign governments, Qureia says, it serves to undercut the Palestinian Authority -- which strengthens Palestinian militant groups angling to fill the political and security vacuum that would follow an Israeli pullout.
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom traveled to the United States this week for meetings with Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to flesh out some of the ideas behind the plan.
In an interview before his departure, Shalom, who is a member of Sharon's Likud Party but has reservations about the plan, said the prime minister and his advisers "are still considering some options -- it's not a completed plan."
U.S. officials say they are wary about not only the question of who would eventually wield power in Gaza, but what would happen to evacuated Jewish settlements and where settlers would be relocated.
Israeli media have reported that in exchange for evacuating Gaza, Sharon wants U.S. approval to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and possibly annex them. But a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, ruled that out.
"We are not bargaining," the official said. "We are not ready to take a Gaza withdrawal and give a West Bank annexation."
Moore reported from Jerusalem.
-------- nato
NATO to Increase Peacekeepers in Troubled Kosovo
March 20, 2004
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/international/europe/20KOSO.html
CAGLAVICA, Kosovo, March 19 - NATO allies sought to shore up a struggling peacekeeping operation in Kosovo on Friday as United Nations officials began to assess the damage left by three days of ethnic violence.
The unrest that was ignited by the drowning of three ethnic Albanian boys in a river - an incident that officials said was the work of local Serbs - began to dissipate on Friday, but Serbs continued to flee their homes in ethnically mixed areas, fearing further attacks.
In the divided town of Mitrovica, the scene of Wednesday's first clashes, French troops forced their way into apartments that they said were the source of gunfire on Thursday.
On Friday, shots could be heard from an ethnically mixed area just north of the river that runs between the Serbian-dominated north side and Albanian-populated south side of the city, according to local United Nations officials.
France and Germany said they would be sending 400 to 600 more troops to join contingents already based in the United Nations-governed province.
On Thursday NATO announced a reserve force of 1,000 American, British and Italian soldiers was being deployed in response to the crisis. The local peacekeeping force already has 18,000 members in Kosovo, but they seemed ill-prepared to deal with the unrest, in which up to 31 people are believed to have been killed.
The United Nations mission in Kosovo was established in 1999 after NATO forced Yugoslav security forces accused of committing widespread atrocities against Albanians to withdraw from the province. Its mandate was to create an autonomous government as well as to protect minorities.
The commander of NATO forces in Southern Europe, Adm. Gregory Johnson, flew into Kosovo on Thursday to take control of the security operation. He described the violence as clearly "orchestrated."
"This kind of activity, which essentially amounts to ethnic cleansing, cannot go on," Admiral Johnson told reporters in the regional capital, Pristina.
But while the fresh troops continued to flow into Kosovo, it was unclear if they would be able to repair the damage. South of Pristina in the ethnically mixed town of Lipjan, Serbian families began to load up tractors with belongings before driving them to the nearby Serb-dominated enclaves of Suvi Do and Gracanica.
In Kosovo Polje, three miles west of Pristina, youths set afire the last Serbian houses in the town.
If the goal of the organizers was to rid Kosovo of its few remaining multiethnic areas, local leaders said they did not succeed.
"It's a difficult situation, but it is better than I thought," said Momcilo Trajkovic, a local Serbian politician and former member of Kosovo's regional Parliament. "A great deal of damage has been done, but many families have decided to stay put."
In Caglavica, a village just south of Pristina and the scene of some of the fiercest clashes in the area between crowds and the security forces trying to protect Serbian homes, trucks began to tow away destroyed United Nations police vehicles on Friday. Ten houses that lined the northern edge of the village were burned out.
The village bore the brunt of unrest in the region, as Albanians focused their anger on Serbs there who had set up a roadblock on the main highway leading to neighboring Macedonia. The Serbs had been protesting the drive-by shooting of an 18-year-old earlier in the week.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani Forces Besiege Guerrillas
Various Foreigners Aid Tribal Fighters, Army Officials Say
By Kamran Khan and John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9284-2004Mar19.html
KARACHI, Pakistan, March 19 -- Several thousand Pakistani army troops have surrounded between 150 and 400 tribal fighters and foreign Islamic guerrillas, some of them associated with al Qaeda, as heavy fighting continued in a remote area near the border with Afghanistan, military officials said Friday.
The intensity of the resistance encountered in the rugged hills of South Waziristan has prompted speculation by some military commanders that the tribal fighters and their foreign allies may be protecting senior al Qaeda figures such as Ayman Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician who is Osama bin Laden's top deputy.
Senior officials said Friday that the foreigners include Chechens, Uzbeks and some Arabs, but they said they had no specific evidence that either bin Laden or Zawahiri was in the area.
"Most recent intelligence inputs do not support the perception that either Osama or Ayman are holed up in that vicinity," said a senior military intelligence officer in Peshawar, the capital of the province in northwestern Pakistan that includes the semi-autonomous tribal area of South Waziristan.
"The idea is to send the strongest message yet to the al Qaeda supporters, but who knows? We may hit the jackpot in the process," the official added.
Pakistan's military spokesman, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, told reporters at a news conference in Islamabad that the guerrillas "are surrounded and they are trying to break the cordon and get away."
Based on "an assessment from the fire we are receiving," Sultan said, military commanders estimated guerrillas' strength at 300 to 400. A military officer in Peshawar put the number at about 150.
Sultan declined to comment on the number of casualties in Friday's operation, but the Reuters news agency, citing a government official in the border region, reported that 15 soldiers had been killed since Thursday. On Tuesday, the first day of the fighting, officials put the death toll at 16 soldiers and 24 suspected militants, including some foreigners.
Besides ridding the area of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, the immediate goal of Friday's operation was to free about a dozen Pakistani paramilitary soldiers and two civilian officials who had been taken hostage by the foreign fighters on Tuesday, when the army launched its sweep in South Waziristan, according to the two military officers in Peshawar.
"The Chechens basically want free passage and an immediate end of the military operation in exchange for the release of the hostages," the intelligence officer said. Although he said there would be "no bargaining," he noted that Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, has already pledged that any foreign fighters who surrender to Pakistani security forces will not be handed over to U.S. custody.
The fighting in South Waziristan this week is the heaviest since the Pakistani army began two years ago to assert control over the tribal areas, where Pakistan's central government traditionally has exercised little influence. About 70,000 troops are deployed in the border region, which includes the Pashtun tribal belt where sympathy for the Taliban and al Qaeda runs deep.
On Friday, Pakistani forces surrounded guerrillas who had taken refuge in mud-walled compounds scattered among several villages west of Wana, the main town in South Waziristan. The operation is centered on an area a few miles from the border with Afghanistan, the officials said. Helicopters attacked the guerrillas' compounds with rockets while ground troops pounded the besieged fighters with artillery. A Pakistani army officer said there was "considerable coordination" with U.S. ground forces operating nearby in Afghanistan.
Witnesses in Wana reported that artillery fire continued through the night and that fighter aircraft were visible overhead as the fighting spread on Friday, the Associated Press reported. Families in the village of Shin Warsak, five miles southeast of Wana, fled in overloaded pickup trucks after helicopter gunships fired rockets at houses. Army trucks loaded with soldiers and weapons rolled out of Wana in the direction of the fighting.
Pakistani army officials and a senior civilian official in Peshawar said Friday night that some influential tribal leaders of South Waziristan were active throughout the day trying to broker an agreement between security forces and the trapped guerrillas.
"The terrorists have been given an unambiguous message that their failure to surrender would invite wrath of the army," according to the aide to the governor of North-West Frontier Province.
Lancaster reported from New Delhi.
----
India warns ties with US could be harmed by military reward to Pakistan
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320115123.dzt03bbr.html
India warned Saturday that the United States may have damaged the countries' growing relationship by granting special military status to rival Pakistan and giving no forewarning.
A foreign ministry statement said the US decision "has significant implications for India-US relations. We are in touch with the US government in this regard."
Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Thursday in Islamabad, two days after he visited New Delhi, that the United States would designate Pakistan a "major non-NATO ally."
"While he was in India, there was much emphasis on India-US strategic partnership. It is disappointing that he did not share with us this decision of the United States government," the statement said.
The special status puts Pakistan but not India in an exclusive club of nations such as Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan and Thailand given preferential US treatment in military cooperation.
Pakistan, which has fought three wars with India, will be eligible for priority delivery of military supplies, although not the defense guarantees provided to members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Powell announced the move just as Pakistani troops launched an assault on some 400 heavily-armed fighters believed to be protecting a top Al-Qaeda leader near the rugged border with Afghanistan.
The United States, which had expected an Indian backlash to the announcement, has since tried to ease New Delhi's concerns.
Deputy Ambassador Robert Blake met Indian foreign ministry officials shortly after Powell made the announcement Thursday, a US embassy official said.
Powell, as he left South Asia, said Washington hoped eventually to have a similar military relationship with India.
Powell said the United States wanted to have "a good relationship with Pakistan and a good relationship with India."
Pakistan was an ally of the United States during the Cold War, when India tilted to the Soviet Union.
Washington has moved increasingly close to New Delhi since the late 1990s but has had to balance the shift with its renewed alliance with Pakistan in the "war on terrorism."
India's main opposition Congress party had Friday said the military reward for Pakistan showed that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's claims to have built warm ties with the world's lone superpower had a shallow base. Congress spokesman Anand Sharma said the status accorded to Pakistan was a "public repudiation of the Indo-US strategic partnership and various statements that they (the United States) are a natural ally on the war on terrorism."
India will begin a five-round national election on April 20, with Vajpayee's Hindu nationalists stressing their record as managers of the economy and foreign policy, including an 11-month-old peace drive with Pakistan.
A major focus in Powell's discussions in India was outsourcing -- a key topic for both India and the United States in national elections where economic issues are at the forefront.
Powell pressed gently on the issue, calling the outsourcing of jobs to foreign markets "a reality of the 21st century" but urging India to open its markets further to US businesses.
----
Pakistan Encounters Resistance From Militants, Arrests 100
By DAVID ROHDE
March 20, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/international/asia/20CND-STAN.html
WANA, Pakistan, March 20 -- Pakistan military commanders continued to encounter fierce resistance from 400 to 500 surrounded Islamic militants near the border with Afghanistan. They appear to have backed off earlier claims that Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, may be among the militants in the South Waziristan tribal area.
The officials suggested that the leader of the militants might be protecting a Chechen or local Pakistani leader. Pakistani paramilitary forces also captured 100 prisoners, but wouldn't release what the prisoners were telling them.
Brigadier Shah said the largest number of militants were believed to be Uzbeks, followed by Chechens, Afghans allied with the hard-line Islamist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Arabs and ethnic Uighurs from Xinjiang Province in western China.
In Washington, by late Friday senior American officials were distancing themselves from Pakistan's assertions that its troops had Dr. Zawahiri trapped. "It's not clear to me who's there, if anybody," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on CNN's "Larry King Live."
Pakistani officials said militants made two attempts to break out of the cordon Thursday night, but had been forced back. Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani military, said at a news briefing Friday that two groups of suspected fighters, one heavily armed, had been apprehended. But he said none of those apprehended appeared to be high-level Qaeda members, and he gave no definite information on the possible whereabouts of Dr. Zawahiri. On Thursday, the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said the "fierce resistance" put up by the fighters might indicate that a prominent Qaeda leader was in the region. Pakistani military and intelligence officials have said they believe that it is Dr. Zawahiri, an Egyptian eye surgeon said to be Al Qaeda's chief planner and Osama bin Laden's personal physician and confidant.
General Sultan said American forces were not involved in the fighting, but were assisting with intelligence and surveillance. Pakistani forces, he added, were communicating with the militants through loudspeakers and sending emissaries to tell them to surrender. "The security forces will try to overcome them with minimum use of force," General Sultan said. "We would like to capture them without large-scale destruction, but we have the force available if need be."
Earlier in the week, General Musharraf offered an amnesty to anyone who surrendered peacefully, he added. But the militants showed few signs of capitulating. Brigadier Shah said they curse General Musharraf and President Bush over their radios.
Army officials vowed to rout the militants, and their forces continued shelling through the night and into the morning on Friday, General Sultan said. In Kabul, a senior Afghan official said Friday night that significant numbers of Afghan and American forces had been sent to Paktika Province to intercept militants fleeing the onslaught in Pakistan, only 12 miles from the border.
In a telephone interview, an Afghan security official with connections in South Waziristan said he had received reports that Dr. Zawahiri was safe in a place some 5 to 10 miles from the actual fighting. The official said Mr. bin Laden was also in the area of South Waziristan but not in the region under attack.
Qari Tahir, a leader of Islamic fighters from Uzbekistan and other Russian-speaking republics and a strong ally of the Taliban movement, was leading the fighting against the Pakistanis, he said.
In other parts of Pakistan, there was growing criticism of the operation from hard-line religious groups. In Karachi, gunmen killed one police officer and wounded two others in an attack that police officials said might have been in retaliation for the operation, Reuters reported.
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Security Officials Reject Idea of C.I.A. for European Union
March 20, 2004
By PATRICK E. TYLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/international/europe/20BRUS.html
BRUSSELS, March 19 - In the wake of the Madrid train attacks, European Union justice and interior ministers on Friday rejected proposals to create a Central Intelligence Agency for Europe, but they agreed that a growing threat made greater intelligence-sharing essential.
The ministers recommended that the European Union have its own "intelligence coordinator," appointed as early as next week as European leaders prepare for their summit meeting, diplomats said.
They also asked Javier Solana, the foreign policy chief, to draw up plans for an "information board" where member states and police agencies could exchange intelligence in a crisis management center at the European headquarters here.
One purpose of the meeting was also to prod countries to adopt basic law enforcement tools such as the European arrest warrant, greater supervision of borders and identity documents, particularly passports, and uniform laws for preserving telecommunications data from cellphones and the Internet.
The Belgian police said Friday that they had conducted some 20 raids against suspected Islamic militants in several cities. One unidentified person arrested was connected to the Moroccan investigation of the May 2003 bombings in Casablanca that killed 45 people, a police statement said.
Meanwhile, French ministers announced that the intelligence chiefs of the five large states, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, would meet in Madrid on Monday to reinforce cooperation in the bombing investigation there.
The urgency reflects how intensely Europe's political leaders perceive a new threat - and potential political backlash - with public opinion very much unsettled over how the West is managing postwar Iraq and the struggle against Islamic extremism.
On Friday, the interior and justice ministers were clearly resistant to the idea of handing over any major intelligence function to a European government. For now, ad hoc arrangements among the major intelligence services in Europe - and with the United States - seem likely to remain the status quo.
Part of the reason, diplomats said, is that Europe's largest states - Britain, France, Germany and Italy - jealously guard their secret intelligence functions, including counterterrorism, as an indivisible part of national sovereignty. It is the smaller European states, some of which lack intelligence agencies, that want greater cooperation.
"We don't want new institutions," said the British home secretary, David Blunkett. "We want action on those measures which have already been agreed upon."
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Faulty intelligence continues to plague U.S. efforts in Iraq
By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8230519.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S.-led war against Iraq began one year ago with an urgent message from a clandestine team of U.S. intelligence officers who'd infiltrated Baghdad: An Iraqi agent who said he had "eyes on" on Saddam Hussein was reporting that Saddam would be spending the night at a compound in southern Baghdad.
The encrypted message arrived at CIA headquarters outside Washington on Wednesday afternoon, March 19. At 7:12 p.m., President Bush ordered an airstrike on the compound. Two hours later, 37 minutes before dawn March 20 in Baghdad, two Air Force F-117 stealth warplanes dropped four 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs on the compound, known as Dora Farms.
The attack reportedly killed one civilian, injured 14 others and obliterated the target, but Saddam and his two sons, Odai and Qusai, survived. Either they weren't there or, as some intelligence officers have since theorized, the agent's information was misunderstood or mistranslated because the Arabic words for "bunker" and "compound" sound somewhat alike, and Saddam was in an outbuilding in the compound, not in a bunker.
Meager, mishandled and made-up intelligence plagued the U.S.-led mission in Iraq long before the war and continues to plague it now. Many of the Bush administration's charges about Iraq's weapons programs and ties to terrorism now appear to have been wrong. U.S. troops are battling a stubborn insurgency that their civilian leaders didn't expect.
There are hopeful signs. The country's 25 million people are freed from a ruthless dictatorship and some are enjoying electricity and water for the first time. Iraq's economy is beginning to pick up, oil output is slowly growing, and just over half the respondents to a recent public opinion survey said their lives are better than before the war and expect the improvement to continue.
But the cost of rebuilding Iraq far exceeds initial estimates and handing power back to Iraqis is proving to be harder than the proponents of war thought it would be. In the recent survey of which leaders Iraqis did and didn't trust, the favorite of some administration officials, former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, finished dead last, behind even Saddam.
At least seven official inquiries into U.S. intelligence involving Iraq are under way in Washington, including one by the Senate Intelligence Committee and another by an independent commission appointed by Bush. As more and more questions are raised about why the United States seems now to have had so little accurate information about Iraq, it's clear that there's more than enough blame to go around:
-U.S. intelligence agencies had few if any independent sources of information in Saddam's Iraq. There was no U.S. Embassy in Baghdad - relations were essentially severed ahead of the 1991 Gulf war - to provide diplomatic cover for American spies. The best sources of information on Iraq's weapons and missile programs were the U.N. weapons inspectors who were kicked out of Iraq in 1998.
-Lacking any good intelligence on Saddam's weapons programs, the CIA erred on the side of what appeared to be caution and extrapolated - essentially, it guessed - the size of Iraq's hidden chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and the extent of its nuclear weapons program from the last data the U.N. inspectors had collected.
-Without its own sources of information from inside Iraq, the United States came to rely increasingly on Iraqi exiles and Kurds living in areas of Iraq that had been under U.S. protection and essentially autonomous since the Gulf War. Intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department regarded many of the exiles, particularly Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, with disdain.
Much of the exiles' information has been found to be marginal at best, and sometimes exaggerated or fabricated. But that information became increasingly important to U.S. judgments, particularly in the absence of other sources.
How the exiles' information affected judgments about Iraq is one element of the probes into the way the war in Iraq was conducted. CIA Director George Tenet has acknowledged that official government assessments of Iraq included information from known fabricators and has promised an investigation.
Some Washington officials believe the seeds of the intelligence problems in Iraq can be traced to the 1970s when people now influential in the Bush administration concluded that the Central Intelligence Agency had grossly underestimated the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The group of outside experts asked to reassess the Soviet threat included Paul Wolfowitz, who's now deputy secretary of defense. Their allies included Richard Perle, who recently resigned from the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, an advisory panel that consults with Pentagon leaders about policy.
Their distrust of the CIA was still evident 30 years later. The CIA's analysis "isn't worth the paper it's written on," Perle, then chairman of the Defense Policy Board, told Knight Ridder in 2002 as the administration's internal intelligence wars over Iraq escalated.
The CIA had stopped working with Chalabi in the mid-1990s. An audit found that the INC couldn't account for how it had spent all of the millions of dollars provided by the U.S. government. In January 2002, the State Department suspended funding for the INC in a similar dispute over its accounting for government funds. Funding eventually was restored.
Some of the money supported the INC's Information Collection Program, an intelligence-gathering effort that supplied information from Iraqi defectors that appeared to substantiate assessments that Saddam had illicit weapons and worked with al-Qaida.
Responsibility for the $4 million-a-year effort was transferred in late 2002 to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
A letter written to the Senate Appropriations Committee by the INC in June 2001 said that information gathered by the group went directly to the Defense Department and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, the chief proponents of a pre-emptive attack on Iraq.
Officials in the Pentagon and the vice president's office deny they were recipients of the INC-supplied information.
Many of the unsubstantiated assertions the administration made can be traced to INC information, including:
- A September 2002 paper on Iraq released by the White House in conjunction with President Bush's speech to the United Nations claimed that Iraq was training international terrorists in airplane hijacking at a facility south of Baghdad called Salman Pak. At the time, several intelligence officials told Knight Ridder and CBS News, among others, that the allegation wasn't true and that the facility probably was used by the Iraqis for counterterrorism training. Since then, inspections in Iraq found no such facility.
- Secretary of State Colin Powell's claim before the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, that three human sources had described Iraq's mobile germ weapons production labs and a fourth had revealed a mobile biowarfare research facility. The DIA concluded that the defector who described the mobile research lab was a fabricator, but an alert on that went unnoticed. Tenet later said questions also have been raised about the veracity of the defectors who described the mobile production facilities. No mobile biowarfare production or research facilities have been found in Iraq.
The same combination of dubious intelligence and distrust of the intelligence bureaucracy also infected planning for the war and for the postwar period.
Largely on the strength of what INC sources had told them, Pentagon planners expected U.S. troops to be welcomed with opened arms. Pentagon civilians led by Wolfowitz dismissed warnings from then-Army Chief of Staff Eric K. Shinseki and others about how many troops it might take to secure postwar Iraq and largely ignored a huge "Future of Iraq" project assembled by 17 U.S. agencies and led by the Department of State.
Instead, U.S. troops were met by a series of guerrilla attacks by Iraqi irregular forces and an insurgency that persists to this day. U.S. occupiers found Iraq's infrastructure in much worse shape than they had been led to believe - though the State Department report had laid out many of the problems.
A U.S. Army War College study last August found that Iraqi scouts in civilian clothes reconnoitered U.S. positions continuously, reporting via cell and satellite phones, landlines and couriers. The Iraqis and their foreign allies who've been attacking the U.S.-led occupation for 11 months appear to be employing the same techniques: using civilians to keep tabs on U.S. forces, Western civilians and Iraqis who are cooperating with the occupation to prepare ambushes, plant improvised explosive devices and mount other attacks.
In addition, military and civilian officials in Iraq say, Saddam loyalists and others may have infiltrated some coalition offices, much as the Viet Cong did in Vietnam, to provide intelligence on high-ranking coalition officials and other plans.
"Some of the Iraqis may have prepared for what came after the war better than we did," said one senior U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his remarks weren't authorized. The official said some Iraqi commanders appear to have realized that fighting the American military was hopeless and prepared instead for what he called "a Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia-style war that they thought they had a better chance of winning."
The CIA station in Baghdad, now the largest in the world with hundreds of officers, reported in November that growing numbers of Iraqis were concluding that the U.S.-led coalition could be defeated and were supporting the resistance. In January, agency officers in Iraq warned that the country could be on a path to civil war.
There Iraq remains one year after the war began, teetering between democracy and disaster.
-------- un
Annan Calls for Probe into U.N.'s Iraqi Oil Program
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9397-2004Mar19.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 19 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed to the Security Council Friday night that he establish an "independent high-level inquiry" into allegations of corruption in a former U.N.-administered humanitarian program that used Iraqi oil revenue to feed Iraqis.
Annan's proposal, contained in a letter to the 15-nation council, is intended to address a series of media reports alleging that foreign dignitaries, including senior U.N. official Benon Sevan, illegally profited from the multibillion-dollar oil-for-food program. It reflected mounting concern among senior U.N. officials that a preliminary probe into misconduct by the U.N. internal auditor would be insufficient to lay the matter to rest.
Sevan, the former head of the program, has denied any wrongdoing through a U.N. spokesman, and Annan has said that he has yet to see hard evidence of corruption within the agency's ranks. But Annan believes that an outside investigation, either by a private auditor or a panel of eminent individuals, will help clear the United Nations, U.N. officials said.
"I don't think we need to have our reputation impugned," Annan told reporters Friday morning. "It is highly possible that there's been quite a lot of wrongdoing, but we need to investigate and get to see who is responsible."
Annan and other senior U.N. officials said the investigation would focus initially on U.N. staff, but they expressed hope that the probe could also look at foreign countries and companies. Annan said that the inquiry would require the support of the Security Council and U.N. member states. But U.N. officials indicated that he would press ahead with an investigation even without the council's full backing.
"The allegations that have appeared in the press focused on the activities of companies and, to a certain extent, governments," Annan's chief spokesman, Fred Eckhard said. He said Annan wants to "see a comprehensive and independent investigation."
The Security Council launched the oil-for-food program in December 1996 so Iraq could raise funds for food and other humanitarian goods. Under the program, Iraq sold more than $67 billion in oil before it was shut down after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's former government pocketed more than $10.1 billion in smuggled oil revenue and illicit proceeds between 1997 and 2002, according to testimony from the General Accounting Office before a House subcommittee on Thursday.
The Security Council, which had oversight responsibility for the program, informally rebuffed an appeal by Annan to adopt a resolution that would compel states to cooperate with investigators.
"We should not create the expectation that the council will agree on a comprehensive investigation," one council diplomat said. "Is the council going to allow these investigators to go to Russia, China, the United States and France" to question government officials and businesses? "Frankly, I think that's a matter the council won't agree on."
-------- us
A Look at U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq
March 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-US-Deaths.html
As of Friday, March 19, 2004, 568 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq a year ago, according to the Department of Defense. Of those, 385 died as a result of hostile action and 183 died of non-hostile causes, the department said. The department did not provide an update Saturday.
The British military has reported 58 deaths; Italy, 17; Spain, eight; Bulgaria, five; Ukraine, three; Thailand, two; Denmark, Estonia and Poland have reported one each.
Since May 1, when President Bush declared that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, 430 U.S. soldiers have died -- 270 as a result of hostile action and 160 of non-hostile causes, according to the military.
Since the start of military operations, 2,868 U.S. service members have been injured as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department. Non-hostile injured numbered 432.
The latest deaths reported by the military:
No new identifications reported.
The latest identifications reported by the military:
-- Marine Cpl. Andrew D. Brownfield, 24, Summit, Ohio; died Thursday due to wounds received from a mortar attack at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq; assigned to Marine Wing Support Squadron 374, Marine Wing Support Group 37, 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, I Marine Expeditionary Force.
-- Army Pfc. Ernest Harold Sutphin, 21, Parkersburg, W.Va.; died Thursday in Landstuhl, Germany, from injuries sustained in a vehicle incident in Kirkuk, Iraq on March 11; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery, 25th Infantry Division (Light).
-------- propaganda wars
Homeland Seeks 'Entertainment Liaison'
March 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Homeland-Security-Entertainment.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Protecting America against terrorist attacks and other disasters requires strong interagency communication and superior intelligence-gathering. Oh, and a little help from Hollywood.
The Homeland Security Department has posted a job for a ``liaison to the entertainment industry.'' The salary could be as high as $136,000, plus benefits.
The department is creating the job to make sure that dramatic portrayals of it are as accurate as possible, spokesman Dennis Murphy said Friday.
It's not a new concept. The Pentagon has been working with TV and film producers for years. Murphy, in a former position at the Customs Service, provided technical advice to the Oscar-winning film ``Traffic.''
The job calls for ``providing strategic counsel'' to Homeland Security officials when they are asked for help with a film and approving assistance for projects that commit the department to cooperate.
``There can be a tremendous impact on the public with the ability to communicate to people what we're doing,'' Murphy said. ``They're going to do their movie. We just don't want it to be silly.''
For example, the FBI has been aided by a number of dramatic portrayals. Among them: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as alien-chasing FBI agents on ``The X-Files,'' and Jodie Foster's determined agent-in-training, Clarice Starling, in ``The Silence of the Lambs.''
In September, ABC debuted its television series, ``Threat Matrix,'' a one-hour show about a highly trained, specialized task force that works out of the Homeland Security Department and ``fights the many faces of terror,'' according to its promotional material. Homeland Security officials declined to comment on the show.
In the past year, the department has been inundated with requests for help on motion pictures and documentaries, said spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos.
Movies and TV shows could be important recruiting tools for people considering a career in Homeland Security, she said. The CIA recently began airing recruitment ads starring Jennifer Garner, who plays a CIA agent in the ABC series ``Alias.''
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is aware of the entertainment industry's impact on the department's image. While on a recent visit to Los Angeles, he met with entertainment industry executives who asked him how they could help the Homeland Security effort, Scolinos said. Ridge suggested they could promote the department's Ready Campaign to educate citizens on how to prepare for a terrorist attack.
The entertainment liaison officer must be a U.S. citizen, have at least a year of specialized experience and obtain a security clearance, according to the job description.
The department began accepting applications for the position on Tuesday and will continue to do so until March 29.
On the Net:
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov
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Kosovo triggers media war
Serbian state TV responded to a government call to broadcasters
20 March, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3552661.stm
Serbia's broadcast and print media have not only ramped up coverage of violence in Kosovo but are openly making their own mark on the conflict.
"All Belgrade TV stations responded to the Serbian government's call and interrupted their broadcasting in sign of protest over the events in Kosovo," BETA news agency declared to coincide with Friday's mass rally in Belgrade.
Just before its regular midday newscast, Serbia's RTS state television flashed up the statement "Stop the terror against Serbs, three minutes of warning to the world!" on a black background.
And Tanjug news agency said it was advising subscribers that from midday local the agency's national service would join electronic media which will interrupt their broadcasting at the invitation of the Serbian government to voice their protest over the pogrom of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija."
Serb press coverage
All of Serbia's papers have devoted dozens of pages each day to covering the anguish of Kosovo Serbs driven out of their homes, and Serbia's reaction.
"Serbs spend the night dreading the sunset and a new destructive surge by Albanian extremists," Politika, a leading pro-government newspaper, wrote on Friday.
This is a wild rampage, sheer nationalism and irredentism Politika
On its front page Borba newspaper cited a senior Serbian official, Nebojsa Covic, as saying: "I fear that Kristallnacht is happening" - a reference to Nazi actions in 1938 when thousands of Jewish targets were attacked and dozens killed.
Several papers agreed the violence proved the failure of a security system set up by international community.
It was "simply unbelievable that Unmik and K-For were unable to get the situation under control"; there was a "total collapse of UN security systems", Borba said.
While for tabloid Vecernje Novosti the violence was an "Albanian Jihad", one Politika writer said "events in Kosovo have nothing to do with Islam. This is a wild rampage, sheer nationalism and irredentism."
Other Serb papers, including Dnevnik and Politika, condemned arson attacks on mosques in Belgrade and Nis after the destruction of Christian Orthodox churches.
Foreign media accused
Some papers turned their guns on international media reporting, particularly over an incident on Tuesday when three Albanian boys drowned in a river outside the flashpoint town of Mitrovica. A 13 year old boy claimed he was with them at the time and that they were being chased by local Serbs
One Politika columnist accused CNN of being the first to report "untruths about the four Albanian boys", whose fate was seen as a trigger by some media.
In response to what it said were remarks by CNN that "there was not enough time for an investigation", Politika asked "were two days really not enough to question the surviving boy?"
Another analyst writing in the paper said "this was done by design, as CNN was in charge of giving media 'treatment' to the action, according to a familiar scenario."
The Albanian media "did their job well, too, raising tensions to the maximum, accusing the Serbs of allegedly chasing the Albanian boys and letting dogs after them," Politika's analyst said.
The tabloid Blic also poured scorn on foreign reporting of events.
Both the BBC and CNN fed their viewers the "story about bloodthirsty Serbs and their dogs" despite receiving from Blic an Unmik statement that the Albanian boys' deaths were an accident, and pledging to correct their reporting.
Kosovar criticism
Kosovo Albanian television, KohaVision TV, aired strenuous appeals by province leaders to Kosovo Albanians to stop attacking Serbs, their churches and the security forces. There was no real state or political authority to stop the violence Koha Ditore
"We reiterate that attacks against the international presence... are completely unacceptable... The destruction of religious and cultural sites, property and homes, is unacceptable for the Kosova people and we condemn it," the TV cited Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova and Premier Bajram Rexhepi as saying.
But in the Albanian-language press, prominent activist Veton Surroi said events showed "there was no real state or political authority that could stop the violence."
Writing in Koha Ditore, he blamed the Kosovar political establishment and international administration for failing to understand the region's problems.
The weekly Java identified frustration built up for years as a result of "Unmik's inefficiency and bureaucracy" coupled with "frustration at the unfinished peace and terrible ambivalence."
Pristina's Epoka e Re, a daily aimed at students, said the violence "should make us all feel guilty, but this will definitely hurt the conscience of our politicians." It accused the Kosovar leadership of "deceiving" the people since the 1999 war.
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- police
Lost Police Reports Hint at Problems
March 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Missing-Crimes.html
ATLANTA (AP) -- Police in Atlanta recently revealed they were missing 22,000 crime reports from a single year. While the underreporting shocked many civilians, it was no surprise for those in law enforcement, who are well aware that agencies across the country lose or alter crime reports to burnish their widely reported crime statistics.
In New York, a police captain was accused of routinely downgrading crime reports so he'd look good in the eyes of his superiors. Philadelphia's Sex Crimes Unit dismissed as non-crimes several thousand reports of rape in 1999. And in Baltimore, an information technology worker quit in December over claims the city's crime reporting was wildly inaccurate.
``It's been a chronic problem,'' said Samuel Walker, a criminal justice professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who runs the Web site www.policeaccountability.org. ``But then again, no one knows exactly how serious it is. There's no real accounting, no real auditing.''
Police and experts say crime rates never are all that accurate, since the job of crime reporting is mostly left to the police themselves -- and police are under constant pressure to show crime rates are dropping.
Even the FBI's national crime reports are known to be only vaguely accurate, since they too rely on reports from police.
``Criminologists have known for years that crime statistics are not reliable,'' said Robert Friedmann, a criminal justice professor at Georgia State University.
The problem, Friedmann said, can be caused by pressure from politicians who want to put a good face on crime, or by officers who fear for their jobs. The solution may involve more independent assessments like Atlanta's.
For the most part, the public would only find out if crimes are being downgraded -- or if incidents are tucked into a dark corner -- when there's a scandal.
The exception is a department such as Atlanta's, which ordered an independent audit to come clean on its misreporting problem. Only a few other cities -- including Boston and New Orleans -- have done the same.
Atlanta's audit said the city underreported crimes for years to help land the 1996 Olympics and pump up tourism. In 2002 alone, there were more than 22,000 missing police reports, 4,281 of which could have been counted as violent offenses.
Despite the distorted figures, Atlanta ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in violent crimes such as rape and murder in nine of the last 10 years, according to FBI crime data, which is compiled from reports submitted by police departments.
``Soon after coming here, I discovered that the systems and practice of the Atlanta police department were essentially broken,'' Chief Richard Pennington said in the audit.
Pennington has proposed a number of reforms, including accounting for crimes from the time a 911 call is made.
In Broward County, Fla., which includes Fort Lauderdale, the state attorney's office is investigating reports that deputies cooked crime statistics so evaluations of the department would go more smoothly.
``Crimes are reclassified every day. If someone has a broken window, they may dial 911 and say their house was robbed. It may turn out it was a burglary, perhaps it was criminal mischief,'' said sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedal.
Sometimes, as in Baltimore's case, the crime statistics were simply miscategorized, said police spokesman Matt Jablow.
``In no case did we find that any allegations of rape were uninvestigated,'' Jablow said. ``No one came forward and said, 'No one investigated my rape.'''
So crime reporting often comes down to the integrity and ethics of police officers.
In New York, 70 sergeants rallied in front of a Queens station house with a 15-foot inflatable rat this month as they demanded the ouster of Capt. Sheldon Howard, who they say reduces the severity of crimes so his statistics look better than they are.
``If Howard's numbers are good, he doesn't get called up and he looks like a star,'' said Sergeants Benevolent Association President Ed Mullins. ``It's a regular pattern and practice that exists in that precinct.''
New York police spokeswoman Chris Filipazzo would not comment because of an ongoing investigation.
In Atlanta, meanwhile, police believe the audit may have overstated its case. The accounting of the problem could have been exaggerated because crimes get repeatedly re-categorized in different computers, said Sgt. John Quigley.
``If there were a lot of reports missing, I would have thought letters to the editor would have reflected the frustration of the citizenry,'' he said.
On the Net:
http://www.policeaccountability.org
http://www.fbi.gov/
-------- prisons / prisoners
Prison of Abused 9/11 Detainees Alters Ways
Associated Press
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9084-2004Mar19.html
The Bureau of Prisons has moved to address problems at a federal prison in Brooklyn where guards abused dozens of people detained shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a Justice Department review.
The review released yesterday by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department inspector general, said the prison bureau had taken "reasonable and responsible steps" to address concerns raised by an earlier investigation into allegations that many of the 84 detainees were mistreated at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
But the review also urged further action in several areas, including creating a special cadre of guards for high-security inmates, a tighter policy on videotaping inmates' movements and on videotaping of strip searches.
The earlier Justice Department investigation found that guards slammed detainees against walls, twisted their arms, performed unneeded strip searches and taped conversations between some detainees and their lawyers. In addition, hundreds of videotapes that might have documented the abuse were destroyed or erased.
The review released yesterday credited prison bureau officials with beefing up training on the use of force and restraints by guards, including several sessions scheduled for between Feb. 27 and April 4 at the Brooklyn prison.
But Fine also said the Justice Department needed assurances that the training would cover the appropriateness of "twisting an inmate's wrist or fingers, stepping on an inmate's ankle chains, placing an inmate's head against the wall and pulling up on an inmate's cuffed arms."
The prison bureau sent out a memo Jan. 28 urging that all prison personnel be aware that they cannot listen to or record conversations between an inmate and that person's attorney, and that when possible they should be able to talk in private conference rooms.
--------
Justice Dept. Urges Changes at Federal Jail
March 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/nyregion/20prison.html
WASHINGTON, March 19 - A Justice Department review that was prompted by the abuse of dozens of detainees at the federal jail in Brooklyn after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, urges the creation of a special cadre of guards for high-security inmates and a tighter policy on conducting strip searches and videotaping inmates' activities.
An earlier Justice Department investigation found that guards at the Metropolitan Detention Center had slammed detainees against walls, twisted their arms, conducted unneeded strip searches and videotaped conversations between some detainees and their lawyers. In addition, hundreds of such videotapes were destroyed or erased.
The review, released on Friday by Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general, also said that the Bureau of Prisons had taken "reasonable and responsible steps" to address concerns raised earlier.
--------
Army Drops Chaplain's Court-Martial
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9356-2004Mar19.html
The U.S. military last night dropped its court-martial proceedings against Army Capt. James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at the Guantanamo Bay prison who once faced accusations of spying that nearly brought death penalty charges against him.
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander of the U.S. military prison in Cuba where alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are held, decided to drop the allegations that Yee mishandled classified material because legal proceedings could have ended with the public release of sensitive documents he was carrying, a military spokesman said.
The general also is dropping other lesser charges pending against Yee, for possessing pornography and for adultery, a military statement said. Instead, Yee will be sent before an administrative proceeding where he will be offered nonjudicial punishment, it added. Then Yee can return to his home base of Fort Lewis, Wash., it said.
The decision ends a controversial chapter in the history of the jail for alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, and what many military legal experts said was an embarrassment for military justice.
In September 2003, when Yee was detained in Florida after almost a year at the prison, military officials said they were preparing to charge him with espionage, sedition and other counts that could have resulted in his execution. U.S. officials said the case appeared to be part of a larger spying ring at Guantanamo Bay. But Yee was never charged with those offenses. Instead, he was accused of mishandling classified papers, downloading pornography onto a computer and having an adulterous affair with a female officer at Guantanamo Bay. In a December hearing attended by Yee's wife, Yee's lover was questioned in detail about his alleged adultery.
Yee's lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, said in a statement last night that "Chaplain Yee has won. . . . The Army's dismissal of the classified information charges against him represents a long-overdue vindication. We reject the notion that security concerns played any role in this decision."
Col. William Costello, the spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, the military unit overseeing Guantanamo Bay, said, "the case could have jeopardized national security if the information had been released or it came out during the proceedings. The nature of the information was such that General Miller, in consultation with intelligence experts, decided that security took precedence over moving forward with the trial."
Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor who teaches the law of war at Georgetown University, said: "This news shows the government has finally come to its senses. The Yee case has made the government look very bad from the beginning, which is a view held by many military lawyers, as well."
In recent months, the military has delayed resumption of a hearing on Yee's case five times, citing each time various delays in determining the security classifications of the sensitive documents found on Yee when he was detained at a naval base in Florida six months ago.
The delays in establishing classification levels meant that even Fidell, Yee's attorney, was not allowed to read the papers. But a few months ago, military officials inadvertently sent Fidell the same batch of documents, and Fidell said that after reading them quickly, he found nothing even remotely classified.
Last year, military officials said Yee was carrying maps of the prison, and some notes on inmates and jail officials.
Fidell had been in negotiations to settle the case, and earlier this month inadvertently e-mailed to dozens of reporters his settlement offer to military officials -- that charges would be dismissed, while Yee would submit to a polygraph and be debriefed by the government about his activities.
The Southern Command said in its statement last night that "although Miller considered Yee's offer to undergo a debriefing in exchange for the government's dropping the charges . . . relevant law enforcement agencies could not support Yee's request for immunity."
Fidell said that "it is revealing that the government has declined the opportunity to debrief and polygraph Chaplain Yee, something it would scarcely have done if it had any real concerns."
Three other people who served at the prison -- an Air Force senior airman, an Army colonel and a linguist contractor -- have also been charged in military or civilian proceedings with improperly having sensitive documents. But the cases are unrelated, officials say.
"Chaplain Yee is entitled to an apology," Fidell said. "The Army's senior leadership must now complete the job of doing the right thing."
--------
Charges Dropped Against Chaplain
March 20, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/national/20YEE.html
WASHINGTON, March 19 - The military said Friday night that it was dropping all charges, including one of mishandling classified information, against Capt. James J. Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The case against Captain Yee, who officials once suggested was part of an espionage ring, had become a lingering embarrassment for the Pentagon.
In a statement released from the United States Southern Command in Miami, the military said it did not want to proceed with a trial on the charge of mishandling classified data because to do so could expose sensitive evidence to public view.
The remaining charges of adultery and possession of pornography against Captain Yee were also dropped. But he will have to face an administrative hearing on those accusations, and he could be penalized by having an official rebuke placed in his record.
The resolution of the case means that Captain Yee will not have to face an Army court-martial. At the same time, the military did not affirmatively clear him of the charge of mishandling classified data, but said it chose not to prosecute only to protect sensitive documents.
His lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell of Washington, said the resolution demonstrated that Captain Yee had prevailed in his fight.
"This represents a long overdue vindication," Mr. Fidell said.
He added, however, that Captain Yee was still owed an apology, and he suggested that the Army was simply trying to sweep its mistakes under the rug by asserting that it dropped the charge of mishandling classified documents to keep information from becoming public.
Mr. Fidell said there was no reason that a trial could not have been conducted, as the lawyers for both sides had high security clearances and no information needed to have been publicly exposed.
Captain Yee was arrested on Sept. 10 at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., on suspicion of espionage after customs inspectors had found papers in his luggage that they said were suspicious and might have had classified information. Officials first suggested his participation in a plot to infiltrate the base and told his lawyers that they might seek the death penalty.
But gradually the case fell apart. He was charged with transporting classified information without a required secure container - far less serious than espionage - and placed in solitary confinement in a naval brig for nearly three months while the military completed its investigation.
When the investigation finished and he was released, the only new charges against him involved keeping pornography on his government computer and having an extramarital affair, both violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
In its statement on Friday night, the military said Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller of the Army, commander of the Guantánamo detention center, had decided to dismiss the charge of mishandling classified information because of "national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence."
In doing so, General Miller rejected Captain Yee's proposal to undergo a debriefing with a polygraph examiner on the question of how he might have dealt with classified material in exchange for an honorable discharge. The military's statement said Captain Yee was expected to return soon to his home unit at Fort Lewis, Wash.
At Guantánamo, where more than 600 detainees are being held, Captain Yee ministered to the detainees, most captured at the end of the Afghanistan conflict. He arranged for the Muslim call to prayer to be played over the sound system of the center five times a day and for meals to be served outside the fasting hours for Ramadan.
Captain Yee graduated from West Point in 1990 and converted to Islam after he had left the Army. He returned later as a chaplain.
Army officials suggested in December at a hearing at Fort Benning, Ga., that he had documents relating to the detainees. Since his arrest, the detainees have not had a Muslim chaplain. Officials say they minister to their own religious needs.
At the preliminary hearing in December, prosecutors were unsure of whether the materials in Captain Yee's luggage were even classified. Most of the initial session was taken up with the charges of adultery as prosecutors brought in a Navy officer who testified in detail about her intimate relationship with Captain Yee at Guantánamo.
The case was repeatedly postponed, ostensibly to provide an opportunity to review the materials to see whether they were classified. But the delays also provided an opportunity to negotiate a settlement.
-------- terrorism
Clinton Aides Plan to Tell Panel of Warning Bush Team on Qaeda
March 20, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/politics/20PANE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 19 - Senior Clinton administration officials called to testify next week before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks say they are prepared to detail how they repeatedly warned their Bush administration counterparts in late 2000 that Al Qaeda posed the worst security threat facing the nation - and how the new administration was slow to act.
They said the warnings were delivered in urgent post-election intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 for Condoleezza Rice, who became Mr. Bush's national security adviser; Stephen Hadley, now Ms. Rice's deputy; and Philip D. Zelikow, a member of the Bush transition team, among others.
One official scheduled to testify, Richard A. Clarke, who was President Bill Clinton's counterterrorism coordinator, said in an interview that the warning about the Qaeda threat could not have been made more bluntly to the incoming Bush officials in intelligence briefings that he led.
At the time of the briefings, there was extensive evidence tying Al Qaeda to the bombing in Yemen two months earlier of an American warship, the Cole, in which 17 sailors were killed.
"It was very explicit," Mr. Clarke said of the warning given to the Bush administration officials. "Rice was briefed, and Hadley was briefed, and Zelikow sat in." Mr. Clarke served as Mr. Bush's counterterrorism chief in the early months of the administration, but after Sept. 11 was given a more limited portfolio as the president's cyberterrorism adviser.
The sworn testimony from the high-ranking Clinton administration officials - including Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Samuel R. Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser - is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.
They are expected to testify along with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who will answer for the Bush administration, as well as George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence in both administrations.
While Clinton officials have offered similar accounts in the past, a new public review of how they warned Mr. Bush's aides about the need to deal quickly with the Qaeda threat could prove awkward to the White House, especially in the midst of a presidential campaign. But given the witnesses' prominence in the Clinton administration, supporters of Mr. Bush may see political motives in the testimony of some of them.
The testimony could also prove uncomfortable for the commission, since Mr. Zelikow is now the executive director of the bipartisan panel. And the Clinton administration officials can expect to come under tough questioning about their own performance in office and why they did not do more to respond to the terrorist threat in the late 1990's.
The White House does not dispute that intelligence briefings about the Qaeda threat occurred during the transition, and the commission has received extensive notes and other documentation from the White House and Clinton administration officials about what was discussed.
What is at issue, Clinton administration officials say, is whether their Bush administration counterparts acted on the warnings, and how quickly. The Clinton administration witnesses say they will offer details of the policy recommendations they made to the incoming Bush aides, but they would not discuss those details before the hearing.
"Until 9/11, counterterrorism was a very secondary issue at the Bush White House," said a senior Clinton official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Remember those first months? The White House was focused on tax cuts, not terrorism. We saw the budgets for counterterrorism programs being cut."
The White House rejects any suggestion that it failed to act on the threats of Qaeda terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The president and his team received briefings on the threat from Al Qaeda prior to taking office, and fighting terrorism became a top priority when this administration came into office," Sean McCormack, a White House spokesman, said. "We actively pursued the Clinton administration's policies on Al Qaeda until we could get into place a more comprehensive policy."
Mr. Zelikow, the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and a co-author of a 1995 book with Ms. Rice, has been the target of repeated criticism from some relatives of Sept. 11 victims. They have said his membership on the Bush transition team and his ties to Ms. Rice pose a serious conflict of interest for the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law-enforcement actions before the attacks.
Mr. Clarke said if Mr. Zelikow left any of the White House intelligence briefings in December 2000 and January 2001 without understanding the imminent threat posed by Al Qaeda, "he was deaf."
Mr. Zelikow said in an interview that he has recused himself from any part of the investigation that involves the transition, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. He said his participation in the Qaeda intelligence briefings was already well known. "The fact of what occurred in these briefings is not really disputed," he said.
Ms. Rice has refused a request to testify at the hearings next week, saying it would violate White House precedent for an incumbent national security adviser to appear in public at a hearing of what the White House considers a legislative body. She has given a private interview to several members of the commission.
The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by Congress in 2002 over the initial objections of the Bush administration.
Ms. Albright and Mr. Cohen declined to be interviewed about their testimony. Mr. Berger refused to discuss details of his testimony, saying only, "I intend to talk about what we did in the Clinton administration, as well as my recommendations for the future."
In the past, Mr. Berger has said that he and his staff organized the intelligence briefings in December 2000 at which Ms. Rice, Mr. Hadley and Mr. Zelikow were warned in detail about the Qaeda threat and that on his departure, he advised Ms. Rice that he believed the Bush administration would be forced to spend more time on dealing with Al Qaeda than on any other subject.
In his testimony, Mr. Clarke is also expected to discuss what he believed to be the Bush administration's determination to punish Saddam Hussein for the Sept. 11 attacks even though there was no evidence to tie the Iraqi president to Al Qaeda.
The issue is addressed in a new book by Mr. Clarke, and in an interview to promote the book on "60 Minutes" on CBS-TV scheduled for Sunday, Mr. Clarke said that the White House considered bombing Iraq in the hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, even when it became clear that Al Qaeda was responsible.
"I think they wanted to believe there was a connection, but the C.I.A. was sitting there, the F.B.I. was sitting there, saying, `We've looked at this issue for years - for years, we've looked, and there's just no connection,' " Mr. Clarke said. He recalled telling Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that "there are a lot of good targets in a lot of places, but Iraq had nothing to do" with the Sept. 11 attacks.
The White House has insisted that it acted aggressively throughout 2001 on the warnings to deal with the threat from Qaeda terrorists, and that there was an exhaustive staff review throughout the spring and summer, with a proposal ready for President Bush in early September to step up the government's efforts to destroy the terrorist network.
The Clinton administration witnesses may face difficult questions at the hearings about why they did not do more to deal with Qaeda immediately after the Cole attack and the discovery the previous winter that Qaeda terrorists had come close to coordinated attacks timed to the Dec. 31, 1999, festivities for the new millennium.
"There was no contemplation of any military action after the millennium plots, and there should have been," said Bob Kerrey, a Democratic member of the commission and a former senator from Nebraska.
"The Cole is even worse, because that was an attack on a military target," he said. "It was military against military. It was an Islamic army against our Navy. Just because you don't have a nation-state as your adversary doesn't mean you should not consider a declaration of war."
--------
The Unmentionable Source of Terrorism
March 20, 2004
by John Pilger
Antiwar.com
http://antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=2159
The current threat of attacks in countries whose governments have close alliances with Washington is the latest stage in a long struggle against the empires of the west, their rapacious crusades and domination. The motivation of those who plant bombs in railway carriages derives directly from this truth. What is different today is that the weak have learned how to attack the strong, and the western crusaders' most recent colonial terrorism (as many as 55,000 Iraqis killed) exposes "us" to retaliation.
The source of much of this danger is Israel. A creation, then guardian of the west's empire in the Middle East, the Zionist state remains the cause of more regional grievance and sheer terror than all the Muslim states combined. Read the melancholy Palestinian Monitor on the Internet; it chronicles the equivalent of Madrid's horror week after week, month after month, in occupied Palestine. No front pages in the West acknowledge this enduring bloodbath, let alone mourn its victims. Moreover, the Israeli army, a terrorist organisation by any reasonable measure, is protected and rewarded in the west.
In its current human rights report, the Foreign Office criticises Israel for its "worrying disregard for human rights" and "the impact that the continuing Israeli occupation and the associated military occupations have had on the lives of ordinary Palestinians."
Yet the Blair government has secretly authorised the sale of vast quantities of arms and terror equipment to Israel. These include leg-irons, electric shock belts and chemical and biological agents. No matter that Israel has defied more United Nations resolutions than any other state since the founding of the world body. Last October, the UN General Assembly voted by 144 to four to condemn the wall that Israel has cut through the heart of the West Bank, annexing the best agricultural land, including the aquifer system that provides most of the Palestinians' water. Israel, as usual, ignored the world.
Israel is the guard dog of America's plans for the Middle East. The former CIA analysts Kathleen and Bill Christison have described how "two strains of Jewish and Christian fundamentalism have dovetailed into an agenda for a vast imperial project to restructure the Middle East, all further reinforced by the happy coincidence of great oil resources up for grabs and a president and vice-president heavily invested in oil."
The "neoconservatives" who run the Bush regime all have close ties with the Likud government in Tel Aviv and the Zionist lobby groups in Washington. In 1997, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) declared: "Jinsa has been working closely with Iraqi National Council leader Dr Ahmad Chalabi to promote Saddam Hussein's removal from office..." Chalabi is the CIA-backed stooge and convicted embezzler at present organising the next "democratic" government in Baghdad.
Until recently, a group of Zionists ran their own intelligence service inside the Pentagon. This was known as the Office of Special Plans, and was overseen by Douglas Feith, an under-secretary of defence, extreme Zionist and opponent of any negotiated peace with the Palestinians. It was the Office of Special Plans that supplied Downing Street with much of its scuttlebutt about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; more often than not, the original source was Israel.
Israel can also claim responsibility for the law passed by Congress that imposes sanctions on Syria and in effect threatens it with the same fate as Iraq unless it agrees to the demands of Tel Aviv. Israel is the guiding hand behind Bush's bellicose campaign against the "nuclear threat" posed by Iran. Today, in occupied Iraq, Israeli special forces are teaching the Americans how to "wall in" a hostile population, in the same way that Israel has walled in the Palestinians in pursuit of the Zionist dream of an apartheid state. The author David Hirst describes the "Israelisation of US foreign policy" as being "now operational as well as ideological."
In understanding Israel's enduring colonial role in the Middle East, it is too simple to see the outrages of Ariel Sharon as an aberrant version of a democracy that lost its way. The myths that abound in middle-class Jewish homes in Britain about Israel's heroic, noble birth have long been reinforced by a "liberal" or "left-wing" Zionism as virulent and essentially destructive as the Likud strain.
In recent years, the truth has come from Israel's own "new historians," who have revealed that the Zionist "idealists" of 1948 had no intention of treating justly or even humanely the Palestinians, who instead were systematically and often murderously driven from their homes. The most courageous of these historians is Ilan Pappe, an Israeli-born professor at Haifa University, who, with the publication of each of his ground-breaking books, has been both acclaimed and smeared. The latest is A History of Modern Palestine, in which he documents the expulsion of Palestinians as an orchestrated crime of ethnic cleansing that tore apart Jews and Arabs coexisting peacefully. As for the modern "peace process," he describes the Oslo Accords of 1993 as a plan by liberal Zionists in the Israeli Labour Party to corral Palestinians in South African-style bantustans. That they were aided by a desperate Palestinian leadership made the "peace" and its "failure" (blamed on the Palestinians) no less counterfeit. During the years of negotiation and raised hopes, governments in Tel Aviv secretly doubled the number of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, intensified the military occupation and completed the fragmentation of the 22 per cent of historic Palestine that the Palestine Liberation Organisation had agreed to accept in return for recognising the state of Israel.
Along with the late Edward Said, Ilan Pappe is the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history. He is also one of the most scholarly. This combination has brought him many admirers, but also enemies among Israel's academic liberal mythologists in Britain, one of whom, Stephen Howe, was given the Pappe book to review in the New Statesman of 8 March. Howe often appears in these pages; his style is to damn with faint praise and to set carefully the limits of debate about empire, be it Irish history, the Middle East or the "war on terror." In Pappe's case, what the reader doesn't know is Howe's personal link to the Israeli establishment; and what Howe does not say in his review is that here for the first time is a textbook on Palestine that narrates the real story as it happened: a non-Zionist version of Zionism.
He accuses Pappe of "factual mistakes," but gives no evidence, then denigrates the book by dismissing it as a footnote to another book by the Israeli historian Benny Morris, who has long atoned for his own revisionist work. To its credit, Cambridge University Press has published Pappe's pioneering and highly accessible work as an authoritative history. This means that the "debate" over Israel's origins is ending, regardless of what the empire's apologists say.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Carbon Dioxide Reported at Record Levels
March 20, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Climate-Record-CO2.html
MAUNA LOA OBSERVATORY, Hawaii (AP) -- Carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, has reached record-high levels in the atmosphere after growing at an accelerated pace in the past year, say scientists monitoring the sky from this 2-mile-high station atop a Hawaiian volcano.
The reason for the faster buildup of the most important ``greenhouse gas'' will require further analysis, the U.S. government experts say.
``But the big picture is that CO2 is continuing to go up,'' said Russell Schnell, deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate monitoring laboratory in Boulder, Colo., which operates the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii.
Carbon dioxide, mostly from burning of coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels, traps heat that otherwise would radiate into space. Global temperatures increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century, and international panels of scientists sponsored by world governments have concluded that most of the warming probably was due to greenhouse gases.
The climatologists forecast continued temperature rises that will disrupt the climate, cause seas to rise and lead to other unpredictable consequences -- unpredictable in part because of uncertainties in computer modeling of future climate.
Before the industrial age and extensive use of fossil fuels, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stood at about 280 parts per million, scientists have determined.
Average readings at the 11,141-foot Mauna Loa Observatory, where carbon dioxide density peaks each northern winter, hovered around 379 parts per million on Friday, compared with about 376 a year ago.
That year-to-year increase of about 3 parts per million is considerably higher than the average annual increase of 1.8 parts per million over the past decade, and markedly more accelerated than the 1-part-per-million annual increase recorded a half-century ago, when observations were first made here.
Asked to explain the stepped-up rate, climatologists were cautious, saying data needed to be further evaluated. But Asia immediately sprang to mind.
``China is taking off economically and burning a lot of fuel. India, too,'' said Pieter Tans, a prominent carbon-cycle expert at NOAA's Boulder lab.
Another leading climatologist, Ralph Keeling, whose father, Charles D. Keeling, developed methods for measuring carbon dioxide, noted that the rate ``does fluctuate up and down a bit,'' and said it was too early to reach conclusions. But he added: ``People are worried about `feedbacks.' We are moving into a warmer world.''
He explained that warming itself releases carbon dioxide from the ocean and soil. By raising the gas's level in the atmosphere, that in turn could increase warming, in a ``positive feedback,'' said Keeling, of San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that, if unchecked, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by 2100 will range from 650 to 970 parts per million. As a result, the panel estimates, average global temperature would probably rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius (2.7 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) between 1990 and 2100.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol would oblige ratifying countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions according to set schedules, to minimize potential global warming. The pact has not taken effect, however.
The United States, the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter, signed the agreement but did not ratify it, and the Bush administration has since withdrawn U.S. support, calling instead for voluntary emission reductions by U.S. industry and more scientific research into climate change.
On the Net:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: http://www.noaa.gov/
-------- ACTIVISTS
Few Disruptions as Antiwar Protesters March in San Francisco
March 20, 2004
New York Times
By DEAN E. MURPHY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/national/20PROT.html
SAN FRANCISCO, March 19 - About 300 people marched through the city's financial district on Friday during the morning rush hour to protest the one-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq.
The demonstration began a weekend of rallies across the country by people opposed to the Bush administration's policies in Iraq. Events are planned on Saturday in scores of cities, with attention focused here, in New York City and in Fayetteville, N.C., near Fort Bragg.
"We need to bring this unjust war to an end," said Jack Heyman, of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which will suspend work for 12 hours at the Port of Oakland beginning Saturday morning and bus its members to the rally.
The San Francisco police said the demonstration on Friday morning resulted in 19 arrests, including two people who were accused of assaulting a police officer after a small skirmish along the march route. Over all, though, the police said the protest posed none of the logistical and traffic problems of the antiwar protests last March. "It went very well," said Deputy Chief Gregory Suhr. Mr. Suhr added, "We facilitated the demonstration, and it wasn't at the expense of commuters."
During the early days of the war, about 2,300 people were arrested here as they blocked intersections and disrupted commerce. This time, scores of police officers stood watch nearby, and officers kept most of the marchers within crosswalks.
As the marchers passed Pine Street, some shouted profanities at a man who stood on the sidewalk yelling, "Support the war!" The man, John Price, a meat cutter here, said he served in the Navy during the first Persian Gulf war and wanted to offer a counterpoint to the protest.
"They like to suggest that what happens in San Francisco represents the United States," Mr. Price said, "but it doesn't. Anytime in this town when I voice my opinion, I am treated like a warmonger and a hater of mankind. People who support the war believe in law and order not giving the police a hassle."
Though one organizer with a loud speaker encouraged participants to take "autonomous action" and engage in civil disobedience, most demonstrators seemed intent on making a less confrontational statement. Organizers said attendance was low because the main protest was scheduled for Saturday.
"We want to show the world there is not total acquiescence in the United States in support of Bush," said Dr. Michael Kozart, a protester.
Six people were arrested for blocking the sidewalk outside the headquarters of the Bechtel Corporation, a defense contractor with contracts in Iraq valued at nearly $3 billion.
For much of the morning, about 25 other people sat in a line on the sidewalk outside the building, hands locked together. One of them, Cissy Sims, accused the company of profiting from the war. "I am angry at the administration for spending tax dollars on war and imperialism and spreading suffering," Ms. Sims said.
A spokesman at Bechtel described the company's work as humanitarian assistance. "There is a real level of ignorance of what Bechtel is doing in Iraq," said the spokesman, Jonathan Marshall. "Bechtel has repaired over 1,200 schools, so one million children could attend class."
Later in the morning, 11 protesters were arrested for blocking the street outside an unoccupied building. About two dozen people who went inside the building with plants were also threatened with arrest. They unfurled banners demanding affordable housing and said they began planting a garden on the roof.
"Money for warfare means squat for housing," one banner read.
Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting for this article.
----
Police Release Ground Rules for Antiwar Demonstration
March 20, 2004
New York Times
By MICHAEL WILSON
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/20/nyregion/20protest.html
The New York City Police Department yesterday released its final plans and instructions to demonstrators planning to attend an antiwar rally and march today that will circle 17 blocks in Manhattan.
In a gesture toward cooperation with the demonstrators, the Police Department has for the first time posted details of the protest on the city's Web page, nyc.gov, and on its own site, nyc.gov/nypd.
Demonstrators are asked to arrive before noon today at 42nd Street and Madison Avenue and walk south on Madison toward the speaker's platform at 24th Street, where speeches will precede the march, which is expected to begin around 1 p.m.
Demonstrators will not be allowed to enter Madison Avenue from side streets, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday. People who try to go straight to the speaker's platform via 24th or 25th Streets, for example, will be blocked. Some fliers for the march have urged demonstrators to meet at 23rd Street and Madison, but that would be a mistake, Mr. Kelly said.
The march will proceed south on Madison to 23rd Street, west to Sixth Avenue and north to 40th Street and will then return down Madison to the speaker's stand at 24th Street for a longer rally, expected to last until 6 p.m.
At the rally, metal barricades will seal off the south end of each block as it fills with demonstrators, Mr. Kelly said, to keep the intersections open for emergency vehicles. To leave the protest, a demonstrator would walk to the north end of the block, and then leave Madison on a side street.
There will also be barricades lining the side of Madison Avenue to keep demonstrators from flowing onto the sidewalks, but Mr. Kelly said there would be exit points along the curbs where possible.
Parade organizers, who have likened the barricades to cattle pens, said that those exit points would be a major improvement over previous demonstrations, like the antiwar rally in February 2003 that led to 91 arrests and left 17 police officers injured.
"It sounds like a small thing, but that would be a significant change in their practices,'' said Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
The group that organized the protest, United for Peace and Justice, will have representatives monitoring crowd control, said Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator. "We also want the day to go smoothly without any problems," she said. "I actually think it's going to be fine."
The group posted details about the protest and instructions on its Web site, unitedforpeace.org.
Similar protests will be held around the world today, on what the group is calling a "global day of action on the one-year anniversary of the Iraq war."
Demonstrators and the police say they view the protest as a preview of the demonstrations that will take place during the Republican National Convention this summer.
An aide to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that the mayor planned to monitor the protest from a police command post, in part because the mayor wanted to observe how the Police Department handled the event in light of the upcoming convention.
"With the protest parade, it's a chance for people to say what they want to say," the mayor said. "I just hope everybody behaves responsibly, and we'll have the world's greatest police department out there protecting us, and also protecting people's rights."
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Peace protests follow the sun
20/03/2004
News24 (SA)
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1501263,00.html
Baghdad - Anti-war chants rippled through cities around the world on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, but in the nation scarred by occupation the dawn of a new era went largely unheralded.
The protests moved with the sun, starting in Australia, then through Asia, into the Middle East and on to Europe and the United States where the main demonstrations were expected. Organisers however were not forecasting the huge turnouts that filled city streets at rallies before the war was launched.
In Iraq, most people were too preoccupied with the struggle for daily life and the fear of violence to mark the start of the war seen live on television sets around the world as missiles and bombs lit up the dawn sky over Baghdad.
We will not celebrate
"We would probably celebrate on April 9 because on that day, we got rid of Saddam and his evil regime, but we will not celebrate the launch of a war that has left us with nothing so far," said former government employee Adnan Saad.
"We are happy that Saddam is gone, but what have we got instead? I am unemployed and I stopped sending my five children to school mainly because of the catastrophic security situation," he said.
US President George W Bush stuck to his defence of the invasion, saying in his weekly radio address that it had removed a major cause of instability in the Middle East.
"One year ago this week, ground forces of a strong coalition entered Iraq to liberate that country from the rule of a tyrant. For the Iraqi people, it was the beginning of their deliverance," said Bush.
"The liberation of Iraq was good for the Iraqi people, good for America, and good for the world. The fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression, and instability from the Middle East.
It was a view shared by few in restive Iraq.
The anniversary followed a week of heavy violence, including a suicide bombing and rocket strikes on hotels in Baghdad, and other attacks on US troops, police and civilians, including journalists.
In the latest incidents, an Iraqi police officer was shot dead early on Saturday at a checkpoint near the northern oil centre of Kirkuk while a local Turkmen community leader there survived an assassination attempt.
On Friday, Iraq's US civilian administrator Paul Bremer said he expected that in the run-up to the June 30 deadline for a return of sovereignty to the Iraqi people "we will have some really bad days".
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher on Saturday also differed, describing the situation in Iraq as "unstable politically and security-wise".
His comments on the political situation were echoed by a member of the US-installed interim leadership.
"The members of the Governing Council and the cabinet think they represent 70% of the Iraqi people. How can they be sure? We have been imposed on the Iraqi people by America," said Ayham al-Samarrai, one of five Sunni Arab ministers in Iraq's first post-Saddam Hussein government.
"Of course, most of the members are known in Iraqi society ... by their opposition to the former regime and also by their democratic thinking," he said, speaking on the sidelines of an economic symposium on Iraq in Beirut.
We don?t represent the people
"However, we don't represent the people. No one chose us. Saddam was not chosen by anyone and neither were we."
Samarrai added that there was "divergence and discord" within the Governing Council and that its members "don't apply the vote."
Saturday's protests - often recalling the failure of the invaders to find the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein was supposed to possess - were largely peaceful and low-key.
At rallies in Australia, speakers called for the country's troops to be brought home from Iraq and attacked Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government's strong ties with the United States.
About two thousand people marched in Sydney and three thousand in Melbourne, far short of the hundreds of thousands who protested in the lead-up to the war.
In the Philippines, riot police used water cannons to disperse about 100 demonstrators who tried to march on the US embassy.
Thousands of people marched through central Tokyo to call for peace in Iraq and to demand the United States and Japan withdraw from the country.
In London, where the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair was Bush's main ally, police estimated 25 000 anti-war activists were marching through the city to protest against the occupation of Iraq, shouting "Anti-Bush! Anti-Blair! Anti-war!
High turnouts were expected in Spain, still in turmoil over the Madrid bombings which killed more than 200 people on March 11, and in Italy - both of whose governments had supported Bush despite massive public opposition.
In the United States, large demonstrations were planned for later on Saturday in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, as well San Francisco where protests took place on Friday. Organisers were hoping for large turnouts in up to 200 cities.
Bush still faces international criticism over the war and its rationale.
In the past week, South Korea has said it will reconsider its commitment to deploy troops, and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski said his country had been "taken for a ride" about Iraq's banned weapons, a remark he later withdrew.
Last week, Spanish prime minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero also placed conditions on Spain's 1 300 troops.
Edited by Trisha Shannon
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Anti - War Protesters Climb London's Big Ben
March 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-britain-tower.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Two anti-war protesters evaded tight security to climb London's landmark Big Ben clock tower at the Houses of Parliament on Saturday, as 25,000 people marched through the city on the first anniversary of the Iraq invasion.
The pair unfurled a banner which read ``Time for Truth,'' before rappelling down from the clockface 328 feet above the capital six hours later. They were arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage.
``We want to send a clear message to (Prime Minister) Tony Blair that we and the British people are fed up with the half-truths and evasions on Iraq,'' said Stephen Tindale, executive director of environmental group Greenpeace, which organized the stunt.
The climbers scaled two fences at the base of the tower, which is subject to some of the tightest security in Britain.
Armed police guard parliament and concrete blocks ring the building to prevent suicide car bombings. Britain is on high alert for attacks after Madrid bombings that killed 202 people.
``There will be questions being asked about how they managed to get over the fence and up the building,'' a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said.
``MAKE TEA, NOT WAR''
Police said 25,000 people gathered in London for the peace march, but organizers estimated the crowd at nearer 100,000.
``It's been proved time and again that this war and occupation has been a disaster both for the Iraqis and for those who are now feeling the brunt of their government's decisions,'' protester Dan Basebrook from Brighton told Reuters, referring to the Madrid attacks.
The London protest was one of many taking place on Saturday in Asia, Europe and the United States against the U.S.-led war backed by Britain that toppled former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and an occupation marked by guerrilla resistance.
In London, protesters carried ``Wanted'' posters bearing the faces of Blair and President Bush and ``No More War, No More Lies'' signs. Banners declared, ``Make tea, not war.''
People dressed as weapons inspectors carried an inflatable nuclear missile to highlight the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Britain's retention of a nuclear deterrent.
Hundreds of black balloons were released in memory of those who died in Iraq and Madrid.
``I think the events in Spain are at the front of most people's minds,'' protester Tony Brown told Reuters.
``I think the actions of Bush, Blair and (outgoing Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria) Aznar put their own countries in the front line. They are fueling terrorism.''
Marshalled by hundreds of policemen, demonstrators, many children among them, blew whistles and chanted songs. Police said three were arrested including the two who scaled Big Ben.
An anti-war demonstration in London last February before the invasion attracted over a million people.
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Thousands Protest on Iraq War Anniversary
March 20, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Protests-World.html
ROME (AP) -- Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Rome on Saturday demanding that Italy pull its 2,600 troops out of Iraq, one of many protests around the world on the anniversary of the war's opening salvos.
Rome's rally was by far the largest, drawing at least 250,000 people, according to police estimates. Organizers claimed as many as 2 million people -- many of them draped in rainbow peace flags -- joined the festive procession through Rome's center that emptied into the historic Circus Maximus park.
Even though most Italians opposed the war, the conservative government of Premier Silvio Berlusconi strongly supported the U.S.-led invasion and deployed peacekeeping troops.
While Saturday's protests were smaller than those on the eve of the war a year ago, they were no less heartfelt.
In Budapest, demonstrators formed a human peace sign and called for the Hungarian government to withdraw its 300 troops from Iraq. In Belgium, about 1,000 people braved rain and blustery wind to carry coffins labeled with oil company logos through central Brussels.
``George Bush did not wage a war against terror,'' veteran peace activist Franz Alt told about 2,000 protesters gathered in heavy rain near the entrance of the U.S. military's Ramstein Air Base in western Germany. ``He has ensured that with his wars, terrorism is now stronger.''
Madrid's protest seemed equally to denounce the Iraq war as well as the March 11 rail bombings, which killed 202 people and injured more than 1,800.
Many Spaniards have accused Spain's conservative government of provoking the attacks by supporting the Iraq war. Three days after the bombings, the ruling Popular Party fell in a surprise loss to the Socialists in general elections.
Thousands of people marched in an evening rally that featured a large banner with a black sash -- Spain's symbol of mourning for the attack, which has been blamed on Moroccan extremists said to be linked to al-Qaida.
The banner read: ``End the occupation. Bring the troops home'' -- a reference to the 1,300 Spanish troops in Iraq, who Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to withdraw unless the United Nations takes charge in Iraq.
Demonstrators in Italy, Ukraine and Poland also demanded their governments withdraw troops.
``The occupation of Iraq is stupid -- it's meddling in another nation's affairs,'' said Polish demonstrator Edyta Raczka, 17, one of about 700 people who marched through Warsaw's old town to the presidential palace and the U.S. Embassy.
Poland contributed combat troops to the war and now commands a 9,500-strong international peacekeeping force in south-central Iraq. It has deployed about 2,400 troops of its own in the peacekeeping effort.
The start of the day saw demonstrations in Japan, Australia, India and the Philippines, where protesters clashed with riot police, although no injuries were reported.
Anti-American feelings ran high in Cairo, Egypt, where demonstrators -- vastly outnumbered by riot police -- burned the American flag. Hundreds of people gathered in other Middle Eastern capitals to denounce the war.
``Down, down USA! America, out! Out!'' shouted more than 100 Syrians and Palestinians who marched in the main streets of Damascus.
Protester Randa Baathi said, ``Today we are here with the global campaign against the war on Iraq to express our rejection of this war and its consequences on Iraq and the entire region.''
Europeans also took to the streets -- in France, Germany, and capitals across the continent.
Tens of thousands marched through central London, some of them waving placards that called President Bush the ``World's No. 1 Terrorist.'' London's Metropolitan Police estimated that some 25,000 people participated. Organizers put the figure at 100,000.
On Saturday morning, two anti-war demonstrators in climbing gear scaled the Big Ben clocktower at the Houses of Parliament and held up a small banner reading, ``Time for Truth,'' before coming down several hours later. Police said they would review security at Parliament following the incident.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was the United States' staunchest ally in the war. But many Britons opposed the invasion and questions about the conflict's legality have dogged the government as coalition forces have failed to find Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
Some Americans joined about 2,500 protesters in Paris, where demonstrators blared a rendition of the John Lennon song ``Give Peace a Chance'' through loudspeakers.
In New York, several thousand people demonstrated, and rallies also were held in Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, San Francisco and Seattle.
Rallies also occurred in Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Greece, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Turkey, Jordan, Bahrain, India, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong, New Zealand and South Africa.
But on the whole, the numbers were far lower than during protests on the eve of the war.
During a Feb. 15, 2003, protest, millions of people thronged through capitals around the globe. Rome also had the highest tally that day, with police estimating 1 million people and organizers three times that many.
``I'm optimistic that this great peace movement will expand across the world so that Iraq will be the last war possible,'' said Gambaracci Nazareno, 70, a retired architect who took a chartered bus into Rome from the Umbrian city of Perugia for the protest.
He said the Iraq war had only served to create new terrorist organizations.
``It's becoming a true and proper war between Islam and the West,'' he said.
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Protests Mark Iraq War Anniversary
March 20, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-protest.html
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Anti-war protests, planned in cities around the world on the anniversary of U.S.-led war in Iraq, began in Asia on Saturday with demonstrators demanding troops be pulled out of the war-scarred country.
Rallies took place in Tokyo, Seoul and Australia and more marches were expected in Europe and the Americas later in the day. A big turnout is expected in Madrid, still shaken from the bomb attacks many blamed on Spain's role in the Iraq war.
Incoming Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq, calling the war a ``disaster'' and a ``fiasco.''
In London, two anti-war protesters climbed the landmark Big Ben clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, unfurling a banner reading ``Time for Truth'' after they reached the clockface 328 feet above the city.
``We want to send a clear message to (Prime Minister) Tony Blair that we and the British people are fed up with the half-truths and evasions on Iraq,'' said Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace which organized the protest.
NUMBERS DOWN
Organizers hoped as many as 100,000 people would march in London under the banner ``No More War, No More Lies.''
But in Australia, the numbers of protesters was generally small, falling well short of the 200,000 or so people who turned out in Sydney alone for an anti-war protest a year ago.
Some 3,000 chanting ``end the occupation, troops out'' marched through Sydney, carrying a caged effigy of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a staunch supporter of the war.
Filmmaker John Pilger and actress Judy Davis addressed the rally. In Melbourne the father of Australian David Hicks, being held as a terror suspect in a U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, called for justice for his son.
``David, if he has done anything wrong, should have been charged or released two years ago,'' Terry Hicks told the rally.
Australia, a close ally of the United States, sent 2,000 troops to Iraq and also dispatched special forces troops to Afghanistan. Around 850 of its troops remain in the Gulf.
In Tokyo, several thousand carrying signs saying ``U.S. Go Home'' and ``World Peace Now,'' braved chill rain to march to Hibiya Park in downtown Tokyo.
Japan, a staunch U.S. ally, already has 250 ground troops in southern Iraq on a humanitarian mission that could eventually involve up to 1,000 military personnel in Iraq and the region.
Some participants wore masks painted to look like skulls, while others chanted ``Get the Japanese Self-Defense Forces out of Iraq!'' to a rhythm of drums and gongs.
Yasuko Nagasawa, 41, said she feared the presence of Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in Iraq could make her country a target. ``If the SDF stays in Iraq, something like 9/11 will happen in Japan. The troops must come home,'' she said.
The Japanese government has repeatedly said Iraqi reconstruction is essential for peace in the Middle East and has vowed to continue its efforts there despite threats purported to be from al Qaeda naming it as a possible target.
In Seoul, about 1,500 mostly young college students staged a peaceful anti-war demonstration ahead of a bigger rally to protest over the impeachment of the South Korean president.
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Thousands march in Latin America against US-led Iraq occupation
TEGUCIGALPA (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320200055.gc4fbb8y.html
Thousands across Latin America joined protesters around the world Saturday marching against the US-led occupation of Iraq on the first anniversary of the war.
Protest rallies were held in countries that included Honduras -- which has sent troops to Iraq -- Chile, Cuba and Venezuela.
Here in Tegucigalpa, hundreds of Hondurans converged at the US embassy to demand the return of 370 Honduran troops from Iraq, where they are under Spanish command.
President Ricardo Maduro said Tuesday he had no plans to prolong his troops' tour beyond their scheduled return in July.
"Bring the soldiers home, let Maduro leave," protestors shouted.
Anti-riot police oversaw the protest as demonstrators called US President George W. Bush a "fascist" on the anniversary of the US-led invasion.
"You're the terrorists," they cried.
The protest was organized by an alliance of unions, farmers, business groups, and women and human rights groups.
Troops from Guatemala and Nicaragua are also in Iraq under Spanish command.
In Chile, some 2,000 anti-globalization and human rights activists joined members of leftist political parties in a march to the downtown presidential palace, where protesters set a US flag ablaze.
"We are against the war and terrorism, because one cannot answer terrorism by invading a country," said Victor de la Fuente, one of the protest organizers.
A separate march was led by the environmental group Greenpeace, and ended outside the US embassy in eastern Santiago.
"This was a military intervention that had no justification," said Gonzalo Villarino, the Greenpeace representative in Chile.
Anti-war marches were also held in Valparaiso, La Serena, and Valdivia.
Chile, a member of the United Nations Security Council, opposed the war in the face of strong pressure from the United States.
In Caracas, hundreds of supporters of leftist President Hugo Chavez met at a downtown plaza to chant "Bush out of Iraq!" and "No to war!"
"Gringos out of Iraq and Venezuela," read one of the protest signs.
"First Afghanistan, then Iraq," said one elderly woman at the protest. "And now they'll be coming for Venezuela."
Chavez has tense relations with Washington, which he says has attempt to orchestrate a coup against him along with the country's political opposition.
In Havana, officials said more than 10,000 Cubans decried the war in a protest in the town of Cueto, 700 kilometers (435 miles) east of Havana, organized by groups associated with the ruling Communist Party.
"The grave situation created by the criminal aggression in Iraq can only be resolved with the unconditional end to the illegal occupation, and with the Iraqi people enjoying its right to absolute independence in a united Iraq free of guardianship," party leaders told the protestors in a statement.
Concerts, art exhibits and conferences to protest the war were planned throughout the Caribbean country of 11 million.
The United States has had a full economic embargo on Cuba since 1961, two years after President Fidel Castro took power.
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Hundreds of Hondurans protest Iraq war
TEGUCIGALPA (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320192301.chrqpn0x.html
Hundreds of Hondurans converged Saturday at the US embassy to protest the Iraq war and demand the return of 370 Honduran troops from Iraq.
President Ricardo Maduro sent Honduran troops to Iraq where they are under Spanish command.
Maduro said Tuesday he had no plans to prolong his troops' tour beyond their scheduled return in July.
"Bring the soldiers home, let Maduro leave," protestors shouted.
Anti-riot police oversaw the protest as demonstrators called US President George W. Bush a "fascist" on the anniversary of the US-led invasion.
"You're the terrorists," they said.
The protest was organized by an alliance of unions, farmers, business groups, and women and human rights groups.
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Chilean demonstrators take anti-war protests to the streets
SANTIAGO (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320191231.rvzdk0mi.html
Chileans joined protesters around the world Saturday marching against the US-led occupation of Iraq on the first anniversary of the war, with two separate rallies held in the capital.
Some 2,000 anti-globalization activists, human rights activists and members of leftist political parties marched to the downtown presidential palace, where activists set a US flag ablaze.
"We are against the war and terrorism, because one cannot answer terrorism by invading a country," said Victor de la Fuente, one of the protest organizers.
A separate march was led by the environmental group Greenpeace, and ended outside the US embassy in eastern Santiago.
"This was a military intervention that had no justification," said Gonzalo Villarino, the Greenpeace representative in Chile.
Anti-war marches were also held in Valparaiso, La Serena, and Valdivia.
Chile, a member of the United Nations Security Council, opposed the war in the face of strong pressure from the United States.
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Iraq Peace March held in Kyiv, Ukraine
UAN Staff Writer Ukraine,
20 March 2004
http://www.uanews.tv/news/wire/04/03/040320-03.htm
About 500 people have been taking part in a peace march in Kyiv's Independence Square. The march was timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the start of the military campaign in Iraq.
Present at the rally were representatives of the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Russian Bloc, the All-Ukrainian Union of Officers and other NGOs. After the meeting, the protesters marched to the US embassy in Ukraine. There, they held another rally to approve a resolution to be given to the embassy.
The protesters held banners saying: "Stop the war and end the occupation of Iraq!", "Ukrainian soldiers, come back from the shameful war!", "Peace in the Middle East."
Half an hour before the main march during the meeting, about 300 supporters of the [radical left] Progressive Socialist Party led by Natalya Vitrenko marched towards the US embassy. The protesters' main demands were for the Ukrainian peacekeeping contingent be withdrawn from Iraq and that authority be handed over to local civilian authorities. The protesters expressed the thought that the Iraq war was not over but had entered a new stage.
Today's event was organized by the Antiwar Committee of Ukraine. It was held within the framework of the world march for peace, taking place in over 50 countries today.
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Several hundred thousand march in Rome against Iraq war
ROME (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320173810.0mdmgpgp.html
Hundreds of thousands of people staged a mass protest in Rome on Saturday against the US-led occupation of Iraq on the first anniversary of the war, which had the support of the Italian government.
The protestors -- numbering almost one million according to organisers, 250,000 according to city police -- filed through the city centre, marching under a giant rainbow-coloured flag and a banner reading "Together for peace".
The rally was called by the left-wing opposition, trade unions, non-governmental organisations and local government figures, in protest at the pro-US foreign policy of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government.
"We are against war and against terrorism," cried demonstrators, in response to the charge by members of the Italian government that the rally played into the hands of Islamic extremists.
Similar demonstrations were being held around the world in countries that joined the US-led coalition in launching a war against Iraq on March 20.
But the turnout was expected to be less than the protests which drew millions in the run-up to the war.
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Q&A: Protesters hold fast to belief U.S. wrong to go to war
Ithaca (NY) Journal,
Saturday, March 20, 2004
http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20040320/localnews/115590.html
EDITOR'S NOTE: The Journal invited local people who were arrested protesting the start of the war in Iraq last year to reflect on that conflict by answering five questions. Eleven people accepted our offer, and their complete responses follow.
JOURNAL: How has your perception of the invasion and occupation changed over the past 12 months?
DANIEL BURNS: As I thought prior to the war, I believe this war and the subsequent occupation is illegal and unjust. I traveled to Iraq in December with Peter De Mott and witnessed first hand the devastating effects of the war and occupation. In the past year, I have seen the war is taking a huge economic toll on our community. If anything, I have realized how there will very long term negative effects because of this war. Our community will continue to face budget shortfalls and property tax increases and human lives will be continue to be lost for many years to come because of this war.
MICHAEL SMITH: I have watched the events in Iraq with a mixture of grief and frustration during the past year. Almost every element of our dissent has turned out to be valid, above all our claim about the absence of WMD's and the deception that was used to initiate the war. I remain as opposed to the war and this administration's foreign policy now as I was 12 months ago. I plan to express my opposition by marching again this Saturday.
TODD SADDLER: It seems just as wrong today, but now I see it in the broader context of empire building. The U.S. has over 700 military bases in 130 countries; let's face it, that's an empire. The coup against Haiti, where I lived for seven years, is the most recent outrage. The immense cost of this empire is the main reason that we can't afford the universal health care that all the other industrialized countries have.
LISA GUIDO: In the last 12 months my perception of the invasion and occupation is that it is chiefly set up to benefit companies like Bechtel and Halliburton and politicians like Bush and Cheney. My stance is that war is not an acceptable means to resolve conflict and that the U.S. is creating many more enemies around the world each day the occupation continues. I believe that many people around the world realize the U.S. is not in Iraq to help create democracy and prevent atrocities, but to strengthen the U.S. foothold in this highly strategic area regarding oil.
I believe more firmly than ever that it is wrong to injure or kill innocent civilians and that we can best support our troops by bringing them home immediately. I support proper respect and health care for our veterans also, and notice that the Bush Administration has not properly provided for our veterans. I believe that the U.S. military recruiters provide misinformation and false promises to encourage people to sign up for the service. It is clear that the college money often promised does not eventually pan out, and that the skilled training provided often does not carry over to living-wage civilian jobs after a service commitment is completed.
TERESA GRADY: My perception has not changed one bit. Only that I feel saddened and horrified as a citizen of a democracy, to be a part of a nation who is willing to send their beautiful youth off to kill and be killed (not to mention maimed both in body and soul) based on lies.
PETER DeMOTT: My perception of the invasion and occupation of Iraq has changed over the past 12 months by becoming even more clear that war generally and this war in particular represent terrible tragedies for the human family insofar as they only serve to perpetuate a cycle of violence, claiming precious human lives and further compromising the integrity of the environment through the widespread use of nuclear weapons, i.e. depleted uranium munitions.
OONA GRADY DeFLAUN: Many of my worst fears have been fulfilled. We are now involved in a conflict that has taken thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of coalition forces lives. We have further contaminated Iraq and our soldiers with poisonous depleted uranium. We have now set a precedent for preemptive war, which is continuing to bring death and destruction.
PETE MEYERS: It seems as if those who protested the war -- locally, nationally, and internationally -- have been vindicated. The war on Iraq has been bloody and messy for both Iraqi's and Americans (do any of us know how many Iraqis have actually been killed? Why is the Pentagon not interested in this figure?) I have a hard time imagining that we're actually any safer as a result of this "occupation."
DAVID GALEZO: The most striking thing about the last 12 months is that the ignorance, conceit and primitive ethical sense of so many Americans is now a given, and will form a first premise for the thinking of most other people in the world.
JOURNAL: With no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, do you feel vindicated in your pre-war stance?
PETER DeMOTT: The quest for weapons of mass destruction amounted to nothing more than a ruse to sell the war to the people of this country. Rather than feeling vindicated in my pre-war stance, I feel an abysmal sadness for the needless loss of life, especially for the loss of the lives of innocent children, women and noncombatants, thousands of whom have perished. As a Vietnam veteran I mourn the fallen service people of all countries.
PETE MEYERS: Most definitely. What is particularly infuriating is the fact that one of our allies in the "war on terror," Pakistan, has been demonstrated to be a proliferator of nuclear weapons material -- to North Korea, Iran and perhaps also Syria. This is supposedly what we went to war on Iraq for, to stop its proliferation. Meanwhile, our supposed ally is proliferating. Makes me believe that the WMD argument put forward by the Bush Administration was subterfuge.
TODD SADDLER: My opposition to the war was not conditioned on the absence of WMD's. Still, I have to say that I'm a little surprised that Bush didn't come up with anything at all, not even a bogus plant. However, even if Saddam had them, the invasion would have been illegal, immoral and unjust.
DANIEL BURNS: I feel horrified and saddened at all the loss of life that has resulted from this unnecessary and illegal war. I believe, as a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ( www.ceip.org) states, that the extent of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction was largely knowable prior to the war. I participated in nonviolent acts of conscience prior to the war because I wanted the American people to have the opportunity to debate the issue before the tragedy of war happened. I am convinced that if there had been open debate in the government and media about this issue before the war, the war would never have occurred.
TERESA GRADY: I don't feel vindicated with the knowledge that people are dead and suffering. I don't feel vindicated to know I am right that our government lies and puts people's lives in danger for corporate greed. I feel sickened.
GRACE RITTER: Vindicated would not be the word I would use to describe my feelings about the current situation in Iraq. My reasons for standing against the war were not only, or primarily, about the alleged WMD. There are still civilians and our service people dying at alarming rates in Iraq. I am still incredibly angry. We may have been right about the weapons, but that does not give me any sort of satisfaction.
OONA GRADY DeFLAUN: I do not believe that invading another country (fo r whatever reason) can ever be a solution. The U.S. has the greatest stockpiles and is the greatest exporter of weapons of mass destruction in the world. We should not have the authority to dictate who may have deadly weapons and who may not. The whole world would be a much safer and more peaceful place if we all disarmed.
DAVID GALEZO: Given America's longstanding but seldom acknowledged aggression in the Middle East, reasonable people are nearly forced to concede that Muslim countries have a legitimate need for WMD. Therefore I never placed a great emphasis on our "finding" them. Obviously bilateral disarmament should be the only immediate goal under discussion.
MICHAEL SMITH: Absolutely. Though this is little comfort when I consider how many people have been killed and maimed, how much the land in Iraq has been ravaged.
JOURNAL: Is Iraq a better place following the U.S. removal of Saddam Hussein?
DANIEL BURNS: Between 7,000 and 9,000 innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed and over 20,000 wounded in the war and occupation. Iraq's infrastructure is destroyed and there is a high level of chaos. Certainly, many Iraqis I spoke with in December are glad Saddam Hussein is gone. However, our country armed him and supported him prior to the early 1990s and then, following the first Gulf War, led the UN in putting harsh, crippling economic sanctions on the Iraqi people. In essence, our country made it impossible for the Iraqi people to oust Saddam Hussein themselves. The war and subsequent occupation of Iraq has meant that conditions for the Iraqi people are different than under Saddam Hussein, but not better, and perhaps worse for many people.
DAVID GALEZO: No, on balance, and in the widest sense, the situation in Iraq and in the world has become predictably worse since the start of the invasion. As I suggested above, the most enduring negative social impact may be that it is now a settled belief around the world that the vast majority of Republicans and others in this country are incorrigibly stuck in an ancient model of nationalist aggression, and therefore foreign alliances excluding the U.S. will have to be formed.
TODD SADDLER: The fall of Saddam is a short-term reprieve for an oppressed people. Why did our government support that clown in the first place? Not for the good of the Iraqi people. In the long term, Iraq is worse off because it is being converted into a third world colony, and it is salted with depleted uranium. If that kind of pollution had occurred in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, it would still be poisoning people today.
TERESA GRADY: The U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix was asked yesterday on NPR (aware of the brutal dictatorship of Saddam) if he felt the price of the war was worth Saddam's removal. His reply was no. He felt that our president did not use "critical thinking." That diplomatic means should have been the protocol, as is expected under international law. Iraq is in chaos now. Violence abounds. If this is how war resolves things, who needs it? The amount of money being robbed from the U.S. economy for this war, should compel the U.S. citizen to ask the question, "who is benefiting economically from this war?"
PETER DeMOTT: The violent ouster of Saddam Hussein by the world's preeminent military superpower did not leave an already devastated Iraq a better place. The actions of our military --slaughtering hapless Iraqis by the thousands and destroying their homes and means of livelihood --have created a climate of hatred and vengeance which makes terrorism and an ever heightening level of violence all the more likely. We will reap what we have sown.
OONA GRADY DeFLAUN: I think that we should be asking the Iraqi people this question, as we should have before we invaded their country.
PETE MEYERS: Certainly very few will argue that Iraq isn't better off, in certain ways, with such a dictator gone. But now it has a dictator of another sort, from another continent. A dictator -- the United States -- which is hardly interested in the democratic aspirations of the Iraqi people. Rather the U.S. is interested solely in geopolitical context within which Iraq sits.
MICHAEL SMITH: This is an overly simplistic way of framing the problem. Are Iraqis better off with Hussein out of power? Most are. Has the chaos that has reigned in much of the country since the war helped Iraqis? No. In any case the question suggests that perhaps Hussein's removal justifies the war ex post facto. This is a very dangerous way of thinking.
JOURNAL: The bombings in Spain, Bali and elsewhere suggest the world community faces threats from terrorists. What is the best response to terror attacks?
TERESA GRADY: First I feel it would be helpful to cite Iraq and Haiti on your list of countries affected by terrorism. U.S. sponsored terror is too often omitted in this discussion keeping us from ever getting to the heart of the matter. After all you can't take care of a problem when you refuse to factor all the variables. The best response would be to look at the plank in our own eye before we try to clean the speck out of another's. Maybe if we turned away from backing known criminals and drug dealers who violently overthrow democratically elected governments, we might have a moral high ground to stand on. However, as with the case in Haiti just two weeks ago, our administration feels justified in backing convicted drug dealers with guns, stating that Aristide no longer had the support of the Haitian people. I was under the impression that we are to vote out a president from office, not bully our "might makes right" way into change, leaving a wake of death and chaos for the men, women and children to sorrowfully clean up. Lets tackle terrorism by beginning with being good to our neighbors as we would like them to be with us.
MICHAEL SMITH: Forgiveness. Use of the international justice system to find and prosecute the perpetrators. Above all, we need to have at least have a conversation about the reasons the terrorists in Spain cited for carrying out their actions. Americans have still not come to terms with our own culpability in sowing the seeds of frustration that can grow into terrorism.
TODD SADDLER: Our enemies are armed first with hatred, then with weapons. Some of the anger against our government is justified. Legitimate grievances provide the foundations for illegitimate violence based on religious and cultural differences. A foreign policy based on justice is the only way to begin a broad scale disarmament of the hatred against the United States. That means we should do to other countries what we would want them to do to us.
LISA GUIDO: The best way in my mind to prevent "terrorism" is to stop supporting governmental terrorism, which includes "shock and awe" tactics, invading and occupying a country and not allowing them sovereignty over their own affairs. The U.S. must provide reparations to the people of Iraq and allow the UN to oversee immediate reconstruction needs, especially to restore purified drinking water facilities. The U.S. must face truth and reconciliation commissions regarding the cruel economic sanctions against the Iraqi people from 1990 to the present. UNICEF reported in 1999 that the sanctions were responsible for over 500,000 deaths of Iraqi children under the age of 5.
DANIEL BURNS: We live in a world where a small fraction of the world's people control most of the world's resources. As long as resources are so inequitably distributed and the United States and its allies pursue foreign polices that are aggressive, illegal and unjust, we will continue to see awful terrorist attacks that claim precious human lives, such as just occurred in Spain. Desperation fuels terrorism. We can end terrorism by pursuing foreign policies that involve sharing the wealth, respecting the national sovereignty and resources of other countries, and that nonviolently promote human rights and economic justice. The sort of neo-colonial policy being pursued by the Bush administration is unjust and puts us all in danger of more terrorist attacks.
PETER DeMOTT: To quote Noam Chomsky, "The best way to fight terrorists is to stop being one." Our country needs to stop exploiting, subjugating and dominating weaker nations, acting with impunity as a global bully. From the genocide committed on the indigenous peoples by the colonists and their progeny to the recent coup in Haiti, the pattern of terrorism remains clear. We need to build a society based on love of one another and of Mother Earth.
GRACE RITTER: I believe the terror bombings are direct results of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and this country's advancing military and economic strangle hold on the world.
OONA GRADY DeFLAUN: I believe that we should focus on why people might take such a drastic and horrible step to get a message across. The U.S. is the greatest exporter of terrorism today -- one example is the School of the Americas (A U.S. school that trains Latin American military that have gone on to commit grave human rights abuses). We as a country should spend money on things like affordable housing, a living wage and universal health care.
PETE MEYERS: To deepen international police work and cooperation between such agencies in order to best locate such terrorist cells. But also to carefully monitor our own actions to see if they contribute or diminish such efforts. I clearly believe that our actions towards and against Iraq put as at more danger and risk of terrorist attacks and leave us more vulnerable. And this from a president who claims to be protecting us.
DAVID GALEZO: As international polls show, the "world community" regards itself as facing a threat from terrorism, which partially occurs as a consequence of U.S. foreign policy. They see the U.S. as "soft" on our own conquests and exploitations, and intellectually dense when it comes to the limitations of our strategy. Towards Islamic nations I recommend negotiation and reparations; and as for Republicans, they should be taxed, and if in office, voted out but not appeased.
JOURNAL: What impact do you believe the anti-war effort had on the nation in 2003, and will have in the future?
TODD SADDLER: The opposition to this war saved tens of thousands of lives by forcing the administration to consider the negative PR that would have resulted from even more wholesale slaughter. It slowed down the administration's drive to invade Iran and Syria. When we vote Bush out of office in November, if the election is not stolen again, that will show the powers that be that we the people will not tolerate their imperial plans.
LISA GUIDO: The anti-war effort in our country must include the above, and also must make the connection that the U.S. military budget is taking money, resources and talents directly away from our domestic needs such as decent health care for all, housing, education and jobs. We must recognize the racism and classism that is rampant throughout our society including the military. We must demand that recruiters do not purposely target people of color and/ or low-income people to go on the front lines of our wars abroad. We need to focus our efforts here in our own country to work against oppression and create a more fair and just society here before we can purport to do that in other countries.
OONA GRADY DeFLAUN: The current anti-war movement has been a great mobilization. It has brought people together from all walks of life to work on a common cause. It forced me to stand up for what I believe in, whatever the costs.
DANIEL BURNS: Much of the debate over the war that is happening now, would never have happened without the efforts of anti war organizers. Ultimately, I believe the impact of working for peace and justice is that consciences are sparked. The following things: women's right to vote, abolition of slavery, and the five day work week happened because of nonviolent acts of civil disobedience and resistance by people who were willing to take risks for justice. This history makes me confident that one day the collective impact of our struggle will be the ushering in of an era of peace and justice.
TERESA GRADY: The anti war effort was a seed of hope and redemption to a nation sleepwalking through murderous and criminal behavior. It was the voice in the wilderness. We will continue to work for peace and justice for all. Some opposed the war before the illegal invasion, then changed their opinion after the illegal invasion to "support the troops." "After all they did get rid of Saddam." I think it is erroneous that we must support our troops by keeping them in harms way in Iraq, exposing them to depleted uranium, knowing full well their presence is in violation of international law and they as well as ourselves could be prosecuted for it.
PETER DeMOTT: I believe the anti-war effort helped to expose the criminality and moral bankruptcy of President Bush and his coterie of accomplices. The realization that we little people have nothing to lose and everything to gain by challenging this "filthy, rotten system" (Dorothy Day) will spread and empower us all to take the necessary steps to save ourselves from the destruction which surely awaits us unless we change our ways.
PETE MEYERS: It is a nascent and fledgling movement that very much flexed some serious muscle in early '03. The movement seriously impacted the national discussion about the voracity of going to war. It's not unlike the civil rights movement, however, in that perhaps we weren't initially successful in stopping a war from happening. Rather we sent down some serious shoots into the ground that will continue to manifest into a larger and more committed movement towards true justice and peace in the world.
DAVID GALEZO: The U.S. anti-war effort has had some effect on weakening rightwing bluster, but we still have far to go. The polls in the U.S. are not encouraging and I doubt the right wingers will lose their relative indifference to American causalities, so the bloodshed will likely continue for years. But there may be hope as Bush continues to lose allies in Europe due to the anti-war movements there.
MICHAEL SMITH: Clearly, the anti-war protests around the world and in this country in early 2003 gave the Bush administration much less legitimacy in their war making. Anti-war activists are witnessing for another way to resolve conflict, sowing different kinds of seeds. These actions can have surprising results. It's difficult to say what the future impact will be but anti-war protests ended the war in Vietnam; non-violent direct action ended segregation in the South.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Neil Golder chose not to answer any question directly. Instead he submitted this reply)
NEIL GOLDER: Many of us who were involved in protesting the invasion of Iraq, have been thinking, struggling and praying about these issues for decades. (Thank goodness for the young people who give us fresh ideas and energy.) The issues are much broader than Iraq, maybe even than U.S. militarism. I think it was clear a year ago, and it is even clearer now, that this "war" (hardly an appropriate term since the sides were so uneven) was illegal and immoral, as is the continuing occupation. One could cheer the removal of Saddam Hussein, but fail to remember that violent means never produce good ends. Lest we get too ethereal in our armchair philosophizing, we need to ask the people of Iraq, especially the poor, especially the ones who were maimed, who lost family members to the violence of the war and the violence of the continuing occupation: how are things for them, how are they suffering as a result of U.S. actions? And ask also, the families of the U.S. soldiers killed and wounded. Gandhi and Martin Luther King have shown us that the only viable way to solve the world's problems is through non-violence. It may take longer, it may require great sacrifice, it may mean radically changing our actions and perceptions. I believe we are in the midst of a worldwide movement, a spiritual as well as a practical movement, to end war, to end violence and exploitation, to bring justice to all.
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GROUP PROTESTS WAR ONE YEAR LATER
BY ANDREA KAMPWERTH
THE SOUTHERN ILLINOISAN
[Sat Mar 20 2004]
http://www.southernillinoisan.com/rednews/2004/03/21/build/top/TOP002.html
CARBONDALE -- As a group, they've been standing on the Town Square with placards protesting the war in Iraq, protesting President George W. Bush's policies, and asking for peace every weekend for more than a year.
Saturday the turnout was greater than usual as Carbondale joined a "global day of action against war and occupation" marking the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Several invited speakers addressed the assembly, putting the protest into context and encouraging the protesters to keep on keeping on.
"This reminds me of the Vietnam War," said John Davis of Carbondale. "I think a lot of the protest is because we don't want the United States to be the policeman of the world. We're not anti-American -- we just hate to see the soldiers dying and being maimed. The turn-out today shows people's frustration toward the war. We're taking a stand -- we're doing something."
Lee Hartman of the Shawnee Green Party said he has seen reaction from passersby become more sympathetic to the protest as the occupation of Iraq continues.
"I think it reminds people the war is not over even though they told us last May that it was," he said. "It reminds people we can still dissent, and we can still protest the government."
Hartman said the signs and the presence of people curbside is a "low-cost mass media expression."
"There are not many places for this to take place in the popular media," he said. "People need a place to express their opinions."
Joel Landry, a graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a humanitarian activist, spoke about the "hideous lie" and the campaign of fear the Bush administration used to justify the war in Iraq.
"There really was no cause for the war, and we know it," he said. "The Bush administration was trying to mislead the American public to believe a war would make us safer. The war hasn't made us safer."
Landry said the war has been a "waste of resources" with severe moral implications. He referred to the Patriot Act, which the city of Carbondale officially protested with a resolution passed by a 5 to 2 vote, as being one of the negative side-effects of the war.
Jim Glover, associate professor of recreation at SIUC, addressed the subject of depleted uranium weapons. He said ammunition made with depleted uranium shells is manufactured at a General Dynamics plant in the Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge. Exposure to depleted uranium, he said, has been linked to cancer and birth defects.
"What better way to dispose of toxic waste than to make it into weapons and shoot it into other people's backyards," he said. Glover alleged the United States government is the "single biggest threat to ecological safety" in the world.
Cathy Field, a teaching assistant in the SIUC sociology department, took a more personal approach, discussing how war and the aftermath of war affects those involved for generations. In her own family, she grew up hearing war stories from her father talking about World War II. Her own daughter, she said, grew up dealing with a father disabled during the Vietnam War.
"Wars do not end as long as the stories continue," she said. "When survival is the story, it may be heroic but it is not poetic. You get up, you struggle through the day, you go to bed. The next day you get up again."
Comparisons to the Vietnam War seem inevitable. Many of the older protesters remember protesting that war, too. A key difference, some said, is that this war has not involved as many students in the protests.
"There was the same feeling with the Vietnam War that we were being fooled," said Genevieve Houghton of Carbondale. "There was a feeling then that we could win (by protesting) in large numbers. Now, students are much less involved. I think now there is a feeling of resignation and despair, even of apocalypticism. I don't think there was that feeling during the Vietnam protests."
The anniversary demonstration has concluded, but the coalition said the protests will continue until there is a change.
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Chomsky backs 'Bush-lite' Kerry
Matthew Tempest
Saturday March 20, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1174017,00.html
Noam Chomsky, the political theorist and leftwing guru, yesterday gave his reluctant endorsement to the Democratic party's presidential contender, John Kerry, calling him "Bush-lite", but a "fraction" better than his rival.
Professor Chomsky - a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a renowned chronicler of American foreign policy - said there were "small differences" between Senator Kerry and the Republican president. But, in an interview on the Guardian's politics website, he added that those small differences "can translate into large outcomes".
He describes the choice facing US voters in November as "the choice between two factions of the business party". But the Bush administration was so "cruel and savage", it was important to replace it.
He said: "Kerry is sometimes described as 'Bush-lite', which is not inaccurate. But despite the limited differences both domestically and internationally, there are differences. In a system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes."
He reserved his especial venom for the Bush administration's plans for the health sector: "The people around Bush are deeply committed to dismantling the achievements of popular struggle through the past century no matter what the cost to the general population."
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25,000 march in London on first anniversary of Iraq war
LONDON (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320171027.pzxsxg6v.html
Some 25,000 protesters marched through central London on the first anniversary of the US and British invasion of Iraq, converging on Trafalgar Square to demand a swift end to its occupation.
With gusty winds buffeting their placards, they set off from Hyde Park determined to make their anger clear to US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Anti-Bush! Anti-Blair! Anti-war, everywhere!" shouted those at the front of the procession -- estimated by police at 25,000 -- as they streamed towards London's most famous square.
Several blocks away, police arrested two Greenpeace activists who had scaled Big Ben, the landmark clocktower of the Houses of Parliament, at dawn and unfurled a banner that read: "Time for the truth."
Harry and Simon Westaway, brothers in their 20s, were led off to a police station "on suspicion of causing criminal damage" after strong winds forced them to abandon their plans to spend the whole day atop Big Ben.
Police -- already on high alert against a potential terrorist attack -- said they would review security in the wake of the stunt. But they insisted that at no time were the duo in a position to break into the premises.
The march in London was among several planned in major cities in Europe and around the world to mark the first anniversary of the Iraq war and to demand a swift end to Iraq's occupation.
Mindful of the Madrid train bombings nine days earlier, organisers called a moment's silence and released thousands of black balloons at Trafalgar Square in memory of both Iraq war victims and those who died in the Spanish capital.
Jeremy Corbyn, a dissident member of Blair's governing Labour party, pointed to last weekend's election upset in Spain.
There, he told the rally, the Spanish people "listened to the lies of their prime minister (Jose Maria Aznar) and emphatically threw their government out of power".
In a message read out to the protesters, London Mayor Ken Livingstone -- a familiar face at past anti-war events -- said: "Everything we have learnt since the war has told us that it was totally unjustified."
In numbers, Saturday's march was far smaller than the million-strong march in the British capital in February last year, when many felt it was still possible to avert the conflict.
It also paled against the 100,000 to 200,000 who protested in Trafalgar Square last November when Bush was in London for a state visit.
But demonstrators told AFP they felt as strongly about the war as ever.
"I think you'll see from this demonstration that the war is still the central issue in British politics," said London artist Leon Kuhn, 49, who was selling his own postcards depicting Blair as Bush's computer mouse.
"You know the phrase, 'Dead man walking'?" he asked. "That's Blair at the moment."
"There's no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a dictator," said May King, 30, another Londoner, who was helping to carry an effigy of Bush and Blair festooned with dollar bills, oil company logos and silver rockets.
"But was he a threat to the nation? I don't think he was," she said.
Anti-war independent MP George Galloway, who was expelled from the Labour party last October, called for the June 10 local and European elections to be a referendum on Blair's future.
"We must draw a line through Tony Blair and ensure that he is the ex-prime minister of Great Britain," said the veteran left-winger from Glasgow, who met Saddam in Baghdad seven months before the war.
A YouGov opinion poll for Sky News television, released earlier this week, indicated that Britons remain divided over the Iraq war -- with 48 percent saying it was the right thing to do, and 41 percent saying it was wrong.
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Chilean demonstrators take anti-war protests to the streets
SANTIAGO (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320191231.rvzdk0mi.html
Chileans joined protesters around the world Saturday marching against the US-led occupation of Iraq on the first anniversary of the war, with two separate rallies held in the capital.
Some 2,000 anti-globalization activists, human rights activists and members of leftist political parties marched to the downtown presidential palace, where activists set a US flag ablaze.
"We are against the war and terrorism, because one cannot answer terrorism by invading a country," said Victor de la Fuente, one of the protest organizers.
A separate march was led by the environmental group Greenpeace, and ended outside the US embassy in eastern Santiago.
"This was a military intervention that had no justification," said Gonzalo Villarino, the Greenpeace representative in Chile.
Anti-war marches were also held in Valparaiso, La Serena, and Valdivia.
Chile, a member of the United Nations Security Council, opposed the war in the face of strong pressure from the United States.
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Hundreds of Hondurans protest Iraq war
TEGUCIGALPA (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320192301.chrqpn0x.html
Hundreds of Hondurans converged Saturday at the US embassy to protest the Iraq war and demand the return of 370 Honduran troops from Iraq.
President Ricardo Maduro sent Honduran troops to Iraq where they are under Spanish command.
Maduro said Tuesday he had no plans to prolong his troops' tour beyond their scheduled return in July.
"Bring the soldiers home, let Maduro leave," protestors shouted.
Anti-riot police oversaw the protest as demonstrators called US President George W. Bush a "fascist" on the anniversary of the US-led invasion.
"You're the terrorists," they said.
The protest was organized by an alliance of unions, farmers, business groups, and women and human rights groups.
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Thousands protest Iraq war in Cuba
HAVANA (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320162335.ceglldn9.html
More than 10,000 Cubans decried the war in Iraq Saturday in a protest organized by groups associated with the ruling Communist Party, officials said.
The protest took place in the town of Cueto, 700 kilometers (435 miles) east of Havana, as the world marked the one-year anniversary of the US-led war.
Concerts, art exhibits and conferences to protest the war were planned throughout the Caribbean country of 11 million.
"The grave situation created by the criminal aggression in Iraq can only be resolved with the unconditional end to the illegal occupation, and with the Iraqi people enjoying its right to absolute independence in a united Iraq free of guardianship," party leaders told the protestors in a statement.
The United States has had a full economic embargo on Cuba since 1961, two years after President Fidel Castro took power.
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Govt lauds war as Australians rally for peace
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Australian Broadcasting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1070246.htm
Thousands of people across the nation have joined in anti-war protests to mark 12 months since the start of the invasion of Iraq.
In Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne protesters heard from a variety of speakers with a common theme - the war in Iraq is unjust.
Defence Minister Senator Robert Hill says people have a democratic right to protest but he has never had any doubt about Australia's role in Iraq.
"I'm proud of what Australia has done," Senator Hill said.
"I'm particularly proud of what our service personnel have done - they were excellent in the combat phase and they continue to o an excellent job in the rebuilding and reconstruction of Iraq."
Sydney
In Sydney, former intelligence analyst turned Greens political candidate Andrew Wilkie addressed a rally of about 2,000 people.
He says Iraq is on the cusp of a civil war, with dozens of civilian deaths for every reported death of a soldier.
Mr Wilkie says it is not just Al Qaeda causing the ongoing violence, although the Australian and US governments would like people to believe the terrorist group is responsible.
"Instead it is a complex combination of jihadists coming in, as they did come into Afghanistan during the 1980s when the Soviets occupied that land," Mr Wilkie said.
"But there is also a guerrilla war against an army of occupation and we're on the cusp of a genuine civil war, caused directly by the invasion."
He condemns the Federal Government for trying to argue Australia faces no heightened risk of terrorism as a result of our involvement.
"We all now live with an increased risk of terrorism of this Government's making," he said.
Journalist John Pilger told the rally thousands of American soldiers are sick or dying due to uranium-tipped bombs dropped on Iraqi cities.
"By every meaning of the word terrorism the invasion of Iraq was a massive act of terrorism," Mr Pilger said.
Melbourne
In Melbourne, 2,000 people have heard from the father of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks and the executive officer of the Victorian Council of Churches, Maureen Postma.
Ms Postma told the rally the deceit over the war has become even more evident during the last year.
"I think some of us were somewhat surprised when leaders of Spain and Poland now confess to being surprised that they were led to war with lies and deceit," she said.
"What do they think millions of us were protesting about in February and March last year?"
Mr Hicks is calling for his son, who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for two years, to be charged or set free.
"David - if he had of done anything wrong - should have been charged or released two years ago," Mr Hicks said.
Brisbane
Brisbane's rally attracted more than 500 people, who heard from speakers including the ALP's national president, Dr Carmen Lawrence.
Dr Lawrence says the rallies around the country show people are becoming increasingly suspicious of the decision to invade Iraq.
She says the arguments put forward by Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer for invading Iraq have continually shifted and been proven wrong.
Dr Lawrence says the Federal Government's credibility is "shot to pieces".
"If they were to claim, for instance, that there were terrorists on our doorstep or nuclear bombs in North Korea or that we're at risk from some source, people would ask whether they could be trusted," she said.
"It's a very serious erosion of public trust in Australia and in many ways it's the worst outcome for Australia."
Hobart
Tasmanians gathered in Hobart's Franklin Square for a silent vigil and march.
Alex Bainbridge, from the Peace Coalition, says the rallies are designed to signal to the Government that Australians are still opposed to what is happening in Iraq.
"Today is 12 months exactly since the illegal invasion by the US, Australia and Britain of Iraq last year," he said.
"[We are here] to say that war took place without the support of the peoples of the world and we're here to call for an end to the occupation of Iraq."
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Two protestors scale Big Ben ahead of London rally against Iraq war
LONDON (AFP)
Mar 20, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040320104601.21j401b8.html
Two anti-war demonstrators on Saturday scaled London's landmark Big Ben clock tower in a spectacular protest, as opponents of the US and British invasion of Iraq prepared to mark its first anniversary with a rally.
"Officers are at the scene trying to bring the protest to a peaceful solution," a spokesman for Scotland Yard said.
Police said they did not believe there was reason to fear a terrorist incident.
"We don't think it is terrorist related. We think they are anti-war," the spokesman added.
British news channel Sky News showed pictures of two men, perched at the level of the clock more than 45 metres (150 feet) from the ground. They were roped together and appeared to have climbing equipment.
The spectacular protest is an embarrassment for British security services who have been on near high alert following the Madrid train bombings on March 11 which killed more than 200 people.
Opponents of the US and British invasion of Iraq were later to mark its first anniversary Saturday with a major street march in London demanding an end to the country's occupation.
Tens of thousands were expected to join the main demonstration in London, starting at noon (1200 GMT) in Hyde Park and snaking its way to Trafalgar Square for an afternoon rally, the Stop the War Coalition said.
Buses were being laid on from more than 75 cities to bring protestors to the British capital.
Several thousand black balloons were to be released at 3 pm in memory of both Iraqi war victims and the 202 people killed in last week's train bombings in Madrid.
It will be a far smaller event than the million-strong march in February last year that underscored the scale of opposition within Britain to Prime Minister Tony Blair's decision to join the US thrust to oust Saddam Hussein.
But organisers were determined to make their voice heard.
"We want to call for an end of the occupation in Iraq," Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition told a news conference earlier in the week.
"Everything we said about the war has turned out to be true, and everything the (British) government said has turned out to be a lie."
Blair, to a greater extent than US President George W. Bush, argued that military action was essential in order to deal with Saddam's feared pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
No such weapons have been found, however, prompting the demonstration's keynote slogan: "No more lies, Mr. Blair."
Blair received a roasting Saturday from his newspaper critics over the war in Iraq, while papers which supported Blair's decision to commit British troops to the campaign to remove Saddam Hussein were notably quieter.
Most trenchant was the Independent, which used its entire front page to run a hard-hitting editorial piece condemning the initiative, titled: "A year of war that made the world a more dangerous place."
An opinion poll by Sky News television, released earlier this week, indicated that Britons are as divided as ever over the war, with 48 percent saying it was right, and 41 percent saying it was wrong.
The last big anti-war protest in London, also spearheaded by Stop the War, was last November when 100,000 to 200,000 converged on Trafalgar Square as Bush paid a state visit.
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